Keep The Faith

I have found the events that have taken place over the last couple of days to be almost unbearable. My daughter, who I believed was making progress in her battle against TED (The Eating Disorder), was struck very quickly with a major depressive episode and she is hospitalized again.

She is safe there and she needs to be there and I know that. I don’t know what demonic thing is causing her so much pain and if I could, I would take it from her and carry it around myself. But, I can’t. It’s a helpless feeling and I despise that.

What I can do is be there for her, be her advocate and (according to a wise friend of mine-no, not Bon Jovi) keep the faith. When he said it, I knew that was right. Yep. I know you’re supposed to have faith. I just wasn’t sure I had any. The one-liners that people say like “God only gives you what you can handle” and “God is testing you” only leave me thinking why and for what? It's not even always true. Sometimes people are given way more than they can handle.

Little by little over the years, life events have chipped away at my faith. It was no longer a rock, the other day I was looking all over for it and could barely locate a pebble. I keep seeing bad things happen to very good people, myself included, and somehow decided that life was just random. It didn’t seem to matter who you were or what you did, if the shuffle left you holding crappy cards, that’s just the way it is.

I was wrong. Very wrong.

The other day I left my daughter alone for about 35 minutes to go see my son’s soccer game. Believe me, everything seemed 100% fine or I would have never left her alone. Everything, though, was not as it appeared and somehow in those few minutes, my daughter almost lost her own battle with her demons.

Yesterday, I had the weepies and was sitting on my living room couch with a pile of Kleenex when my neighbor, Lynette, came over and told me a story that immediately helped me locate my misplaced faith.

Lynette says that during that 35 minute time period, she was at her house cooking a roast.

Let me preface this story with one tidbit of information: Lynette cooks less than I do and I can safely say that’s almost never.

Since I’ve shared all my supreme culinary skills with my friends over the years, Lynette followed my method of cooking and put a roast in the oven without setting a timer or even paying attention to what time it was when she put it in the oven. Sometime later, she had realized what she had done and asked her daughter to run over to my house to get a meat thermometer.

Her daughter had peeked out a window and didn’t see any of our cars.

“Someone is always home over there, go and get the meat thermometer, please.” she had said. If, on the off chance that no one is home, Lynette has a key to my house that they are free to use anytime for anything, too.

Key in hand, Lynette’s daughter, Lulu, crossed the street and rapped her knuckles on the door in what she thought was a simple search of a meat thermometer. I adore Lynette's daughter. When I first met Lulu, she was 9 months old and she smiled at me with the face of a little angel. I remember thinking that at the time. This child looks an angel, a cherub. I was right about that. Not only did she look like one, she is one.

My daughter answered Lulu’s knock, and it was obvious she had been crying. Lulu asked what was wrong and my daughter told her that she had stubbed her toe while getting to the door. Lulu didn't believe her.

While they searched for the meat thermometer, Lulu told my daughter a funny little joke and my daughter, locating the meat thermometer said “Thank God you came here.”

Lulu left and within seconds my daughter was on the phone calling for help that saved her life.

There is no way this was coincidence. When I heard this story, there was no doubt in my (what I thought was faithless mind) that this was a divine intervention. I was right, Lulu was the angel I had always felt she was and I was completely wrong to have doubted my faith.

What are the chances that Lynette would ever need a meat thermometer? I think you’d get better odds on getting struck by lightning. When Lynette screws up cooking, she tosses it in the garbage. Never, not once in all of these years, has she been so concerned about a piece of meat that she has crossed the street seeking advice or an instrument to save it.

When I heard this story, I realized that I wasn’t looking at things correctly. God wasn’t giving my baby more than she could handle, He had just saved her from the demons that were.

I still have the weepies, but now, I also have found my faith and I intend on keeping it. Armed with it and my Catboots, this time I am going to kick that demon’s ass, and I am going to win.

Keep the faith.