It was the only place I ever really felt at peace.  None in my family understood it.  They all believed that their religions lay in their hearts and not in any buildings, but for some reason I always stood out.  Maybe because in that place I didn’t have to worry about what I was going to do with my life.  I’d always believed that God would show me the way.

Sophia sighed and set her pen down on the page, pushed it into the binding crease of the journal, and closed it.  She rarely went home these days.  In a few short weeks she’d be found bleeding on one of God’s pews without any clues to guide her family, but in this moment no one could know that. 

The breeze stirred her long blond hair across her hazel eyes, features she’d inherited from her father.  For a moment, she was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t notice it.  The journal and the church had become the staples that kept her life together especially in recent days—especially the journal.  She’d taken particular care to record events as a historian would, with as much detail as possible.  Times, places, people, people’s features, scenery, mood, feelings; it was all meticulously noted.  It was necessary because things were changing.  Not all things were simple to record.

Her fingers curled around the edge of the book, tightening; thumbnail dragged across the brown leather cover; eyes watering, narrowing; the serenity intruded on by anger.  In a rush it was flung open once more and the previous page was torn violently from within.  “It’s all wrong.”  Sophia muttered fiercely as she ripped the page into smaller pieces and threw them to the wind so that it would carry those pieces far, far from her.

How do you explain to another person—“No.”  She scratched out the line and tried again, the words gradually coming more and more easily to her. 

If I don’t figure out how to fix it soon, I’ll stop it by any means necessary.

Sophia closed the journal at that and locked it, then tucked it and the pen away into her bag.

I opened my eyes and there before me was the end of my life.  There were no flashes of scenes past or things that could be.  I did not envision my children or a moment with my lover.  It was a blinding light that erased everything as if it had never been; erased doubt; erased longing; erased desire.  I thought then that I would soon be walking with God with my very next step.

Those instants are so easy to fantasize, romanticize.  Giving it all up for the ones you love, to protect the world, for the moral right.  This is why war continues, because we all have that longing for the meaning that such sacrifice can ascribe our lives that peace cannot.  I think everyone deep down longs for that one defining moment where they can immortalize their souls forever with a single act.  An act that would bring people to their knees, bring tears to their eyes, lay silence like blankets upon their hearts just at the mere thought of it.

I was no different.  And the life that I lead now taught me my error.  I thought I would die a glorious death that would forever immortalize my mortal soul in a world of angels and demons with powers I could never fathom.  It is shameful to admit, but I gave up everything in that moment not for the ones I loved or for any noble inclination of virtue.  I gave up everything for vanity.

How ironic, then, that I gained it all back and fled from it.

I stayed as long as I possibly could.  Every day was like a twisting coil building tension.  Every doctor’s visit, every parent-teacher conference, every load of laundry… A little over twenty years, it was no wonder when the taut line was struck how the wire recoiled--cracked.  Ever since that day, my father had nicknamed me his wild angel.  I fled from that too.

I know I hurt them, hurt them all, but I didn’t know what else I could do.  I had no other choice, you see, I had to leave.  I couldn’t stay there any longer.  After that day I was not who I had been, I was someone else.  They say that when an individual experiences a loss, that individual often has trouble maintaining friendships formed before that loss and tends to shift into new friendships formed afterward.  It’s too hard, you see, to look into those faces, those eyes, and tell them over and over again that you’re just not the same anymore.

Ambiguous losses are those that lack clarity.  They cannot be defined or explained; there is no reason that can be attributed to them, and it is this uncertainty that creates a space between ourselves and others that often cannot be bridged.

Reconciliation to most means atoning for a wrong or making things right with someone.  There is an implied hierarchy of right and wrong, moral and immoral, or my personal distaste: should.  In Theology, Reconciliation describes a change in the relationship between man and God.  This change recognizes the capacity  and the inevitability of acceptance in nature, in ourselves.  I believe that God exists within our innermost feelings: in our wrath and our love, in our hurt and our healing, and that to be closer to this we must first submerge ourselves in it.