Under a canopy of rain, the black arms of the cherry trees filled with leaves and buds. Fistfuls of blossoms fell open among the dark leaves of the camellia and hydrangea. Hitoamegoto-ni atatakaku-naru. In the spring, as they say in Japan, the weather grows warmer with each drop of rain. But all through that April, storms hovered over Izu Peninsula, and a cold rain came down in glassy white sheets on the mountain ranges.

There is a river in those mountains that, in the spring, rushes with melted snow and ice. Tangles of brush and pine line its clay banks, and trails of moss and mud lead down to its raging waters. Deep beneath its seething surface, it is lined with stones smooth and round.

I was eleven that spring, and I went down into that river, my hair flying in the wind. Underfoot, the rocks were slick with algae, and the water wound its stinging, dark coils around my ankles, then my knees, my thighs, and when I came to the middle of the churning river, the water swirled around my waist.

These are the sounds I heard in that moment: a mere thread of voices singing, oh, so faintly, a familiar song; birds chanting among the glistening leaves of the trees; but most of all, the deafening hum of water razing through the gorge like claws. I went under, then, into that chilled darkness, squeezed like a tiny thing in its palm, and all the boulders of snow that somewhere upstream had come crashing down into the river pressed upon me. There was silence beneath. I was light, I was death. I could not breathe.

And then, quickly, it was over. A hand raised me up. I looked into the smiling face of a man in a black gown.

"Welcome into the family of God," he said.

My baptismal gown swirled around me like black liquid. I looked toward the shore—my best friend, Andy, had gone down before me. I heard the voices more clearly now. All to Jesus, I surrender. All to Him I freely give. I will ever love and trust Him. In His presence daily live…

Overhead, the sun winked, dazzling.

The actual record of this day reads very differently. I have it written down in my pre-adolescent hand on sixteen blue-lined pages, now brittle and stained with age. From this account, I know that on the morning of the day Andy and I were baptized, rain clouds quilted the sky, punctuated by thunder and lightening. I know that I wore a gray jumper skirt and white blouse and that I had cornflakes and grapefruit for breakfast. There is evidence that my father’s nickname for me was "Peanut" and that Andy did not like to eat mushrooms and, more importantly, that Andy and I prayed over and over again for the rain to stop. We wanted to be baptized in that river. We believed, then, in miracles. We had faith.

I know that sometime during our Sabbath School class, I looked out the window and saw that the rain had stopped. I have recorded what Andy and I said to each other in that moment and the smile that passed between us. Later, we went down into that river under a cloudless blue sky. We were the faithful, the rewarded. I titled my childhood memoir "God Answers Prayers."

"Unless you become as little children," the verse goes, "you will by no means enter into the kingdom of God." The years have slipped away, effortlessly, quickly, like leaves in a spring current, and I am no longer a little child. I do not know how to understand this verse.

Perhaps it refers to the confidence and optimism of the girl who wrote those sixteen pages of lace. She was sure of God. Her faith was easy; the Truth, uncomplicated. All along the walls of her heart stood the components of her faith, a single perfect row of stones of black and white.

But the real truth is this: the waters were already rushing out to sea. Time is pouring forth endlessly into a fragile, distant memory. That eleven-year-old girl came up out of that river, and she was growing up already, hurriedly, unpredictably. She walked away from the banks of that river and could not look back.

The river runs deep and cold.

Things are swept away.

The world is all colors, all shades of gray—faith and truth, also. Skies don’t always clear. God, if he is indeed all-powerful, sometimes looks the other way. The Path of Righteousness sometimes crosses over, not into safety, but into the Valley of Death. I do not understand perpetual human suffering, or the complexities of a living, working faith in the Grand Plan of Salvation. I am not questioning the small things, the inconsequential, textural riddles of a spiritual life—numbers or dragons or symbols of blood and resurrection. I am questioning the fundamentals of a faith. And the answers are not easy; they are devastating. The "truth" is complex; there is sometimes no revelation. These are the lessons of adulthood.

I could go under so easily, it seems. The ones who do not ask questions do not suffer; the ones who do not doubt are satisfied—but I am not one of them. I cannot let go so easily. I am obligated to see what is real, not what is believable. I am compelled to search out the darkness that is God, as much as the light that I have been taught is him.

On my desk sits a smooth, squarish stone that I brought home from that river of sacramental death that spring day of miracles. It is startlingly heavy, and its mottled face is chipped on one corner. It fits comfortably now in my grownup palm. In the beginning, this stone was a symbol of a promise and a life that ultimately became something so different from the one I imagined on the day I went down into that river. In the beginning, this stone was my rainbow, my proof, my evidence of God. It was an emblem of faith, my communion bread.

What I have now in God is not so much faith as hope. Of all that has been washed away in the river, this one hope I carry and cling to relentlessly: God is compassion. It is the piece that has not come unfastened in the rapacious tides of time. It is the piece that I cannot, will not, give up.

God is compassion.

The rest of the pieces I sacrifice, easily, sadly. They sink heavily, in reluctant surrender, stones of black and white, to the bottom of the river.

It is silent at the bottom, I suppose. The fingers of water are gentle, soothing, and over time, the stones will grow green slippery skins over which other small feet will walk, confidently, down into the raging river.

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