I know people always say that God works in mysterious ways. But I’m starting to think that God only ‘works’ for certain people, the people who have a small problem that just flits away. I don’t think that my life went downhill just because God wanted it to. I can’t believe in that.
My mother used to make me pray every night before I went to bed. It was just a ritual that she believed in. She thought it would work one day - that we would both go to bed and in the morning we would wake up and my brother would still be there and we wouldn’t be in debt. I liked to believe in it, too. That it was going to work. That the kids who made fun of me at school were only doing so because some higher force told them to, a whisper carried on the wind that ruffled through their hair as they walked to school. I liked to believe it, and I prayed every night. I don’t know if I was praying for some kind of absolution, or some kind of truth. Either way, I would always start my prayers by saying, “Dear God, I hope you can hear me up there.”
Though my clothes all had holes in them (some more easily concealed than others) and sometimes we didn’t have dinner (or breakfast or lunch), I knew we had it better than a lot people. I saw the pictures of the Holocaust victims in my history book, the details glossed over for middle school kids. I told my mother one day that a Holocaust victim had said, “If there’s a God, he’s going to have to personally ask for my forgiveness.” I told her, “He’s going to have to ask for mine, too.” It was blasphemous for me to say that; she couldn’t understand. She wouldn't open her eyes to what I believed in, just as I wouldn't open my eyes. I don’t know how she clung to her faith, but she did, and she clung to it like it was the buoy that was keeping her an inch above the water, an inch away from drowning. She truly believed that the world was working in mysterious ways, in ways that we couldn’t see. But I could see it, and I could see that none of it was real.
There were times when I cried out loudly to God, asking him to change something, anything. What do you want to change? We’re one paycheck off of the street, my mother has a cough that wracks her body, I come home with my hair a little bit shorter every now and then because the other kids think it’s funny to give me a free haircut. Take your pick, change anything you want. But it seemed that the figure I was talking to in church was a deaf and a mute. There was no sign from that little figure that was the size of my torso. As a young boy, I already started to believe that the wooden cross and wooden figure in front of me was just that: it was wooden, and easily manipulated and shaped by those who wanted to believe. Like my mother.
And like I said, that image could be easily manipulated. I’ve heard many people say the same thing: I’m in this situation because God has a plan. What if the situation is on sickness, death? Why does any pain and suffering have to be a part of the plan? It is easy to say that God has a plan, that everything will work itself out when you’re keeping above the water, when you lay in bed at night and the only thing that troubles you is whether or not someone took offense to what you said. It’s easy to say when you aren’t facing this so called ‘plan,' when you aren't struggling day in and day out against the obstacles set in motion by this plan.
My mother still believes in you. I remember waking up during the night to wander down the hall to her room, and I can remember seeing her on her knees, her knuckles white in the clasp of her hands. I remember her murmurings, her crying, and her prayers. Now that things are better, she has even more reason to believe in you. She thinks that you saved our lives, kept us off of the streets. She wants me to write on her tombstone, “Faithful servant.” I don’t know how she does it. I wish I could be so blind, or maybe just hopeful. But I’m not. I know I’m doing better, but I don’t think that it’s any thanks to you.
She still believes in you, but I don’t. I know you aren’t real and so do you.
