" My mother believed in God's will for many years. It was as if she had turned on a celestial faucet and goodness kept pouring out. She said it was faith that kept all these good things coming our way, only I thought she said "fate," because she couldn't pronounce the "th" sound in "faith." And later, I discovered that maybe it was fate all along, that faith was just an illusion that somehow you're in control. "