Two Steps Forward Read online

  www.IVPress.com/books

  Through the heartfelt mercies of our God,

  God’s Sunrise will break in upon us,

  shining on those in the darkness,

  those sitting in the shadow of death,

  then showing us the way, one foot at a time,

  down the path of peace.

  Luke 1:78-79

  With love and gratitude for the One and the ones who walk with me.

  And for Anne Schmidt, who asked not to be forgotten.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One: Keeping Watch

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Part Two: Waiting in the Dark

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Part Three: In a Place Like This

  Nine

  Ten

  Part Four: Love Descends

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Acknowledgments

  Companion Guide for Prayer and Conversation

  Praise for Two Steps Forward

  About the Author

  The Sensible Shoes Series

  Crescendo

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Katherine Rhodes lingered by her office window at the New Hope Retreat Center, watching a wedge of geese traverse a brooding sky. A snowfall would cheer the bleak December landscape, where grass had dulled to a shade of hibernating green, where a few unharvested apples in a nearby orchard hung on bare branches, like ornaments on twig trees. Winter in West Michigan could be grueling and relentless, a purging season when all visible evidence of flourishing life was stripped away to reveal underlying forms in their stark, honest, vulnerable beauty. This was a time to trust the deep interior work of God, a time to watch for dawning light in distending darkness, a time to wait with hope, to remain alert, even while nature slept.

  Her thoughts drifted toward the ones who had recently completed the sacred journey retreat. Even though Katherine had led retreats at New Hope for almost twenty years, the work of the Spirit never ceased to delight and astonish her. What a privilege to share part of the journey with those who were hungry for deeper life with God.

  Part of the journey. That was always the challenge when the retreat came to an end: letting them go and entrusting them to the Holy One. For a few short months she walked closely with them, teaching them to pay attention to the gentlest movement of the Spirit, helping them to navigate the breathtaking and complex terrain of the inner life, encouraging them to find ways to receive and respond to the immeasurable love of God, reminding them to find fellow travelers to share the journey. They would need trustworthy companions along the way.

  With a whispered benediction, Katherine opened her hands and released them to God’s care. Again.

  Part One

  Keeping Watch

  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,

  and in his word I hope;

  my soul waits for the Lord

  more than those who watch for the morning,

  more than those who watch for the morning.

  Psalm 130:5-6

  one

  Meg

  Meg Crane clutched the collar of her turquoise cardigan, her knuckles cold beneath her chin. Ever since takeoff, the well-dressed, gray-haired woman beside her in seat 12-B had been casting appraising glances in Meg’s direction. Was she breaching some sort of airplane etiquette? Transmitting neon messages of first-time-flyer anxiety? Maybe the woman was examining the scarlet, telltale blotches that were no doubt creeping up her neck. If only she had worn a turtleneck. Or a scarf. Her shoulder-length, ash blonde curls provided a meager veil.

  The woman extracted a plum-colored Coach bag from beneath the seat in front of her. “I swear they keep stuffing more rows into these planes,” she said. “Flying isn’t much fun anymore, is it?”

  Meg cleared her throat. “It’s my first flight.”

  “Really! Well, good for you.”

  Meg supposed she deserved to be patronized. There probably weren’t many forty-six-year-old women who had never been on an airplane before.

  “Where are you headed?” the woman asked.

  “London.”

  “No kidding! I’m going to London too! Overnight flight tonight?” Meg nodded. The woman pulled her itinerary from her purse. “Flight 835 at seven?”

  “Yes.” Meg had studied her ticket so frequently, she’d memorized it.

  “How about that! Small world!” She tapped a heart-shaped pendant dangling from a gold chain around her neck. “I’m taking a bit of my husband’s ashes to scatter in Westminster Abbey.”

  She carried her husband around with her in a necklace? Meg had never heard of such a thing. Was she allowed to scatter ashes like that? Surely there were rules against that, weren’t there?

  The woman leaned toward her in the sort of confidential way normally reserved for friends. “Before my husband died he made a bucket list—not of all the things he wanted to do before he kicked the bucket, but of all the places he wanted to be taken after he kicked it. So, ever since he died, I’ve been traveling all over the world and sprinkling him here and there. The Taj Majal, the Grand Canyon, Paris—right off the top of the Eiffel Tower! My daughter thinks I’m terribly morbid, but I told her, ‘No. Morbid would mean shutting myself up alone at the house and crying over old photos into a gin and tonic. That would be morbid. And I refuse to be morbid.’ So this month it’s London, and next spring it’s the Bolivian rainforest. And then next summer I’ll be heading to Machu Picchu to hike the Inca trail. My husband always hoped we’d make that trip together, but the cancer got him first. So I’ll sprinkle a bit of him there on top of the mountain, right in the middle of the ancient ruins.”

  Meg replied with a courteous smile and “hmmm” before casting an envying glance at the solitary and silent passengers across the aisle, their books establishing a definitive Do Not Disturb zone, her books tucked in her carry-on bag, now stowed securely in an overhead bin. Just as she was about to reach for the in-flight magazine, the flight attendant arrived at their row with the beverage cart. “Something to drink for you?” She handed each of them a miniature bag of pretzels.

  “Ginger ale, please,” said Meg. Maybe that would help settle her stomach.

  “I’ll take a Bloody Mary.” The woman opened her wallet, then pivoted again toward Meg. “Do you live in Kingsbury?”

  Meg nodded.

  “You look really familiar. I’ve been sitting here trying to figure it out. Have we met before?”

  “I don’t think so.” She definitely would have remembered someone this gregarious.

  “Do you happen to go to Kingsbury school board meetings?”

  “No.”

  “How about the gym on Petersborough Road?”

  “No.”

  “It’s going to drive me crazy until I figure it out.”

  “How about Kingsbury Community Church?” It was the only place Meg could think to offer as a possibility.

  “Definitely not.” The woman squinted hard. “Art museum, symphony, gardening club?”

  “Afraid not.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Got it!”

  Meg tilted her head.

  “You look like someone my husband worked with years ago. Beverly something. Beverly, Beverly, Beverly . . . Beverly Reese! You’re not related to a Beverly Reese, are you?”

  “No, sorry. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  The woman patted her cheeks and neck with her left hand while holding her drink in her right. “I suddenly remembered because she had really fair skin like you and used to get the same kind of hives whenever she got nervous. Have you tried acupuncture?”


  “Uhhh . . . no.” How long was the flight to New York?

  “I think she did acupuncture. And yoga. Just a thought.” She pressed the button to recline her seat a few inches. “So what takes you to London?”

  Meg teased open her bag of pretzels, careful not to spill them on the tray table. “My daughter’s studying there for her junior year. She’s an English literature major.”

  “Ahh. What a wonderful opportunity for her.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how long will you be staying?”

  Honestly, of all the people to end up sitting next to. “A couple of weeks. Through Christmas.”

  “Christmas is lovely there. Are you staying right in London?”

  “Not far from the college.”

  “How nice for you.”

  Yes, it was going to be wonderful. She had been dreaming about their visit for weeks now. She had planned to dream about it during the flight. She chewed slowly on a pretzel.

  Without taking a breath, her seatmate launched into detailed and colorful narratives about her own family: her name was Jean, her daughter was an unmarried actress currently starring in an off-Broadway production, her husband had died of pancreatic cancer, her son was going through a messy divorce. “I always knew it wouldn’t last,” she said. “At least they didn’t have kids. She was a nightmare. An absolute nightmare. I’m glad he finally woke up and said, ‘Enough! No more!’”

  Eventually, either because of the effects of alcohol or a loss of interest in one-sided conversation, Jean drifted off to sleep. Careful not to bump her, Meg shifted position in her seat and slipped off her shoes.

  Her sensible shoes.

  What a journey she’d taken since September, when she first met Hannah, Mara, and Charissa at the New Hope Retreat Center. They had happened to sit together at a back corner table near an exit door, and Meg had used the excuse of her high heels to avoid walking the prayer labyrinth. “I’m afraid I didn’t wear very sensible shoes,” Meg told them. “Guess I wasn’t taking ‘sacred journey’ literally, huh?”

  “I like it!” Mara had exclaimed. “Sacred journeys need sensible shoes! What shall we call ourselves? The Sensible Shoes Club?”

  Over the past three months, they had learned to travel deeper into God’s heart, sometimes with reluctant and stumbling steps. Meg had grown to love and appreciate each of them: Mara, a fifty-year-old wife, mother of three sons, and soon-to-be grandmother; Charissa, a married and newly pregnant graduate student; Hannah, a pastor on a nine-month sabbatical from ministry in Chicago.

  All of them had come to the airport to pray for Meg and offer their encouragement. She was grateful. So grateful for companions on the spiritual journey.

  “It’s gonna be an awfully long month before we can all be together again,” Mara had said while they drank coffee in the Kingsbury Airport terminal. “I don’t want to fall off the track, you know? I just hope I remember some of the stuff I learned during the retreat. Me and my menopause brain. Remind me, okay?”

  “Me too,” said Charissa. “I wrote down a whole list of spiritual disciplines that I wanted to keep practicing, all kinds of things that could help me grow in the right direction and be less self-centered. But I always get even more obsessed about school this time of year, with final papers and projects and everything. Lately, I haven’t been doing much of anything from that list. My rule of life right now is just ‘Survive.’”

  “So start smaller,” Hannah suggested. “Maybe choose one thing that will help you stay connected with God in the midst of the stress, and then there may be other practices you can gradually weave in.”

  “I just wish there were a quick fix,” Charissa said. “It’s the whole letting-go-of-control thing. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there. Maybe I’ll always be a control freak.”

  “At least you see it, right?” Mara said. “That’s progress! Even if it feels slow. Guess I have to keep remembering that it’s okay if it’s two steps forward, one step back. ’Course, sometimes it feels like a few baby steps forward, then a few big steps back. And I still get dizzy from walkin’ around and around in circles, same old baggage again and again.”

  Meg had recorded some of their prayer requests in her notebook: for Charissa to find ways to love and serve others well, even in the midst of her busyness; for Mara to know God’s peace and to persevere in faith while battling chronic frustration and disappointment with her husband and their two teenage sons; for Hannah as she continued to settle into the rhythm of rest and a new relationship.

  “How about you, Meg?” Mara asked. “How else can we pray for you?”

  “I think ‘hope’ is my word right now,” Meg replied. “Especially with all the hopes I have for this trip, for my time with Becca. We lit an Advent candle in worship yesterday—the hope candle—and my pastor talked about how true Christian hope isn’t about wishing for things, how there’s a big difference between hoping for something specific to happen versus trusting God to be faithful, no matter what happens.” She had written down some sermon quotes in her notebook so that she would remember: Our hope isn’t uncertain. Christian hope doesn’t fluctuate according to circumstances. True hope is about having confidence that God’s good and loving purposes in Christ can never be thwarted, no matter how it appears.

  “I’ll pray for you every day, girlfriend,” Mara had said.

  Meg knew she meant it.

  She rotated her feet in several slow circles, then pressed the button on her armrest to recline. Her seatmate was snoring softly, mouth draped open. Meg stared at the pendant around her neck. She had been quick to judge the widow for carrying her husband’s ashes in a locket, forgetting that she also carried part of her husband with her. She had tucked Jim’s last card into her carry-on bag, the card he’d given her on the day they saw their baby on the ultrasound. He had written about his love for Meg, his love for their unborn child, his eagerness to be a dad, his certainty that Meg would be a wonderful mother. But weeks later, on a dismal, gray November afternoon, Meg’s world imploded when Jim’s car slid off an icy highway and slammed into a tree. He died at St. Luke’s Hospital before she could get there to say good-bye. On Christmas Eve, with anguished sobs, Meg returned to St. Luke’s and delivered their baby, a beautiful girl who had her mother’s large doe eyes, just as her father had hoped. And now that baby girl was turning twenty-one, and she and Meg would celebrate together in England.

  So much to celebrate, so much to share.

  Out of necessity, Meg had mentally and emotionally locked Jim away after he died. Unable to face the prospect of raising Becca alone, she left the beloved home she had shared with Jim and returned to her childhood house, where tears were not tolerated. Her mother, widowed when Meg was four years old, had no patience for weakness or self-pity and offered an ultimatum: if Meg was going to live under her roof, she would need to pull herself together and move on. Fearful of disintegrating under the weight of her grief, Meg swallowed her sorrow and complied with her mother’s demands as best she could. Becca, meanwhile, learned early in life that asking questions about her daddy made Mommy sad, so after a while, she stopped asking. And the years rolled on as if Jim had never existed.

  But after twenty-one years of repressing her grief, Meg had recently discovered the courage and freedom not only to mourn, but to let Jim live again in her mind and heart. Though it was difficult to feel the pain of his absence, she was also remembering the joy of their life together, and she wanted to share some of those joys with their daughter. She wanted Becca to know how much her father had loved her, even before he knew her. She wanted to look Becca in the eye and tell her how sorry she was for withholding him, how she wished she had done things differently. Now that Meg was remembering his life and love, she hoped he would come to life for Becca too.

  Hope. That word again.

  She had fixed her gaze on the flickering hope candle during worship, her prayers focused on the fears that had paralyzed her, the regrets that had consumed he
r, the longings for God that had begun to emerge, awakening her to new possibilities, new opportunities, new courage, yes—to new hope. Katherine, Hannah, Mara, and Charissa had accompanied her on the first steps of that journey toward transformation and healing. Now there were more steps to take.

  In England.

  Jim would be so proud of her for traveling by herself across the ocean. And he’d be so proud of his daughter, their winged and confident, lively and spirited daughter, who had not inherited her mother’s fears. Thank God. With a contented sigh, Meg leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes, eventually lulled to sleep by the gentle vibrations of the plane.

  Charissa

  Charissa Sinclair twirled strands of her long dark hair around her fingertips and listened to the rhythmic squeak of the windshield wipers. What was keeping him? She’d already been idling the car for seven—now eight—minutes outside John’s office building, and she didn’t want to turn off the engine now.

  C’mon, c’mon.

  She never should have spent three whole hours away from her doctoral work, especially with the end of the semester rapidly approaching. But she was serious about her desire to be less self-absorbed, so she had decided to give herself a break from paper revisions and spend her class-free afternoon by going to the airport to say good-bye and offer support to Meg. And then, rather than eating by herself, she had invited Mara to join her for lunch. Until recently, Charissa had regarded Mara only as an overweight, middle-aged housewife with a tabloid past. Mara was the sort of person Charissa had spent a lifetime avoiding. They had nothing in common.

  Scratch that.

  They actually did have something significant in common, hard as it was to admit. They both “needed grace.” Charissa had begun to learn that difficult lesson through their Sensible Shoes group over the past several months.

  To her surprise, Charissa had discovered that she enjoyed being with Mara. Despite being crass and tactless at times, Mara, with her dyed auburn hair, brash wardrobe colors, and clunky costume jewelry, had her heart in the right place. “Anything you need, call me,” Mara had said at lunch. “You know, since your mom is so far away. I could be like a whatchamacallit . . .”