Passing on faith, living with doubt | Motherly spirit

“Mom, I think you’re making this up.”

That’s what my five-year-old daughter said to me when I tried to answer her question: Can Jesus and Mary see us right now, in our living room?

To be honest, my garbled answer didn’t even feel true to me. I don’t know exactly what I said, but whatever it was, it didn’t feel convincing. It wasn’t an answer I would have been satisfied with, so why should she be?

Still, I was a bit shocked by her comment. Children have strong nonsense detectors, and of course I don’t want her to think that our faith is nothing more than a collection of unconvincing explanations of invisible (supposed) realities. I went into another room to put away some laundry and tried to think of a way to salvage the interaction. The only way forward, I realized, was to be honest.

“You asked me before if Jesus and Mary can see us in our living room. The truth is, I don’t really know. I know that when I pray, I feel like God hears me, and I think that Jesus and Mary and everyone in heaven can see us when we call on them. But honestly, I don’t know how. There are many things I don’t know about God.”

She thought for a moment and then shrugged. “Oh okay!” She seemed more satisfied with my confession than with my attempt to give her a concrete answer. I contacted her and let her know that adults also have questions about God and faith.

My own beliefs still feel very much ‘under construction’. Of course, faith evolves for everyone, but as an adult convert, there are many aspects of the daily practice of Catholicism that still feel unnatural to me—things as simple as talking about God and prayer. Without any framework for what it means to grow up with an active spiritual life, I routinely find myself wondering how to guide my children on their own journey with God. Their tender young hearts are so ready to absorb what I teach them that I feel an enormous responsibility to ensure that I give them the tools to develop a life of faith while giving them space to express their own thoughts and to explore feelings about the big questions.

My oldest child, just six years old, is only now beginning to really question the things we hear in church, in our prayers, and in conversations about God. So I don’t have any answers, but I have questions that you might have too – and I have hope. Above all, I hope that faith will feel like a gift to them, and not like a burden.

As caregivers, it can be very difficult to trust that God is able to build relationships with our children with little intervention from us. We believe that we should act as mediators between God and our children, micro-managing how our children relate to the Divine. In a way, feeling quite insecure about my own faith helped in this regard; the urge to tell my children what to believe, or how to understand the more mysterious aspects of faith, is much weaker when there are many things that continue to confuse me.

I don’t want them to simply copy the pious words I teach them, or to believe that what I told them is true simply because I said it. It is my hope that they will experience faith as a compelling, beautiful invitation: an invitation to a relationship with their Creator, an invitation to experience love and comfort in prayer, an invitation to participate in the rich traditions and history of the church. My own experience has taught me that this invitation must be accepted freely, and that accepting it is not a one-time event. Furthermore, their feelings about the invitation may not always be simple; there will be times when they reject them or accept them only grudgingly. That’s okay too.

I know this to be true because my own “yes” is often more of an “okay, I guess.” As an adult, I have chosen the faith for myself, and so my decision to live my life within the Catholic tradition is entirely my own. Yet I often feel unsure of how to be Catholic when so many questions are constantly bubbling at the surface of my faith – but my mustard seed faith persists regardless.

I want my children to know that big questions and doubts do not undermine faith; if anything, they are an integral part of an enduring faith. The lack of certainty does not exclude any of us from participating in a life enriched by faith. In fact, it places us in the company of many, many holy men and women across the centuries and millennia (“Doubting Thomas,” St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and St. Jane de Chantal, to name but ). a few).

We need not fear doubt – neither our own doubts nor those of our children. Doubt fuels questions, and questions lead to deeper and more authentic relationships, including with God. The goal is not security, but a relationship with God that grows ever deeper and broader, and, contrary to our human desire to understand, a growing awareness of how little we know of the Divine. So I embrace my own doubts and those of my children. I encourage them to ask questions with me. And ultimately, I must release my grip and allow them the freedom to follow their own journey of faith and doubt.

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