My sister is in the middle of a somewhat potentially serious health crisis. She's always been sickly- in one form or another. I never thought it could be something this scary though. We were keeping it quiet, didn't want to scare the 'rents unless absolutely necessary. But in this family, secrets are hard to keep.
She decided it was time. We don't yet know the outcome, but seeing as more tests are necessary, it seems almost impossible to keep this quiet for much longer.
Neither my sister nor I are very spiritual people. We are both in the doubtful category when it comes to God and creation, although on varying degrees. She believes in something, I believe in energy. Both of our parents are believers. My mother more so since her own health crisis ten years ago. I hear her mention God and prayers more often in one week than I did in the first eighteen years of my life. She is a true convert. Or really I guess she just wholeheartedly believes that God is there for us and she relies on him often. She isn't able to go to church, but the church comes to her and she receives communion once a week. Good for her. I am happy that she has found something that eases her tensions and that she can rely on when needed. I am unable to share my true beliefs and interpretations of the Bible with her. She gets very upset and her voice raises several octaves. It's not pleasant.
My father grew up in the Episcopalian church. He is very open-minded but definitely a believer. I can be honest with him regarding the Bible. When I tell him about my thoughts on the so-called Virgin Mary he doesn't get upset or angry, he just ducks as if lightning will strike us at any time. He does agree that my arguments on certain stories are valid, but he just cannot make the jump to the non-believer.
In the past, I believed in God the same way that I believed in Santa Claus. I SAID that I believed because just in case there really was a Santa, I didn't want to be the only kid without a gift from him under the tree. Same with God. I said I believed, but really I doubted. These days I realize that I cant get away with lying about it.
Funny thing happened, though, that night I found out about my sister's health. I cried, and cried, and then as I was laying in bed whimpering, I began to pray. I prayed for her safety, I prayed for her health, I prayed for everything to be okay. I prayed that if someone had to go, let it be me. I couldn't bear for someone I love to be in pain. And then it occurred to me... who exactly was I praying to? I thought that I didn't believe in anything out there. I thought that we were here on Earth with just ourselves and a vast amount of space out there. I didn't know what to do next. But I figured if my first instinct was to pray for a miracle, maybe there is someone or something out there who really can help us with that.
When we told my mother, she was upset. She didn't cry, but she asked a lot of questions and needed us to repeat the names of potential diagnoses several times. I was surprised at how well she kept it together. She did much better than I had. I wonder what her secret is, but I have a feeling I already know.
When discussing sad or serious things with Mom I try to crack a lot of jokes in order to keep things light. This conversation was no different. There are a lot of things that I can handle, but my mother crying isn't one. So jokes galore is what she got. Every now and then she would get serious and tell us how we need to pray each and every single day, every chance we got. My sister would chime in with how we would pray to energy. That is our on-going non-believer joke. When we really want or need something we tell each other to pray to the energy. Hey.. it works for us. Mom doesn't get it. Or if she does, she gets very irritated that we joke about such serious fire-and-brimstone topics such as God. She isn't the wrath of God type, but she wants no jokes when it comes to the heavens above. Toward the end of our convo, the instructions she gives us to pray happen more and more often. She starts repeating herself. In order to get her off of her "pray some more" instructions, I politely asked her a simple question. If my sister did end up with something horrible does that mean that Jesus hates her? My sister laughed, I laughed, my mom cussed.
The conversation was ending. Our topic had moved on to other things, the sucky waitress at IHOP the other day. The rain we almost got caught in. Gossip about people we know.
Just before hanging up, after we have all said our goodbyes (important calls are almost always three-way-calls) I hear my mother, at one of her highest octaves ever, because she often confuses octave levels with decibels, scream, "PRAY TO JESUS- DON'T FORGET!!!!!"
So which is it- Jesus or energy?
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