(For the girl I lit the candles for)

I’ve mostly eaten one meal a day for most of my life – usually just dinner.  My parents were too occupied, uninvolved, or stingy to feed me properly.  I rarely ate lunch in high school, relying on the hot chocolate at my after-school job for sustenance and nutrition.  The only period of my life when I ate more than one was in college when I had a meal plan.  From then on, in law school, grad school, and even at work, it was just one.

I don’t even know why I even mentioned all that, but it seemed relevant to faith.  Most of my life was filled with doubt and uncertainty.  I remember my first job out of college working at night – surrounded by poorly designed robotic machines, large jars of ethanol and other chemicals, bacterial plates. wearing my lab coat from my locker, etc.  Wondering what the future held.

But I had my faith.  It wasn’t always the most defined or directed, but I knew I believed that things would somehow work out, even if I had massive doubt – in events and self.

Maybe it’s because I had no choice.  I wasn’t one of those who could buy, test, network, or charm my way in and out of things.  But I think it’s more than that.  Faith was the bass line in my life, sometimes simple and repetitive like the D-A-Bm-G in With or Without You. 

Yet, steady and comforting, something to play to in terms of rhythm and structure.