but it wouldn't be make believe...thoughts on wishes, hope and faith

have you ever wished and hoped for something, something so crazy and impossible, but wished for it for so long that even if you didn't really expect it to ever come true, it became second nature to include it in your daydream list of wishes? and then suddenly, one day, while you're still wishing for it, you look up and realize that it HAS come true?

when i was little, around 10 years old i think, i first read and fell in love with anne of green gables. i wanted to be her, not just read about her. what i didn't realize at the time was that i liked her so much because i already saw myself in her, but not thinking quite that introspectively at 10, i just knew that she was what i wanted to be when i grew up. and weirdly, i extended that wish not just to her personality and being, but to her looks as well. anne was fair with pale "alabaster" skin and red hair, first like the color of carrots, then a rich auburn. her eyes were light and changeable, moving from gleaming grey to shining green depending on her mood. in my imagination she is still the most beautiful woman i have ever, um, not seen.. and i wanted to look just like her.

so much so, in fact, that i actually started to pray about it. in my prayers at night after asking god to bless every relative and friend i knew, i would ask that i could someday look like anne.

now you have to understand that at the time i was a scrawny, short, brown eyed little girl with scraped knees and the dorkiest glasses on the planet. more than that though, i was a pretty dark kiddo. my summer tan would last and last and my skin was definitely brown. so talk about the bluest eye, i was praying to god to change me in to a fair haired, fair eyed picture of beauty, bargaining with how good i would be if i only looked like anne. (an interesting aside: in the books, anne was always praying for brown hair and a blushing complexion!)

i prayed my way right through up to 8th grade, just about one year before i would lose my Faith all together, when my skin actually changed. impossible you say? i wish. though i can still tan in the summer, and do, i am naturally very pale now. my mother is perpetually telling me, "ness, you need some blush" and molesting me with a blush brush and too pink powder from her purse.

i don't exactly regret having seen this change come through. it was an interesting lesson for me, both in the "be careful what you wish for" way and in the "mind/prayer is a powerful thing" bit of spiritual spookiness.

i've been thinking about this because my faith is, very simply, back. frankly it has been creeping back for the last year, but i had been afraid to fully explore it for fear of being a total hypocrite. i say creeping because even though i wasn't going to church and wasn't really praying, i was thinking more and more about it and "wishing" that i could "find it" again. you may laugh, but it's the sunday late night broadcasts of joel osteen's that helped me the most. it was my covert way of indulging in a little god time. my husband was really irked by my watching it, although i don't think he was irked in the way i was irked by it. you see, i was worried that i was finding inspiration through a snake oil salesman. he, my husband, however seemed to dislike it the way he disliked my other guilty pleasure TV, like Roseanne and The Nanny. i wonder if i should have asked him to really sit down and watch i with me, instead of turning it on, low volume, while he slept at night. i think that whatever evil there may be in him, Osteen's messages aren't half bad. they helped me quite a bit in finding faith in myself...though not necessarily, at the time, in god.

so after months of making an effort to watch the program, but not really feeling comfortable with taking any other steps, i went on my trip to europe and saw church after church after church. i wondered why the St. Peter's was beautiful and grand, but didn't make me feel...something more. i loved the Duomo in Florence, but more for its juxtapostion of Church dogma and Renaissance messages than its effect on my heart. there were probably another 20 churches on the trip, if not more, all beautiful in their way, with their own story and significance, but all museum like and far away from me.

and then, the last church we visited, rife with violent, bizarre and beautiful history, was Notre Dame. still a Church in use with areas roped off for worshippers and weekly mass, the Cathedral still not necessarily more beautiful than another, but it moved inside me somehow. my sister and i sat in the chapel of our lady, lit some candles, and prayed for our gramma, our grampa, and our little cousin daniel, and for whatever else we needed. i prayed for everyone, oddly, and including the caviat that i would pray for myself, for my husband, but that might just be "too hypocritical for you to take." and there it was. a conversation with god, the first in years, and one that has made me smile inside ever since.

don't get me wrong, folks, i'm no wannabe or holy roller, professing to be something i'm not. this journey is of my making and i'm seeking guidance as i need it, going to church as i want, praying on things in ways that are as much medatative and therapeutic as anything else. i am also as aware as ever of the evils of religion and dogma, the crutch for free thinking they can become, but i stopped arguing against faith a long time ago. faith is faith. if you truly believe in something, it might as well be real. to the believer, whatever the cause, faith and reality are one and the same.