The cold was bone chilling. Snow was still piled high after the snows a week ago. She kissed the kids goodbye but not her husband. She walked up the path in the freezing afternoon’s fading light to the near deserted retreat house.
Four days.
Four days on her own.
Four days to think and pray. Two kids to raise. A marriage seriously bent if not perhaps already broken, and no job for September.
She checked in and asked for the room most distant from the main part of the house. Solitude, time to think, time to pray, time to get things in order.
Not quite, as after dinner she was ablaze with fever. By bedtime she had chills and was vomiting and cramped with diarrhea. What a mess she thought, as she, over the four days, made trip after trip down the hall to the lavatory. She could not eat or think and certainly not pray.
She just began to feel like herself, maybe, as she packed to go.
“Just give me one little sign of hope”, she prayed as she put on her coat after four days of misery and, as she walked outside it felt warm on her face and there were buds on the bushes along the path.
“Alright God, that’s enough of sign for me”
