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I was attending a twenty-four-hour silent retreat. I was weary that day, physically and emotionally, and while other people walked and prayed in the silence of woods and meadows and a long, deserted beach, I made it only as far as the wrought iron table on the wooden deck of the retreat center.
Where do I go to rest? I asked the silence, and I wrote that question over and over again on a white page in my journal. For me silence itself is a resting place to which I return repeatedly, but on that particular day I needed something else: flesh and blood and human hearts turned toward me. I can rest in a circle of women, I wrote on the next page, surprised both by the intensity of my felt need and by the fact that I viewed a circle of women as the answer.
During most of my adult life I lived in isolation. My days were often crowded with people, but one can remain isolated in even the most well peopled life, and I did. I was isolated behind the pleasant smile I slapped across my face to hide my despair. No matter what the occasion or who the companions, I longed for the safety of solitude. How many minutes until I can drop the image? How long before I can quit pretending?
But there I was, envisioning a circle of women as a place of emotional rest. Thankfully I had learned that women may look very different on the surface, but the deeper we sink into our true selves, the more common ground we find. Henri Nouwen wrote that “the more deeply personal our words become, the more universal they become.” That’s because when we slip beneath our shined up exteriors most of us share the same basic longings and fears. We want to be loved. We’re afraid of being rejected. We want to live meaningful lives. We’re afraid of failure. We’ve been wounded. We need to heal.
I learned this first in 1992 when speaking to a group of pastor’s wives. When I agreed to speak I didn’t know that at the appointed time I would be neck-deep in an emotional quagmire I couldn’t have imagined. Months earlier I had entered therapy with a Christian counselor and had discovered that some things do, indeed, get worse before they get better. I was squarely in the “worse” phase of growth and the last thing I wanted was to tell the truth about my life to a bunch of successful, happy pastor’s wives. But I didn’t have the energy to lie, so I shaped a talk straight from the pathos of my real life. I knew the talk was too raw, but it was the only talk I could give authentically.
The night before I had to speak I woke up in the dark, horrified at the thought of exposing my messed-up little life. These women will think I’m crazy, and maybe I am. Maybe I am just a ridiculous, hopeless woman who ought to keep her mouth shut. Maybe I am about to make a complete fool of myself.
In the morning I stood in the women’s restroom at church, watching the hands of my watch move toward the appointed hour. Finally I pushed open the door, walked resolutely down the hallway, then stood outside the classroom until I was introduced. I began by reading Ecclesiastes 3, which tells us there is a time for everything. “There’s even a time to heal,” I said, “and that’s what I’m going to talk about today.”
I described the specifics of my own woundedness, revealed the ineffectual ways I had acted out my pain, and explained how I had created an image to protect my fragile, wounded inner core. I also spoke in more general terms about our common need to acknowledge our wounds, feel our feelings, and speak our words. I even talked about my struggles with God and faith and Christianity.
When the hour ended, many women were crying, not because of my story, but because of their own. Like me, they were weary of image management, tired of being estranged from their own souls, and dissatisfied with how distant they felt from God.
Before I spoke I had felt fragile and unstable, like a toddler just learning to walk, and lonely, cut off from the world of normal, healthy, happy people. When I finished I still felt fragile, but no longer lonely. In the movie Shadowlands, a young man in conversation with C. S. Lewis suggests that “we read in order to discover that we’re not alone.” I think perhaps I write—and give occasional talks—in the hope that I will discover I am not alone and that my readers will discover they are not alone.
In the numerous conversations that flowed out of that talk I stumbled into several relationships that eventually turned into friendships. Several years ago I decided to gather these individual friends into a group. Good naturedly, these women of different ages, marital status, and personality agreed to indulge me and we committed ourselves to “doing life together.” But we were all busy, and our good intention never became reality. We enjoyed sporadic get-togethers, but we weren’t exactly doing life together.
Then I had one of the days when everything seems to unravel. A note from my editor reminded me that a publishing deadline was looming and I was far behind schedule. The director of a woman’s group for whom I had agreed to speak asked for a detailed outline of my talk—and I hadn’t even decided on the theme. I needed to book an international flight—ASAP—but the logistics of the trip were so complicated I couldn’t being to get my head around them. I was one month from my daughter’s wedding and having nightmares about dropped details. On top of all that, I had a doctor’s appointment that scared me.
I went to bed that night literally chanting, God help me. God help me. I slept poorly, but got up early knowing exactly what to do. I paced the kitchen until 8:00 a.m., then called the four women in my potential group. Can you come for an emergency meeting at my house at 7 p.m. tonight?
Amazingly, each was free to come, and all day I felt buoyed by the expectation of our gathering. When we had situated ourselves around the coffee table in my living room I told them I had experienced an epiphany that morning: I had realized that the key to my survival during the next few months was a circle of women and, like it or not, they were it. I added that I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only one in the group needing “a little extra help in life,” and that if we would agree to meet together every Tuesday evening at 7, I bet we would all benefit. We spent the evening talking about what we longed for in relationships and what we hoped to give and receive from each other. We agreed to meet each Tuesday at 7.
We’ll be meeting together tonight. I don’t know exactly how our meeting will unfold. But I know we will pull each other out of the isolation we all tend toward when life gets overwhelming. We will remind each other that we’re not alone in our need for healing, for grace, for affirmation. We’ll be able to cry together, if necessary, and laugh together at anything that is even the least bit funny. We will call each other back to our true selves. And I’m confident that as we sit in our little circle and speak honestly about our lives, we will feel encouraged and empowered.
I’m also hoping I will find an answer to the question that has been haunting me all week: Is my mother-of-the-bride dress too tight? Sometimes we need girlfriends to help with the big things, sometimes with the little ones.
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