I'd thought many a time to do just this--to go to the church by myself and sit in silence--the place where I worshipped as a child, where I walked alongside my father, taking communion with him.
I entered the church, worried that Father Rob would be there, preparing his sermon or setting the altar; I didn't want to be seen, for I wanted to stare alone at that magnificent glass scene depicting Christ's empty tomb, an angel standing beside the stone door, rolled aside to show that He had left, risen from death to new life. I wanted to sit and pray slowly and fervently to the Divine.
That stained glass window has always amazed me. How is it possible for a piece of glass to be so vividly red and deep in hue? The gold looks like it is lighting the way, almost vibrant enough to transport me to another place beyond this world.
I love this church for selfish and unethical reasons; it looks English and is so as it is Episcopalian. It touches my heart as a tie to the English/ Irish roots that run through my blood. But something more than that has brought me back time after time after all of these years.
As I've grown older, my deepening of faith has surprised me. To the outside world, though I raged and argued against God (something I do on a weekly basis), faith and especially the Catholic Church as a teenager, I've always been a spiritual person. As a child, I was probably more faithful than most, believing without a doubt that there was a heaven, where even animals are admitted. I still believe this. I've heard the Catholics don't, but I say fuck 'em. It only makes sense that the animals that loved me so unconditionally and who bore witness to the difficulties of my growth, puberty and adolescence should be reborn on a plane of eternal happiness. As a child I also believed in spirits and ghosts. I still do.
And now that I'm a grown woman, searching for myself, I feel that my faith keeps deepening.
I remember when it happened. (I pause here, thinking about how much I wish to divulge. This is a public forum after all. I strive to write for me, to make this blog all about me, to write for me with no consideration to who may read it or if it is even followed.)
------------------
I remember when it happened... when I felt there was truly Divine energy because I had encountered an angel.
------------Oct. 31, 2004
I was miserable, just back to school from Fall Break in late October of 2004, after seeing my parents for the first time since living on my own in college. At this point in my life I didn't know I was medically ill. I had always been a worrier, even as a young, young child. As I became a teenager I experienced bouts of intense depression; I could be starving and didn't want to eat anything. I'd live off of one small snack a day. I couldn't stop crying, feeling as though a part of me was dead inside. I couldn't sleep but spent hours lying awake at night tossing and turning, worrying about all the things that I couldn't control in life, of the future, and worrying about myself and who I was.
The depression worsened as I grew older, returning more frequently than it had when I was a child.
Now, I found myself in college, trying to run away from the depression that had plagued me for years in high school. I thought with college, a change of scene, getting older and hormones settling down would alleviate all or most of my intense symptoms.
By the time Oct. 31st (with the exception of my birthday, my favorite day of the whole year) I had slipped back into a depression that was a week, and many sleepless nights old. I felt like I was at my wits' end. Nothing had changed. I was still miserable. I was still anxious, worrying all the time, feeling guilty for thoughts I could not control.
--------------------
Anne was a young woman I'd met in my home-base/ icebreakers group at University of Portland over Orientation Weekend. She was very tall (she's 6 ft 1) and you couldn't not notice her. She was nice and she liked cats, so naturally we got along quite well. Over the next few weeks, we'd meet with our mutual acquaintances for lunch, and we were friends, but only slightly so.
Everything changed when I came back from working out at the gym that Sunday, the 31st. I was so down I didn't even get a costume (a thing quite unlike me) and everyone was gearing up for Halloween festivities in the dorms. I returned from my attempt to exhaust myself into sleep and I walked through the first floor where Anne was decorating the hall for the little kids who would soon be trick-or-treating the hallways. She looked up at me, we exchanged hellos and she instantly saw that I wasn't happy.
"How are you?"
"Not good," I said as I tried my best to stop from tearing up.
"Do you want to talk?" she said.
Here's where everything changed. Up until this point I had hardly spoken about the specter that followed me, the sickness of the soul I had carried for so long. I thought no one could love me or like me or get me or want to be friends with me if they knew what I dealt with, how I suffered. Not even my best friend of many years knew what I struggled with. I'd told no one but my parents. And when asked about how I felt on a day to day basis, my answer was the clipped, "I'm fine." A lie, packaged in two words that seemed to stop other people from asking too many in-depth questions about how I was really feeling.
At this precise moment, I made a leap of faith and took one large step towards showing myself my own strength.
"Yes," I strangled out as she folded her arms around me and I started crying into her shoulder.
We went down to the study rooms, at this point vacant and quiet, offering some privacy. With equal parts relief and fear, I told her about how I was feeling, what I was thinking, how awful I had been feeling.
To my surprise, she kept listening to me; there was no hightailing it to the door---I didn't scare her away with my truth or my jagged slump-shouldered sobs. Even more to my surprise, I had finally opened up, become vulnerable to a person who understood depression and anxiety, on a firsthand level.
Her words saved me that night, as they did on subsequent nights and later years, and the sheer fact that I opened up, so raw and vulnerable, to the right person at the right time, in my time of need, was a personal miracle. Her kindness, faith and acceptance were beautiful to me and her ongoing support and faith in me was a sign of unconditional love; something I'd never felt.
Though many people might claim coincidence, I know that it was not. She was Angel in that moment, transcending the human form and tapping into a source of Divine love I needed so much.
I've thought about this turning point in my life many times over, especially on the rare occasion I get to see Annie, and today was no different---the dark, empty wooden pews; the knee rests and prayer books cloistered in that cool, dark and silent church brought all of this back to me. As I sat there looking at the empty tomb and thinking about the promise of Christ's miracle, I realized I had experienced one of my own. God is ever with me because I still talk with Anne.
No comments:
Post a Comment