“Will you lay down your life for me?”

“Will you lay down your life for me?”[i]

Seven years ago, on a Wednesday morning in Lent, I knelt in the front pew of St. James' Episcopal Church in Potomac, Maryland, shaking and weeping. We had just had a midweek Eucharist service. As it happens, our Lenten program that year was “Questions Jesus Asks,” and I had prepared a reflection on the question “Do you want to be made well?” in which I shared my experience of being born with a club foot and suffering molestation as a child.

I had experienced a lot of healing as I’d moved into a deeper relationship with Christ, both through 12-step recovery and spiritual formation here at St. James.’ I had come here with a history of self-loathing that led to many destructive behaviors.  Seven years ago, in 2006, at the age of 49, I still had no college degree because I’d never had the confidence to return to school, and I’d remained with the same company for decades, convinced I was unqualified to do anything else. For nearly half a century, I had allowed life to happen to me, and had never felt like an agent in my own history.

As I knelt in that pew before the pulpit that Wednesday morning seven years ago, I experienced a visceral longing for deeper communion, an ache for Jesus unlike any I’d ever known. Krista K,[ii] came over and asked me if I was okay. I said, “I miss him so much.” (Do you remember this? You thought I was talking about Jim.) I was referring to Jesus. It felt as if we had been joined once, and I wanted to return.

At the same time that I had this deep longing, I had a sort of vision in my mind, not a hallucination, but a very real sense of paths radiating out from me in all directions. I knew that I could choose any path I wanted. And I knew that what God wanted was for me to choose the path directly ahead of me: the one that led over a cliff.

Krista fetched Cindy, and Cindy and I sat in the chapel, talking about the longing, the paths, and the cliff. Beverly B, [iii] who had cleaned up following the Eucharist, left the church, but came back minutes later. She wrapped a prayer shawl around my shoulders, saying, “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know I need to give this to you.”

Indeed she did. By the time Cindy and I finished our conversation, I had a way forward. It was a major leap of faith. I was going to try to become an Episcopal priest, and the first step in the process was to get my bachelor’s degree. I wanted to dedicate my life to serving God and God’s people, to help others experience the healing love of God that had brought me so far already, and promised now to lead me into a land I did not know. I had no idea how I would afford the tuition or time to study, nor even where I would enroll, but I knew I needed a bachelor’s degree, and I knew I wanted to major in religion. It was all that interested me at that point, despite, or perhaps, because of, the fact that I’d been in business for 30 years.

So off the cliff I stepped.

Three months later, I was an undergrad at GW. I still had no idea how this was going to work out. How would I tell my boss I was no longer going to work for the company I’d been with since I was 19? How would our family handle the loss of income while I was in seminary? I only knew that, for now, I was called to work faithfully toward my BA, and I continued to work fulltime while I did so.

In June of 2007, a year after I resumed studies, I hit my first bump against the cliff I’d stepped off of.  The conversation with my boss became unnecessary when I found him dead in his apartment. Suddenly, shocked and grieving, with the image of Frank’s lifeless body seared in my mind’s eye, I was the boss, and the corporation I had devoted my entire adult life to, as well as part of my teenage years, was to be liquidated and disbanded. While it may seem that Frank’s death solved my problem, I believe the reverse: if Frank was going to die, a good and gracious God had prepared me, at that point where my entire career was coming to a catastrophic end, to have a sense that there was, in fact, a plan for my welfare and not for harm, to give me a future with hope.[iv]

The company work was almost done by the time I graduated in 2009, and I went on unemployment while I looked for my next job in the midst of the Great Recession. I was grateful to have a degree – any degree – since many places would not have considered me without it. Again, I viewed it as providence.

As part of my work toward becoming a priest, I visited a spiritual director regularly. Walking through the Brookland neighborhood near Catholic University, I noticed an intriguing brick building in the midst of frame houses, with an even more intriguing name on it: Center of Concern. “I wonder what they do there?” I asked myself each time, thinking I should screw up the courage to ring the bell. Being unsure of myself, I never did. That is, not until March of 2010, when I went for a job interview there and learned that the work of the Center of Concern was very much in line with what I’d been doing at St. James,’ raising awareness of global poverty issues and encouraging support of the Millennium Development Goals. By the end of April, I was the new Chief Operating Officer at the Center. Things felt very much back on track and I continued the vocational discernment process to become a priest.

The day after I received my first paycheck, though, I was shattered to learn that my marriage of nearly 29 years was ending. Just four years earlier, we’d renewed our vows and, although I knew things were strange and strained, I believed in God and marriage and the power of forgiveness and love, and I thought my husband did, too. In this absolutely surreal, frightening, rug-pulled-out-from-under-my-feet experience, though, I was aware, again, of grace and providence, for God had led me to full-time employment, and my sense of self-worth and financial stability was intact when I entered into the long, painful process of divorce. Throughout it all, I tried to behave in a way that honored God, even as I felt that the process itself was not what He (or I) ever wanted. I was reminded of Thomas Merton’s prayer: “… I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing… I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.”[v] Sadly, Bishop John Chane of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington informed me that, given the trauma of divorce, my discernment process would be suspended for two years. I was heartbroken all over again, and convinced that I knew better than he. Trust me, the bishop was right.

The following May, as the divorce was nearing its final chapter, my mother died. She had been suffering from a variety of ailments, and was 90 years old, but the cancer that claimed her life was diagnosed only weeks before her death. I was very aware that, in the divorce, I would have sought support from her and, in her death, I would have sought support from my husband. Now I had neither, only God and the community of faithful friends and co-workers to pray me through. The spiritual director I’d been seeing for discernment became a counselor as I processed my grief. My mother’s ashes were interred six days after my divorce was final.

“Will you lay down your life for me?”

I stepped off a cliff in 2006, willing to lay down my old life and the familiar shackles of broken self-regard that bound me to my career, but thinking that I knew where I would land. In the ensuing years, I had to lay down much more of the life I’d known. The scenery around me now is a very strange land: I’m not ordained, not even in seminary. The process of becoming a priest has fallen to the wayside, a victim of some of the trauma I’ve experienced. I’ve lost my marriage and my mother, but I’ve gained two granddaughters and innumerable friends. I work for half the salary I made in 2006, but at a job that holds so much more meaning, with people of faith who care about God and the poor. I have resources and a home to dedicate to the service of God and to provide sanctuary to women in crisis. I don’t know if I’m done tumbling through the air and bumping against the cliff, but I do know that God is present, and always has been, even when I couldn’t feel Him.

In her song, “Held,” Natalie Grant sings:

This is what it means to be held

How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life

And you survive

This is what it means to loved and to know

That the promise was when everything fell

We’d be held.[vi]

It is a fearful thing to lay down one’s life and fall into the hands of the living God.[vii]  It is a far more fearful thing to live safely up on a cliff, never trusting that His loving hands will catch you.

---

[i] Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times. – John 13:38. All scripture citations are New Revised Standard Version.

[ii] Surname has been abbreviated for privacy.

[iii] Surname has been abbreviated for privacy.

[iv]  For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. - Jeremiah 29:11.

[v] Thomas Merton, “Thoughts in Solitude, “ copyright Abbey of Gethsemani.  The full text of “The Merton Prayer,” as it's come to be known is: MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

[vi] “Held” was written by Christa Wells, and appears on Grant’s 2005 album, “Awaken.”

[vii] It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. – Hebrews 10:31.