Dear Beekeeper,
I don’t believe in a God, but lately I’ve been wishing I had whatever brain chemicals people have that make them feel at peace. I did the Catholicism thing for 22 years and like most people it didn’t bring me peace, it brought me a lot of guilt, shame, and fear.
But now, my life is filled with lots of change and uncertainty and more and more the only thing I want to ask is for prayer. I feel like I can’t do it so surely someone else who has it figured out will pray for me.
That caveat aside, the last 6 months have been filled with lots of grief and anger & letting go. In February my mom was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and was told she had 3-6 months to live. The stress of the experience, my troubling pattern of caring for others instead of myself quickly wore away at a new romantic relationship as well as an already fraught roommate situation. Neither were meant for me, and I know that now, but the experience of losing them in quick succession, all throughout the rapid and confusing process of my mom’s cancer treatment brought up the kind of trauma that reshapes a person --in maybe the way people of faith say that God gives us struggles to teach us lessons.
My mom had her entire lung removed. She now only has one kind of less threatening cancer in her body. I’m mourning the first of a kind queer breakup. And I have to put this version of myself in the world all while trying to find someone to share my home with me just so I can afford it.
Most days the anxiety is worse than the grief. The experience was like re breaking bones so that they can heal right. I know it’s what’s supposed to happen, and all these things will make me a more healed, more whole, more self determined person but all I feel is broken and alone and scared.
Hope feels so far away. Stillness feels impossible.
So idk. I guess what I’m saying is I need a little hope. I need a little sign everything will work out. I’ll feel love one day, I’ll feel safety one day, I’ll be able to rest.
Dear Waiting-for-Hope,
Oh, honey, you’re IN IT, right now. In the middle of the painful, waiting moment while everything feels dark and lonely. Through your words, I hear the yearning for meaning and something-greater… even though, even still. And yes, sweet one, know that even as I write an answering letter, I— and the readers in the hive— will help hold this with you, and will pray alongside you in your multiple heartbreaks. (I am, right now!)
Faith is complex.
It’s both simple, and annoyingly difficult.
It’s a framework that has access points at the most binary, AND through multiple levels of meaning making, scientific reason (thank God!) and community care.
Sometimes, in these lonely nights of longing, I imagine what it’s like to be a bee, forming and becoming herself in the goo. What I mean by that is: a honeybee’s lifecycle includes 21 days before she even comes into the day. She is by herself, an egg in a hex cell, a larvae being fed by her sister-workers, a pupa covered in that cell by wax. She’s alone in there. For about 9-10 days (half of her development into a winged-insect)… she is alone in the dark.
I might imagine you’re feeling something similar, right now: alone in the dark. Each wave of memory washing you anew with grief and the life you had, as well as the life you thought you were building. I’m so sorry, Waiting-for-Hope.
For the record, I don’t actually believe that “god gives us struggles to teach us lessons,” though I understand some people find comfort there. I think sometimes, struggle is just struggle. And for so much of our human history, struggle and grief are a uniting companion of experience. To live is to grieve. To struggle is to join beside sister-workers across the ages each holding just a piece of what is. Each imagining what could be. The systems that cause struggle are the same systems that my faith enables me to keep fighting against… and the hive has always been how we do that fighting together.
After those days in the dark hex, the bee has to chew herself out. She has to do that part by herself, with only the vibrations of her hive to comfort her. She doesn’t know them yet, but she’s pulling herself out to join in. She’s never alone— they buzz and dance and work all around her, but her emergence (or beemergence?!) is hers and hers to do alone. And it will not be like this forever. You will not be in this darkness forever. Things will change and shift, and you WILL emerge.
Here is what I see in you: your stretching for connection, your reaching for hope-- that itself is a connection. You don’t have to have it yet. The act of stretching puts you in communion with so many across generations: your own ancestors, your mom. Your struggle and hers are connected, next to mine and ours and the struggle of our people across the globe for the very thing you write toward: a little hope… a little sign everything will work out.
That’s the faith work. You don’t need the answer, honeybee, but the stretching itself is a measure of connection to so much greater than you. And the beauty of a honeybee hive is that it’s about all of us. So while you ache, know that we will hold that hope in escrow for you, cherishing the future where you feel the Love that already surrounds you. Where your safety is held with as much ferocity by your fellow human companions as is necessary for our joyful survival. Where you can lay your head down and rest, knowing that your struggle is joined—and held— by the collective hive, and your rest is a holy prayer of gratitude in deep belonging.
I’m praying with you, Waiting-for-Hope.
P.S. Dear Reader— yes you! Are you holding something close for which you might need a little honey? Then write in and and join alongside this ever-growing hive of hope and care! 🐝