When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions (Plus)($9.86Value)

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From the bestselling author of The Secret Life of Bees, an inspiring autobiographical account of personal pain, spiritual awakening, and divine grace.   Blending her own experience with an intimate grasp of spirituality, Sue Monk Kidd relates the passionate and moving tale of her spiritual crisis, when life seemed to have lost meaning and her longing for a hasty escape from the pain yielded to a discipline of “active waiting.” Full of wisdom, poise, and grace, Kidd’s words will encourage us along our spiritual journey, toward becoming who we truly are. “A joy to read….Honest and healing.” - Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and author of Soul Making As I read her book, Kidd became a companion. I love having her walk with me on my journey. - Eugene Peterson, author of The Message “What a joy! Sue Monk Kidd combines profound wisdom in a most readable and anecdotal style. Like Einstein, she shows us the great truth is also ‘simple and beautiful.’ When the Heart Waits is just that!” - Richard Rohr, OFM, author of Everything Belongs “Kidd’s thoughts about transformation . . . coupled with her superb writing, make When the Heart Waits insightful, challenging reading for those in similar places.” - Virtue Magazine “Kidd’s writing is vivid . . . alive.” - Ex Christo From the Bestselling Author of The Secret Life of Bees , an Inspiring Autobiographical Account of Personal Pain, Spiritual Awakening, and Divine Grace Blending her own experiences with an intimate grasp of spirituality, Sue Monk Kidd relates the passionate and moving tale of her spiritual crisis, when life seemed to have lost meaning and her longing for a hasty escape from the pain yielded to a discipline of "active waiting." This PLUS edition includes a reader's guide. Sue Monk Kidd is the author of the bestselling novels The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair , as well as the award-winning The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and God's Joyful Surprise . When the Heart Waits Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions By Sue Monk Kidd HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright ©2006 Sue Monk Kidd All right reserved. ISBN: 0061144894 Chapter One The Long Way Round Midway this way of life we're bound upon, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, Where the right road was wholly lost and gone . . . . It is so bitter it goes nigh to death. —Dante Patience is everything. —Rainer Maria Rilke Overhead a thickening of clouds wreathed everything in grayness. It was February, when the earth of South Carolina seems mired in the dregs of winter. I had been walking for miles; I don't know how many. I could feel neither my toes inside my shoes nor the wind on my face. I could feel nothing at all but an intense aching in my soul. For some months I had been lost in a baffling crisis of spirit. Back in the autumn I had awakened to a growing darkness and cacophony, as if something in my depths were crying out. A whole chorus of voices. Orphaned voices. They seemed to speak for all the unlived parts of me, and-they came with a force and dazzle that I couldn't contain. They seemed to explode the boundaries of my existence. I know now that they were the clamor of a new self struggling to be born. Midlife Darkness I was standing on the shifting ground of midlife, having come upon that time in life when one is summoned to an inner transformation, to a crossing over from one identity to another. When change-winds swirl through our lives, especially at midlife, they often call us to undertake a new passage of the spiritual journey that of confronting the lost and counterfeit places within us and releasing our deeper, innermost self—our true self. They call us to come home to ourselves, to become who we really are. That winter of my discontent, I had no real idea of any of this. I was mystified by the inner upheaval I felt. This sort of thing couldn't be happening to me, I told myself. I had already been on an inner spiritual quest—one that had begun eight years earlier with an experience of chest pains and stress. My journey had taught me a more contemplative way of being in the world and had given me the first real centeredness I'd known. Discovering myself loved by God and forging new dimensions of intimacy with God's presence had brought much healing to my fragmented life. I should have remembered, though, that the life of the spirit is never static. We're born on one level, only to find some new struggle toward wholeness gestating within. That's the sacred intent of life, of God—to move us continuously toward growth, toward recovering all that is lost and orphaned within us and restoring the divine image imprinted on our soul. And rarely do significant shifts come without a sense of our being lost in dark woods, or in what T. S. Eliot called the "vacant interstellar spaces."' I kept walking through the fogged afternoon light as if the mere ritual of putting one foot in front of the other would lead me