A Small Miracle Every Morning

It may be age, it may be increasing interaction with folks who don't share my belief in an afterlife. Whatever it is, with each year that I get closer to "heaven" I have an increasing struggle to believe it is there.

My favorite theologian happens to be my husband and his answer to this replicates his answer to all my doubts, "If Christianity were based on knowledge, it wouldn't be a 'faith.'" While logically correct and theologically profound, this answer is staggeringly unsatisfying to a woman who wonders where she'll be going when she is gone.

Thankfully, the Holy Spirit (or somebody) has placed a faith in God's goodness in my heart. And, in spite of the holocaust and my ancestors' contribution to slavery and my country's continuing neglect of the poor, I do believe in God's goodness. So that is a place to start.

And, noticing the indicators of God's presence in my life helps. There are roses and peonies and daisies and dandelions -- all of them witnesses to the principle of life God has engrafted in his creation. Rain falls. The sun shines. My husband comes home for dinner another night . . . in spite of all my failings and the operation of gravity on my 53-year-old body.

But the main heaven miracle I am hanging onto is the one that happens daily. Each night my head drops to the pillow, grateful for respite from dirty dishes and ungraded papers. Some nights, when I am uncharacteristically rested, I face the darkness of sleep for the abyss that it truly is and hesitate. The hesitation expresses itself as anxiety about tasks to be done or worries over events I can't control. But the night-time fear is fundamentally a fear of the abyss, it is a fear of nothingness, of dissolving into non-existence.

That abyss is an opportunity to act in faith. Each night as I close my eyes on the world, I cease to be. Doctors and psychologists can argue this point, but my experience is that I cease to be. It is a scary prospect, and the temptation is to use worry as an inner-tube to avoid the descent. But eventually, I always let go and sink into sleep.

Miraculously, each morning I resurface.

Each morning I wake up renewed, always myself and more than myself. Each morning I am a tiny manifestation of heaven, that great awakening on the other side of a deep abyss.