by Jacci Turner
Dedication
To Amy Hauptman—my sunshine friend. Thank you for raising money for me to go to the “grounding retreat,” where this book was born. You are amazing.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Resources
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
How did I end up at a Benedictine monastery in Nebraska? The question circled through Amy’s mind as she walked gingerly around the man-made lake behind the monastery.
Truth was, she knew exactly how she’d gotten here. It was Jennie’s fault. Jennie, her college roommate and the kindest person Amy knew, had not only insisted she come, she’d raised the money to pay for it. Jennie had been to the retreat a year before and said it changed her life.
Her mind went back to the day she’d come home from a class for her graduate degree in social work. Her mom always left her mail on the small table next to her bed. There was a card from Jennie, with a cryptic note, and a check for seventy-five dollars. The note said, “You need to come to this retreat with me. It will be amazing.” That was all—that and a web address for the “Contemplative Activists” website.
Amy knew what activists were. Her father had called her and Jennie “firebrands” in college. They were leaders in their campus Christian club: organizing food drives, bringing in guest speakers on child soldiers, and more. Then, upon graduation, they’d both gone off to save the world. Amy had gone to Thailand to work with a group that rescued girls and women from sex trafficking, and Jennie to Chicago to help underserved kids.
Amy checked the Contemplative Activist website and got a vague sense of this supposedly special place in Nebraska.
As Amy walked in the dark, she passed other retreatants who smiled or nodded in the dim light. It felt good to move her body after a whole day of flying to get here. The air was soft on her face. Her skin felt like silk in this humidity. Being from Nevada, where the air was dry as toast, the moisture felt like a gift. The August air was warm and the light breeze caressed her.
She remembered texting Jennie back immediately after checking out the website. “Thank you so much! I can’t believe you did that.” Jennie worked for a nonprofit. She didn’t have seventy-five dollars to give away. She’d continued her text: “But I can’t possibly afford the retreat. I will rip up the check.”
Jennie had fired back another cryptic remark. “Just wait a few weeks.”
Amy took a fork in the path that led down to a tall statue of a monk. His arms stretched out over the pond, and floodlights shooting up made it look like he was celebrating after a touchdown. An illuminated nameplate at the base of the statue read, St. Benedict. She knew nothing of the saint but decided to call him Benny and that he must be a 49er. She loved the 49ers and had attended many games with her grandpa, her Opa who had lived near San Francisco and had been a die-hard fan.
She enjoyed being out in the dark without fear that someone would attack her. The other retreatants were nearby and it seemed like a safe place. There was a fountain in the lake behind her that made a peaceful sound as its gentle splashing mingled with the chirp of crickets and cicadas. Hadn’t Tom, the retreat leader, said to be sure to look at the stars tonight? She walked back up the path and found one of the many benches that lined it. Lying back, she put her feet on the bench, knees bent, and stared up at the stars. Amy was impressed. In Reno you couldn’t really see the stars unless you left town. The lights of the twenty-four-hour city drowned out the sky. There was only one word to describe this night: it was thick with stars. Thick. If she’d known anything about constellations, she probably could have found them all. As it was, she could only find the big and small dippers, an accomplishment she equated to playing “Chopsticks” on the piano. Jennie could have named them all, oh why wasn’t she here?
True to Jennie’s word, cards had begun arriving in the mail. They were from people Amy hadn’t talked to in a long time, friends that had been in her Bible study during college. Freshmen that she and Jennie had taken under their wings. They were grown and gone now, with budding careers of their own. All included notes with their small checks, saying things like, “You made a difference in my life; I’m glad to give a little back.” She’d been shocked. She felt so separated from those days. From that kind of faith. She felt like a hypocrite. Should she even take their money? What would they think of her now, their former Bible study leader, a failure as a missionary, a failure as a church leader, a failure as a Christian?
But suddenly she had the money, not only for the five-day retreat, but also for the trip there and back. Reluctantly she’d registered—if nothing else, she’d get a week with Jennie. She should be studying. She should be looking for work. She should be doing a lot of things, but the idea of getting to see Jennie after two years had been too tempting.
Then Jennie had dropped the bomb. Her folks had decided to fly to Chicago that weekend to surprise her with a visit. She couldn’t come to the retreat and Amy had already registered and bought her plane tickets. She’d thought about backing out, but what about all those people who had sent money?
Now Amy was in Nebraska at a retreat center with fifty strangers from twenty different states. She gazed at the sky as a falling star streaked across her vision and went out. Wasn’t she supposed to make a wish? I wish I were anywhere but here.
2
Amy woke up in a daze. It felt like the middle of the night. Why was her alarm going off? She reached over the side of the bed where her phone was charging on the floor and shut off the noise. It said seven o’clock in the morning.
She sat up on the bed, trying to focus her blurry eyes, totally disoriented. She was in a room with two twin beds, one of them empty. A crucifix hung across from her on the wall. The retreat center. The empty bed was where Jennie was supposed to sleep. The room was simple: a soft chair under the window that looked out on the grounds, a desk and chair under the crucifix, and a bathroom. She was so tired. It was five a.m. in Reno—why was she up?
Amy fumbled around the table next to her bed and flipped on the small lamp, blinking at the light. She grabbed the name tag she’d been given at registration, with its black lanyard and plastic rectangular pouch. The front declared Amy Spanier—Reno. She flipped it over and squinted at the back, where the conference’s schedule had been printed. Seven thirty Monday was breakfast and eight thirty was yoga. Ah, breakfast—that’s why she wanted to get up at “the butt crack of dawn,” as her best friend, Joshua, would say. They were smart not to put yoga first on the schedule. She could have easily talked herself out of that, but breakfast? Amy was a girl who liked to eat. Not that she was fat, but she wasn’t skinny either. Her Opa had described her as “sturdy,” a description she rather enjoyed.
As she pulled on her workout clothes, she thought of the woman who had picked her up from the airport. She was a tiny, beautiful Muslim named Amani. Tom, the retreat leader, had arranged the ride and Amy was thankful not to have to rent a car after Jennie canceled on her. Amani had a large poster board in the car and Amy, pointing at the board, had said, “I can tell you’re a teacher,” to break the ice. She actually already knew that Amani was a teacher, because Tom had told her in an e-mail. Amani said, “Yes, but actually the poster is my ‘thirty t
hings to do before I turn thirty’ board. I want to fill it out while I’m here.”
That thought had captured Amy’s attention immediately. She had turned twenty-nine just last month and decided right then to make her own list. If she got nothing else out of this week, she’d have a list of things to try before she turned thirty. That sounded fun.
Would she like yoga? If she did, it could be something to put on her list. She needed to do something physical. She’d definitely slacked on the exercise since—well, since Westin Timothy Davis, to be exact.
West was her almost fiancé, now ex–almost fiancé. Who was now the fiancé of someone else. That piece of … Amy grabbed her pillow and screamed into it until the frustration ebbed. She stood, panting, as thoughts of West floated into her mind, a scowl across his handsome face. “I don’t think we’re on the same page anymore, Amy,” he had said. Whatever. She pushed him from her mind, throwing the pillow against the far wall.
She went to the sink to brush her teeth. The florescent light was not kind. She was confronted with a bush of wild brown curls where her once-tame hair had been. It was the humidity. It gave her “Hermione hair.” That’s what Joshua called this look, after her favorite Harry Potter character. Oh well—she was just going to yoga, right? It had been what—nine years since she’d tried yoga? She’d taken it for a P.E. credit in college her freshman year. I hope I don’t embarrass myself.
She grabbed her brush and pulled a hair tie off the handle, tying the whole mane of hair back in a loose ponytail at the crown of her head. She checked the mirror. Wiping sleep from her blue eyes, she noticed dark circles. She was not going to worry about that right now; in fact, she just might go the whole week without makeup. She’d never see these people again anyway, right? She checked the mirror once more. Not great, but good enough. She needed coffee.
Snatching her travel mug from her suitcase, she walked down a carpeted hall to the other end of the building, passing other groggy retreatants. Some smiled, some nodded, and some kept their eyes down. They probably needed coffee too. The walls were lined with pictures of priests or biblical scenes. She’d never been in a Catholic retreat center before and it felt foreign, like being in a different country.
The hallway opened up into a bigger area. Their meeting room was on the right, and to the left was a large bank of windows that led outside to the path around the lake. She glanced out at the morning, the sky a slate gray. Following the direction the others were going, she found a small drink station next to the dining hall and filled her travel mug with coffee, adding two yellow sweetener packets and two little pots of French vanilla creamer. Joshua’s voice rang through her head: “You like candy, not coffee.”
He would know. As a barista at Starbucks, he always had a cup ready for her in the morning. But she did not look forward to the quip that came with it. She had a sweet tooth, it was true, and he loved to playfully tease her about it.
Only one cup, she promised herself. She’d overdone the caffeine on the three planes yesterday (that’s what a cheapo ticket got you) and had found it hard to get to sleep. She sat her cup on one of the long, empty tables in the dining room. That would force her to meet people when all she wanted to do was crawl into a cave. She’d come all the way to godforsaken Nebraska—she had to figure out why, and she wasn’t going to find out if she kept to herself the whole week. If God was going to speak to her—and Amy was not at all sure he would—he usually did so through other people, at least he had in the past.
She joined the line outside the food bar that led into a room where two stainless-steel tables were filled with breakfast options. She watched the people in front of her grab trays and silverware off the back wall unit, then go to either side of the buffet. She slid a tray off the stack and headed to the right side. The first station had fresh fruit, and she loaded her plate. I’d better pace myself, she thought. Five days of buffets would be a killer on her figure. She’d already packed on a few extra pounds, Post West or “PW,” as Joshua had tagged her breakup with West, and it was time to start eating healthier. Maybe she’d put that on her “thirty before thirty” list. Lose ten pounds.
As the line progressed, she observed the other retreatants. Some were her parents’ age, but most were around her age or a few years older. Some were in pairs, but most appeared to be alone. Most were white, but there were a few people of color.
She came to the next station: eggs, sausage, and bacon. She put a small amount of each on her plate and spooned salsa onto her eggs. She wondered about Amani. Would there be food here she could eat? She knew Muslims didn’t eat pork. Maybe she should offer to make a food run for her. Of course, she’d have to borrow Amani’s car. That was silly. She had a lot of thoughts like that, wanting to be helpful without realizing how impossible it was.
The next station was bread—better skip that. Her tray loaded, she went back to find her coffee cup. Two girls, about her age, were at the table facing her. “Mind if I join you?” she asked.
They both smiled at her in welcome. The one on her left had a short, asymmetrical brown bob, pore-less skin, and large Bambi eyes. “Please do. I’m Natalie,” she said.
Amy slid into the chair, placing her tray on the table. “I’m Amy.”
“Brooke,” said the other girl, rounder, with her blond hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. Her dimples were epic. “We were just talking about documentaries. Do you like them?” Her voice was strong, confident.
“I do,” said Amy. She watched an occasional documentary.
Natalie’s eyes got even bigger. “I just love them. I just watched this one on whales; do you know that people didn’t start to save the whales until they learned that whales could sing? That made them more human, and suddenly activists stepped in to keep them from being slaughtered.” Natalie talked without taking a breath as if whales were the most important subject in the world.
Brooke chimed in. “I love the ones about sustainable fashion. Do you know that most of the clothes we buy are made in sweatshops by children?”
Amy was starting to get the gist of the conversation. The conference was for activists after all. Everyone here was probably concerned about justice issues. But these girls seemed so young. As her Opa would have said, they were “bright eyed and bushy tailed.” Suddenly Amy felt like a wrung-out dishrag, too cynical and old beyond her years.
They prattled on happily about documentaries they’d watched on genetically modified food and puppy mills. Amy wondered when she’d become so cynical. When she said she liked documentaries, she’d meant a more frivolous variety. Like the one about the guy who spent a year living off whatever he could find on Craigslist. Suddenly the topic switched to TED Talks. Now that was something she could talk about.
“I love TED Talks,” she volunteered.
“Me too,” said Natalie, leaning forward as if TED Talks were the most important thing in her life. Amy wondered if she spoke about everything with perky enthusiasm. She had to push down a smile thinking of Natalie gushing about Pap smears or root canals. If only Joshua were here to laugh with her.
Natalie continued. “I just love Elizabeth Gilbert. Eat, Pray, Love was my favorite book. Some of my friends were like, ‘Really? Eat, Pray, Love?’ But yeah, Eat, Pray, Love!”
Amy knew what she meant. Since this was a largely Christian retreat, Natalie was probably from an evangelical Christian background like herself. That particular brand of Christian tended to look askance at anything that smacked of Eastern mysticism, and Elizabeth Gilbert’s book had a whole section on the joys of meditation. Amy had loved it. She remembered when she’d been judgmental like that, though. In fact, in the not-too-distant past, riding to a Catholic retreat center with a Muslim would have felt really weird. When had she changed?
“Oh, I loved that book,” agreed Brooke, “but the movie was eh,” she said, moving her hand, palm down, back and forth to signal the movie was only so-so. “Have you watched the TED Talks by Brené Brown? I love her. I saw her live in Boston.”
“Oh, I love her!” said Natalie. “I didn’t know she did live presentations.”
“Oh yeah,” said Brooke. “Have you read Rising Strong? That book came at just the right time for me. I was hired at a church to be the youth pastor and it was a disaster.”
Amy perked up at this. “Really? I just got fired from a church myself!”
“No way,” said Brooke.
“That’s amazing, guys,” broke in Natalie. “I really want to hear about it, but it’s time for yoga. Do you want to go?”
“I do,” said Brooke. “We’ll have to talk later, Amy. I can’t wait to hear your story.”
Amy grabbed her tray and followed the girls out. Was it possible that someone here could relate to her pain? Maybe she had more in common with these girls than she knew.
3
Yoga felt wonderful. The teacher was Felicia, the tiny blond wife of the man who had spoken last night, Tom. They were leading the retreat together and were both shorter than Amy’s five foot ten. They were what Tom jokingly referred to as “fun sized.”
“What is your intention for this practice?” asked Felicia to the thirty people on mats. My intention is to survive, thought Amy. Then she revised, It’s to stretch. I really feel tight.
They were in the same room they’d started in last night but the large circle of chairs had been removed and now yoga mats filled the space in haphazard rows. Violin music played in the background as Felicia’s comforting voice spoke to them. She led in a way that Amy instantly clicked with: “This is your practice,” she said. “Listen to your body. If a move is not working for you, adjust until it is.” Amy loved that and was able to do all the moves Felicia led them through even though she was nowhere as graceful as Natalie on the mat next to her.
After the workout, Amy had time to go back to her room to shower. She headed down the hall, promising to see her new friends at the next meeting. Last night’s meeting had been more of an introduction. “This is your retreat,” emphasized Tom. “If you need to skip a meeting, skip it. Make it whatever you need.”