It’s 8 pm. A half-eaten chicken sandwich sits in front of me – remnants from lunch. My stomach has been slowly crawling up my throat for the better part of an hour, and it is beginning to dawn on me that no amount of reality TV is going to prevent what’s coming. My mouth is salivating, and my head is pounding. I should probably get a trash can. Fuck.

I flashback to 6 hours ago, when I had sprinted downstairs to ensure no one stole my lunch, muttering that the only way that chicken sandwich would leave my possession would be over my dead body. I mentally correct this statement now: Over my dead body OR salmonella. 

Right after this memory, the inevitable finally strikes- in a half-gallop, half-sprint, I crash into the bathroom, kick down a door, and part ways with my chicken sandwich forever as it flies into the awaiting maw of white porcelain usually reserved for fecal matter. 

I lay heaving on the floor with an idea—a last-ditch, helpless whisper: 

“God. Please. Please stop this. I apologize for saying you are not real. You are real, and you know I believe that because I already apologized. If you take away this fucking food poisoning I’ll repent for my sins.”

Is this faith? Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard famously claimed that if you have a reason for believing, it’s not faith. Considering my motivation to keep my food in my stomach, one could compellingly argue that my prayer isn’t real faith. 

Despite this, I think my prayer perfectly captures what faith means to me: comfort. It wasn’t a request born of deep, thoughtful belief—it was a plea born from panic and the hope that somehow, someway, I’d be spared. That feels pretty insincere- like God or any higher power is some last-ditch “do not press unless emergency button” in my brain. 

But I think my moment on the floor was faith. Not in the sense that I truly believed that God was going to save me, but in the comfort that something out there was lying on the floor with me. Faith provided safety in that moment – even if I was suffering, at least I wasn’t alone. I can imagine torn up sandals, a white robe, and the savior of all mankind planted on the ground next to me. He lies in decades of drunken dirt and filthy nights that make up the chamber of sin that is the SNU bathroom. 

Faith doesn’t mean someone is coming to save you. It just means something out there is aware that you need to be saved. Especially when you eat an undercooked chicken sandwich.