“You’ve got to go through it, Tony.”

It’s maybe a hundred meters long, jagged stones stacked on one another. Though it is centuries old, the constant presence of young people on its ledge erases ideas of noble conquest or stately affair. No, it is just the Neckarmauer, the wall that runs alongside the Neckar River.

It belongs to the idiosyncrasies of Tübingen, for though it seems as if it is only a retaining wall, there is a much deeper social function. Littered with twenty-somethings with Ice Cream in hand, this wall is one of the most beloved meeting points in our little town. People gather for 15 minute breaks as well as 4 hour conversations, ranging from small talk to counseling sessions. I usually find myself somewhere between the two as my feet dangle above the greenish blue water.

I sat there with my teammate Jack, watching the Venetian style boats pass by. It’s been a long few months for the both of us, and though we both have a lot of questions about what happened, we are also both aware of something that is shifting within us. Neither of us can name it yet, but like the moments before rain, the air around us seems to be changing. “After all, when you step out on an adventure, you step into a new self,” Jack said into the silence of our questions. “We just don’t get to know what that looks like yet, do we? We don’t get to know how, be we do know we will get through it.”

It wasn’t that long ago that similar words were spoken to me in my own language.

“You’ve got to go through it,” Traci said to me, as I leaned against the wall by her tea-cart. “And when you don’t know the way through it, you need to ask yourself what you already have in you, already given to you, that will serve you to go through this?”

She waited for my response, but I could not speak. Five years of mentoring and friendship with this woman had marked me with a subtext in her words that makes them ring in my head two months later, still unprocessed and unanswered. Her life signified her belief in the mark of Love on each human, and of what a significant thing it is to be part of the beautiful Mosaic that is humanity. “The world needs what your heart has to offer,” she would say, as if our hearts themselves carried a gift yet unopened.

Sometimes you find yourself sitting on a wall, wondering how you’re going to make it through the uncomfortably strange, beautifully painful thing that we call life. You look around for help, and help will come, but maybe sometimes by doing so, you find that you’ve forgotten the Grace of being you. There is a certain depth of Grace that comes simply from being a person that was made and marked by Love.

[The grace of God means something like this: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you.] – F. Buechner

I still don’t know how to answer Traci’s question, but I do know it’s the kind of question that deserves some thoughtful time. I don’t know what to do with Jack’s questions either, but I do know that it’s the kind of question that is ripe with Grace.

Still Wandering,

Tony