The Wayward Daughter

We often hear about the wayward son, but what about the wayward daughter?

Whose walk with Light was disrupted when her bridge into young womanhood was torn down by the hands of man, including her own, leaving her stranded and searching for how to proceed forward.

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Assuming the only option was by descent into the canyon below, she began her climb down.

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When she made it down to the canyon floor, it was a dark place, where the sun struggled to reach its depths.

Not concerned with direction, she began walking, feeling she had nothing to lose because she felt she had nothing to hold.

And down in this canyon she discovered other wanderers.

Some who seemed to have never seen the light above the canyon’s rim in its full glory.

Some of the wanderers did seem to be kindred spirits though.

Perhaps, she thought, she had ventured into the right place after all!

There was life in the canyon, but a haunting sense of deprivation was there too.

These canyon dwellers showed her the ways of canyon life. What they ̶u̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶ abused to fill their lives. And for a time, this distracted her from her sense of displacement.

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The detour offered some sweet escapes from her shifted reality, but always, when the final rays of sun set on her days of indulgence, she was left feeling emptier than ever, yearning for what she thought she was experiencing.

Was this sheol?

A never ending return to darkness at the end of her days? Truly at the end of her days.

What a despairing prospect. And an exhausting motive to fill every day as fully as possible in the aim of feeling life when she knew the void of silence that was to greet her arrival home every evening.

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This canyon was deceptive. If you listened closely to the volume of chaotic liveliness, you could hear the deep echoes of loneliness vibrating through the canyon. The human heart beats aching for more than what they knew between the canyon walls.

A creature of the shadows she wasn't meant to be.

So why is this where she resided?

Spending her days in what light she could receive, but dulling her senses as soon as dusk approached. For to be alone and aware in the darkness was an open invitation to the seclusion of her reality.

The reality of her seclusion.

The Seclusion that greeted her arrival home every evening, disappointedly saying, “Oh, just you again.”

This was the typical greeting until one glorious and heartbreaking evening.

Perhaps she had left the window open, for Seclusion wasn’t there to greet her.

No… it was much better.

It was Defeat.

It was the unavoidable truth towards the void she felt her life to be.

And it came crashing into her as she stepped through the door.

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She fell to the floor, her sobs singing the ache of her soul.

Laying there in despair, her world stood still.

She could not move, could not breathe.

Hopelessness had robbed her of breath.

But then… through that open window,

that fractured heart granting entry to her soul,

She heard a voice carried on the breeze, gently saying,

“Open your eyes.

The Love you’ve been so blindly searching for is here.

You are not alone, my daughter. You’ve never been alone.

Rise up.”

And so she did.

Not just off the floor, but out of the canyon.

Picking up the pieces of her deconstructed bridge,

she forged a ladder,

and rung by rung,

she climbed to the canyon rim -

Where a hand reached over the edge,

grasping hers,

pulling her out of her wilderness,

and back into the Light.