This week, I lost a friend. He died suddenly, without warning or preparation, and the news sent a quiet shock through everyone who knew him. There’s something about sudden loss that not only breaks your heart but also scrambles your sense of what’s solid. It leaves a space where certainty used to be, and in its place, questions come rushing in.

Writing this piece is one way I’m trying to make sense of what has happened. I am at a loss for words and I don’t pretend to have answers. In fact, I’m not even sure I’m asking the right questions. But in the days since his passing, I’ve been thinking a lot about belief, not just religious belief, but the broader, messier kind. The belief we hold about what gives life meaning. About what connects us. About what, if anything, waits for us beyond this moment.

When the World Reflects What You’re Feeling

Amid this personal reckoning came the news that Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost had been elected Pope Leo XIV—the first American to lead the Catholic Church. A global moment, yes, but for me, it landed as something more intimate. A reminder that belief, in all its forms, remains a constant undercurrent in our lives. While the world was watching a new chapter in religious leadership, I was sitting in my own moment of transition, asking many of the same timeless questions.

Especially after 50, these questions begin to shift. They don’t come from nowhere. They come from years lived, losses felt, and time that starts to feel less theoretical and more real. What do I believe now? What brings me peace? What holds me steady when the ground suddenly moves beneath me?

The Many Forms of Belief After 50

For some, midlife brings a return to long-held religious traditions. For others, it opens the door to new forms of spirituality or even to a quiet letting go of structure altogether. Some find solace in Sunday services, while others feel closest to the divine in the woods, or during a morning meditation, or in music that makes them cry. Some pray. Others simply sit in silence. Every path is valid. Every path is personal.

A 2023 Pew Research Center study found that 70 percent of U.S. adults describe themselves as spiritual in some way. Among adults over the age of 50, 80 percent say their spiritual beliefs are important in their lives, and 71 percent say the same for religion. Yet only 48 percent identify as both religious and spiritual. The rest fall somewhere between, or outside, those definitions entirely.

Science and the Subtle Power of Spiritual Practice

While belief can be deeply personal, research suggests its benefits extend into broader measures of wellbeing. A 2023 study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that religious service attendance was associated with lower all-cause mortality among older adults in Sweden. The study suggests this may be due not only to spiritual belief itself, but also to the social connection, purpose, and consistency that often accompany regular religious or communal practice.

Still, the question lingers: Is it the belief itself that strengthens us? The ritual? The belonging? Or simply the act of seeking something that lives beyond the chaos of daily life?

Grief as a Gateway to Meaning

I don’t know exactly what I believe right now. But I do know this: the moment we lose someone, the world tilts. And in that tilting, we are often pulled into the deeper layers of what it means to be alive, and to carry on. Grief, as painful as it is, opens us to wonder. Not just about where our loved ones go, but about how we live in their absence. What we honor. What we hold on to. What we release.

Losing someone reminds us how fragile life is, but also how much we care. How much we feel. And maybe that is where belief begins. Not in certainty, but in care. In connection. In the questions we carry forward into each day.

The Invitation: To Ask, To Wonder, To Keep Going

So, I’m writing this not as a conclusion, but as an offering. A reflection shaped by sudden loss, stirred by world events, and grounded in the very human desire to make meaning. It’s an invitation to pause, to consider, and to ask the important questions in these moments. What brings me peace now? What keeps me steady when things fall apart? What makes me feel alive, connected, and purposeful?

Maybe, at this stage of life, the most faithful thing we can do is keep asking.

Rest in peace Lindy. God speed. You will be missed.