Bravely On The Way

A Chorus of Questions

Last week, I invited you to join me in a Lenten practice of truth-telling.

What’s the thing you need to know?
What’s the thing you need to name?

When it comes to seeing things honestly—then speaking about them plainly—I have often needed to take the long way around. Many times, it was a quiet confession or a candid disclosure from someone else that broke me open, clearing the way for honest vulnerability.

It can be hard not to edit or soften truth before it’s fully formed, but we never get to be seen or known in any place other than where we are. And while it’s true that such work cannot be done for us, it’s also true that we don’t have to do it alone.

Time and again, the stories of others have helpfully unlocked my own.

In the weeks between now and Easter, I will be sharing excerpts from an essay I wrote with you in mind. My hope has been that specific details from my story might free you to engage more honestly with yours.

Carve out a little space. Pour a cup of tea. Then, when you’re good and ready, come in for a closer peek—paying special attention to the things that catch your eye.

Bravely On The Way: A Chorus of Questions                                                                

I was sitting porchside in the adirondack, gentle breeze blowing, birdsong raining down—a near-perfect shower of sights and sounds. Blinking back the sunshine on this bright Spring Break morning, I felt the contrasts in my body: numb fingers, painful joints, chemo-induced neuropathy flaring.

There are things in life that crush you, I thought.

I’d walked myself cripply onto the porch that morning, embodying a paradox: I was a deadweight inside of a beautiful spring song rising.

I knew these places; I had been next to them for years alongside others.

Crouching knee to knee in the church basement with a high school junior in my care, while she hugged the toilet and breathed her way through a panic-attack. Sipping Starbucks with a colleague when, two questions in, a torrent of tears and crushing concerns erupted—business dreams, financial solvency, and vocational identity all up for grabs. Meandering around the back of a barside patio at 2 AM, where my good bud was defensively drinking his way through the unwinding of his marriage—hangover and heartbreak, sure as the dawn.

I knew the pull of the deep—had place-shared in proximity of darkness for years, watching trouble make landfall wave by wave.

But on this bright morning, a few weeks before my 48th birthday, I felt in my own body the pull of the undertow for the first time. It scared me—this external force, so different from the buoyant spirit I’d lived in nearly all my life.

For years, I’d known a special vulnerability alongside Spring Break, Christmas Break, Summer Break—those innocuous seasonal rituals that, nonetheless, work their way into the psyche of singles and “creative family units” with the subtle, haunting message: you don’t belong. (Of course, it’s a small step from there to become a person defined by all you’re not.)

And while that threadbare narrative was surely humming somewhere in the background, I knew that today’s gloom was different—deeper.

In something I can only name as grace, I’d woken up that morning connected to one thought—or, more specifically, one character: the bleeding woman from Mark 5. Mentioned by three of the four gospel writers, none of them give her a name. In every place she appears, Jesus is on His way to something else. She haunts the narrative as someone on the margins—a “by the way character” who is both desperately stuck and seemingly forgotten.

I’d woken specifically to a phrase I had apparently memorized, however accidental: she’d spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse.

Had I lived it?

Over the past three weeks, I’d dropped nearly a thousand dollars—money I didn’t have—on medical supports that hadn’t worked. Sitting porchside on this bright morning, the one thing I knew more than the sun on my face was that instead of getting better, I was growing worse.¹

Sparrows flitted about and shape-shifted into fuzzy beige circles of sound, as my eyes welled with tears and confusion, questions taking up cranky residence in every square inch of my brain. I felt the downcast spirit settle viscerally on my body. But something about being here with my blurry truth in the plain light of day—something about sitting shiva on the porch—jolted me back in time to a different moment I’d had in this very chair, nine months before my doctor had said “cancer.”

I had been hosting my friend, Mindy, from out of town. She was here for a conference, so we had barely managed early morning hallway hellos and shower logistics, but on this particular night—well past 10pm—we’d finally connected for real conversation.

Mindy was sprawled out on the porch swing, while I lounged in the adirondack, chipping at paint. Swapping tidbits from the day, we’d not been ambitious for heroic conversation that night, yet here we were, thirty minutes in, dropping into quiet candor and existential questions while the moon slowly rose.

We were talking about how confusing it is to know The Way.

We hadn’t said it like that. But I was describing another friend who’s taking brave steps of faith despite none of the math adding up.

“Like you,” I said, “he keeps walking forward into the wilderness—looking and praying and hoping for the manna.”

My friend nodded. She knew a thing or two about desert terrain and its associative scramble for the bare-bones basics.

While developing land for a retreat center, stepping into remarkable faith-driven risk, she’d made an astronomical payment to a drilling company they’d hired to dig 900ft—twice—in search of water. The result? A mockery of dust and dry ground. The expert they’d consulted on the project had “never seen it.”

In my mind’s eye, I imagined Moses—water on his mind, staff in his hand—managing his way down onto one knee, peering into the abyss of a hole deeper than the Sears Tower.

We talked about the paradox: how The Way looks and feels an awful lot like the Not Way. How crying out into the darkness sometimes does build faith, but at other times, it seems a stand-in for sheer absurdity. We discussed the fact that appearances are endlessly deceptive—how the very thing that could stretch and grow you also has the unwieldy power to blow you well past the breaking point on any given day. (And what does bravery look like in these places anyhow?)

Summer cicadas chirped loudly, joining in the chorus of questions, as Mindy and I traded sleep for camaraderie and friendship.

Questions for Reflection:

1. When have you found yourself investing time, energy, or resources into something, only to feel like—instead of getting better—things got worse?

2. How have you responded to seasons of disruption or uncertainty? What’s worked? What hasn’t?

3. This passage includes an image of “sitting shiva on the porch”²—allowing space for questions and tears. What’s the thing you need space for right now? What’s one step you can take to get it?

4. When you face surprise or disappointment, what’s your typical response? Do you push forward, retreat, seek out a different path? How’s it working for you?

5. Who is one person you (could) trust with something deep & unresolved in your story? What do you need from them?

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1. Author’s Note: This scene depicts a particularly difficult moment in my chemo journey. Though I’m currently trudging through a final year of cancer treatment, my long-term prognosis remains full of hope.

2. "Sitting Shiva" refers to the week-long Jewish mourning period for first-degree relatives after a death, where mourners stay at home, sit on low stools, and refrain from certain activities, allowing for grief and reflection.