The Starting Point

If someone had told me that after attempting to take my life, I would find myself on a sort of internal trip to discover and rebuild myself, instead of on a trip through torment and torture, I would have laughed.

After I had become an adolescent I had sworn off anything that had to do with the supernatural and welcomed only that which logic, rationality, and science could explain as the platform on which my principles and life as an adult would be built on.

However, when my entire life had come crashing down around me because of the sorrow and despair that had swallowed me, my once solid platform had failed to provide any solace and it had definitely failed at providing me with the means to pull myself out of the darkness. I had then realized, deep down, that human rationality and even science, no matter how capable the human mind might be, were blindsided and limited, and therefore could not give me what I needed to combat my sadness. They could show me the footprints but nothing beyond.

So I had then decided to look for another pathway and I had turned back to religion since I had been brought up inside it and my parents, grandparents, and husband had insisted it would help me. But also there I had failed to find my answers. I had gone to Father Gregor thinking that he would be able to pull me out since he was supposed to be connected to God, but everything he had said to me had literally sailed over my head without making even a dent in my void.

Yet today, as I finally crossed the threshold of that magical doorway accompanied by these four amazing people who had become my support system, I came to understand why neither logic nor religion had been able to provide me with help.

The reason, I thought as I reflected on all the different puzzle pieces that had been given to me by my three male friends, was that I had lacked the very root of it all and without that root, I had been blinded. Faith, that word that we as humans usually treat as a mere concept, or as something unreal and unattainable, was not only very real, but it was the link without which the physical and the spiritual could not connect. In my case, I had made the choice to isolate myself from that fountain of truth, and thus I had not been able to see. Without Faith, religion had become just another system without any depth to it.

However, I could now also understand why I, like so many others, preferred to deny that Faith exists and that it is a necessary part of our lives. This is because Faith demands two things from a person: the first, absolute trust in someone else, enough to give yourself up into the hands and will of that other person, and the second, total abandonment and openness to receive and accept as truth that which you cannot control, and cannot understand with your human mind. And most people, if not all of us, despise the idea of relinquishing control to someone else because we prefer to believe that we are equipped enough to lead our lives all by ourselves.

And that had been me until that fateful day when my pride, transformed into that dark void, had swallowed me and convinced me that there was no further hope for me. I had been unable to accept the hand that had been reaching out to me over and over through so many people, and through so many events, because I had not been willing to accept that I had been wrong and thus, I had preferred to end it all. But that hand, that someone, had refused to give up on me and when I had called out, it had answered.

Well, today, I finally understood what Abraham, Emmanuel, and Michael had told me. What had saved me, what was now giving me this small chance at saving myself, was not that pride, or my human capabilities. It was Hope, that pesky little light that had always been inside me, who had broken the bonds of my rationality and opened up my heart and soul to prepare them for what I was now experiencing.

I had been so engaged in my internal monologue and reflections, that I had not been paying attention to my surroundings, and thus, when I finally did bring my mind around, I stopped in my tracks and released a shocked gasp. I became aware that the other four people with me had realized what was happening to me and so they too had stopped to look at me. But I could only focus my attention on what I was seeing. We had come out on the other side of the doorway and arrived at the one place I had believed I would never see again.

Right before my eyes stood the landscape that had seen me come into this world and grow up with its beautiful farmhouse and small backyard garden. I could see everything that had once been a part of my childhood and adolescent years and a veritable landslide of tears came down my cheeks.

My friends remained silent, just following in my footsteps as I moved around, while I allowed my senses to take everything in. I began to turn my head in all directions, seeking to see it all: the house, the porch, the little swing my dad had once hung from a tree branch, the little orchard my mom had planted, and finally, the one place where, in my innocence, I had first come into contact with the spiritual world; my beloved willow tree. It was there, still standing, with part of its roots sunken into the small brook that ran near the edge of my parents´ land and its beautiful green branches and leaves offering shadow from the unrelenting sun on the opposite side.

If I had been asked to give a name to my most prominent emotion right at that moment, I would have called it longing. The happiest years of my life, the best experiences, and memories, had been acquired around this place, and particularly, below the shade of that tree.

It was ironic, I thought then, that although I had always loved my home, I had yearned to leave it, and another something I did not wish to acknowledge right now, behind, as soon as I had turned eighteen. Why? Because as a young woman who had been convinced that she could reach the very stars if she wanted to, I had also been convinced that God, and faith, were just nonsense that would only be an obstacle to reach my goals.

In fact, when I had become a teenager, I began to have difficulties accepting my parents´ way of life. They, like my grandparents, were simple folk from European ancestry who had always trusted that whatever came from God was good, and if that meant hardship, then it was to be embraced and accepted. They never sought to go out of their small farm and into the bigger world, and they were more than happy with what life had given them. But I had failed to see the value in their deep faith and had wrongly interpreted it as their excuse to cowardly hide from the real world, and as soon as I was able, I took off without ever looking back.

Once more lost to the world around me, I shook my head and laughed at myself. How wrong had I been back then and how wrong had I been ever since. After what I had seen and experienced thus far, and even though I still had difficulties believing that there was a loving God, I had to accept that I might have been the one in the wrong from the start.

"Emily, are you okay?" I heard Michael softly asking me from my left, startling me a bit.

I turned my head towards him and sought in his eyes a much-needed anchor before my mind went down its beloved guilt-trip again. And he did not fail to both understand and provide what I needed from him.

"I do not even know how to feel," I softly said as I turned my head from looking at Michael back towards the scenery before me. "I have had such a huge life-changing experience already that coming here now, to this place of all places, where I knew happiness and fulfillment, has me feeling a bit overwhelmed."

"That's okay," Michael responded while taking one of my hands in his, thus helping me calm my rushing heart.

"Remember that we told you this would happen. You need to see and understand your origins in order to understand yourself. Do not let yourself be pulled down by guilt and shame; you have had plenty of those and they only drowned you. It is time now to see, to let go, to forgive, and to rebuild. Lean on me, lean on all of us to help. Remember; you have never been, and will never be, alone," Michael said again, squeezing my hand gently. I smiled at him and with renewed strength, continued my perusal of this beloved place.

Everything around me looked exactly as it once used to. And whether this was the product of my imagination, or we were really in my hometown, the truth was that this experience was moving much more than just mere memories. It was moving the very foundations of my soul.

Without being totally conscious of my actions, I released Michael´s hand and walked down towards the willow tree. I looked up at it and immediately remembered that it had been here that I had first met who had probably been one of the dearest people to me; Dawn.

I had only thought out her name, not even spoken it when all of a sudden I felt her presence right beside me. I was so overwhelmed and so awed by all this, that when I found my voice, all I could do was whisper to her, in the hope of finding out if this was only an illusion.

"Dawn, is this real? Is any of this real?"

She turned her head towards me as soon as she heard my question and said, "As Michael, Abraham, and Emmanuel have told you, all of this is real, as am I, and you, my dear friend are going to experience a journey like no one ever has. We will all experience this together. Trust in them Emily, trust in those three; nothing will go wrong if you hand yourself over to them."

I had been nodding my head, forcing my mind to open up and simply accept, when suddenly the crashing of a screendoor was heard.

Dawn and I turned around and I came face to face with something I had not expected to see. A very young and beautiful version of my mother had suddenly come out of the house through the back porch, evidently upset by something, and was running down the stairs as she loudly cried.

My heart melted immediately at the sad sight and without thinking I began to move towards her with the intention of pulling her into a hug like I had not done for many years. However, as soon as I took the first step, I felt a hand on my shoulder and I looked up to see Abraham's very serious, but tender, eyes trained on me.

"I know this is hard for you," he said as he pulled me back and towards him. "But you must remember that you cannot change, or alter, the past in any way. What you are seeing now, though hard, will help you on your path to understanding your own past, but nothing that has been done can be undone."

I looked at him and said from the bottom of my heart, "Please, do not leave for one moment Abraham. I know what you are saying and I remember your words to me. But I beg you, do not leave me," I said as I turned my eyes back to my crying mother and squeezed Abraham's hand on my shoulder.

"Never, little one. I have never and will never leave you alone," I turned back to look at him for a second, before turning back towards my mom.

Not long after her exit from the house, the back door swung violently once more and I saw as my very young, and handsome father, came running out through it and towards my heartbroken mother. He soon caught up to her and even though she tried to push him away, he finally succeeded in trapping her between his arms. Seeing that she had no way to escape, my mother found the means to release her pain by burying her head against my father's shirt and hitting his chest repeatedly. My father's tear-stained face came down on top of my mother's head and the two of them cried like children.

The pain and sorrow that I felt emerging from both of my parents were so overwhelming that I was starting to feel my heart reacting to it. I had been pondering on what could have caused such misery in two of the gayest people I had ever known in my life when they began to talk.

"Sophie, please, listen to me," I heard my dad saying as he gently pulled my mother´s head away from his chest and forced her to look at him. "I know it is hard, but we must be strong. Please, sweetheart, it is not the end of the world. And remember, God is with us and nothing is impossible for Him. All we must do is pray with faith, and if it is meant to be, He will give it to us. I too want a child with all my heart, but, there is nothing we can do."

"Do not tell me that it is not the end of the world Stefan, because to me it is!" my mother responded in anger, pulling her face away from my father´s gentle grasp. "It has been my dream ever since I was a little girl, and I always kept hope that God would not permit me to suffer such a devastating effect, after what I went through with that bastard. But it seems God neither listens to prayers nor cares about His children - that is if He even exists - because if He did, He would have not allowed me to become incapable of conceiving. And don´t tell me that you understand my pain because it was not you who had to face that nightmare and it was not you who lived that horror. Believe in God? How can someone like me believe in someone who is supposed to want what's best for His children, but at the same time allows a monster to destroy the life of a young woman? And now, as if that had not been punishment enough for who knows what sin, that Almighty being will not grant me my wish! Tell me, how is that fair to you?" my mom screamed as she roughly shook her body within my father's arms, trying hard to break his embrace.

I could see that my father was having the hardest time controlling his own sobs and that each of my mother´s words hit him harder than a knife to the chest. But he was trying for the sake of my mother and he too was attempting not to come undone at what had evidently been the worst news they had received. At that moment I understood why the two of them were so heartbroken.

They had just been told that my mother, who had been the victim of a previous abusive relationship was incapable of conception. This news I had just heard took me completely by surprise as my mother had never told me that she had been declared incapable of bearing children. I had learned from her about the horror of her life and it had been one of the reasons why I had decided that I could not believe in God. But not that she had been barren, and definitely not that she, one of the most devout women I had ever met, had lost her faith, to begin with.

"I know that right now you are under a lot of pain," I heard my father softly murmuring, in an attempt to calm my mother´s rage. "And so am I, Sophie, because I too dreamed of this. I do not pretend to say that I can even begin to understand the pain that you went through and I know it is not fair to you but what I believe is that God always knows what He is doing. He sees things that we cannot and if He has not allowed it yet, or He never allows it, it's because it is not the right time, or because we may be being called to something else.

"I would do anything, offer anything, to remove your pain and change the outcome of what happened to you, but I can't and I know you understand deep down that even pain has its purposes.

"What I need you to understand," my father continued as he finally reached my mother and took her face back into his gentle hands with evident tenderness, "is that I am not trying to belittle your suffering; I am just trying to give you a more positive perspective on something that is hard for both of us."

Suddenly my mom lost all her fighting energy and collapsed against my dad's body. It was a good thing he had such a tight grip on her; otherwise, she would have slumped on the floor.

"You'll see Soph, you'll see, I know that God will grant us this wish, you just have to believe in His goodness."

"Where was He when I needed Him most?" came my mother´s angered but shaky voice from between my father´s arms. "All that shenanigans they give us about Him always looking after us, then why did He allow me to fall into the hands of that monster? Why did He not protect me from harm, or intervene on my behalf to save me? In fact, why did He bring into life a creature He knew from the start would become a monster? Are those the acts of a good father? No, they are not! So how can you ask me to believe in such a being? God does not exist Stefan and we must better learn and work with that!" my mom screamed against my dad's shirt as she squeezed it in her fists.

The pain, the sadness, and the rage that were emanating from my mother, coupled with the suffering from my father, were so strong and overpowering, that even at a distance I was able to feel them as if they were my own. In fact, they began to have such an effect on me, that they began to overtake me and fill me with them. I too began to ask myself the questions my mother had just voiced, and as I did so, I began to feel darkness poisoning my heart again.

At that same moment, I felt Abraham's hand squeezing my shoulder gently and the warmth from that touch was enough to drive away from my heart that creeping venom. I closed my eyes for a second, holding the connection between the two of us for a few more moments before I focused again on the scene before me. My dad was the one to speak this time.

"I know that nothing that happened to you makes sense and that it makes us question whether there is really a loving God out there watching over us. I too have had moments when I have asked Him if He only wished to bring us into this world to torment us and make us suffer. But then I remember all the good things in this world, and how His constant help has pulled us through really tough moments, as well as the strength that He gives our souls to withstand the hardships of this world, and I stop doubting.

"It is funny because even we, who have been raised in the faith, still expect that believing in God will make all our troubles go away. We want Him to be this magician who prevents bad things from happening, but, that is not real, Soph and you know that.

"What I do know for a fact is that He suffered alongside you, and He gave you the strength to hold yourself up when so many others would have ended their lives! And then He brought you to me. Those Soph, are the acts of a good father who has to accept the choices of His children and then figure out the best way to help them out."

Right at the moment when my mother was going to give her answer, I stopped being able to hear because from deep within me burst forth the most intense anger. How could my father try to tell my mother that there was a loving God after what they had said? My mother was absolutely right, how could anyone believe that there was such a thing as a loving higher being when situations like the one my mother had gone through happened over and over again? There was no such thing as a loving being that was looking after us, that was a total lie! And my father had fallen victim to that utter bull.

No sooner had those thoughts accosted me, when I became aware that total darkness had suddenly enveloped my four companions and me and that my parents and childhood home had disappeared. Since this same event had already happened so many times before, and because I could feel the presence of my four friends, I did not feel startled, or scared. However, I did realize that whatever was about to happen once this thing lifted from around us would be in response to my earlier anger and thoughts.