Just as Mom and Pastor Carter said I would…
“Will anyone else be joining us?” I asked, my body jostled about as we drove over the badly maintained road.
“Not this time,” Pastor Carter said, braking gently as the truck came to a sharp turn.
I glanced at him in surprise. That was unusual. The elders were always present for an arrival. It’s the way it had always been done.
I wanted to ask what was different about this arrival but I knew better than to pester him with questions. He provided information if he felt we needed it.
“Who’s the arrival?” One final question. Just this one.
Pastor Carter smiled. “Do you remember your arrival, Sara?”
My stomach clenched. “Yes,” I replied weakly, my nails digging into my palms.
“Is it a happy memory for you?” Pastor Carter hit a bump and I had to brace myself against the door.
“I don’t know—”
“I recall a scared little girl, crying, asking her mother to go home. Is that how you remember it?”
Where was he going with this? Why did it matter? What did it have to do with the arrival?
“It is,” I admitted, swallowing thickly.
Pastor took my hand again and I felt his serenity on my skin. In my blood. “Not all arrivals are joyous. You know this. You’ve lived it and yet you learned the truth. Compassion is essential.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
Pastor Carter released my hand and I felt bereft at the loss of contact. “This is your first arrival, Sara. A perfect opportunity for you to grow. To learn. Our arrival is seeking the same thing all of us are—a spiritual awakening.”
Pastor Carter had a way of talking in riddles that often made no sense at the time he spoke them. It was only later that his words became clear. His meaning obvious.
“What does this have to do with my arrival?”
Pastor Carter patted my cheek. “Be the voice of knowledge found through resistance.”
I wanted to ask more questions but I knew from the downward curve of his mouth, Pastor wouldn’t answer any of them.
Pastor Carter parked the truck in the middle of a copse of trees beside the narrow, packed dirt lane. We got out and made our way to the gate.
A line of unobtrusive fencing ran the length of the property line. The large metal gate was the only barrier between us and theoutside.
It was the first time I had been to the gate in ten years. It had been pitch black when I had seen it before. Things are always grander in memory.
And I found that I was…underwhelmed.
Nothing imposing or awe-inspiring, the gate looked more like something you’d see at a cattle ranch. Hardly indicative of the life-changing experience people came here for.
The reality crashed into the memory, jarring me in ways I didn’t quite understand. Pastor Carter pointed a remote at the gate and I watched with a strange sense of malaise as they opened with a groan.
The recollection of the two solid metal grates had seemed monstrous in my head. It had branded itself on my mind. I remembered the gaping entrance had loomed before me like a cavernous mouth.
I also remembered thinking that Mom was wrong. After hearing Pastor Carter speak, his voice didn’t sound like God’s at all. He was just a man. But I would never say that out loud. Because I too came to think of him as the embodiment of holiness.
Those early moments at the gate had changed my life. And since then, many, many people started their own journeys the exact same way. Now here we were again.
Only the two of us.
