Chapter 02: A Long Way Home
“This is a great moment, when you see, however distant, the goal of your wandering. The thing which has been living in your imagination suddenly becomes a part of the tangible world.”
In 2020, as we all know, a global pandemic turned our world upside down. As we all retreated to our homes, many of us, myself included, had a lot of time alone to think. In the early months of the lockdown and social isolation, I happened to get really sick from April - August with infected kidney stones, requiring three trips to the hospital, Covid testing and isolation, many different medications, months of IVs, three operations and weeks of bed rest.
Not only did my world slow down, it came to a crashing halt.
And lying in bed, popping pain killers while attending endless zoom calls, thoughts began to resurface about completing what I started 9 years ago. I found myself asking my Creator once again, “Ok, what’s next?”. Full disclosure, it was actually the Spirit tapping me on my shoulder and whispering gently into my soul, “it’s time to close that chapter”.
The idea of going back to finish this project seemed to made sense while at the same time elevated my blood pressure and flooded me with the familiar feelings of crushing fear and shame. Shame around not finishing in 2017 even though I walked across the stage. Shame around having to contact the registrar to find out what was required to complete degree. What would they think of me? And what would I write about? I had lots of interests and accumulated research that I was passionate about but who at Seminary would actually care about those things? Was I willing to be vulnerable again?
During my mandatory bed rest, I happened to watch the film, Lion (2016) based on the book, A Long Way Home, by Saroo Brierly. It is the remarkable story of a young Indian man in his 20’s looking to find out who he really was. At 5 years old he was separated from his beloved older brother and ended up in a city 1,000 miles from his small village, alone, on the streets of a massive, dangerous slum struggling to stay alive. He was captured and taken to an orphange where he was adopted by an Australian couple and spent the next 20 years in a land that was not his own with a beautful family that loved him. Yet deep inside, he longed to know who he was and where he came from. After four years of obsessive research, combing for clues as he pieced together fragmented memories from his childhood, he travels back to India and comes face to face with his mother who never stopped believng he would retrun.
It’s the story of Saroo’s 25 year pilgrimage back to himself.
I could not stop thinking about this beautiful and heartbreaking film. It settled into my bones and stirred within me the desire to come back to something I thought I would never experience again…a desire to hope.
In 2011, I started out my M.A. journey feeling like I had to prove something to well everyone. To prove to myself I could engage the work of theology in a meaingful way. To prove to former church leaders and pastors who said I would never be used by God because of my disobedience to their twisted toxicity. And to deconsruct the years of lies that taunted me, whispering I would never be good enough for love and belonging by my Creator.
But now, all that has fallen away.
The reasons I started out are not the reasons I am finishing now. I am doing it for myself. I am doing it because I am chasing hope…not in other’s opinions of me or for their affirmation of my work, not even for the piece of paper that confirms my completion of this degree.
I want to experience for myself the hope written in the words I type as I tell my story, in my own way, for my own pleasure. And like Saroo, finding my way back to myself is a pilgrimage of trusting myself that this is the time to close this loop in order to move forward.
To share this story, my story, is a leap of faith of finding my way back to hope.