I do. Yes, me. Pragmatic me.

Tonight is a reading by my friend Hope Edelman from her new memoir, The Possibility of Everything. In the book, she and her husband take their daughter to Belize where Maya is treated by shaman healers. It’s an adventure tale, for sure, but more so the book is about faith. It’s an exploration of what we can allow ourselves to trust. Where and when can we let go, even a little bit, and let powers beyond ourselves support us?

“Trust the Universe,” is a phrase that annoys me. (And Hope, it seems from her book, agrees – or agreed.) I take this phrase as be code for “give up trying.” And I’m all about trying. I work really really really hard to keep everything going. Too hard, some would say. But if I stop, then what would happen? It would be as though The Universe (ah, yeah, that again!) would see me not working hard enough and any little bit of goodness it was thinking of sending my way would evaporate. This is my fear: stop and all will collapse. Keep going, and I’ll eventually be rewarded.

After this January, I have no idea where I’m earning my income. The temporary job I have ends then. The local job market is as dry as it is everywhere else, and relatively small as my town is only 60,000 souls. So the reality of poverty – along with my anger over the child support pittance – can wake me up at night. This giant worry I’ll call Financial Woe, comes and sits on the side of my bed and hisses fear in my ears. Many nights, she is there, coiling her long legs around mine and not letting me come up for air. “It’s all going to collapse,” she snarls. “The worst is going to happen.” She is sure. And by 4:30 am, I am sure, too. What “the worst” is, I don’t exactly know. It’s a feeling. A color. A shape. Nothing concrete. Just utter fear and failure.

But then, as if by magic, there are days like yesterday when I’m sure it’s all going to work out. Some time in early January, just in the nick of time –  maybe even in early February – something will appear in my lap – some job or project. It may be just enough, or it may be bigger and better than anything I can imagine right now. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it will appear. And that experience – just like so many others like it I’ve had over the years – will help me to extend my belief in the possibility of everything. Again. Little by little, step by step, this Pragmatist has been becoming a believer. Walking just like Indiana Jones across the invisible divide. Getting up every morning, knowing even on my darkest days, that somewhere, somehow, it will work out. That hissing lady is still there, and it may take years longer for me to totally rid her from my life; but in the meantime, I’m doing better at floating – laying my head back and knowing that the water will hold me.