Buckets of snow continued to accumulate on that gloomy day in mid-January, and as I trekked across the frozen tundra that was my apartment building parking lot, I questioned my faith.
The last quarter of the year had been rough for me. Just a few months prior, I had quit my cushy back-office corporate job at a steady insurance company to pursue a more fruitful venture as a salesman. It only took me about 30 days to crash and burn out of that position, and now I was staring down triple digits in the consecutive days of unemployment counter.
I hated myself for being out of work for so long. I hated myself for quitting a safe job for a riskier one. But mostly I hated myself for falling into an endless pit of despair. The days and weeks and months oozed by at a snail’s pace, and eventually it felt like one giant slog of hopelessness.
Those days, there were few reasons to venture out of my humble abode. Unfortunately, one of those reasons had arisen today, as my rations of food had run dry. Conveniently, it had happened in the middle of a generational snowstorm.
So there I was, standing in the heart of a blizzard, desperately trying to shovel my car out of a mountain of ice and snow, so I could eat that week. Of course, I didn’t have a shovel (who needs a shovel when you live in a concrete jungle), so I was resorted to using my two-in-one snow brush and ice scraper tool. What a sight that must have been for curious onlookers. An underdressed homeless-looking man trying to remove a two-ton hunk of metal from the glacial abyss with a plastic wand.
Desperation began to set in as I continually failed to back overtop the mountain of ice that had grown behind my back wheels. Eventually, my mind went the same way as my body, and grew numb to the situation. I began to ask the big questions as I toiled away at the ice and snow.
I scrutinized God for leading me into this situation. It just felt too good to ask the “why me” question that everyone likes to ask when something doesn’t go their way. When life sits them down in the torture room and beats the shit out of them with a pillowcase full of baseballs. It was just too easy to play the victim. I was unlucky, and because of my misfortune, I was being punished.
And then I felt guilty for feeling sorry for myself in the first place, because I knew it could be so much worse. There were people who were way less fortunate than I was. Millions, if not billions, of cursed souls around the world who were homeless, starving, sickly, and otherwise living a live of extreme destitution. If nothing else, I had a roof over my head. I had clothes on my back and food on my table. Enough cash in the bank to hold me over for another month or two. I had a loving family and loyal friends who lived just down the road. I was in good health. Why wasn’t I thankful? Was this self-loathing even warranted?
I was so engulfed in my own pity-party that I initially paid no attention to the battered bronze Buick that had pulled into the parking lot in the middle of my ravenous digging. The car looped around to the aisle where I was standing and carefully meandered past me. I continued shoveling for a few moments, then took a break to revel in my weariness and inhale the bitterly cold winter air. As I did so, I casually observed the Buick.
The driver had now done a full lap around the parking lot. It was strange because there were plenty of spots available, even with a few of them being currently occupied by snowbanks. Instead of exiting the lot, it once again looped around and started heading towards my location. I didn’t think much of it. Perhaps they were killing time. Or they were lost and looking for directions. Or perhaps it was someone I knew. Stranger things have happened, right?
The driver of the car slowly approached me and carefully came to a full stop. For some reason, I had expected the operator of the car to be a fellow millennial or deranged old man. So I was quite surprised to see that it was neither, and the driver was actually an old woman.
I took a few steps toward the unraveled passenger window and leaned forward to get a better look at her. She had wispy white hair, a wrinkled face, and desperately happy eyes. I could not help but think of my own paternal grandmother, with her wiry build, bright red lipstick, and faded wool coat, which was the color of a freshly-poured cappuccino.
I prepared to deliver the typical opening line of the annoyed retail salesclerk, “can I help you?”, but the woman spoke first, in a soft yet confident voice.
“Do you believe?”
What a dumb question. Was she trying to convert me? I shot back my response in an intentionally displeased tone.
“Do I believe in what?”
The woman wasted no time. She repeated the question.
“I said do you believe, young man?”
She emphasized the word ‘believe’ like a pastor delivering a powerful sermon. I knew where this was going. I decided to expedite the inevitable religious shilling and get on with my day, as I had places to be, and the world certainly wasn’t getting warmer. I shot back again.
“Do I believe in God?”, I asked sarcastically, almost smirking at the ridiculousness of my situation. Look at me, standing here like an idiot, talking to some Christian fanatic, who somehow decided that circling parking lots was the most efficient way to spread the Gospel of the Lord. Whoever was writing this parody had a sick sense of humor.
The woman paused for a second, then delivered five words that shook me to my core.
“Do you believe in yourself?”
And in that moment, my entire life flashed before my eyes, as if I was the old man on his death bed mulling over his biggest regrets in life. In those 3 seconds, I reminisced on all the times I did believe in myself; all the triumph, glory, and self-actualization I achieved up until that very moment. And then I thought about the past few months, which felt like I was the starring role in a depressing drama film – self-doubt, worry, anger, anxiety, dread, and a general apprehension towards life.
I lied. I had no other choice. I just wanted the conversation to be over. To get on with my day. And so after pausing for a few seconds, I uttered a response that reeked of self-doubt.
“Um, yeah, of course I believe in myself!”
The old woman stared at me out the half-drawn passenger window for a few moments, then slowly let out a warm grin. She then turned up the radio (Christian programming), rolled up the window, and carefully started driving away across the icy parking lot.
I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the vehicle in awe, wondering if this strange life I was living was nothing more than a computer simulation. It was hilarious, in a dark, twisted way. I returned to my labor for a few seconds before pausing to get one last look at the old woman creeping away. But when I raised my head to do so, the car had vanished, seemingly into thin air. I took a few paces to my left to peer around the building to see if she was sitting at the stop light just around the corner. Nothing. I then took a few paces in the other direction to see if she had ventured off the other way. Again, nothing. It was as if she was driving the DeLorean with Marty and Doc and teleported to another era in human history. The physical aspects of my strange encounter were erased from the sands of time, and all I was left with was my own memory of the event.
My mind began to wander back to the existential questions as I scraped a few more layers of the ice away from the pavement. Was God trying to speak to me? I remembered my studies of ancient civilizations, who were more in-tune with their physical surroundings, constantly looking for signs from their deities. This particular sign seemed too obvious – if the Almighty himself was really trying to talk to me, perhaps he would send me a dead animal or a lost wallet instead. Something that was open for interpretation. I just wasn’t buying an old woman wielding the word of the Lord.
The wandering thoughts about faith faded as I turned my attention back to my own slippery situation. I reluctantly hopped in the driver’s seat and prepared to try to escape from the frozen bear trap one more time. I put the car in reverse and slowly tapped the gas. The car shot backwards a few inches, came nearly to a stop as it reached the mountain of snow and ice, and then ever so slightly trickled over the mound like a golf ball cresting the top of a slope. I kept my foot on the gas as the momentum dragged my front wheels over the mound as well. I continued until the entire chassis had exited the parking spot. I was free.
I inhaled deeply and breathed a sigh of relief. It was difficult to not immediately think back to the old woman and those five words that she so innocently uttered as I sat there in my now-warm cabin. I repeated the question back to myself one more time: do I believe in myself? And it was in that very moment that I realized it was the only question that mattered. There was no reason to question my faith; the past few moments had proved that there was nothing to question in the first place.
As I made my way to the grocer, my thoughts returned to those who were less fortunate. The ones who were the subjects of our proverbial “thoughts and prayers”. And I felt a great comfort sweep over my soul, knowing that they were already in good hands. And so there in the silence, I said a prayer. Not for the ones who were less fortunate. Not for the ones who had been shamefully robbed of the gift of life. But for those who were just like me. The ones who did have a roof over their head and clothes on their back and food on their tables. The ones who did have a loving family, loyal friends, and a healthy mind and body. I prayed for the ones who were so close to making it out of the prison they constructed inside their own head. They just needed a reason to believe. A reason to believe in themselves. Because little did they know that God believed in them. The world believed in them. The world depended on them believing in themselves.
They just needed a little old woman in a tattered sedan with a proverbial shovel to dig them out of the avalanche of self-doubt.
Onward,
Tony