After Mike’s death, the neatly thought out plans I had made for my life started to fizzle. I had started college to get a degree in Journalism but in my new upside down world that idea was no longer attractive.

A few weeks before my brother’s death, I had been given an assignment in one of my classes to arrange ten life priorities from a list according to how I valued them. An easy task I thought at the time. No sweat. I remembered distinctly laughing at the listing “Good Health” and thinking what a funny thing to even consider as a life priority. I put it down as number nine or ten, as remembrances of an old Geritol vitamin commercial came to mind. It used to state, “If you have your health you have everything.” I naturally thought that was only for people over sixty, nothing someone in their twenties had to be bothered with. Now just a week later, “good health” went screaming up to the top of the list.

Another class I was taking was astronomy and the teacher for some strange reason started talking about people being found alive in their coffins after they had been buried. I don’t know how that figured in with the study of stars and planets but all I could see as the teacher droned on with his story was the face of my brother in his coffin looking so quiet, so peaceful as if he was only sleeping. Even though I knew he hadn’t been buried alive I decided I had as much of that class as I could take. I never went back to it. Soon I had dropped the rest of my classes and quit school all together. Shortly after that, I gave notice at my job as well. Life was starting to head down into a perfect nose-drive.

When I was in the Navy I had done a lot of drugs. Enough drugs and bad turns, that I had lost my Top Secret Security clearance in Germany and went from decoding radio transmitted codes to cleaning bathrooms and mopping long hallways. After going through a court martial and losing a rank in service, I was sent to drug rehabilitation back in the United States. Drug rehabilitation had its good points and its bad points. Some very, very bad, and some very, very good.

I arrived late at night. My drug counselor, a male, decided it would be good to have sex before I started therapy. I was like, “Okay, whatever.” I did not have a lot of self worth at that time so I was an easy pushover. As only one of two women in the drug section I was assigned to, it was not long before I was in more trouble sexually and doing even harder drugs than ever. It seemed that all the dope pushers found all the customers they needed in such a concentrated spot. I used to see a mental picture in my head of a big sign over the compound that said something like, “Sell Your Drugs Here – Customers always available.”

A couple of weeks before my rehabilitation was over I was given a chance to go on a weekend retreat. It wasn’t exactly “religious” but it was here that I had one of the biggest conversions of my life. The retreat was located in the beautiful northern California woods. The center was a big lodge and people of all ages and walks of life attended it, I think I may have been the only military person there. The first night we sat in a big group and were told how the weekend would proceed. We would start off in groups of two. Each person would be given some “alone” time to walk in the woods and think about what they wanted to share with this other person. Then we would move from pairs to groups of four until finally at the end of the weekend we would be able to share with everyone.

I immediately had thoughts of panic, whatever would I share? We went to bed and in the morning after breakfast we had our alone time to think about what we would share. Real panic settled in. I started for a walk in the woods. It turned into more of a run, every time I stopped for a breath to rest on a log or a grassy spot my stomach would turn into knots and I would jump back up and keep moving. For the entire period of my “alone” time I was on the move. What would I share? What could I share about myself? I had no idea. Not a clue. Than I tried sitting on a log to rest for a moment and enlightenment came. The magical key that would open up the door to my self discovery was suddenly presented to me in an “Oh my goodness!” moment. “I was running!” I would share that I was running. That is who I was and what I was all about. I was running away. Running from myself. Running from everything. Running, running, running.

The rest of the weekend passed far too quickly. I shared my insight amidst sobs and tears, shaking and nervous, because I wasn’t used to sharing personal thoughts with anyone. Everyone in the group seemed to be as weak and vulnerable as I was. As we shared the common bonds of frailness and brokenness we found solace from each other. It was a great time of healing. I embraced others who shared their insights and moments of revelation. It was as if God had stepped down into our little gathering and embraced each of us with new life.

I returned to the drug rehabilitation center in a glow of being “born again.” Though God had not been explicitly mentioned, I knew it was God that had touched me. It was God who had whispered those words into my head as I was scrambling about through the woods trying to find myself. It was his whisper, “You are running away,” that stopped me in my tracks and allowed me to find the space and time to say, “Hell-o,” to myself.

Now that I have been in the monastery for twenty five years I can see how clearly God was setting my feet upon the narrow path and redirecting my heart towards him. Now the tears and feelings of hopelessness and despair of those days have been replaced by new joy and life and excitement at what God has in store for me, but it wasn’t so at the time.

I was 25 years old when I finally entered the monastery, feeling like I had already lived a very, very long time. Entering the Monastery was not an escape for me, a dropping out of life but rather a total refocus of seeing life no longer through my own eyes, but God’s. I wanted to ensure that my ticket to Eternity would be in heaven. I wanted to do whatever it would take to get there.

This article is a continuation of My Monastic Journey which you might want to read first.