Undaunted Joy #99 Guest Post- Sally Brower

When Things Don't Go as Planned

Photo by Peter Hansen on Unsplash

Each month, I like to feature a guest post. It is good to look at joy from a different view than just mine.

This week Undaunted Joy features writer, Sally Brower. Sally and I met at Image Journal’s Glen Workshop a few years back. Sally has a keen eye for a story and finding the sacred in what might look ordinary to others. She has also been a great source of encouragement to me in the last few years. Today she shares a story you might empathize with—-when a vacation does not quite go to plan.

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“Did you enjoy your vacation?” The question stopped me short. I could describe the  resort on Vancouver Island, sitting on a rugged rocky outcropping overlooking the wild crashing  waves of the Pacific, exactly as it was pictured when I booked it. I could commend the small  cruise ship I chose instead of a large one because it could take us deep into fjords, close to true  untouched wilderness. Or show my lovely photos of small Alaskan towns that clung tenaciously  between the sea and the mountains.  

It was a polite question asked of a returning traveler. I struggled to reply. The trip was  arduous, not relaxing. I was challenged, not amused or entertained. I was finally on the trip of a  lifetime and I spent day two of a three week vacation in the emergency room of a small rural  hospital. Even when the chills and fever subsided, I struggled to breathe and walk, especially  uphill. Did I enjoy my vacation? No. It was the wrong question. What touched me? 

The landscape touched memories. My great Aunt Clara was a nurse who traveled to  remote native villages. She posed in her parka made of polar bear and seal skin. She brought  back a small bearskin that I slept on as a child beside the fireplace. Once I saw a ten foot tall  Kodiak bear in a museum, but now with hip waders and a backpack, I slogged through  marshland in the misty rain to see live bears. I had the joy of being just ten yards away from a  cub and its mother, six hundred pounds with four inch claws.  

Like the native people Aunt Clara served, she lived by the tides, the weather, and the  seasons. I realized she was like the early Orthodox Christian missionaries whose footsteps I  walked in. Like them, she adapted to a harsh and unforgiving landscape, brought medical  services and spiritual care. On Spruce Island, I walked in the footsteps of St. Herman. Despite severe hardships, this saint founded an orphanage and a school, cared for the sick, built a chapel.  I walked up the green moss path that felt like carpet, through old growth forest, to the places  where this saint, often seen feeding bears, around whom all living creatures were unafraid and  peaceful, had lived and prayed. 

At the age of seventy-four, I was finally able to explore the storied Alaska of my youth. It  was not the vacation I had planned, but it was an inner journey that surprised me with joy. The  souvenirs from this journey were less tangible, deeper. The ill health I experienced became a gift  that slowed me down, helped me to experience the joy of each present moment. The illness made  me aware of living by God’s mercy, each footstep, each breath sustained by a strength not my  own, a joy not of my choosing.

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Sally Brower, PhD is a retired Episcopal priest and joyful Eastern Orthodox convert, writer and artist. Her poetry appears in Wisdom Found: Stories of Women Transfigured by Faith, Reinventing Worship, and The Cup of Salvation. Her photography has been shown numerous times at ecva.org. Her award winning short story is in An Odd Sized Casket. Her writing seeks to transform even painful human experience into something beautiful and meaningful.

If you would like to write a guest post, send me your submission. Perhaps we can find a home for it! With 1200 subscribers, I’d love to use this Substack to share other joyful voices.