While my time as a church volunteer at St. Bartholomew’s comes to a pause (hopefully a short one), I look back at my time here with deep gratitude and appreciation.

I gave myself a great gift by creating this incredible experience in my life, right when most people around me were finding hard to feel hopeful and motivated.

Time after time I’ve sat on this bench, often when no other soul was around, and just waited.

Waited for the world to find its way again, for fear to turn into trust, for the hearts to be open again.

I sat, waited, and wept.

Every day I’d be having my private conversation with God, who by the way never minded my sunglasses as he probably wears them too!

“How’s things down there?”

“Alright. Could be better I guess, but perhaps if I wait a bit longer it will all be back to normal.”

“Is that what you want my child, do you miss the old life that much?”

Did I miss the old life? Do I still?

What if I said yes?

Would anyone be surprised? Outraged? Maybe disappointed?

Yes, I have sat on this bench time again missing what it was, and in some ways I still do.

And I think it’s both healthy and important to acknowledge so, and please do join me if you see yourself in that.

For we are not weak in feeling this way, but humans.

And as I missed what was, I also created space for what’s to come.

For the life yet to be met and lived.

For the joys and tears, the adventures and the growth.

While I did so, it became evident that much had to go as I slowly got better at “accepting & allowing.”

“Ok, ok God you win! Your way not mine!”, I’ve often muttered under my breath lately.

I recently came to see how the very things I had expected to find here, were actually within me.

In fact, they are me.

The silence & grace I have often been so in need for, never even came from my special friend up there.

They have been offered to this place by the thousands of souls who crossed its threshold through the centuries.

One after the other, every single person entering here left a bit of themselves until such a sanctuary came to life.

On my last day, God spoke: “My child, the time has come when you now return to the world, as you have learnt to let it be. Never look for me out there for you’ll never find me. I am in the quiet within your heart, in the space between your thoughts, in your laughter same as your tears. I was always you and now remember this as you walk on.”