A death of faith leads to the making of a woman

Five years ago I cradled my father’s head in my lap and watched life leave his body. He heaved one final breath and departed from this earth, and I remember that exact moment, because in that second, everything I believed in died with him. My faith in any higher power diminished, and I began a path of self-destructive behavior that lead to misery and loss. A failed engagement followed by an abusive relationship destroyed any joy in my life, and the second year of graduate school found me in the hospital with no will to continue living.

A Quaker woman in Cincinnati, Amanda, befriended me and began writing to me weekly, giving words of encouragement. We hardly knew each other but the letters arrived faithfully. Copies of letters to other women came as well, describing the loneliness and darkness we each faced in our spiritual lives. Amanda chronicled the death of her grandmother in a series of poems she passed along, often with a handmade felt flower or collection of small books.

“How do we die?” she asked me. “What are your thoughts on love?”

Never prodding, never prying, Amanda wrote lyrically and recorded letters she wrote to her husband during their first year of marriage, or a poem on the spiritual meditation of washing dishes.

I learned a quiet way to practice faith. Often I woke up at five in the morning to do two or three hours of meditation and prayer. Amanda’s written presence guided me through yoga poses and prayer beads. I read countless books by Thomas Merton, a monk who lived nestled in the foothills of Kentucky. I read of sitting in the zafu, the Benedictine practice of manual labor, and the mysticism of the Zen masters. I longed for my true self, the woman I was created to be, stripped from masks and falsehoods.

As I shed layer after layer of doubt and weakness, I began a new journey of spiritual reconciliation. I found hope in the Divine, and followed with my own path as a Quaker woman, renewed in love and joy.

I believe in the power of planting seeds of faith and the power of self-healing. I believe that in the darkest moments of life, there are glimmers of soft light that beckon us not to fear. Life is a walking meditation of love and Light, a path of valleys and hillsides. We make our own happiness in this earth, and the Inner Light we possess wills us to move ever forward, walking, stumbling like newborn lambs, and grasping on to the ever-present promise of becoming our truest selves.