A Beginning

Judy was reclining behind her desk, giving me one of her thoughtful looks—the one where it feels as if she’s weighing your words against the truth she sees in your soul. I was sitting across from her on the brown, white, and yellow plaid couch in her office at the Christian college I attended. At the time I was her TA, which made her my professor, my advisor, and my boss.

I held her gaze for a moment, but the compassion I saw unnerved me. I don’t remember what I said to her, but it was likely I had just raged. Again. I was 20; the previous six months had brought more heartache than I thought I could hold: a death, a broken heart, shattered dreams, betrayals, multiple rapes and sexual assaults, emotional, spiritual, and verbal abuse, crippling mental breakdowns and lock-down psych wards, and an almost successful suicide attempt.

I was lost in the dark. In some ways, I had abandoned myself to the darkness. Because there I could be angry; I could hide the pain and shame and confusion. But Judy saw it. And she’d sit with me week after week, not trying to fix me or force me to believe a set of ideals. When I was surrounded by people who condemned me and left me, she stayed to listen. She heard me speak venom and saw me cry desperate tears, and she never recoiled. She gave me space to rage and ask hard questions, and she never replied with a quick cliché or careless words.

After a stretch of thoughtful silence, Judy slid something across her desk. “This is for you,” she said. “Just a tangible reminder you can take with you.”

I walked to the desk to see what it was. Sitting among the folders and papers and essays waiting to be graded was a clear plastic compass.

“May you find your True North again,” she said as I picked it up.

“Um, thanks?” I replied. She gave a small nod. I looked at it sitting in my palm. It was smooth and light, nothing special. Mentally, I shrugged. I slipped it into my backpack, sat back down, and changed the subject.

The moment was gone.

At the time, it was, like the compass, unremarkable.

It’s only in looking back, after walking this long road of redemption and healing, that I realize what Judy and those simple words gave me: a way out of the dark. She knew it was a journey I had to make on my own, that it would be hard and filled with obstacles and roadblocks and pain and joy and suffering and healing. But she also knew—and trusted in—a Light I’d lost sight of.

Today I dug out that compass, felt its smooth edges once again, and let my boys play with it for the first time. It was an unremarkable act, and yet full of weight and hope. Because I still had that compass when my husband and I battled years of infertility. When the words “Down syndrome” and “autism” were whispered over our boys. When more loved ones passed and more dreams were lost and more pain and more uncertainty coursed through these last 16 years.

The words spoken over me that day in Judy’s office have echoed across the years and settled deep into my soul, reminding me to always find my True North. My Hope. Because Hope is the only thing that gets us through the darkness.

What I offer here are pages from my journey. Of things I’ve learned—or am in the process of learning—along the way. It’s not pretty, and it’s not tidy; it’s real and raw—the way redemption usually is. And I hope that, in some small way, these words can serve as a guiding light through whatever darkness you find yourself in. That they can help you find your True North.