Several years ago, I found myself, as I called it, between religions.
Not converted.
Not enlightened.
Just somewhere between what I had believed and what I could still make myself believe.
After too many devastating things in my family and in my own life, the world began to feel less like a place with a plan and more like an angry force with very good aim.
For years I had said what a lot of us say:
Everything happens for a reason.
I waited for the reason.
I waited for all the trials and losses to arrange themselves into something I could understand.
They never did.
When the explanation stopped working
Eventually I could no longer make sense of it all.
I let anger take over.
I went to a very dark place.
That happened before cancer.
I think that matters.
Cancer did not arrive and suddenly destroy a perfect, uncomplicated faith. The cracks were already there.
I had spent years thinking I had a purpose. I had an almost unreasonable drive to make my mark on the world, to create something, change something, leave something behind.
I felt invincible.
Then life kept landing punches.
At some point I lost the drive.
I became what I once described as:
A fighter with no cause.
Then came the diagnosis
Stage 2 first.
Then Stage 4.
I did not have some great spiritual awakening.
I went numb.
By then I had already abandoned faith, or at least the version of faith I had understood before.
It simply was not available to me.
And I am wary of rewriting that part now just because survival stories are supposed to have tidy lessons.
Mine did not.
The people who kept saying God
Something unexpected happened during treatment.
I found myself surrounded by nurses and doctors with strong religious conviction.
They were comfortable bringing God into conversations with me.
I was not.
A few times I told them I was having a religious conflict.
They did not argue.
They did not hand me a slogan.
They did not try to solve me.
Sometimes they barely responded verbally at all.
But I remember their eyes.
There was something there that gave me hope.
I still cannot define exactly what that means.
I am still between religions
I wish I had a more satisfying ending for this.
I do not.
My faith is cautiously held back.
There is still too much I cannot make sense of.
Illness did not make the world suddenly logical.
Survival did not answer the questions.
And hope did not arrive carrying a label telling me where it came from.
But hope did come back.
Quietly.
Not as certainty.
Not as doctrine.
Not as proof that everything happens for a reason.
Just as the possibility that there may still be something ahead worth walking toward.
I have hope, even if I cannot define where that hope should lead me.
For now, that is enough.
I am still a work in progress.
Still asking questions.
Still suspicious of easy answers.
Still here.