I am obsessed with birds. In the winter in particular, they save the day and carry me through. They are pretty much anti-depressants with wings. I notice hawks all the time when I’m driving, usually perched on wires, surveying open fields. One day last week I saw three hawks like that, but they were all in a particular position: leaning forward, staring intently down at the ground. They looked ready to launch themselves toward their next meal.

The next morning I was out with the dog, and a flock of blackbirds was flying overhead. I heard the sound of the hawk before I saw it: the whooshing sound of his wings cutting the air as he dove toward the blackbirds. I’ve never heard anything like it before. And in that moment, I heard God say in my heart: I am like the hawk, precise and powerful. And I know that is true. He sees; his vision is precise. It’s not like he’s missing things. And I know he’s powerful: he can swoop in and change things, and that sound I heard spoke to that speed and power that is a part of who he is.

But then there is the flip side: People suffer. My friend’s daughter is in the hospital, in pain, and awaiting answers that don’t seem to be forthcoming. My son’s former teacher has been living with ALS for years. He is young, with four young children, and probably today he will be moved to a nursing home to live out his days. He is frightened and heartbroken about being separated from his family. He wants to die. He also has great faith and believes that God is with him and that he will leave this earth when God has planned it. And of course there are countless other ways people suffer—war, poverty, addiction, depression, sickness. betrayal, broken relationships. Sometimes all we can hear is the world’s endless litany of pain.

If we choose to believe in God, then somehow we have to hold these two truths in our hands and hearts at the same time: That God is precision and power, yet people still suffer. It’s the delta between these two truths where we struggle and it’s also the place where our faith grows.

The older I get, the more I think American christianity (or perhaps I should say, American evangelical Christianity, because I don’t see this in Catholicism so much or in mainline churches) mostly gets faith wrong. We want certitude and answers, and we believe faith can be reduced to a set of right beliefs about who God is and how he works. But my experience with faith is nothing like that. There are no answers; I am feeling my way through the dark. The answers I thought I was so sure of have been smashed to pieces and blown away on a cold wind. In the place past answers I have found trust and peace, some kind of soft openness that feels like breath itself. Somehow, in the paradox is where the magic happens. I can’t control it and I can’t make it conform to my ideas about the way it should go. I can only breathe through it and hold the truth in my two hands.