The Mustard Seed

" The apostles said to Jesus: 'Increase our faith.'  He replied, ' If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea', and it will obey you.  " [Luke 17: 5-10].

 I grew up in a home without Faith. My grandmother died when I was age 14. It was then that my parents stopped taking me to church. They labeled Christians as losers and hypocrites. They banned church; and they spoke of God as if He were only a pathetic myth for the gullible. My mother used to say that, "Religion is the opiate of the masses." As if Faith and church were invented by powerful men, to keep the lower classes deceived and meek. As if . . . .

After my parents took church away, I made my Faith as small as possible. I tried to make my Faith invisible, because if no one could see the Faith that I had, no one could take it away from me, right?

If my parents got into a heated discussion about faith and religion at the dinner table, I became mute. I was afraid that if I admitted what I thought about God, that they would turn against me. I was never sure what punishment I would get, but I was never brave enough to find out.

My childhood was filled with fear. I grew up in a war zone, only the war was a battle of mother vs. father, brother vs. sister, father vs. daughter, mother vs. daughter.

In that house, no one ever hugged me or said, " I love you." I received either no touch whatsoever -- or harmful touch.

My mother could turn cruel in an instant.

My father seemed always to be seething mad. He could not seem to work out his anger with my mother. So he took it out on me.

At the hands of a sibling, I was bruised, locked into my room, called ugly every day. My room was booby trapped. When I cried, my parents told me that I was "too sensitive."

It was when I came home as a twenty-something, to announce that I was marrying a Catholic, that I felt their full fury. This was a Battle. Out in the open. About Faith. My parents told me point blank to find someone else. They refused to stand in the receiving line at my wedding. After my wedding, I took to wearing a gold cross, but I hid it under my shirt.

Almost ten years later, a dear relative became sick. He had to go to the ER. Suddenly, he was admitted to the hospital. 

After an inital x-ray, the doctors announced that they strongly suspected cancer, and a particularly
virulent form of it. If diagnosed, he would be dead in a few months. I found myself sinking into despair.

I had fought for so long. I had left home, I had earned degrees. I had done all the right things. I was fighting all these Losses in my life. No warm, loving mother. No gentle father. No sibling(s), as an ally.

Now this!! It was Un-fair. Where was God?

One day, the phone rang. It was my mother-in-law. She asked how was I doing, with this relative so sick? I burst into tears.

She said, " Do you have faith that everything will be okay?'

I snapped at her, " I HAVE no faith." I felt that my Faith had been shrunk down so small over the years, that it had become eroded, made invisible. What good was it?

I feared that maybe God really was a mirage. Or that He had forgotten me. He KNEW that I had no loving father or mother or brother. And for Him to take away my dear one?! That was IT.

My mother-in-law said to me, "Well. I have enough Faith for both of us." And she told me that she was going to pray and that I was going to pray with her. And she was going to put my prayer intention on the Prayer Network at her church. And then this dear one would live. I was so shattered, I almost did not believe her words to me.

We waited for what seemed forever, for the date of exploratory surgery.

The day of the surgery, I was at home, waiting for word. Suddenly, the phone rang. It was the doctor. The shadow on the x-ray was not cancer. It was only an infection.  My dear one would be fine!

I burst into tears, I sobbed so hard, I could not speak. I praised God!

And this was the first time that I knew that the tiniest bit of Faith is enough. We do not need to pray, " Increase my faith."

God has given us all the Faith that we need. That tiny seed of Faith that I had hidden inside of me all those years was still there! That bit of Faith had done its work!

That Faith is not found solely in church. That Faith is not found solely in the gold crosses that we wear. That Faith is inside us. No one can take it away. And that Faith inside us is always enough.

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