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I’m a spiritual person. I don’t pray every day, but prayer is an integral part of who I am. So, when I realized that after 27 years, my marriage was coming to end, and I found that I couldn’t pray, I knew that I had to do something. My gut told me that it was time to find a Stephen Minister, and so I did. She meets with me once a week and prays for me regularly. She listens to my story – sometimes through a wash of tears and halted words. She is there to walk with me through this rocky time and to hold my hand or help me up when I fall.
Sometimes you know that the circumstances that life is throwing at you are bigger than you are. For me, the end of my marriage was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It didn’t start there. It started with my oldest children leaving for college, a long way away and leaving me wondering “what’s next in my life?” Then there was my mother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and coming to terms with that slow, gradual loss of someone I love and thrown in for good measure, the death of my favorite dog – ever. Loss, loss and more loss. I was in way over my head. I thought, “This is how people get lost spiritually. I need someone strong to guide me through this. I won’t make it on my own.”
My Stephen Minister is old enough to be my mother and wise enough to mother us all, but she doesn’t talk a lot – except to pray at the end of our times together. The thing I like most about her is that she’s been around the block herself, and I can tell her anything without feeling judged. Another thing that I love about her is the way she is there for me. It is such a comfort when I’m having a bad day or when something unexpected comes up, to be able to call or e-mail her and know that she’ll lift my situation up in prayer and that she’s standing beside me through that moment. In those times she makes God very real and present for me.
One day after we had met for several months, she arrived with a big package for me. Inside was a prayer shawl. If you’re having a hard time visualizing a prayer shawl, mine is purple (my favorite color) and fuzzy, and if you think of an adult blankie – you’ll have it. When I’m sad or lonely, cold or afraid, I wrap myself in this shawl, and it is an immediate reminder that God is with me, that He sees my brokenness, that He hears my prayers, that He cares that I’m hurting and that somehow, He will see me through this and even make something good from this mess. I don’t know how that will work. I can’t see that far in the future, but when I wrap myself in my prayer shawl, I believe that. My prayer shawl is the opposite of an Invisibility Cloak (e.g., Harry Potter). It reminds me that God always has His eyes on me.
If you find yourself in a situation where life is overwhelming you with troubles, so much so that it shakes your spiritual foundations, I hope that you will give yourself the gift of a Stephen Minister.