Faith vs. Beliefs

When I was a child, I was obsessed with the stars.  I loved the exercise of charting the constellations.  I would sit in our backyard and stare up at the sky and think about how each of those stars was its own sun and perhaps each one was the center of its own solar system and perhaps there were planets rotating, just like ours, around several of those suns, and MAYBE just MAYBE, there was a little girl on one of those planets charting constellations from a different view.  Maybe our sun was the North Star from where she sat.  It seemed to me that with an infinite number of stars and planets that stretched out for eternity, there must be another star somewhere that had planets rotating at the exact perfect distance to have the exact perfect atmosphere to support life someplace else.  I have thought that always.  On my college senior year houseboat trip on Lake Mead, I was convinced that if I just looked long enough at the sky, eventually I would see something.  I sat on the back of the boat with five or so friends staring at the perfectly clear night waiting for our UFO sighting.  It's possible that we smoked some pot that night.  By the way, my dad recently told me that he feels the exact opposite.  That with so many stars and planets, he feels there is no way possible that life could exist the way it does here.  It's statistics, right?  The exact perfect conditions for something so unlikely to occur....but it does anyway. Like life on earth....like SIDS.  But, really, I meant to write more about the unknown (because you know I love the unknown).  You may think this is something new - my interest in the unknown. It is not.  As obsessed as I was with stars as a child, I was ten times more obsessed with the Loch Ness monster.  Perhaps one of my parents could explain to you how I even knew what it was.  I had National Geographic clippings of fuzzy Loch Ness photos covering the walls of my "playroom".  I was sure he existed.  So what if nobody had found him yet?  Didn't scientists continue to have new species of animals all of the time?  There had to be a reason that people keep seeing him.  It still drives me crazy that he has not yet been found.  In college I befriended a guy who I haven't seen since, who knows that when he was a kid, he saw Bigfoot.  He was camping with his family and I don't remember the story exactly, but I think he went to take a pee in the woods and he saw Bigfoot.  This friend was no Pitzer pothead either, he went to Pomona on a scholarship (sorry Pitzer friends, but you know outsiders are more impressed by our neighbors).  I never knew his story until I ran into him one night at the Marlin Club - a dive bar on Catalina Island - while I was there one summer with my family.  He was working that summer for a scientist on the island, studying Bigfoot material or legends or sightings or something (I don't actually remember so well....did I mention that I ran into him at this dive bar?)  Anyway, the point is that he was smart and successful and believed in a creature that was considered laughable to most people.  Since Max died, my brain keeps wandering back to the places where I get to see him again (Max, not Carlos the Bigfoot hunter).  Will I see him in dreams?  Will he continue to speak to me through a medium?  Will I "get" to have a Near Death Experience and reunite with him only to have him tell me that it is not my time yet and then return me to my body?  Will I learn to communicate with him myself?  Am I crazy?  Yes.  I don't want to wait until I die to find out if I get to be with Max again.  And, if I die and nothing happens then I am just dead.  Ted says I should just BELIEVE that we will be reunited again.  I guess then if I die and nothing happens, I will be dead and therefore, not disappointed.  I wish it were good enough for me.  I have faith but I am not sure that I believe.  Does that make sense?  For some reason, I still BELIEVE that if the universe stretches on for eternity that somewhere there has to be another intelligent life form.  In fact, there is no doubt in my mind.  It annoys me actually that I believe in that though, because I don't care about that.  I want to believe in Max.  I guess I would not spend so much time thinking about how to memorialize him appropriately if I didn't believe that he could see.  I must believe that he knows we are doing everything for him.  He must know how much we love him.  I have enough faith to keep me going minute by minute but I am looking for the belief that is going to last me through this lifetime.  Can anyone help me out?  Seriously?  What do you believe?