The Kids and Believing in God

I am calmer still, and able to breathe through my nose still and pooping regularly still and feeling better physically than I have in a long, long time. My stomach feels flatter (I lost 2-3 pounds on the LID), and I have more energy. I’m falling asleep at night at about 8-9 pm, but I’m also waking up earlier bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. For instance, this morning I got up at 6:30 and feel totally alert and awake. I did go to bed last night at 9 pm, and I did wake up for an hour and a half around 3 am, but still, I’m feeling very good and super energetic during the day. Yesterday I did several loads of laundry, did the MS Walk, took Brendan to Wild Rivers interviews, made lunches and dinner, did some gardening and vacuumed the entire house, laminate floors included. It was my eighth day back on Synthroid after being off it for 29 days.

On the way home from church this morning with Brendan and Jack in the car, I told them that when I was young, I believed in God because I was raised to believe in God, that when I was older—a young adult—I believed in God because it was habit, but that now I believed in God because I know He’s real and He’s proving it to me everyday. I told them that God was showing me things about Himself and giving me evidence of His existence every day since my thyroid cancer diagnosis, and I even told them I was writing a book about how God is making Himself known to me through my cancer. (I joked it was only a pamphlet right now, and Brendan laughed.) Brendan asked, “Are you going to publish it?” and I said, “Oh, I don’t know. I’m just writing it so I’ll have something to look back on and remind me how awesome God was to me through this time, and I want to have something for you and Jack to read to tell you what God has done for me. I don’t want to forget this.”

Turns out Brendan is agnostic. In the same conversation in the car, Jack asked Brendan if he believed in God, and he said something along the lines of, “I don’t know if you can know whether or not there’s a God.” I’m not shocked. I think I would have said I was agnostic when I was a teenager, too. You’re way too skeptical to take things at face value when you’re a teenager. Plus, you think you know it all, and nobody can tell you anything. And I appreciated Brendan’s honesty, even though it’s not what I want for him. At least now I know where he stands—or at least where he says he stands. You know all that teenage bravado can mask true feelings. I have faith that God has been working on Brendan and will continue to work on Brendan forever. But now I know I need to begin praying earnestly for Brendan to come to know Jesus as I have.