I could not lead anyone there, but thanks to Kyle’s innate sense of direction, we dine there ten times over the next month, following the scent of its tom kha gai like hypnotized cartoon characters. The grandfather eagerly takes our shoes every time, welcomes us to his family establishment as though we are old friends. On our fifth visit, Kyle says, “I’m already sorry for my future self who no longer has this food.”
The family that runs this establishment has a special seat in heaven at the right hand of God. I’m sure of it. They welcome us into their home, the most sacred of places, with the taking of shoes and the scooping of rice.
I am overdue for a dip back into the waters of cheap counseling and decide to treat myself to a checkup. The therapist with whom I met for two months during our original visit to Thailand has retired to his home in Michigan, but the center where he worked is still here in Chiang Mai. I’ve never met with a spiritual director before, but a writer friend of mine back in the States swears by regular meetings with hers, and there are a few available at this center as a service.
This afternoon, I sit in the office of a silver-haired, quiet-spoken woman named Nora. Her office is a simple converted bedroom in the corner of a house-turned-well-being-center. A couch and armchairs are centered around a coffee table, icons and paintings of St. Francis on the walls, and art supplies on shelves. From my chair, I watch her walk silently around the office, gathering a legal pad, pens, sheets of drawing paper. She sits down, smiles at me, and doesn’t move. I feel like a teenager on her first job interview, not sure if I am supposed to talk first. Should I have come equipped with a laundry list of concerns? Would she begin by asking about my childhood? This is not counseling, and I have no idea what to expect from an hour with a spiritual director. Do I make the first move? I sit there, smile back, look around the room.
After an eternity of silence, Nora says quietly, “I’m ready when you are.” I shift my eyes back to her, and she hasn’t moved. She is still smiling at me.
I decide that candor is probably best, that I will never see this woman again after this month. “I’m honestly not sure why I’m here, other than I feel like I could use some spiritual direction in my life.” This is the truth.
“Why do you feel that way?” Nora asks.
I sit for a few seconds, because this is a good question. I’m not terribly sure, other than my soul is weary, my usual recipe of prayer and reflecting on passages from the Bible isn’t inspiring me, and I sense a gaping, run-ragged hole in my soul where mature wisdom should be. Also, I don’t know where my home is, where I might really belong.
Years have passed since I last felt poured-into, I tell her, and I have not bothered to seek it out. I have embarked on this year of travel, at age thirty-seven, feeling less confident than I did a decade ago about what I believe to be true, and how that truth intersects with who I am. I am weary from game playing and formulaic answers, and the evangelical-Christian hat that I have worn daily with every outfit since I was fourteen feels too small, headache inducing. I fidget daily in its discomfort, but I don’t know how to exchange it, how it should be resized. Perhaps I can stitch a new hat from scraps I find scattered around the globe, I suggest. Perhaps she could be my milliner, maybe help me find the first scrap, floating somewhere along the sidewalks of old Chiang Mai.
I tell her this, and she only smiles.
Also, I started this year of globe trekking confident that traveling was the right thing to do, but somehow, that confidence hadn’t come with me in my pack. I feel fidgety and lost.
She only smiles.
“I need spiritual direction because I feel like I can’t find my compass, the thing that points me home. Also, the hat I’ve worn for over twenty years doesn’t fit anymore, and I want to find a new one,” I repeat.
Nora nods this time. “You think I can help you find a compass and a hat?”
“I’m not sure. But I’m willing to pay you twenty bucks a chat to see if you can help,” I reply.
“I think it’s good you’re here,” she says. “Because we all lose our way every now and then. Sometimes it helps to ask a fellow sojourner if she can see through the fog in front of you.”
I consider the fog in front of me, how I love writing but itch to break out of my genre into something new. I love the freedom of nomadic living, too, but yearn for the simplicity of home. I grow restless with the humdrum of small, ordinary life, but know it’s in those hours of sorting socks and vacuuming the car where most of life is meant to be lived. I don’t think I am made to do daily extraordinary things, to constantly unearth new sights. The loveliness of wandering, of travel, dangles like a carrot on a stick, but it’s coupled with the heartache of wanderlust, of knowing that there will always be one more thing to see. Chasing the globe’s rotation for more than a few months will do me in. I will come undone. It is not how I am meant to live; I know it.
“You already have the answers you need within you from God,” Nora explains. “I am simply here to walk with you and help you unearth them. I can do that.”
She lights a candle on the table in front of us and bows her head. I follow suit and close my eyes.
Because we’ll be in Thailand for a solid two months, I can meet with Nora at least six times. There are other things to do in Chiang Mai—night markets to shop for cheap art and phone cases, hikes through the hills to the highest point in the country, elephant sanctuaries to visit. But after my first session, I sense an unveiling—these spiritual direction sessions are a primary reason we’ve been drawn here.
In our third meeting, Nora ends our time together, as customary, with silence, her reading a psalm. To signify our time is over, she snuffs out the candle. The hour is spent as it was the previous two meetings: silence and candle lighting to start, Nora asking me what God is speaking to me today, more silence from me, then an unexpected outburst of tears as I share what comes to mind, usually some sort of frustration with my work as a writer. I pour out details of specific burdens and cultural movements that tie me in knots. Nora is a safe person with thousands of miles between our daily worlds. She will park when there is inward movement, help lift a stone when she senses treasure underneath.
At the end of our third meeting, snuffed candle smoke still rising in the air, Nora says, “Before you leave Chiang Mai, I have a prescription for you. I want you to visit a monastery in town for a day of silence.”
She hands me a brochure with a picture of a labyrinth on the front. I open it and find a smiling priest welcoming me to come for the day, the night, or for a week, to hear from God and get away from the city noise. There is no talking permitted on the grounds.