a personal essay by Bonnie Lee Black, January 2026—

“What does ‘died’ mean?,” I asked my mother when I was four and my best friend Ruthie, who was five, had just died of leukemia. I’d never known anyone who’d died.

My spirited young mother, who was not in any way spiritual or religious –her whole philosophy of life had been, “When you’re alive, you live; when you die, you’re dead” — made up a glowing story for me:
“Ruthie has gone to a better place,” she said convincingly. “She’s gone to live with God in his home in Heaven, where there is no sickness, no pain, and no tears. God saw that Ruthie – such a good girl! – had been very sick and in pain, so he decided she’d be happier with him. She’ll never be sick again.”

My first thought was, “Lucky Ruthie!” My second was, “How is it that my Mom suddenly believes in God?” Always before, the word God had only been an angry epithet in our house. But since that day – since the day my mother made up that story to console me – I’ve never feared death. Something about it felt profoundly true, even to the four-year-old me: This life on earth is not all there is.

Before she became ill, Ruthie had told me a little bit about God. Being a year ahead of me, she had started Catholic school, so every afternoon after school she painstakingly shared with me what she’d learned that day from the nuns.

“Look up there,” Ruthie instructed me, pointing to the sky, as we sat on her front porch side by side. “See that big cloud? God is behind that cloud, looking down at us. He’s like a loving father watching over us.”

This was news to me, and I found it thrilling. In my Protestant family, which never attended church and where my father was always enraged and often belligerently drunk, the thought of a loving, caring, fatherly God up there somewhere was irresistible. I credit my friend Ruthie for putting me on my spiritual path.

It’s been a long and rocky road, I confess. I’m eighty now; and when I look back on my life, I can clearly see the main turning points on this journey that have led me to where I am today, spiritually speaking.

In my adolescence, when World War III was raging at home in the runup to my parents’ overdue divorce, and I felt desperate for some life guidance, I went to a gospel church in a neighboring New Jersey town with my friend Lindy and her family. Even after Lindy and her family moved away, I continued attending that church, faithfully and hungrily – the Sunday school classes, the morning worship services, the evening youth group meetings, the evening services. I went for the music – Bach in the morning and rousing hymns at night – for the Bible lessons, for the warmth of the people, for the messages of love and peace. I went to escape the strife at home and find a haven with the promise of Heaven.

In this small, white, clapboard church, God seemed real to me. Not cold and remote like the farthest star, but as close and vital as one’s own heartbeat. This God was an all-knowing, all-loving, all-forgiving, ever-present friend, who was worshipped, not with repetitive phrases read from a book, but with simple, spontaneous language spoken from the heart.

So I began a daily habit of waking early to read the Bible and pray before getting ready for school. I spoke to God as if He were a caring parent, asking for guidance, help with my homework, strength for the day, more faith. I applied myself to my schoolwork and became an honor student. I strove to grow wings and rise above the battlefield at home.

The fatal flaw in this rosy self-portrait was my blinkered naivete, which I’ve regretted ever since. When I was nineteen, a much-older, professional man, who was intent on marrying a blond-haired, blue-eyed, naive virgin, and who professed to me the same religious beliefs as mine, charmed me into marrying him. I learned too late that I’d only been a means to an end for him: He wanted something he could not then buy because surrogacy was not yet readily available – a child of his own, a beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed child “for his mother to raise,” he later told me.

After our divorce and I was given custody of our baby daughter, he took her on a visitation and, along with his aging parents, disappeared.

I saw a lawyer in the office building where I worked, and he counseled me on what to do. At one point he leaned over his desk, cigarette hanging from the side of his mouth, and said, “From now on you’ve got to live like a f*ckin’ nun. He’s probably having you followed.” This man had known my ex-husband, but he didn’t know me. He didn’t know I already lived like a nun.

The FBI agent who was assigned my case told me coldly one day when I visited his office and begged him for news, “You are just a number in our files.”

An elder of my church took me aside one Sunday evening to inform me I could never marry again because our church didn’t recognize divorce. If I did remarry, I’d be “living in sin,” he said. (I immediately thought: I don’t need to bother to get married again to live in sin.) I never returned to that church.

People who knew me and knew my story treated me pityingly, and I hated them for it. Good people who didn’t know me but learned of my story regarded me with suspicion – because, after all, in their world, and according to their beliefs, bad things only happen to bad people.

Every doctor I visited about my severe stomach pain and weight loss tried to prescribe tranquilizers or antidepressants for me, but I refused them all. I chose to remain clear-headed and not drugged into docility. I chose to harness my pain and fury.

And so began my many years of boxing with God. I moved to New York for its promised anonymity, at the same time the Broadway musical, “Your Arm’s Too Short to Box with God,” had opened. Ha! I thought, seething, MY arm’s NOT too short to box with God! My anger toward my God was incendiary. My prayers were vitriolic. HOW COULD YOU?, I shouted between clenched teeth, WHY DID YOU LET THIS HAPPEN TO ME? I WAS A GOOD GIRL! WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS ANGUISH? WHERE IS MY BABY?! BRING BACK MY BABY!!!

I often considered suicide because the pain of not knowing where and how my daughter was, day after day, month after month, year after year, was unbearable. But I knew that if and when she was ever found, she would need me. I had to go on living – eating, sleeping, working. I had to get through this. My marching orders to myself were, “You must be strong, you must go on!” And through it all I never stopped railing at God – Why?! Why?! Why?! This phase lasted for many years.

In New York I attended Columbia University on full scholarships; I enlarged my mind. In New York I met people of all colors, shapes, sizes, stories, ethnicities, abilities, and religions and had many Jewish friends; they enlarged my heart.

In New York I wrote a book in which I shared my personal story for the first time, and a prominent New York publisher published it. That book found my daughter for me and helped thousands of others who’d experienced similar heartbreak and loss due to parental child abduction.

In New York I learned a life-altering lesson: The God whom I’d been railing at for so many years had used me for good. This seeming tragedy had turned to triumph.

In my fifties I joined the Peace Corps and served for two years as a health and nutrition volunteer working with mothers and children in Gabon, Central Africa. After my Peace Corps service, I went up to Mali, West Africa, and created an economic development project working with Malian women and young girls.

Mali is a predominantly Muslim country, and I came to deeply admire the good, kind, generous, God-loving Muslim people I got to know in the three years I lived there. As part of my morning devotions I read N. J. Dawood’s English translation of the Koran, and I was profoundly moved by the beauty of it.

Ten years ago I retired to the beautiful old small city of San Miguel de Allende in the central mountains of Mexico, and this is where I plan to stay. San Miguel is called el corazon de Mexico – the heart of Mexico. Mexico in its entirety to me has enormous heart, so Mexico has become my heart’s home.

Mexico is a predominantly Catholic country, and I highly respect the Mexican people’s adherence to their religious traditions. But I could no more become a Mexican Catholic than I could have become a Malian Muslim or a Jewish New Yorker. So I ask myself, What am I now?

It seems as if in all my years of grappling with God and stumbling upward along my spiritual mountainous path I’ve come up with my own religion, which is not a religion at all. “Religion” to me denotes manmade dogma, and mine eschews such dogma. I no longer attend church. I cannot honestly repeat the Apostle’s Creed. I do not believe, as most manmade religions do, that women are meant to be subordinate. I do not believe, as most white men do, that white men are superior. I strongly believe all of us are equally valuable and all of us have important roles to play in this life on earth.

But I’ve never stopped praying – not to a big old white guy in the sky tucked, like the Wizard of Oz, behind a cloud, nor to a young Middle Eastern man being tortured to death on a roughly hewn wooden cross, but to what I like to think of as the Great Spirit, the term indigenous Americans use. A benevolent power available to all, beyond description, beyond definition.
I believe in this God because I must. Where else could I possibly put my trust? Men? Money? Political or religious leaders? No. The God I believe in has brought me through hell on earth and taught me so much: Everyone has heartache. Everyone suffers pain and loss. This life is a test, the Koran says; we must just do our best.

I still pray every day. I pray for the things I lack: patience, tolerance, love, understanding, empathy, compassion, strength, fortitude, grace, wisdom, and more. And every day I get just enough of these to last for that day. I give thanks for my many blessings, especially for bringing me to Mexico, where my ashes will be buried on a mountaintop.

I have no fear of death; in fact, I look forward to the next realm, the last stop on this spiritual journey, where my soul will finally be at home. Maybe — who knows? — I’ll even be reunited with Ruthie.

An honors graduate of Columbia University in New York, Bonnie Lee Black is the author of six books, including the memoir SOMEWHERE CHILD about her daughter’s abduction by her father (Viking Press, 1981). Bonnie’s essays have appeared in numerous literary journals, and for the past ten years she has been writing a weekly blog from her adopted home, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. For more information, please visit: http://www.bonnieleeblack.com