A Change of Heart

A lot of things have changed for me in the past decade or so. Twelve years ago, I got out of the military. I moved back to my hometown, got back into the civilian workforce, made new friends and watched my sister start a family.
Since then, my own life has taken a back seat, I felt that I had done and seen so much that I needed to take time to assimilate all the new opinions and ideals that I had formed. One thing that I learned was to not take everything for granted. At thirty years old, I assumed that I still had time to meet Mr. Right, start a family, start a career, buy a house, etc. Now that I've gotten a dozen years older, and none of those things has happened, I wonder what it was that held me back all these years.
I had been married when I was twenty-three, but that marriage was a sham, a constant war between my over-controlling young husband and myself. The thought of willingly subjugating my wants and needs to him made me contrary and belligerent. Some people are headstrong; I'm one of those people. During my ten-year stint in the military, I got into a bit of trouble, nothing too serious, but always because I thought that I had the right to strike out on my own path, and Uncle Sam thought differently. We didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things, just like my husband and me. For a while after my divorce, I made it my mission to prove to the world that the rules didn't apply to me. I took many lovers, enough for some people to call me a slut, a whore, a tramp, even a homewrecker. I didn't care, because I thought that if men could do it without the stigma, why couldn't I. To tell the truth, I still think that way, to a degree. Sexism pisses me off to no end, but I decided later that I was better than any domineering man, and made a pact with myself to become more moral than they are. Being better than the gander is better for this goose. Luckily, I never got any diseases, and never regretted the pregnancy I terminated because of one failed contraceptive. Perversely, I still believe that it's better to raise kids with mom and dad present in their lives.
Somewhere along the way, while still in the military, I got involved in a church at the suggestion of a female military colleague of mine. There was a hole in my life that I was trying to fill, besides the one between my legs. Every Sunday, I would get up after a night of binge-drinking, jaundiced and hung over, and drive out to the church off-base for my dose of that ol' timey religion. I reasoned that I needed to have a 'personal relationship' with God to drag me out of the funk I was wallowing in. There was a lot of singing, hand shaking, muttering in tongues, hugging your neighbor and passing of the plates (plural, plates; they took an average of three offerings per service) and still, no resonating voice of a superior power to instruct me in the ways of the Lord. Oh, sure, the preacher, the pastor of the singles ministry, the ever-supportive congregation all assured me that when I had TRULY opened my heart to Jesus and his father, I would get the sign that he was there to guide and watch over me. Months went by, the church asked for more and more money, and even urged me to go to a seminar to learn how Christians managed their money, and promised that if I joined in their approved money-making endeavor (think NutraLife supplements pyramid scheme), God would bless me with as much money as I needed to give back to the church, which would open my heart to the possibility of God, which would make me one with God in his infinite wisdom. At times, I felt like the ringer in a rigged poker game.
God never spoke to me. When I questioned my friend, she told me that I wasn't getting the messages because I was hung up on the idea of a literal voice talking to me. She explained to me, as if talking to a child, that God speaks in different ways to different people. She admonished me for being blinded by my worries, and when I stopped thinking of myself, God would send down some kind of heavenly smoke-signal to alert me to His message. I tried, I worked hard to help others with mundane tasks, I gave up partying and sleeping with cute guys that I just met, I gave to the church. Still, no God.
I got out of the military after a stint in Kuwait. Ten years of my life spent seeing the world and working my tail off, and I still had no marketable skills (I built bombs and missiles, not a lot of call for that in the civilian sector) and I was sure that God was ignoring me. Prayer was a daily thing, only, I hated doing it on my knees, they were damaged so badly from all my years of jumping up and down off of munitions trailers that they hurt to the touch. Still, no answers.
When I got back home, my sister was dating a guy she met in college and eventually, they got married and soon after, got pregnant and had my lovely niece. This is the beginning of this story...
Not long after having my niece, my sister started having trouble with her coordination and vision. She'd trip and fall, bump her head, smash her fingers, get weakness on her left side, and generally, feel terrible. An MRI detected damage to her central nervous system consistent with multiple sclerosis. I know the whole family felt like they'd been gut-punched, but I felt a pain in my heart that still hasn't subsided. She was the good kid, the loving, giving child, the considerate and compassionate one. Sure, I was the brainiac, the leader, the risk-taker and the war-hero, but she was my anchor to reality. I felt cut loose from the God I was so desperately seeking. How in the hell was this supposed to be His plan? What the FUCK??? Of course, my sister, being the way she is, tried to console me and tell me that everything was going to be fine, her MS wasn't the aggressive type, but to no avail. I carried guilt like that damned cross. It should've been me. I was the strong one. I had nobody to be a burden to, I was a free-range mustang on the vast plain of life. She had a family to worry about.
One day, after telling her that God would surely help, I mean really, her father-in-law was a minister, she had a direct line to God, she told me that she had been an atheist for a while. She said it was because she had never been saved in the church, our parents had never had her baptised and wasn't dragged to church like I had been when I was young. She said, at first, that she never felt connected to God and didn't miss it at all. I was a little indignant, telling her that now was the time to rely on God to help her out, but she'd have none of it. No amount of convincing would make a dent in her resolve that time or any other.
I pored over the Bible, looking for some sort of reason that God would treat a wonderful person like my sister that way, but never found anything that made any sense. God said he was merciful, that our rewards lay with him in Heaven, that we cannot fathom his ineffible plan for us, that we are cleansed of our sins by the sacrifice of his son, blah, blah, blah. All I could see was pettiness, cheap words, mystical pronunciations, empty promises. And not a drop of proof.
My sister is having another episode as I write this. She has double vision so bad it makes her vomit. A visiting nurse came by and connected an intravenous line to her forearm for a course of steroids and a new drug that's supposed to help. My sister is so weak, she has chest pains and gets winded just crossing the room to help her three children get settled at the dinner table. Mom and I help her with as much as we can until her husband gets home from work. I can see the worry in everyone's eyes. The normally ebullient kids are soft-spoken and subdued. The two older kids, the girls, are helpful, getting tea for their mom, while the youngest, the boy, acts out and sulks over the littlest things. Nobody has much of an appetite. God isn't in this house. He never was, but not because these people were bad, just the opposite, really. They are truly loving, sweet, giving people, all of them, almost to a fault.
I've had a change of heart. God does not exist and I'll tell you why. Why would a god, an all-powerful god, and all-seeing god, an all-knowing god, make such a stupid mistake as Multiple Sclerosis, and then blame this mistake on the creatures he visits the mistake upon? We didn't pray enough? I did.
I don't hate God. That would be like hating the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. None of them exist. Mankind has created a system of belief to ward off the fear of death, the end of a life that means so much to one's self, be it your own, or someone's life that you care about. It's a sham. Humans suffer, we're animals with a life expectancy of seventy to a hundred or so years. We die, we all die, but I will not give my hope over to an imaginary, useless, destructive, mind and self-erasing concept any longer.
My sister will probably die before me, and I will suffer her loss, but her children will remember her, as will their children if she makes it that far. But I'm glad neither of us has to feel as if a vengeful, weak, impotent god had anything to do with the joy and love we feel for each other. We made that ourselves. And as long I breathe, I'll make it my personal mission to make sure everyone I love knows that I love them, that my morals and deeds are inspired by a flesh and blood example of goodness and morality that no god ever forged. I've learned that our rewards are here on earth, in the love that we generate around ourselves, in the joy that no one else can take credit for and most of all, in the god-free knowledge that this is the only life we get, to enjoy it as much as we can, while we have it.