The following excerpt is from pages 1-4 of Summer in the Waiting Room: Faith • Hope • Love
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Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. ~ Saint Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews 11:1
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My story is about youthful promise, unfulfilled potential, bad decisions, and crippling failure. What comes next is a frenetic quest to vanquish failure demons and short-lived vindication. A life-changing heart attack and heart failure trigger an exploration of faith. In the end, my spiritual journey, shaped by faith, hope, and love, leads to a remarkable recovery and long-lasting redemption.
There’s a supernatural higher power that mysteriously controls the world around us. Life does its own thing despite futile efforts to manage it to our benefit. No matter how hard we try to unravel mysterious phenomena with science, there are some things that can’t be explained. That’s when we turn to religion, spirituality, and mysticism to find answers. Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson once told a friend that his grandfather said, “Religion is like a mother. However good your friend’s mother may be, you cannot forsake your own.” In honor of the profound influence my mother had on me, I refer to God throughout this book as that higher power.
Wholehearted confidence in God is at the core of faith, inner peace, and happiness. Unfortunately, like most worthwhile endeavors, devotion to unconditional belief is easier said than done. I’ve spent more than a decade reading, learning, and thinking about how to apply the concepts of acceptance, gratitude, and reliance on the divine in my day-to-day life. While the literature opened my eyes, I could’ve looked no further than my mom’s life to find answers. She was a model of faith, even though I didn’t fully understand the impact of her words and actions.
When I was a kid, she taught us to say, “Thank you, God, and thank you, Mom” after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Of course, I understood why I was thanking Mom. She cooked the meals. The reason for thanking God never really dawned on me. I thought it was a ritual like everything else about church: sitting and standing at the appropriate times, praying “Our Father,” taking Communion, and reciting responses after the priest gave a blessing. For Mom, the words had deep meaning. Through the course of any given day, you could hear her say, “Si Dios quiere” (God willing), “gracias a Dios” (thank God), and “Dios te bendiga” (God bless you). These expressions of devotion were part of every discussion she had with someone. They weren’t mere clichés to her. She was patient, understanding, and thoughtful no matter the situation, good or bad. Mom was a woman who put herself in God’s hands.
As I grew older and more financially secure, I started to notice the beautiful simplicity of her life. I found time to visit her in the morning on the way to work almost every Friday. I loved to see her eyes brighten and her smile broaden when she opened the door. A warm hug greeted me before she escorted me to the kitchen to fix a plate of papas (fried potatoes), two over-easy eggs, a cup of coffee, and warm tortillas. Mom loved to hear about my week and shared news about my brothers and sisters. Her children and grandchildren were her prized “possessions.” When my siblings and I bought “nice” homes and filled them with “nice things” (her words), she beamed with pride. When she passed away, she had the same round kitchen table, simple living room furniture, basic dinette, and plain bedroom set that I remember as a boy. She appreciated every bit of it. I never heard her yearn for more or complain about what she didn’t have.
Mom genuinely believed that to live a happy and fulfilling life, one has to be truly thankful for all that God has provided. My guess is that she had a happy and fulfilling life. The struggles of living and the heartbreak of losing loved ones didn’t deter her from being grateful. She didn’t know her father. She grieved when she lost my grandma, dad, and an older sister. She wasn’t surrounded with “nice things.” She never visited the places she dreamed about. Nevertheless, she was truly thankful for what she had and appreciated every day of life God gave to her.
Faith is a powerful ride-or-die partner to have by your side, especially while riding the roller coaster we call life. I’ve been on quite a ride myself, most of it without the guardrails of faith and gratitude. The highs and lows and twists and turns of my story resemble a wild ride on the Giant Dipper, a whitewashed wooden 1920s-era roller coaster with bright red tracks that dominates the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. When I was a kid, we used to simply call it “The Roller Coaster.” Getting on The Roller Coaster was my all-time favorite thing to do every time my family went to Santa Cruz, which is about a forty-five-minute drive from where I grew up.
The Giant Dipper is a thrilling experience. Without warning, the coaster swooshes away from the starting point and quickly vanishes into a tunnel. Adrenalin shoots through your body while riders hoot, holler, and scream with nervous excitement. The train speeds through a pitch-black curvy tunnel to a low point before emerging from the darkness and begins slowly climbing to the first peak with the classic clicking sound of a roller coaster laboring upward. Once at the top, the train slowly scales the peak and screams down the other side of the tracks in a free fall as it rushes toward the ground. After scaling a couple of smaller hills and valleys, the train rapidly rises up into the sky to reach the top before it violently curves downward to its left, speeding through a deep, scary drop.
For forty-six years, my life followed the path of The Roller Coaster. I grew up in a working-class east San Jose neighborhood in the protective cocoon of my parents. After high school, I ventured away from the neighborhood to attend San Jose State University. Being outside the bubble was exciting and a little intimidating. I eventually flunked out of college and chose a lifestyle fueled by alcohol, dead-end jobs, and the next party. The ensuing undisciplined mayhem was like the Giant Dipper’s wild downward ride through the dark tunnel. Slowly, I put my life back together. I married a wonderful woman, returned to and graduated from college, worked my way up the corporate ladder, and served in public office. My wife, Sandra, and I built a family and a stable life.
On June 7, 2010, we were approaching our twentieth wedding anniversary, our two daughters were healthy and happy, and I had achieved success in my career. It felt like being on top of the world. But like the Giant Dipper’s next move after reaching its climactic bend, my life would soon make an abrupt and furious downward turn and plummet toward its lowest depths. That summer, I embarked on a quest to understand faith the way my mom understood it.
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On November 9, 2023 from 6:00 to 7:00 pm, I will share more stories from my book at the Stanford Bookstore. Join me and my heart transplant surgeon for an evening of faith, hope, love, and signing books!
RSVP at this link:
ESEReport.com 