"Maybe"

I believe “maybe” is an excuse. It was mine.

It came from apprehension, from fear, from doubt, from indecision, from ignorance. It was a crutch, a security blanket, and a safety net. I hid behind it, avoiding decisions and commitments. I used it to put things off, to push them to the back of my mind.

For years, when people would ask me if I believed that God existed, I could never give them a straight answer, usually, I’d answer “maybe”. On a retreat over the summer, I was once again asked if I believed in God, but this time was different. This time I couldn’t brush the question off, I couldn’t mumble or change the subject, there was no weaseling my way out. I was going to have to own my thoughts; I was going to be held accountable for my beliefs.

Later, when I was writing in my notebook, I couldn’t stop thinking about God. I was so confused. I was lost. I thought about what God meant to my friends, people at my church, people at the church across the street, people in mosques on the other side of the world. I ended my entry with the sentence “maybe God does exist”. But I was just hiding, again. Before I hiked back, I scribbled down one last thought in the margin; I wrote “God cannot ‘maybe’ exist”.

I think back on that day, that journal entry, and that scribble in the margin, and I think about them often. But somewhere along the way I realized that after all the time I’d spent thinking about God and what other people thought, I hadn’t once considered what I thought.

After a lot of reading, talking, thinking, and searching, I decided. And it was one of the single most amazing things I have ever done.

I struggled with the idea of God. It intimidated me. It terrified me. “Maybe” was my excuse. If I said “maybe” I didn’t have to commit or decide. I was safe, hiding behind my excuse. But I overcame my fears and my doubts. I decided for me. Not for my friends, not for my family, not for the people at my church. Me. I stopped worrying if I was right. I stopped worrying about whether other people would judge me. Because it doesn’t matter if I’m right, and it doesn’t matter if they judge me because finally, finally, I feel like what I think is good enough. I don’t need validation, I don’t need judgment. Because my beliefs matter.

Whatever your “maybe” is, I encourage you to face it. It’s uncomfortable, and probably even scary, but I promise you, if nothing else, it is well worth it.