I’ve been thinking this morning about all the clichés surrounding looking at the world from a kid’s point of view, and real and powerful messages that we sometimes don’t take the time to hear that come from our kids. I’ve certainly learned more about who I am and what I believe since my sons came into my life. Or, maybe that’s not quite right, but I’ve been forced to examine what I believe in a more concrete way since their arrivals.

Certainly, I can point to my pregnancy with the elder of the two as the point at which the rubber met the road in terms of my faith journey, and faith won. God won. I will never forget sitting out on the front stoop of that apartment in Madison and finally admitting that I didn’t have all the answers, that I couldn’t solve every problem on my own. That I needed help. I offered that up, in what was a profoundly humbling moment, and put my life in someone else’s hands in a way I’d never done before, and my life changed.

I am not blessed with an easy faith. But the challenges that come through exploration of my beliefs have been a blessing. I’ve read a lot, I’ve asked questions, but no one have been better partners in the discovery than those two little boys. Sitting in church and watching the youngest, all of eight months old, watch with rapt attention as the cross moves from the back of the church to the front, is a powerful part of my Sunday mornings. Yes, I know, infant, shiny things, but there’s a reason it’s called faith after all, right?

And then there’s the four year old, going on forty, sometimes, who asks me all the big questions. The ones that always trip me up and give me pause and make me sweat, just a little, as I try to come up with an answer that will satisfy both of us.

It’s impossible not to hear or see news coming out of Haiti right now, and while we were listening to NPR on the way in to work and school this morning, he asked me why God would allow all those people to hurt, to die.

I told him that God doesn’t cause the hurt, that God isn’t responsible for when or how people die. That instead, God is there to help us through the pain, to offer us comfort and support and to bring us home when our lives are over. That when things are the hardest, he helps us find a way out. He was satisfied with this response, humming a little as he went back to looking at his book. Me, on the other hand? I looked skyward at that and sighed, imagined somewhere someone was probably watching and chuckling.

I don’t have all the answers, but I have faith. Thanks for the reminder.