The week of her death, I was already struggling with my faith.

I’d had questions for a long time. I’d gone through the motions of church for a while.

Suddenly, I was 30, then 31, and I felt pretty damaged. I was divorced. I couldn’t get rid of the extra weight I’d packed on during my marriage. I couldn’t make being a writer work. So I tried becoming a barista. I couldn’t find a job. I tried marketing. I tried telesales. Then I couldn’t keep a job. The finance marketing position, the one that felt like a dream come true in a historic home, part of a small town, wasn’t working. I wasn’t financially stable and I didn’t know how to become financially stable. And, really, all I’d ever wanted was to get married and build a family, but as I got older, I wasn’t sure if I wanted that anymore. And then I wasn’t sure if it was even for me. I tried to find the answers, sort through the mess that was my life.

Dog training was the first bit of hope I’d felt in a long time. I’d found a dog training internship on a southern New Jersey farm, 15 minutes away from where I was renting a room. I’d always wanted to work with animals, and I’d already tried dog walking for six months. I hadn’t like that, but dog training felt different. It felt special.

And it was. 

I was still struggling financially, because although it was a paid internship, it didn’t pay a whole lot. But there was this career trajectory that felt exciting, that was a true opportunity. I’d keep getting experience on the farm. I’d start teaching classes. I’d start private lessons.

And because I was pretty loud about my other passions, I started getting promotions, too. Suddenly, I was the Farmcamp manager. Then I was doing their communications and building their newsletter, with a client spotlight every month. I enjoyed my work, and I loved going to the farm.

It was just a little bit of hope, but it was what I needed. I didn’t wrestle with my disappearing faith. I sprinkled it lightly with water by going to church once a week. Just enough to keep the seeds alive. But I was already asking questions, trying to understand.

The first time I’d first seriously questioned was before I’d gotten married. We were doing couples marriage counseling, and the pastor mentioned that there were plenty of Christian marriages that didn’t work out, and there were plenty of secular marriages that worked out great. It hit me between the eyes a bit, because I already had this mentality that because my fiance and I loved each other, we would get through anything. Of course our marriage would last. We were Christians and we’d be committed to each other, no matter what. Too many people got divorced. We wouldn’t be a statistic.

But what was the point of being Christian if there were secular marriages that were stronger, more full of love, that lasted longer? Was there even a point to faith? It seemed to contradict everything I’d been raised to believe, everything that already didn’t seem quite real anyway.

If Christians were saved and set apart by God, shouldn’t their lives show that change? Show a different way of living? Show light and truth?

And the reality had been, once I’d stepped out of the Christian bubble, I’d found that folks who didn’t believe in God were much more kind and forgiving and gracious than the Christians I knew. As much as I feared public school, I think I would have found more friends there than I ever did at the private Christian school.

The week that Margaret died, I had started teaching group dog training classes. And I’d always joked about cats, mostly because I didn’t understand them. But after a successful class that Wednesday evening, I’d shut down the vet clinic where the class had taken place and turned to the hallway to see a cat sitting in the shadows. It felt ominous.

Maybe it was ominous. Maybe it was just a cat.

I’d wished, after she died, that something had warned me. That God, if he existed, had shown up. Because it would have taken very little to save her. Just a premonition. Just an inkling that night. Just me calling my mom and telling her to call the police, to get Margaret out of the little apartment where she died, before it was too late.

Emblem of Our House is an on-going series about the death of my sister Margaret in 2018, published every Monday/Tuesday here and on Instagram @EmblemofOurHouse.