It was there on the delivery bed after her little boy had been born, after the placenta had followed him out so quickly looking like his deflated helium balloon, and after he had been cleaned, wrapped and placed against her breast, that she stopped believing. She lost all her faith right then, hard and fast like inverse revelation, like a booming voice that knocked her clean out of the pew.
If faith is there waiting in the front of the hospital when she is discharged to pick her up she will surely be all apologies and smiles, ready to re-hitch happily after a 48 hour divorce. But that is down elevators, across stretches of over-buffed linoleum, and through far too many automatic double doors. She doesn’t bother to imagine it. Instead she holds her justborn while he screams deciding she likes the way he sounds.
To what little degree she can manage to rationalize it, it goes like this: if this wild little life with all its organs in their relatively proper places is hers—if this piece of creation is her creation—then the world is without justice. Her worship had never been good or pure. This loss of faith, though, was not like a discussion had for years and finally understood; it was more like a fire sparked unnoticed in some high recess of her mind, a web of neurons like entangled kindling ignited, that descended and was heard.
Not a single bone in her body—even filled with the infinite redemption of God—believes she deserves this reward. But here he is in her hands, not miscarried, or spontaneously aborted, or stillborn… just alive.
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