Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: GRACE (08/24/23)
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TITLE: Meant To Be Alone | Previous Challenge Entry
By Laurie Bahlke
08/31/23 -
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She turned and faced me. I moved several steps in her direction and went on, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry but are you okay?” As she approached, I could see the tears filling her eyes and streaming down her cheeks. The words continued to tumble out of me, “It’s just—I know a heavy heart when I see one.”
She nodded her head in soft reply, “I’m just trying to take it one—” and then her voice trailed off, larger tears spilling quickly.
“One day at a time?” I asked.
“No. One second at a time. It’s been a really hard year.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sara.”
“Sara, can I pray for you?”
“I guess so.” Pause. Breath. “Yeah.”
I stepped closer and there on the outskirts of a small woodland bathed in the late summer sun; I prayed that God would be near to her. I prayed that she would find comfort, peace, and resolution to what was troubling her.
“Sara, I want you to know that you are not alone. In this world of hurt, you are not alone. I will pray for you each day and I hope that our paths cross again.”
Sara thanked me for stopping, for calling out to her, and “for caring.”
What is so amazing in this story, isn’t that I prayed with Sara or even that I stopped and called out to her. What is amazing is that my walk had started out very differently.
I was feeling alone. I was trying to sort out why I felt so triggered by absence—the absence of a friend, the absence of my husband who had said he would walk with me, the absence of my mother who I lost to death nearly three years ago. I realized that it wasn’t any one situation, it was the absence itself, the ache that comes from feeling alone and on some levels abandoned.
After my mother’s death, I learned that when I was five years old, she left me and my younger sister in the care of a dear friend so that she could seek help at an inpatient mental health clinic. I don’t know the details as those who do know won’t share and I don’t recall, probably because I was so young. My body seems to remember though, the trauma, the feeling, the absence.
I was having difficulty processing it all and during my walk, I listened to an old sermon on my phone. It reminded me that God holds my past, present, and future. My mother’s journey belonged to her and in the end, she did the thing that helped her to be a better mother. My journey still lies before me and while my direction is borne of my past, it is also rooted in my present, as God intends.
I was drying my tears when I first saw Sara rounding the bend. As our feet carried us on, we did the typical “hi, how’s it goin’” exchange, more statement than genuine inquiry. She bobbled her head a bit and said, “You know. It’s goin’.” I caught the look in her eyes long enough to know that she too was carrying a heavy heart. She looked away, averting her eyes to the ground, and continued her journey away from me as I passed in the opposite direction, headed home.
It was another thirty, forty, or fifty steps before something clutched in my heart and whispered, “Turn around and stop her.”
And so, I turned and called out.
I believe that God’s ways are at work, even in the moments when I don’t understand where it’s all headed and why the things in this life are all so hard sometimes.
I don’t know Sara, her life story, her pain, her scars, her beliefs. I do know the One who loves me though and because of this, I could carry her pain if but for a moment. I think about her now, as the day comes to a close and the sun begins to set. I was meant to be alone on that walking trail. I was meant to walk this earthly road with its twists and bends. God’s grace fills the recesses of absence; it saves and heals and when shared, overflows.
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