I thought I would know a lot more by the time I reached this age.

Now, I believe age 28 marked the high-water mark of what I knew for sure - or thought I did.

Of course, that was before children, divorce, job loss, freelance work, remarriage, a blended family, the death of my parents, four teenage daughters in the house at the same time, and a son who battles deadly drug addiction.

Add in a few health scares and the number of my questions has grown exponentially while the things I hold to be true heads towards the single digits.

I count this not as loss but gain.

So many dimensions of life about which to wonder! And the questions are not theoretical but rooted in the mud of my life.

I accepted a scholarship to theological school because I had so much uneasiness about the church language of my youth. My time at the Vancouver School of Theology was immensely valuable, providing powerful tools to sort through the theoretical and academic questions with which I arrived.

The discovery of the iceberg, depth-beneath-the-surface, dimension of life was exhilarating. Imagine! So many of the challenges and circumstances of life contain a theological, ethical and even spiritual dimension.

And, as the K-Tel commercials used to say, “There’s even more!” 

I came to realize that engagement with these dimensions of my life’s questions turns out to be a path to a closer awareness of God. The mystery has grown but, as my friend, Janet Gear says, mystery does not mean distance.