I love sunshine. I find it difficult to describe the feeling, when I lift my face to the sun and close my eyes.

Sometimes, I can do just that one thing; close my eyes and turn my face to the sun and take 3, 4, maybe 5 deep breaths, and feel like I've had a 20 minute power nap.

But if I am home and it's a beautiful day I feel myself being pulled out in to it. On a beautiful sunny day, to be indoors is almost painful. I want to bare as much of myself as I can and bask in it for as long as I can.

So, on a recent day, when I started to feel the burden of stress that comes when I see several dates approaching that I've committed to things that I have not yet properly prepared for, I told Greg, “I need to write” “I need time at the computer”.

But, it's not that easy. Saying it doesn't make it happen. For a variety of reasons I understand, but don't need to go into, and probably for some I am unaware of, I need solitude to write meaningfully. And that's fine. Because Greg has lots of little irons in lots of little fires and spends lots of little chunks of time away from the property. The struggle for me, comes when Wintering is over and the Earth wakes from her rest. It's very hard for me to sit at my computer when the sun is shining and the grass is growing wild and the gardens need planting. It's hard to be in, when being out, would feel so delicious. Normally, when home alone, I jump upstairs and start writing the minute I have the house to myself. But lately, I just want to don my gardening gloves and care for the property in its Spring tenderness.

So imagine my grateful heart when, on a day I'd have the house to myself for 7 whole hours, the clouds rolled in, the wind picked up and there was a chill in the air. Not a day I'd normally choose to spend outside. So even though there were projects that needed completion, I took off my gloves, put away the weedeater, took off my 'yard shoes' and came inside.

Where, I sat at my computer staring at a blank page. I can't do that. I either have something brewing or I don't. I should have known better. Like Kelly so graciously said to me one day at the pool, “It'll come.” After almost no time at all, I was back outside working feverishly to get the yard mowed before the rain came.

The next morning, I was watching Young Sheldon while riding the stationary bike. And that’s when it came.

I actually don't expect that very many of you are familiar with binge watching Netflix, but I do it while I ride. And Young Sheldon is my latest series. In the episode that morning, Sheldon's family learns that a neighbor lost their 16 year old in a car accident the previous night.

Sheldon's mom, a very strict Southern Texas Baptist, tells Sheldon, who is 10, that “Faith means believing in something you can't know for sure is real.” But the sudden, tragic death of this girl, absolutely rocks her faith right off of its pious foundation. She tries to write a condolence card to the family and as soon as she catches herself starting to write, “She's in a better place” she feels so disgusted with herself and then she loses touch with her faith. Wondering, with uncharacteristic anger, how in the world there could ever be a better place for a 16 year old child than at home, and safe with her family.

I'm not sure why I needed to tell you all that stuff about how I operate. I knew, when Kelly said to me in the pool that day that, “It'll come.” that she was right.

When I watched that TV mom, a mom with a 15 yr old and 10 year old twins, struggle with the sudden snatch-away death of a neighbor's 16 yr old daughter, it reminded me that grief has so much to teach us. So much to teach us about what it is we truly believe.

Our relationship to faith, whatever we mean by it and however we might describe it, is something we all develop over time. And losing things, like dreams, and people we love, helps shape how we might identify and define what our faith is.

How has that worked in your life? How have the people and places and things you've lost shaped what you believe in? What do you believe in? What do you think happens to us when we die?

I was, very recently, bedside with a woman who has chosen to stop taking nourishment or hydration. She has chosen that it is her time to die.

Similar to a woman whose story I posted on Substack last week, this woman was elderly, she had had cancer several years ago and it had come back, and she had decided she didn't want to subject herself to the rigors of treatment again and asked to be put on what we call 'comfort care'. No one could predict when she might actually die.

I knew all of this before arriving for my shift and I knew I wanted to meet her. The palliative team from the previous day had told me as much.

When I knocked on her door and pushed it slightly open, I found two women sitting at her bedside. Their chairs were pulled very close to her bed. I entered and asked if it was alright for me to interrupt and they all enthusiastically said, “Yes!”

I introduced myself as a chaplain on the palliative team and told them I didn't need anything, I just wanted to ask how their day had been. I walked to the far side of her bed so I was facing all 3 of them.

The two women were her adult daughter (an only child) and her daughter's partner. They live on the Eastern slope and mom's home is an hour West of the hospital. It turns out, they had made the decision to get mom home. Hospice was due in 30 minutes to complete all the paper work and she'd be released home as soon as everything was in place. I felt completely welcomed and at ease with these 3 women. At one point I leaned in to the patient and pointed at the daughter and said did you bring any other children to the world like this lovely young woman? And she shook her head NO. And I said, “There were no others?” And she looked at me again and then said softly, “Yes. There were 3 others. A tubal pregnancy and two miscarriages. I lost them all.”

Never taking my eyes from hers, I said, “I'm so sorry”. “I believe that women who lose babies like that are one of the most underserved popluations of grievers we have. Mother's Day is Sunday and I know those three babies are with you aren't they?” She was locked in on me and she nodded her head yes. Then she said some of the things she'd been told when she lost those babies.

“God needed another Angel”

or

“God must have needed them more.”

or

“You're young. You can have more children.”

and then,

“They are in a better place.”

I looked across the bed at the two younger women and although they were both quiet, they both had tears in their eyes. This is perhaps a story they know but mnot one they have ever heard told to another person.

Then I asked if her spiritual practice, however she would define it, allowed for the possibility that she might get to meet them after all. That when she dies maybe they will be there somehow and she can finally wrap her arms around them?

She said, “No.” She had never thought about it that way but now she would. She would think about them and she hoped that maybe they would be there and she would know it was them.

Now all 4 of us were almost crying. The girls were laughing through their tears and the patient was so serene and peaceful and calm. Smiling like an angel herself ,she reached up her hands and thanked me for coming.

Has anything ever happened to you, in your life, that completely rocked everything you'd ever believed, or believed IN, up until that moment?

And then, what did you do to get back on solid ground?

That was something she and I did not get to explore. How she was able to move forward after those losses. She had said simply, “You just do” and I had said, “Yes. And you move forward with each one of them on your hip” And she said “Yes”

I make an assumption that being in this circle means you believe in something you can't really know for sure is real. Something big. Something good. Something higher. Something we can't see or touch. But something we believe has our backs as we move toward our own highest and greatest good.

“Faith means believing in something you can't know for sure is real.”

Sheldon's mom believes in God. She identifies and defines God as all powerful and all mighty. Definitely large and in charge. And it was all well and good to believe that when we die, IF we too believe that way, we get to go to heaven.

But then a child died. And children are not supposed to die. Her order of the Universe was messed with and her trust in what she had always professed to believe in was shaken to the core.

I don't know how she finds her way back. I'm sure, being familiar with the writers of this series, that she absolutely will, and, that Sheldon will have something to do with it.