Despite refusing to ingest toxins in our body or succumb to the dark places in our souls, Pastor kept several guns and a cabinet full of liquor in the gathering room. Everyone was given access to the closet. Even the smallest children.
Pastor Carter said it was important to face the things that tempt us. The sin we were all capable of. The fundamentals of The Gathering’s message were about facing temptation and embracing faith instead. It wasn’t about denying ourselves—but about allowing ourselvesmore.
I had never known anyone to open the cabinet.
Not ever.
I didn’t really want to think of what would happen if they did.
Pastor stayed up to date on current events as well. All the wars. All the crime. Global warming and mad politicians. He spoke of these atrocities as reminders of all we were trying to leave behind. Pastor Carter made a point to utilize news reports and narcissistic ramblings on social media to reaffirm the importance of staying true to the path.
“It’s only when we see the horrors that we embrace our reason. We can’t hide from reality or we’ll never understand the truth.”
But the longer we resided at The Retreat, the harder it was to face the ungodliness in the outside world. The disciples focused only on cleansing our souls for the day when we’d be called home. The day we’d be able to leave this horrible world behind for good.
Yet the call of the gate was still there. The reminder that there was something else just beyond the hills and cliffs that had become our sanctuary.
Each of us had found the gate in our own way.
In our own time.
For our own reasons.
I remembered clutching Mom’s hand in the evening chill, ten years before. I was only eight when my mother decided it was time to sell our house and set out across the country to the backwoods of rural Virginia, to follow a man she claimed had a voice like God.
She had watched one of Pastor’s sermons on the internet. I have no idea to this day how she found it. Or why she was looking for something like that in the first place. Perhaps she discovered it in the dark days after Dad left. During the nights when I’d hear her wailing.
What I do know is that for two weeks, my mother spent hours watching the man who would become our savior preach about the dangers of modern society. The necessity of finding balance and harmony in one’s own soul.
Of listening to the call to walk the path.
Follow the path, it will lead you home…
“He speaks with God’s tongue, Sara. He is his true messenger. I feel his truth in my bones.”
She had said these words with a heat that caught fire in my naïve young heart. My mother was a zealous woman. Her passion could be thrilling, or it could be devastating. I had lived my entire life in the smoldering ruins of Mom’s erratic moods. She made irrational decisions with absolute clarity—to her. And I was always along for the ride. I never questioned her. I was a child. My mother’s will, no matter how unstable, was law. I trusted her whole heartedly. I loved her with total certainty. I had no reason not to.
So when she decided we’d go live in the Blue Ridge Mountains, cut off from society, I did as I was told. We threw away most of our belongings and trekked 2500 miles to the place we were meant to be.
I tended to shy away from memories of the early days of my time at The Retreat. They weren’t pleasant ones. There were tears—mine and Mom’s. There were the painful recollections of her vicious hand across my cheek when I begged her to leave. I wanted my friends. I wanted my cat, Twinkles, who we left at the local shelter. I wanted my dad, even if he had left and made no effort to contact me. I didn’t want to pray for hours. I didn’t want to get out of bed in the silent dark to make a cold, tense journey to wake the sun.
I hated those memories. They were colored by an ill-informed mind. I forced myself to replace them with others. Ones I was more comfortable with in my new life, ones that I may not have chosen, but became glad for.
Pastor Carter had embraced us, as he embraced all of his flock. And I felt, after those first few fraught years, that I had found a place to belong.
Our venerated leader welcomed every single one of his disciples at the gate. He was present for their arrival. A smiling mouth and kind hand. A warm hug and a whispered prayer. The stray sheep were joyfully enveloped into their new family. Often they came damaged. Tainted and scarred from theoutside’smistreatment of their delicate souls. And with The Gathering they rediscovered hope. They rediscovered purpose.
They found faith.
But except for my own, I had never been present for an arrival. The elders, or those deemed important to the path, were tasked with the embrace. The moment when a new disciple was brought into the fold.
I had always been too young. Still too unclean.
Until today.
Why today?
It felt a whole lot like destiny. And I wouldn’t question it. Not ever. God had a plan and I was part of it.
