God's Daddy

“Why does everyone think God is up in the sky?” Sage asked the other day as we were headed to the airport for my aunt’s Celebration of Life,  the details of death and funerals and God weighing heavily on all our minds – big and small alike. I look out the window at the vibrant blue sky, a couple fat cumulus clouds floating in the ethers, and start to answer with: “Well, lots of people think heaven is above us, up in the clouds . . . “ I pause momentarily, thinking through how I’ll explain this, wanting to make sure I get it right.

As I mentally prepare for my unrehearsed, heaven elevator speech, Sage interrupts my train of thought. And with a knowing, well-duh! tone to her voice she answers, to what I did not know was a rhetorical question:

“Yeah, but God could be everywhere, all around us, right now!”

And as Jeff drives, eyes straight ahead, and I sit quietly, pensively, in the passenger seat, I think to myself, “How did I get so darn lucky?? I love this girl so much. So unarmored. Yes, I’ll keep her FOREVER. She’s that lovely. She’s that good.”  (And even if she wasn’t ALL THAT, I’d keep her still – of course I would! - but she makes it so much infinitely easier to lay that claim when she repeatedly takes my breath away with her wisdom and smarts and self-assurance.)

I say to her, “Sage, that is so smart of you and I couldn’t agree more. God IS everywhere. In every beautiful, living thing. And so many people forget this . . ."  I’m about to really get up on my soap box. I’m thrilled. She gets it. She’s speakin’ my language.  But then, she interrupts me again.  Doesn’t need any long, drawn out, grown-up version of God this morning. She’s got her own answers and her own, more pressing questions.  Like the one she interjects in mid-sentence:

“Yeah, OK mom, but another thing . . . I’ve been wondering, what does God LOOK like anyway?  And yeah . . . where did he come from??”

It’s hard to be a wise, old sage in a 7-year-old body, with a child’s mind and a mystic’s soul. There’s so much in there, wanting to know, wanting to share, as yet unfettered too much by the thick layers of life and loss.  As of yet, she is not too much of anything.  She is enough of every good thing and she believes it - I am so thankful for that.

Sage’s dad, my husband and partner, replies to Sage in his true, charming, genteel Southern fashion with this: “God came from God’s daddy!”  So you see what I’m dealing with.  No punches. No pulls. No smoke and mirrors here. Just a good, solid, clear-cut answer to a child’s simple question: “Where did God come from?”

But Sage is not so easily swayed (that’s my girl!).  Nope. She needs more. And she’s not afraid to say so. “No really.  Where did God come from?” It’s a great question. It’s a tricky question. It’s one I’m going to need to think on for just a while longer before I can give her my (in)adequate answer.   I tell her so. “Sage, that is a great question.  God is LOVE and energy. Embodied in everything. He is everywhere . . . “

But I haven’t answered her question. I’m skirting the issue. And she knows it. And I know it. And frankly, that’s just the way it’s got to be because in this moment, it’s the best I’ve got.

I won’t always have all the answers.  And I’m honest enough to let her know that.  And honest enough to tell her that some of that, she’ll have to decide for herself. Honest enough, too, to tell her she can trust what she knows and believes is her truth to believe. She has that God spark within her, feels its warm flame, speaks its truth in myriad ways everyday. But some of that God stuff, it’s simply too big to get our heads around today.

Nevertheless, Sage has her questions. And she is seeking her answers. Asking anyone and everyone: “Who’s God’s daddy?", she is her father’s daughter: sweet, down-to-Earth, straight-forward. She is her mother’s child: unarmored, full of beauty, a whole-hearted seeker.

She is, and will forever be, my wise Sage.

(Thank you God . . . And God’s daddy! I am so thankful for my girl.)