The Puppet Show

My parents had unflinching faith. They believed in God, they never wavered, they prayed every day and they instilled belief in my brother and me.

Decades past childhood, the best way to describe my equation with faith is that I am on a rollercoaster ride with it.

I loop between do I believe, what do I believe, why do I believe it, and recently, the burning question is what conversations should I have with our grandkids about God?

You’d think at my age I’d be more settled on these questions. I am not because without scientific proof, the “leap” of faith frequently lands me in the abyss.

I am a good daughter because on most days I believe in a higher power. The form is what my parents have exposed me to. The reason I believe is simple. If I am the most evolved entity in the universe, how dumb is that?! I am not even the kind of person I want to be! There has to be something better.

I attribute positive happenings to good work. Bad things - like unexpected loss - is negative karma at work or a higher power playing me like a puppet. With no knowledge of what refuse I have collected, it’s hard to assign attribution to misdeeds of past lives. Being played like a puppet in a constantly evolving narrative is far more plausible.

In recent years, I’ve unexpectedly lost my entire birth family. The abrupt end of history and continuity affect me at an atomic level.

Happiness, I now say, is never guaranteed. Yet, we expect it, demand it even. The puppet master - or mistress or angel or dragon or monolith - has ways to humble us. For a long time after my brother’s passing I was beset with guilt. I didn’t care for him enough to make him take care of himself. There were signs I ignored. I should have spent more time with him. I was too wrapped up in my life. The reality is that when his time was up, it was up. There’s nothing any of us could do to keep him longer. It is too clinical to continue believing during these low points. When his play ended, my faith faded.

There years later, there are days when I feel my loved ones are watching over me. Then I remember my dead mother being taken away and I think how mortified she’d be looking at herself on a stretcher. There’s no way she could have been watching that scene from the heavens and not signaled a demand for privacy. Clearly, she was gone the minute her heart stopped. My father, brother and in-laws are also not on sentry duty.

To rationalize, I force myself to believe that they have merged into the higher power and the collective energy will keep me steady for the people I continue to love and serve and the ones who care about me. Planning for the here-and-now instead of what was and could have been offers purpose.

The pendulum that swings between belief and the lack of it has delivered an aversion to faith that dictates. Faith that says do this or do that, in this way or that no longer works for me. I seek faith that helps me cope with my storyline and offers practical benefits, faith which helps me center on the lives lived and not the lives lost. My mother once said, believe in your own way and pray as you can. I know they would approve of my evolution on faith.

As for Mina and Samir, I will tell them that belief in a higher power is a belief that these who have gone before us can help us do better, be kinder and become more disciplined, diligent and loving. Everything else is white noise like believing in Bertrand Russell’s teapot allegedly circumnavigating the planets without scientific proof of its existence. This message may give the grandkids the impetus to be rockstars in the stories they weave.

Kudos to those who have unwavering faith. For the rest for whom the dance evolves daily, may the puppeteer’s hand in the shade be kind and generous as a new year full of possibilities dawns upon us.

In this season of good tidings, my fervent wish for those near me who are coping with unimaginable loss is for you to find balance and discover peace little by little each day. In your journey, may our love be a comfort.

And to all: happy, merry. peace, joy and love. We are ever grateful to be in your circle.