After my first week's rest during a recent fortnight of annual leave from work, I found myself considerably rested, (a great honour from lupus and his little achey fatigue buddies) dressed,breakfasted, medicated and half way to the local swimming pool at 9am on a Sunday morning. As I reached the corner of the road to my destination I paused for a split second and watched as families happily entered the church situated next door, I watched their faces as they wholeheartedly and without any doubt made their way through the welcoming arched wooden doorway, eager to show their faith and belief. Not for the first time since I have been ill, I felt a very natural instinct follow the crowd and enter the calm tranquillity even most atheists couldn't deny exists within a church building.
Within 2 minutes that intention is gone and I am back to my original plan of pacing up the road to swim 15 lengths and burn off the previous nights spicy beef and noodles (homemade of course).
The trouble is, I feel conflicted. On one hand I feel like going through those doors would give me comfort and reassurance for the path in life I now find myself on, give me opportunity to say 'hey thanks, I owe you one, I'm still here' and offer me momentary solitude to consider all the additional thoughts and adaptations I now have to integrate into this alien and unexpected lifestyle
But on the other I hand I feel I would want answers, and like the eternal cliche I'd want to know ' So why me then? What was the point? I was fine with the way things were' and so the doubt comes in.
It's a question I've considered so often since, if God exists why would he make me suffer like I did, put me through 6 months of torture, terrified of going to sleep in case I didn't wake up and scar my body from knee to ribcage, something I have to see every day in the mirror, a remorseless reminder of the whole period. And then the table turns again.. Why am I still here? There was a day in April 2011 where my body completely shut down, my kidneys barely functioning and the fluid on my lungs causing heart failure, strapped up to machines and wires in every possible vein and artery when something or somebody decided 'not yet'.
Was it all those prayers mum kept telling me people we're saying for me? The congregation of my Mother in laws church in Skelmersdale who we're told to keep me in their daily prayers? Or my own strength of mind? the actions of quick thinking critical care staff? The decisions of my consultant and the right medication?
If it was the latter, why do I still want answers?
It may be human nature, it it may just be me, but I still question why and feel like over 2 years on I'm sat on the fence - the church fence that is.
Common sense and the facts of science and evolution make me highly critical and very unaccepting of the Bible and what it tells you to believe. It's validity is null and void to me and always has been, never a regular church goer and irritated by those who knock at your door eager to preach and convert I still keep a very open mind. Never one to dismiss something or someone at first glance, I still feel a sense of a bigger meaning to life, a plan and that there are more answers out there for everyone. Is this a type of faith? or something we have that as humans, don't fully understand and so seek answers to fulfil a spiritual void in our lives.
It's amazing the thoughts and questions that occur to you when you go through a life changing experience or serious illness. For me, everything I once had faith in has gone through a massive metamorphis. Aside from the basic skills we learn as a child, language, walking, reading. I feel like I have had to relearn nearly everything in my life and by default meaning I needed to have utmost faith in myself. After 6 months not working and reliant on my family and Mark for the simplest of things, I had to learn how to be around people again and multitask, learn how to admit defeat when tired, not to worry about the small things, still learning not to feel guilty about not being as strong, healthy or fast paced as everyone around me.
The presence of a chapel and Chaplin in every hospital is an advocacy for faith as a coping mechanism during serious illness. A necessity for the chronically ill and their families whom need ability to seek sanctuary and prayer during difficult times. The occasions I was wheeled past that chapel at York hospital I felt nothing but resentment at that time, it was a place to direct my anger compiled with guilt for all those that I was told had said a prayer for me. Could it be I do really believe deep down inside? The fact that I resented the chapel and what it represented surely meant there had to have been something tucked away somewhere and I would have gone down a whole other route.
So is faith just a way of providing ourselves with comfort? We perhaps seek comfort from religion as a way of giving us hope that things will get better in the end, but how does that give us relief in the mean time..? Is what we are doing just procrastinating and filling our time with perhaps misplaced hope until we come out of the bad times and then exclaim 'my faith got me through'. Did it? Or was it a channel ( like many others, counselling, exercise, holidays) that was cathartic to your needs, frustrations and sadness at the situation. Why should it be proclaimed above all else as the perfect ointment to heal all manner of human ailments and illness..?
One thing I am certain of is that it wasn't religious faith that helped me cope through those awful months, but a belief in myself and a stubborn determination that I was going to get better and get married. It was this and the love of my family and beautiful friends that got me through the gates and halfway to the finish line, and are still keeping me on track today. And for that reason only when I have reason to be in a holy place... I will light a candle and say 'Thanks'.
For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. - ROMANS 1: 11-12
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