My Doubting Thomas Spirit

My Doubting Thomas Spirit

Of all the disciples Jesus called to service, “Doubting Thomas” would have been my least favorite, perhaps because I wouldn’t want to identify with a skeptic.  Or maybe I saw more of me in him than I would have liked.  For different yet very similar reasons I might not have wanted to be closely associated with "Whatever-Comes-Up-Comes-Out- Peter, either." 

A global term that eclipses the essence of a person, "Doubt" leaves a hard-to-remove stain on character.  It's almost like an unholy questioning of everything that should go unquestioned.  Even after Thomas, whose given name was Didymus, examined the hands, feet, and sides of Jesus and accepted the evidence He offered, the question lingered, "Now, does Doubting Thomas really believe?"

While it should not matter because my precious Daughter is dead, why does my miind keep circling back like a one-wagon wagon train to disbelief? It just could not have happened as quickly as it did.  Within the span of three hours---from notification that she was being rushed to the hospital to the three doctors walking in as one to officially inform me---barely three hours had passed.  That's an awfully fast movement from life to death, earth to heaven, completeness to shattering.  That's quick; that's "lickety-split" quick. 

So, who do I believe? Can I really wrap my head and heart around facts and go with her death, which I concede is the end of life? Obviously, neither I nor anyone I know who knew her have seen her in over a calendar year.  She's not merely a "Runaway."  She hasn't located to Las Vegas and reinvented herself there.  Although, maybe what happens in Vegas really does stay in Vegas.   Of course, the rational me knows better. Her sister and I made all the arrangements  for the Memorial and did all the stuff that needed to be done.  We're not able yet to discuss her comfortably. I don't know how Tracey feels,other than abject loss.

Typically, I problem solve and make decisions  well, It doesn't take long to gather  information, sort it, get others' opinions, think about it, and decide. Of late, I've become a procrastinator, and it's not pretty.  I don't remember when it became easy to just "Let the world go away." So I  go someplace else, a Twilight-zone type place that just materializes.    It also has no people! I don't plan for it;  it's just an "all of a sudden sojourn."  

Time suspends  and my mind hides in Chicago's Lincoln Park  with its almost emerald  green grass, where I can just be.  White and gray clouds float lazily against an azure blue sky.  They  reconfigure themselves into all kinds of shapes, animals, and abstracts.  Here is a place where I don't have to believe or make-believe.  Was it Frank Sinatra who sang "I've Gotta to be me?"   Who, I wonder when I'm not wandering, am I? Believer? Doubter?