Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

To Believe or Not to Believe

8:49 AM

Norma was driving as fast as she could, and just missed the last red light by a second and had to slam on her brakes, causing Aunt Elner’s insurance files to spill all over the floor of the car. She was so upset by this time, and wanted to pray for help with her nerves, but she knew she either had to pray or drive carefully; she couldn’t do both, so she decided to pay attention to the road.

Besides not wanting to have a wreck, she was also not 100 percent sure that praying would help. Norma had struggled with her faith all her life, and wondered why believing had not been easy for her, like English or speech had been in high school. She had made all A’s in both subjects; everyone said she had a lovely speaking voice, and to this very day, she could still conjugate a sentence. But she of all people needed to have faith in something. Macky was absolutely no help; he was as sure there was nothing out there as Aunt Elner was sure there was, contrary to what Verbena thought. Aunt Elner had called her just last week and said, “Norma, since I’ve been watching my science shows, my opinion of the Maker has shot up, I knew he was great, but I didn’t know how great, how anybody could think of so many things to create is beyond me, why just your different species of tropical fish alone are a miracle.”

Aunt Elner had no doubt whatsoever, but Norma was stuck right in the middle, fluctuating back and forth. One day she believed, the next she was not sure. Norma wished she could talk to someone about it, but she couldn’t confide in her minister, who was just starting out, and needed all the encouragement she could get. But even though Norma was not sure who or what she was praying to, she often did pray for help in overcoming her character flaws: not to notice when people put the ketchup bottle on the dinner table, or kept their garage full of junk and left the doors wide open, not to recoil at the sight of Verbena’s solid oak toilet seats, but she failed miserably, disappointing herself over and over again.

Norma was convinced her inability to not be offended by people with bad taste, terrible manners, or those who used incorrect grammar and said “went” instead of “gone” was directly related to the fact that she was unsteady in her faith. She hoped that one day she might get a sign, some kind of revelation, to prove that something was out there. Verbena said she was always on the lookout for “signs, wonders, and miracles,” and Norma would take anything at this point, but so far she had seen nothing. If she died in a car crash right now on her way to Aunt Elner’s, her tombstone would have to read:

HERE LIES NORMA WARREN

DEAD, BUT STILL CONFUSED.