Mara thought carefully. “I just want peace,” she finally said, chewing on what was left of a fingernail.
“What is peace?” Dawn asked.
I know, I know.
They’d had this conversation many times, and Mara knew the script by heart. Dawn would remind her that peace wasn’t the absence of conflict, but the presence of God in the midst of the storm. Dawn would tell her that peace wasn’t dependent on her circumstances—that true peace was about wholeness and being at one with God. Dawn would say that peace was a gift, the fruit of intimacy with Christ, flowing out of God’s love for her.
Though Mara understood what peace was, she had never known it.
“I’m tired,” she breathed. “Tired of the constant battling. I just want a rest.”
Dawn sat a long time without saying anything, and Mara wondered what she was thinking. Maybe Dawn was finally giving up on her too. Maybe she was hopeless.
She stared at her shoes and braced herself for the verdict.
Dawn stood up and went to her desk, pulling out a plum-colored pamphlet from a stack of papers. “You’ve heard me mention some of the groups and programs at the New Hope Center,” she said, handing the paper to Mara. “They offer what they call a ‘sacred journey’ group, exploring ways to encounter God. A group like that would give you a place to connect with other people walking the same kind of spiritual path. I think it might be a good thing for you to do.”
Mara skimmed the description quickly, looking for a reason to say no.
The sacred journey is a pilgrimage for those who are thirsty for more of God. This journey is for all those who are dissatisfied with living on the surface and who want to travel deeper into God’s heart. We invite you to come and explore spiritual disciplines as we seek to create sacred space for God.
Mara stopped reading. There. She’d found it. “I hate the word discipline,” she said. “I already feel guilty, and I haven’t even gone yet.”
“I know,” said Dawn. “Lots of people have the same reaction. But spiritual disciplines aren’t laws or rules to follow. They’re tools that help us create space in our lives so God can work within us. We can’t transform ourselves. That’s God’s work, by God’s grace. But disciplines help us cooperate with the work of the Spirit.”
Mara communicated her cynicism with a frown.
“Think of it this way, Mara. We don’t have the power to make the sun rise, but we can choose to be awake when it happens. Spiritual disciplines help us stay awake.”
Mara kept examining the flyer, looking for more reasons to say no. Over the years she had completed plenty of personal Bible studies and had the workbooks to prove it. Even though she knew she didn’t want another fill-in-the-blank, do-it-yourself study, she wasn’t sure she was ready to explore her spiritual life with other people. “I’m not sure about the group thing,” she confessed.
“Why?”
“Because at least by doing things on my own, no one has the chance to reject me.” There. She’d said it.
“Look how far you’ve already come,” Dawn said gently. “You’ve been able to disclose lots of things you’d never been able to talk about before, and I haven’t rejected you.”
Mara smiled slightly. “I pay you not to reject me.” She reached into her oversized bag for a tissue.
“Mara, I wouldn’t recommend this group if you weren’t ready for something more. This kind of group is a first step toward deeper things. This is a group where you have anonymity. You’re free to disclose what you want. But at least you’d be walking the path with others. You can’t keep living on your own, Mara. It’s not good for you to be alone. And you’ve been alone for most of your life, even when you’ve been with other people.”
Dawn was right. Mara surrounded herself with people who didn’t know her: casual acquaintances who shared common interests, people she met at the boys’ extra-curricular activities, even friends at church. Mara had constructed a persona that functioned reasonably well. But deep within her defenses was a little girl who was terrified that if other people discovered who she really was, they would walk away.
She left Dawn’s office not sure what to do. Yes, she was captive to her fears, but at least her captivity was familiar. What would she discover if she stepped through the doorway into the unknown? Was her discontent strong enough to propel her forward? More than that, did she actually trust God enough to let go of the past and stride into something new?
She didn’t know. She honestly didn’t know.
Mara waited until the boys had gone upstairs to finish homework on Thursday night before she tried to broach the subject of the New Hope group with Tom. He had arrived home early from his business trip, and he seemed to be in a relatively decent mood.
“Dawn gave me some information about a group at the New Hope Retreat Center,” she said casually, spooning leftover mashed potatoes into a plastic container.
He didn’t look up from his Sports Illustrated.
She finished putting away the food and then tried again. “When I saw Dawn this week, she recommended a group for me. She thought it might be helpful.”
He continued to read. “What’s that gonna cost?” he asked. Mara had known he’d be interested in that detail.
“It’s by donation.”
“How much?” He still wasn’t looking at her.
“I don’t know. Whatever someone wants to give, I guess. It goes to support the ministries there.”
He turned a page. “Then why don’t you chuck the counseling and go with the freebie?”
They’d had this argument before about the cost of her counseling appointments. Tom had never understood why Mara needed to pay someone to listen to her.
“Seeing Dawn helps me keep everything together.” She hoped that Kevin and Brian weren’t eavesdropping.
“Keep what together? It’s not like you’ve got a particularly rough life. Look around you.” He waved his hand around their newly remodeled kitchen, expanded to accommodate two teenage boys. “There are people in this world who have real things to complain about, you know.”
She stared into the gleaming sink, chewed her nail, and counted to ten.
Tom wouldn’t refuse to pay for the group. He would just make her feel guilty for needing it. Or rather, as Dawn often said, Mara would choose to respond to Tom by feeling guilty.
She grabbed a pint of double fudge brownie ice cream from the freezer before retreating to their bedroom, where she soothed herself with her tonic of choice: reality television. Watching other people’s drama and conflicts usually made her feel much better about her own.
Usually.
Meg
Meg Fowler soared as she hurried home from school. Jim Crane had asked her to the Valentine’s Day Dance! She had been saving her babysitting money for months, hoping he would ask, hoping she’d have enough to buy a dress. THE dress. The most beautiful gown she had ever seen: sky blue chiffon, just off the shoulders, with airy ruffles at the neckline. When the weekend came, she begged her mother to take her to VanKammen’s Department Store so she could try it on.
Meg eyed herself approvingly in the dressing room mirror, twirling this way and that. The gown was even prettier than she’d remembered, a perfect complement to her blonde hair and fair complexion. Beaming, she floated down the hallway to show her mother.
“That’s the dress you’ve been fussing about?” Mother asked, frowning. “You certainly don’t have the figure for that. Of course, it’s your money. Do what you want.”
Meg returned to the dressing room, removed the gown, and put it back on the rack.
Meg almost threw the New Hope flyer away. Instead, it landed on the kitchen counter with a pile of other things she didn’t know what to do with. Passivity was her instinctive way of decision-making, especially when she felt overwhelmed. If she just waited long enough, decisions would be made for her.
But no matter what pile she put it in, the plum-colored paper kept catching her eye, beckoning her with its
simple invitation: “Come take a sacred journey.”
Although Rachel, her older sister, wasn’t particularly religious, Meg finally called and asked her for advice. “Well, you need to do something for yourself, Megs,” Rachel said. “With Mother gone, you’re rattling around alone inside that big old house. Besides, I know you don’t have piano students on Saturday mornings. What’s your excuse?”
Meg pondered those words long after she hung up the phone. “There are good reasons and real reasons,” Pastor Dave was fond of saying. Meg had run out of good reasons. And the real reason?
She was afraid.
But Rachel wouldn’t understand that, so Meg didn’t try to explain. She was tired of trying to explain. This was one of the many arguments she simply could not win. Rachel had always been the fearless, adventurous one, off exploring faraway places with delight in the unknown and the exotic. Rachel was the daughter with wings. Meg was the daughter with roots.
Meg had always been the one with roots.
The one time she had spread her wings, she hadn’t flown far from home. Meg married her high school sweetheart, and they moved into a house two miles away. For six and a half years she was Mrs. Jim Crane, and life was blissfully happy. Then on a gray and grimacing November afternoon, when Meg was seven months pregnant with Becca, a stranger’s voice on the telephone brought news that obliterated her. So sorry to have to tell you. Your husband. Highway accident. Ambulance. St. Luke’s Hospital. Mrs. Crane? Hello? Meg didn’t get to the hospital in time to say good-bye.
That night she packed as much as she could carry of her life with Jim into two suitcases, locked the front door, and staggered back to her mother’s house. Six weeks later she was at St Luke’s again, giving birth to their daughter on Christmas Eve.
For months after the accident, Meg was a stranger to herself. No longer “Jim’s wife,” she had to learn how to be “Becca’s mom.” Most nights she cried herself to sleep after Mother went to bed. Though Mother had been widowed when Meg was only four, she had no patience for tears and did not tolerate self-pity. “I never had the luxury of feeling sorry for myself,” she often scolded Meg. “And neither do you. You’ve got a baby to take care of. You’re going to have to be a grown-up and move on.”
So Meg had wept in secret.
Now, more than twenty years later, the disequilibrium of grief had returned for another season, even bleaker, harsher, and more annihilating than before. Mother was gone. Becca was gone. And Jim was back.
After years of silent absence, Jim was with her again in dreams. As Meg slept, her subconscious mind raised him from the dead, and she only had the power to bury him when she was awake. Even that power was weakening. New grief had moved the immovable, breaking the seal on her old sorrow and rolling away the stone she had tightly lodged against the tomb of her memories. Now Jim leapt forth into resurrected life, always just beyond her reach. She could not follow. She could not hold him. And she didn’t have the strength to miss him again. Please, Lord, don’t make me miss him again. At least Becca was away in England. Meg wouldn’t want her daughter to know about her torment or her tears.
So she wept in secret.
“You’re forty-six, Megs,” Rachel reminded her on the phone one night. “It’s time to figure out who you are when you’re not being Ruth Fowler’s daughter. Go to the group. And for cryin’ out loud, get a pet or something, will you?”
Meg knew her heartache was far more complicated than her mother’s absence, even if Rachel didn’t understand. Her grief was deeper than the loss of her identity as “daughter.” Mother’s death had simply been the crowbar, prying open an old box of sorrow.
Time to figure out who you are.
Maybe Sandy and Rachel were right. Maybe it was time to venture beyond the walls of her lonely house. Maybe it was time for a sacred journey after all.
If only she could find a way to put one foot in front of the other.
2
The Pilgrimage Begins
Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.
Psalm 84:5-7
New Hope
When Meg arrived at the New Hope Retreat Center on the second Saturday of September, she instinctively looked for the parking space farthest away from the building entrance. After circling a bit, she chose a spot partially shielded by small shrubs. Help, she breathed, turning off the ignition. Her hand was on her seatbelt, half poised to remove it, half clinging to it for security. From her semi-secluded vantage point, she watched a small group of people gather outside the main entrance. She wondered if any of them had wrestled with demons that morning. The sacred journey hadn’t even started, and she was already exhausted.
“Just remember the old saying,” Rachel had told her. “‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’”
As Meg stared at the ivy-covered brick building, she tried to rouse enough courage simply to walk one hundred yards across the parking lot. Help, God, please, she prayed. Though her high heels clicked a steady tempo on the pavement, her insubordinate heart raced uncontrollably. By the time she reached the portico, her chest was pounding in her ears.
A tiny, silver-haired and round-faced woman greeted her at the door. “Welcome! I’m Katherine Rhodes,” she said, extending both her hands. Meg was expecting a flimsy, delicate handshake from the five-foot-nothing sprite—not a firm, steadying, two-handed grip. This was a woman of sturdy resolve, like Meg’s mother. But unlike Ruth Fowler, who had been determinedly wintry, Katherine radiated summery warmth. “Are you here for the sacred journey group?” Katherine asked.
“Yes,” Meg squeaked. She felt her face flush with color. Why was her face always hot when her hands were always cold?
“So glad you’re here,” Katherine said. “Just make your way to the end of the hallway and turn right. And help yourself to coffee and bagels.”
Meg ducked into a restroom off the hallway, relieved to see she was alone. Scrutinizing herself in the mirror, she turned this way and that. No use. Each angle merely gave her new inspiration to find fault. She experimented with pulling her shoulder length blonde curls away from her face, but that was too open. The red blotches were still visible on her neck. So she let her hair down again, opting to shield herself with a veil.
And what about her skirt and blouse? Too dressy? Katherine and the others had been casually dressed. What if she discovered she was the only one in church clothes? She licked her finger and rubbed it feverishly over a small black spot on her sleeve, becoming increasingly irritated with herself.
When a woman wearing jeans and a sweatshirt opened the door, Meg knew she had run out of time to make herself right. There would be no pleasing her clamoring inner critic today, no quieting Mother’s voice inside her head. Or was it her own voice? She wasn’t even sure anymore.
The sunlit, sage green room was filling slowly with casually dressed people when Meg entered. She scanned the desk for her name tag, then made her way to the far back corner table near an artificial ficus tree and an exit door. She wondered if anyone had noticed her hand trembling when she scribbled an illegible signature on the group roster.
She felt sick to her stomach.
What in the world had she been thinking, signing up for something like this? She should have signed up for a women’s Bible study at the church instead. At least she would have recognized people there. But this? If she hadn’t been so eager to please her pastor and his wife, she wouldn’t have come. Meg wasn’t sure which would be more painful: disappointing them or giving herself an ulcer. She reached for her purse and was about to take flight when someone approached the table, cutting off her escape route.
“Mind if I sit with you? I like back corners too.” The heavy-set woman winked conspiratorially. “Makes it easier for me to watch everything that’s goi
ng on.”
Makes it easier for me to run to the bathroom if I need to throw up, Meg answered. But only to herself. She forced a smile and motioned to the empty seat next to her.
“Thanks,” the newcomer replied, setting down her coffee mug, a bagel, and an oversized embroidered bag. Clothed in loud floral prints and bold, jangling accessories, she had the appearance of a free-spirited non-conformist. Even her short, wavy hair was colorful: reddish brown with brash copper highlights.
Wish I could wear bright colors with confidence, Meg thought, looking down at her tan skirt.
The woman exhaled slowly as she squeezed her matronly figure into the seat. “These chairs aren’t built for large women, are they?” she commented dryly, observing Meg’s petite frame. “Not that you’ve got that problem.” She extended a steady hand. “I’m Mara Garrison.”
“Meg. Meg Crane. Sorry for the cold hands.” Meg’s voice was barely above a whisper.
“Warm heart, I bet,” Mara said, fiddling with her colorful bangles and large-beaded necklaces. Was that a tattoo on her wrist? Meg couldn’t tell for sure and didn’t want to stare. “So, Meg—you ready for a ‘sacred journey’?” Meg shrugged and managed a weak smile. “I’m not sure either,” Mara went on, reaching into her bag. “But a friend thought I needed this, so here I am. How ’bout you? How’d you find out about it?”
“I . . . um . . . ” Meg felt color rushing to her face. If only she had worn a turtleneck. But it was still too warm for turtlenecks. “My pastor’s wife recommended it because it helped her after her mom died. And she thought maybe it would help me now that my mother’s gone.” Too much. She’d said too much. She hadn’t planned on revealing herself. Now she was going to cry. She bit her lip and willed back the tears.
Mara stopped putting on her bright red lipstick and looked up from her compact mirror. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, offering a tender look of compassion that threatened Meg’s already fragile nervous system.
A Story about the Spiritual Journey Page 4