Logan Airport
“Flight 219 headed to Detroit will begin boarding in fifteen minutes.”
Meredith sat back in her chair. A young mother traveling with her son was asking the counter agent for an update on their seats. Her frantic tone made Meredith thankful to have her boarding pass in hand. Re-routing through Detroit would add a few extra hours to her day, but at least she’d spend tonight in her own home. Never had her own bed and her own pillow sounded so inviting.
Meredith’s seat was toward the very front of the plane, meaning that she’d be one of the last called on to board. She decided to use that extra time efficiently. It was all fine and good to wallow in self-pity for short bursts of time, but then she had to be proactive. Proactive and positive.
She pulled out one of the notebooks she always traveled with, turned to the first new page, and wrote on the top Things I can do after Living Grace Ministries. She proceeded to stare at the journal for several minutes. When the blank page proved too intimidating, she decided to give herself a little more structure. She divided the page into three columns and wrote Ministry, Career, and Totally Frivolous.
The frivolous category was the easiest to fill. For years, Meredith had told herself she’d take music lessons. Soon, her column was spilling over with ideas like hiring a piano teacher, finding a singing tutor, even starting up ballroom dance classes and joining a gym. For a minute, she tried to decide if she wanted to add travel to her list, but she was starting to enjoy the thought of staying home for a while. Maybe she could even get herself a pet.
The other two columns proved more difficult to fill in. For almost half of her life, ministry and career had been one and the same thing to her, and she wanted to keep it that way if possible. But what did she know how to do other than writing and speaking? And how could she do either now?
Always practical, Meredith realized the bills had to get paid. She didn’t live extravagantly, but she’d need a job to put food on the table, not to mention those music and dance lessons she was hoping to dive into now that she had so much extra time on her hands.
Maybe there was a church or a nonprofit nearby she could work with. Grand Rapids was full of Christian publishing companies and colleges, and with her old friend Connor willing to help her make new connections …
She thought about the manuscript in her backpack. It had been almost over two decades since she’d been taken advantage of by a Christian leader she trusted, but she’d only started talking about her experience a few years ago. In that time, she’d realized how many other women around the world shared similar trauma, often at the hands of pastors and youth leaders. And just as horrific as the abuse itself was how eager churches were to cover up sin to avoid a scandal.
She stared at the blank columns on the page. Tried to decide if she could see her career going in a vastly different direction.
Decided that change wasn’t always such a bad thing.
Start a ministry for victims of sexual abuse. Since she couldn’t decide whether it fit best under the column for ministry or career, she wrote it down in both.
And for the first time that day, she smiled, even though she knew nobody else was watching.