Most of us remember vividly the first time we meet our children. When I met my oldest daughter for the first time she was staring up at me with impossibly blue eyes - wondering. That has been something I have become used to Treasure doing through the years. She wonders about everything, the ridiculous, the mundane, the fantastic. She is always questioning. It seems to be part of who she is.
Two years ago I felt like I stepped into a Stephen King novel when both my little girls were diagnosed with ecoli poisoning. It is rare enough for two children in a home to be hospitalized from ecoli. But when they were both diagnosed with a much rarer, potentially lethal syndrome, caused by the ecoli poisoning, that felt like being struck by lightning twice. The weeks in Pediatric ICU are a blur of tests, doctors, blood transfusions, dialysis and beeping alarms and strange but necessary machines. Then one day the thunder storm seemed to be passing - Tori had recovered enough to go home. Treasure was improving and was undergoing some of her last dialysis sessions. It was one of those last dialysis sessions that Treasure became very uncomfortable and complaining of terrible head pain. She was restless and I was very relieved when the dialysis session was over. I was leaning over her and looking into those impossibly blue eyes again when she calmly looked up to my face with her familiar wonder and asked, "Who are you"? No parent is ever prepared for their 5 year old to not recognize them. But, with the torrent of emotions I was feeling at that moment, never once was I ever mad at my daughter. A steely resolve rose up in me that she should one day know me and how much I loved her again, whatever that would take.
Of course, two years later I have accomplished that goal. But Treasure's past inability to recognize me speaks to a deeper search I have been on over the last decade. Suffice to say that my faith has been ravaged in many ways over the last ten or so years. It was assaulted in every possible way, to such a point that I have on more then one occasion looked up to the heavens and wondered, who are you anyway? I have come to many conclusions while I have sought to answer that question and even settled for an unhappy period of agnosticism when I despaired that question would never be answered.
One thing I am sure of tonight is that my heavenly parent is no more angry at my questions and wonder then I was at my daughter's. Life is complicated and uncertain. I cannot believe that a God would be insulted by my confusion, but instead I do sense a steady leading in my life as this God answers my wondering and challenges my perceptions about who God would be. I have read countless books and spent many hours wondering about God. My beliefs have changed. I was a devout pentecostal girl who was on the edge of all things Charismatic. These days I no longer speak in tongues. I am not involved in endless evangelism, spiritual warfare, worship seminars and everything else Christian ad-nauseum. But, there is a strange satisfaction I am discovering as my wondering is being answered. The God I am rediscovering is different, but no less fantastic. And, I am so caught up in people, and our imperfections and flaws and strengths and weaknesses. How we can be there for each other.
I would not try to convince anybody else of the truths that I am finding. For me they are just the answer to my blue eyes looking up into a storm and wondering. If someone else doesn't see the same thing - well, that's okay, maybe they are just in a different place in their walk or their eyes are looking at a different sky. At least I am no longer afraid to wonder.
