“Mom, what if he isn’t real?”

This essay was first published on The Daily BS on July 25, 2025.

Every once in a while, it happened. As The Cub, youngest in our litter, got ready for bed, he’d say it. “Mom, wanna come lay down with me?” Sometimes when the question came, he simply wanted company. But other times, there was something on his mind that would come out there in the darkness of his room with a just a crack of light peeking in from my office upstairs. On this particular night, it was the latter.

“You can have any pillow you want.” That’s what he said. This, in reference to his huge pillow inventory that was carefully arranged on his bed every day.

I picked one, placing it right next to his, and slipped in. He busied himself, getting his water glass ready to put beside his bed in case he got thirsty in the night. Then, these words came in the dark, “There’s somethin’ I need to talk to you about.”

I waited, listening intently.

“I don’t know if it’s just the devil tryin’ to git inside my head, but I’ve been havin’ these thoughts. ‘What if Jesus isn’t real?’”

There was a weight, an anxiety in his words, and it was a weight that I well knew. Doubt weighs on a child like the Andes mountains, pressing down. I was familiar with that pressing weight.

“That’s normal,” I said in the dim light of the room. “It’s because you’ve never seen him with your eyes. You’ve never met my grandparents (your great-grandparents), either, but you know they existed.” Beside me, he was all ears, two big ones, in the night.

“You can’t see electricity, can you? You can’t see the wires inside the walls or the way it runs through them. When you look at the switch, you could think, ‘I don’t know if it actually works or not,’ and then you can choose to have faith that it does and flip it, and there it is. The lights come on.”

His sigh held oceans of relief, and the way his shoulders slumped told me how hard it had been. “Whew! I feel better. ‘Cause I thought, ‘Come on!’” He’d been paddling himself, feeling awful. Now, the simple truth brought relief to my suffering son, and he closed his eyes and slept.

Later, when I thought about our bedtime chat, it hit me. Just because believing that Jesus is real has always come easy for me, it doesn’t mean that it’s easy for everyone else. Faith, I know, can be hard. Really hard.

A message from a troubled reader one day underscored that truth. “(I’m) sitting in the dark crying. I don’t see any way out. I’m scared to even look for God because I’m afraid he’ll take something more away from me, and it feels like I don’t have much left.”

“I’m scared to look for God.”

In a stranger’s cry, I heard pain, loss, and loneliness. Reaching into my own pockets, I gave her what I had learned by experience. “Then don’t look for him. Just listen to him breathe and match your breath to his. It takes practice, but stopping and paying attention to the actual breath going in and out of your lungs is trauma work. It helps to get the nervous system unstuck when it’s in fight or flight.” What I also meant, but did not say using words was this, “In listening for God, it will allow you to feel his presence beside you there in the dark.”

She was surprised. “No one’s ever told me that I didn’t need to look for God before.”

“It doesn’t mean you give up on him,” I told her. “(It means that) you don’t have to wear yourself out looking for him because he already knows where you are.”

Once more, the simple truth brought relief. “It took so much pressure off me to read that and think that I didn’t have to (try to) figure out how to see God in these dark circumstances. That I could just breathe instead of trying to make sense (of everything). That He is so close, I could feel His breathing. Maybe He is not ‘doing’ all these hard things to me? Maybe He is sitting with me.”

As with any victim of a natural disaster (earthquake, flash flood, etc.) who lies buried beneath a pile of rubble, helpless and waiting for rescue, so it is with us. When we are powerless to free ourselves and save ourselves, he comes to our rescue. Though we cannot see him, he can see us. If we want to be found, he can never fail to find us.

If you, like the troubled stranger, are stuck in darkness, afraid to look for God, I’ll tell you what I told her. “Don’t look for him. Just listen for his breath, then match your breath to his. He already knows where you are.”

As my own small son received comfort that night beside me in the dark, listening to my breath and hearing my voice beside him, so it shall be for you. You don’t have to see all, know all, or understand much of anything. You only need a child-sized faith that he exists and that he’s there beside you now.