God, Faith & Belief

A woman who was pushed down the stairs when she was 28 weeks pregnant gave birth to a baby girl who later died. She wrote me a moving message today. She is only 19, the incident happened when she was 15. It made me think back to where I was at 19... just married, no children on the horizon and I had faith in God. I was part of a very religious community that I left 4 years later and with it, buried my life and everyone I had ever known. (it's complicated...)  2 days ago, I received a message of sympathy from one of those individuals who meant a great deal to me; she would be referred to today as my BFF -  it was as though she temporarily resurrected from the dead to tell me she was sorry for my loss and then was herself buried again... 

The woman who wrote me today referred to us as 'Angel Mothers', a reference I tenderly associated with babies being innocent and angelic-like. I realized later however, that I am one of the few Mummies on the forum who doesn't think that Zephyr is an actual angel, now looking down upon in me heaven, awaiting a reunion... Nor do I believe that he will magically be resurrected one day and return to my womb. Although I do believe in a God or Creator who put everything into motion, I have come to believe that he/it does not have any sort of involvement in our daily lives. First of all, I would like to have nothing to do with any sort of God who takes babies and runs some sort of heavenly daycare. On earth, a person who takes someone else's child is called a kidnapper. Why would anyone want to pray to a kidnapper?

So no, I don't think God has anything to do with it. I think that the belief in heaven or resurrection is something for us to hold onto as a viable hope of explaining the unthinkable; that random bad things happen all the time and that there's nothing we can do about it nor is there any hope of seeing loved ones again, period. Don't get me wrong, I wish I did believe, wish I did have this faith because it would make things much easier right now... to think I could touch, feel and see my Zephyr again...

I think that prayer unto itself is sustaining. The belief that someone with the power to make it all better is actually listening and may intervene in our lives or give us strength - that very notion is powerful stuff. Meaning no disrespect, I have come to believe that it's the belief itself that carries the faithful through, not God. Although I have great admiration for people of faith, I have become a rather apathetic realist I suppose in that plenty of people all over the world pray for various things, all good of course; I mean who prays for something terrible to happen? And yet terrible things happen all the time, to good people, often of faith, caring, loving, wise, talented, funny, wonderful, young and old people without any sense of logic or reason. Think Haiti...

Greg and I watch a show called Lost. It is about a plane that crashes on an island and it's the story of the survivors and the rather strange occurrences that befall them. We are nearing the end of the series now and several pieces of the puzzle that have spanned several seasons are falling into place. It was the second last show we watched a few nights ago that stuck with me for some reason. (Potential spoiler here to anyone still watching this show...) It appears that a man named Jacob who has powers is a sort of keeper of the island and he prevents the evil, also a man on the island, from leaving so as not to exterminate the whole earth. The evil man is actually fairly likable as well and it is often difficult to decipher if he is really actually evil. Jacob orchestrates events to bring people to the island where they are left to their own devices to see if they can actually survive and remain good. He only protects a select few from actual death even though they still go through terrible suffering. The whole plot a rather biblical premise I thought to myself... One of the survivors who has come to the island after a terrible injustice has been done to him asks Jacob why he doesn't just tell people about the evil on the island and why doesn't he intervene in the events to help people? And Jacob says something like "that's not my job, I expect them to sort it out without my intervention."