More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Life is either a collision of random events, like billiard balls during a break careening off and into one another, or if you are so inclined to believe, our predetermined fate—what my mother took such great comfort in calling God’s will.
She wasn’t interested in just rocking this boat. She intended to capsize it.
“Time is wicked. It comes and goes like a thief in the night, stealing our youth, our beauty, and our bodies.”
But to my mother—I suspect to all mothers—their little boys will always be their little boys, no matter how old those boys become.
My mom had done her very best to put on a happy face. That’s not to say she wasn’t sincerely happy for me, but with every new beginning, there is an inevitable end we must first accept, and my mother was struggling to accept that her boy had finished high school and would be leaving home in just a few short months.
“I mean the whole situation,” my mother said. “It’s the pits, isn’t it?” “Yeah, it is, Mom. It really is.” “Your father worked so hard all his life, and for what? He’s going to end up here? It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” It truly did, and that was as close as I’d ever come to hearing my mother question her faith.
“I’ve led a wonderful life, Sam, more wonderful than I had a right to ever expect. God gave me the kindest, gentlest man to be my husband, and he gave me the most precious baby boy.”
“Help me to understand,” I said. “I want to believe. Help me to believe. Help me to have faith.”
“Everything happens for a reason, Samuel. Never forget that. Have faith in God’s will.”
we live for the quiet, intimate moments that mark not our calendars but our hearts:
We realize it is in those quiet moments that each of us has the ability to make our lives extraordinary.
Sam wanted to believe. He wanted to believe that God really did have a plan for him and for his life, that his hardships as a child would all help mold for him an extraordinary life. He wanted to believe that his prayers had a purpose, that God truly is benevolent, despite so many in the world so often being malevolent. He wanted to believe that God’s will really meant something and was not just a mother’s way of dismissing a curious son.
