The Constant

I was asked, not long ago, to describe my relationship with God. It was a quiet afternoon, the kind where shadows from trees keep time on the wall like a slow metronome, and the light falls soft across your words. I answered without thinking too hard: “It’s constant.” The person across from me tilted his head a little and asked again, “But what does that mean, exactly?” His face was kind, but unconvinced, like someone hearing about a distant town with no roads on the map.

And still, I said, “It’s just… constant. Always has been.”

There are things we carry so close inside us, they become the water we swim in. It’s hard to describe what it feels like to breathe underwater until someone asks you to explain the ocean. I realized, sitting there with that question blooming between us, that I don’t often speak about that part of my life. Not because I don’t want to—but because it lives in a chamber of my heart too sacred to hold up to light and language. It’s not that I’m hiding. It’s just that it’s always there. Like blood through the body. Like breath. But here’s an attempt.

This morning, I was with someone I love deeply. The kind of closeness that makes you forget your age, your name, your deadlines. We were laughing—big, ugly, gasping laughter that spilled over into the air like water breaking through a dam. In that precise, crystalline moment, I felt the pulse of the divine. It brushed across me like wind over tall grass. I said, “Thank you.” Quietly, internally, not out loud. I didn’t need to. God heard.

That’s the part we all like to hear. The golden moment. The still photo of joy, perfectly backlit. But here’s the thing. God doesn’t flinch from our bad angles. And He certainly doesn’t differentiate between your laughter and your frustration. That part is just us—humans, cataloguing our days into good and bad, like we’re sorting socks.

The more honest answer to how I stay in constant conversation with God might look less like laughter and more like standing in my kitchen, arms crossed, annoyed.

It starts with my mother. She’s getting older, and her patience has begun to fray like a hem worn thin. She mutters sometimes, little frustrations under her breath: “Ugh. Really?” A sigh, a small grumble. At first, I found it charming in an old-lady way, like a tea kettle spitting out its last drops. But over time, it got under my skin. I didn’t want it to, but there it was, scratching.

Of course, what we reject in others is often the thing we fear is creeping into ourselves. I noticed recently—at the grocery store, maybe, or when the internet glitched—that same exasperated “Really?!” tumbling out of my mouth. In her tone. In her timing. And I thought, Good Lord, is that my mother living in my jaw?

That’s when God speaks. Not in a burning bush. Not in Sanskrit carved into the clouds. But in that precise, prickly realization that I am becoming someone I never meant to imitate. That I, too, am short on grace.

So yes, my relationship with God is constant. Because I’m constantly being shown things. Some of them lovely—like how to let go and laugh until I cry. And some of them uncomfortable—like how I hold onto expectations like thorns and press them into the people I love. And in both cases, I say thank you. Not always right away. Sometimes after I’ve stomped my feet and rolled my eyes and blamed Mercury in retrograde. But I get there.

This is what people don’t always understand about prayer. It’s not something I schedule, like a dentist appointment. It’s woven through everything: through grief, through irritation, through morning sunlight on my tea cup, through my mother’s muttering, through my own shame. Sometimes I talk to God the way you might talk to an old friend who knows all your secrets already. Sometimes I’m yelling. Sometimes I’m silent. Sometimes I’m saying nothing at all, just living—making dinner, folding laundry, watching a dog stretch and sigh in the sun—and it still counts. Because the line is always open.

So when someone asks me again to describe that connection, I might still say it’s constant. But maybe now I’ll add this: It’s a daily remembering. That I am not the master of the universe, nor the victim of it either. That I am being guided—sometimes gently, sometimes with a firm hand on my back. That God is not just present in the laughter, but in the awkward silences and the irritations I wish I could blame on someone else. That’s the truth.

God is in the ache as much as the joy. In the exhale and the plea. In the part of me that laughs and the part that cringes when I catch myself acting too much like my mother. And in every one of those moments, I try—sometimes poorly, sometimes late—but I try to pause and say: Thank you.

Thank you for showing me who I am.

Thank you for not giving up.

Thank you for walking with me even when I’m dragging my heels.

So if you ask me again, what does “constant” mean?

It means I am never not in the conversation.

Even when I’m angry.

Even when I forget.

Even when the only prayer I can manage is a muttered, Really?!

And somehow, even then, God answers.

Hari Om  Tat Sat