Sept. 13, 2006
A Christian friend of mine came over for coffee one day with the wish of discussing my blog, which, unbeknownst to me, she had been reading for a while.
"How do you cope?” she exhaled with a desperation any parent would recognize. “How do you cope with life without praying for help?"I rarely see myself as having to "cope," but I understood her question. She then shared a spiritual experience she had had after praying during a time of difficulty. Her prayer had brought her a sense of peace and confidence that gave her the strength to continue.
"I don’t disbelieve your experiences from prayer. I do believe people actually feel the things they claim to feel when they have them," I explained to my friend. "I just don’t think the source of those feelings is from a god. I believe that those feelings of peace and strength come from within yourself. So even as a non-believer, I have access to that same peace and strength."
I have been thinking about that previous conversation during the last two months after my six-year-old daughter unexpectedly had a seizure. Since that first seizure in June she has had test-upon-test, two of which have come back abnormal. She has also had a second seizure. She has been prescribed anti-seizure medication, which we hope will prevent a third seizure.
With another test approaching and all of the tasks that come with a new serious illness, there are now some days where I am close to "coping."
In fact, my mother asked me the very same question in a phone conversation just last week. "How do you cope without praying to the Heavenly Father for help? I don’t understand it."
And if I may say so, I feel I am doing quite well. I know the signs of stress and anxiety. I’ve learned to identify my stress even when my consciousness is not aware of it. For me, the secular means of coping have been very effective. And while I recognize that there are benefits to prayer, even if there is no god listening and answering, I prefer my secular modes of dealing with difficulty over my past method of praying.
I feel I am better able to "let go" and deal with the problem at hand without constantly hoping for an all-powerful being to fix it. I don’t need to ask "Why?" I don’t need to wonder what this god wants me to learn from the experience. I don’t have the pressure of wondering if it really is his will to heal my daughter if I would just show more faith.
That is a burden I am happy not to carry. I am glad to just be able to focus on the problem at hand.
So how does a humanist cope? I have specific methods I use. There are three main things I have been doing since that first day when the neurologist confirmed the emergency room doctor’s suspicion that my daughter’s 25-minute unconsciousness was the result of a seizure.
The first thing I did when I came home from that anxiety-inducing appointment was to step down from all of my volunteer positions. As small as they currently were, I knew it was a constant distraction to know that I had deadlines to meet. I eliminated everything that was non-essential so that I could focus on the job of taking care of my daughter’s medical needs, providing my family with a stable and stress-free household and giving myself plenty of relaxing me-time.
It is true that I have the time to help out with my mothers’ club and the parent-teacher organization. I have the time to write more blog entries. But I am giving my time to other things right now.
One thing I prioritized was my own health, particularly regarding exercise. I try to guarantee that I get a minimum of thirty minutes of exercise every day. Nothing seems to eliminate anxiety, loosen a knot-tied stomach and give me positive feelings as running on my treadmill. For this reason, I have centered my current workout program around this activity. Yoga helps as well (especially with its deep-breathing) so I incorporated one to two yoga workouts into my weekly schedule. While I also do strength-training, I have minimized the duration and the weight amounts because for me, the resulting weak muscles contribute to feelings of nervousness.
My second priority for the time I gave back to myself was to work on my favorite hobby, scrapbooking. Whether it is gardening, puzzle-working, golfing, fishing or knitting, hobbies such as these are meditative in nature. They require that our minds slow down and focus on a single task. They allow us to either hone in on the activity at hand, or let our minds wander into productive thinking when the activity is repetitive in nature. I had noticed the calming effects of scrapbooking for me in the past, so doing it is a priority I have established for any extra time I have right now.
Yes, I think I am coping fine. I keep my stress-level in check by taking note of any increase in distractibility or lack of concentration; by eliminating all unnecessary obligations; by maintaining a good exercise schedule; and by giving myself permission to play in the way I love most.
If I were to compare my ability to handle life now as a non-believer with how I did it in my religious days, I would say there is a vast improvement. That does not mean that religion made me less able to handle life’s problems. But it definitely has not been the necessity my friends and family think it must be.
Noell Hyman writes for her blog, AgnosticMom.com. She has been blogging since August of 2005. Relatively new to the humanist landscape, Noell declared herself a humanist some time in the year of 2002 after leaving religion, specifically the Mormon Church. A stay-at-home mother of three young children, Noell's aim is to reach other non-religious parents who find themselves isolated in the struggle to raise a healthy family without religion. Noell wants to make "Agnostic Mom" a humanist and secular household name. Visit: www.AgnosticMom.com
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