Spaciousness to Heal and Grow

*Trigger Warning: This article contains references to accidental death and suicide.*

When I opted to join the Crossing the Threshold (CTT) program at Shalem, I was serving in leadership in multiple climate justice activism organizations, and figured contemplative grounding could help. Rather than support my life in these roles, I found contemplative spirituality has helped heal family wounds.  I was surprised because I felt my family life was broken beyond repair.

Like many, I come from a dysfunctional family. When I started the program, my father and I hadn’t spoken in over eight years, and my mother had an emotionally abusive relationship with me. My four living younger sisters and I had grown distant and guarded.

This distance was born out of two painful losses. First, when I was nine, one March morning homeschooling in our woodland yard in Upstate New York, my sisters rode my dad’s flatbed trailer like a hayride. As I went inside for a break, my dad sprinted by pale as a ghost. “I ran over Rebekah,” he said. Ultimately, my toddler sister died in front of us, accidentally crushed to death in the driveway, reaching for Heaven as my father knelt over her body.  The second incident happened years later.  One brisk October night, my youngest brother Josh went missing. The police found his body in a tree. Dead from suicide at seventeen, his senior year of high school.

Both of these deaths fueled my mother’s emotional abuse and contributed to a bitter divorce with my father.  We had no space to grieve, let alone heal.

While my church experiences initially dragged me into fundamentalism, I found the call to stillness and kindred spirits in contemplative writers and mystics. During my contemplative journey, I experienced the unconditional acceptance and love of God. In prayer, contemplative practice and books, I learned to experience the Divine directly and found endless spaciousness there.

In CTT, I gathered monthly in genuine spiritual community rooted in mutually vulnerable sharing in a space of spiritual centering, wisdom and love, free of judgement or fear. While I’d spent over thirty years in church, six in Bible college, and several in ministry, I’d never experienced authentic, egalitarian, inclusive community. Church was top-down, consumeristic, exclusionary. Shalem provided a needed spiritual greenhouse and hospital. My peers and mentor helped by providing a supportive environment to ask big questions and take difficult steps.

In their presence, as in contemplative prayer, I felt the call of Spirit to deeper presence. My relationships were guarded and distant, yet Spirit whispered for healing. I felt the spiritual pull in stillness. I could safely feel the inner suffering of those who hurt me, rather than fixating on my pain. Selfless love grew in silence.

On the anniversary of my sister’s death, I wrote to my father: “Here’s what I wish I could have said when I was nine…” I wished to release him of any guilt, shame, or fear he felt about her death, told him I need not forgive what I never blamed him for. He said, “You know not how much or how long I’ve needed to hear those words.” He later opened up like I never thought possible. Healing began.

So far, some of these relationships have healed and some have not. To protect myself, I’ve learned to balance being honest with setting clear boundaries. Contemplative spirituality taught me love without control or expectation. I set boundaries with most of my family to protect my healing. Boundaries support my ability to love myself – and my family. I love and accept them, without expectation of change.

CTT helped me heal and grow in the most important relationships of my life. Contemplative leadership helped me lead in relationships toward authenticity and vulnerability, even when it proved excruciatingly difficult. The presence of God experienced in contemplative practice allows me to be who I am in a way that – to put it in the words of a favorite author – I can finally say, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” and, “I am who I am.”

*Crossing the Threshold is now accepting applications. To learn more and to register for an upcoming info session, click HERE.*

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