Faith & Patience v Speed

Note: Yesterday in my blog post, I called out all of my wonderful and supportive friends. I wanted to mention that you--my five blog readers--are also considered in that group. Writing is a necessary outlet for me, and it is comforting to know that someone out there is reading this, even if I don't talk to you every day. Many thanks!

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At work yesterday at lunch, I was playing cards with a group of guys who I've been playing with for two years when one of them asked me how I was "doing." Not the chit-chat "How's it going?" and the expected response is "Fine." This was a "So what the heck is going on because we know something is up?" So I told him Jack and I were separated, and the rest of the group was surprisingly attentive and supportive.

The guy who asked has been divorced for two years now. This guy is religious and I wondered how much faith played into his staying in a very difficult marriage for years. He believed for seven years that things would get better, and then they didn't. Did his religious faith play into his faith in his personal life?

So what is faith? I was reading in the Lori Gottlieb book about uncertainty in life, and I suppose faith is a way of dealing with that uncertainty. Right now, there is a lot of uncertainty in my life, but where does faith come in, and what kind of faith? When I was looking at the waterfall Sunday, I thought things are going to be okay, which was both very comforting and at the same time incredibly vague. What things, and what is okay? Does it mean that my current state will get better, but what does better mean? Does it mean I hope the Boy will grow up to have a wonderfully connected and accomplished life, or does it mean he won't lay in bed for six months ever again?

And then I thought about patience. When I was in the educational advocacy world, we had three tenets when it came to making a giant bureaucracy change: be patient, persistent and polite. Can I apply these same tenets to my personal life right now? Part of me wants everything to be better and fixed and resolved right now. I am tired of waiting. Fuck patience.

I was talking to a friend of mine a week or two ago who was hospitalized a year ago with anxiety and depression.

"Look at how well you are doing compared to a year ago! You should be proud of yourself!" I said.

He harumphed and crossed his arms over his chest, apparently not agreeing with me. I ignored his body language and pressed on.

"You should celebrate," I said to a response of silence. I didn't care that he might not have agreed with me as I saw a considerable difference. A few days later I found out that he spends his weekends laying in bed.

Oh. Hmmm.

And then I thought about the Boy and how Jack and I are moving him to boarding school next week. His likely stay there will be fourteen months, and that is breaking my heart. And then I thought about my friend who a year after his hospitalization has made tremendous progress, but still isn't 100% of where he'd like to be. I thought of my writer friend whose husband and had depression for two years where he did nothing but lay in bed for two years, and then he recovered.

If it is taking my friend a year to get back to base, it is going to take at least a year for the Boy, too. This bizarrely brings me comfort, as now I don't feel so bad sending the Boy off for so long. I wouldn't deny him cancer treatment if he had lymphoma. Why should I deny him this life saving treatment as well?

Will it save his life?

Therein lies faith.

I want speed, but perhaps the only place I'll get that is from my Q5.