Figuring Out My Relationship with God

Figuring Out My Relationship with God

Don’t know what’s got into me but I want to go back to church. I used to go to mass every Sunday with my mother and it felt like going home sitting beside her in the pew in the same church in which I was baptized, confirmed and got married. But then Covid hit and we stopped going. And then we entered the worst part of my husband’s battle with MS which ended with his death in September of 2021, and my faith was shook up bad.

There was no God in what happened to him. He was a really good person, a really good person, who suffered senselessly. His cells malfunctioned and there was no supernatural explanation for it, no grand purpose, only the two of us trying to get through the days. Please don’t tell me it was because Adam and Eve disobeyed. I don’t need a fairy tale to delude me into believing my husband’s suffering had any meaning. It was meaningless. His cells just did not work.

In fact, the entire Bible to me is fiction. If there is a God, they sure didn’t speak to us through certain chosen humans. If there is a God, we are not their priority. They have a whole universe to keep in motion. We are a small, insignificant speck in the grand scheme of things, an organic wonder of chemistry subject to its environment.

Dogma be damned. But, but … I volunteered to go to mass with my mother on Easter Sunday. Sitting there, that feeling came back to me, that utter peace, that connection with the spiritual. A big draw for me was sitting beside my mother. And also the sense that you are part of something that is so much greater than you.

I sat in the pew, and asked in my head, “God, who are you?” And to Jesus, I asked, “Are you here?”

It’s just that I am left exposed to my spirituality. It begs attention.

I am not totally convinced that it is not all delusion. The brain is a powerful believer. It seeks comfort. My experience with my husband’s illness and his death confirm to me that God does not play a role in our lives. But what is this part in me that likes to sit in church for an hour on Sunday?

And so, yeah. My relationship with God. I couldn’t for a second imagine what he/she is. So what am I connecting with when I go to church? That part of me that represents the wonder of creation. And that wonder is found inside everything that exists. I don’t ask anything of God. And I do not believe he/she asks anything of me. But sometimes it’s just nice to sit in church and have people say, “Peace be with you.”