The Wise Woman Chair.

The pink chair that was once purple has a story of its own. The fading came from years of seeking wisdom.

After weeks in the hospital, Jen was discharged into hospice. I didn’t have a place of my own at the time, so I went home with her as part of her caretaking team.

The early mornings together were precious. She would sit in the Wise Woman Chair, and together we would read poems, pray, sing, and cry. We learned to hold tight and let go.

I had received the chair several years earlier, right after I had gone to a retreat where I was introduced to something called the Ampersand way of thinking. The idea was simple, but it stayed with me. Two things that seem opposite can both be true at the same time. Joy and sorrow. Fear and faith. Holding on and letting go.

It was all about the both/and.

During one of the retreat sessions, the speaker placed three chairs at the front of the room: a metal folding chair, a plastic blow-up chair with a princess on it, and a large purple armchair. A coping chair, a little girl chair and a wise woman chair.

We were asked to think of a decision we were struggling to make. Most of us were coming from marriages where betrayal had robbed trust, and decisions had to be faced. The assignment was to sit in each chair with the same question and see what the different outcomes might be.

I walked straight to the metal coping chair.

It was a cold, uncomfortable folding chair, the kind I already knew. I didn’t hesitate. I sat down and immediately thought I didn’t need to make any changes in my life. It was all too much to imagine, and the outcome felt impossible. I heard the voice I knew most. “Just freeze, you don’t want to make the wrong decision. Just keep your chin up and keep going as is. God will work it all out.”

When I moved to the little girl chair, I stood looking at it, but couldn’t bring myself to sit in it. It was small and fragile. Something in me wouldn’t go there.

Then I went to the purple chair. It was inviting, the kind you could sink into. I sat down and felt the velvety softness beneath me, but almost immediately, I wanted to get up because when I sat there, I only saw my worst fear; being alone.

The decision I made was not to return to the chaotic home of addiction, but to give more time for change to take place. I was out of couches to crash on, so I stayed with a woman I barely knew. She was a new friend from church who didn’t know my story, only that I needed a place to land. She knew I needed time alone and provided me with her guest room.

I was unsure if I was doing the right thing until I stepped into the guest room. In the corner was a purple chair and ottoman. Tears welled and I exhaled. There were no words, so I didn’t even try explaining it to Chris. The chair was beautiful with the fabric a soft lavender , it’s wood carvings, intricate and royal. For a couple of weeks, I sat in the chair, mostly crying because the decision still felt like too much.

When I left, she told me to take the chair with me because she felt the Lord had told her I needed it. All I could muster saying was, “Thank you.” I called Jen and she helped me load it up. She knew the story because she had walked every step with me. She was as much in awe as I was by the whole thing.

The chair stayed with me for years, and I sat in it often. Sometimes, to make decisions. Sometimes, to sit quietly and listen. But, eventually, in this chair, I learned to receive the peace of truly letting go and letting God. I felt pain there. And, I felt peace there.

When Jen finally had a place of her own, her housewarming gift was the Wise Woman Chair. We both cried because it was hard for me to let go, and it was just as hard for her to receive.

As we walked through her illness, wisdom was found in those early mornings. She sat in the purple chair in the corner of her bedroom, and I sat on the bed across from her.

We prayed for healing, and when we ran out of words for that, we prayed for mercy. We talked about the anger, the kind that builds when you watch someone you love suffer, and the miracle doesn’t come. We sat with the harder truth that sometimes God does not provide the ending we desire, and just how much that hurts. Then we talked about how He walks into that pain with us.

Jen was never really angry at God. I was.

“Maybe the miracle is the mercy, Michele,” she’d say to me. What wisdom.

Some mornings she would sit there, eyes closed, praying softly. I knew the prayer; I’d heard it from her before. She simply wanted to go home already. I would sit across from her, tears running down my own face, trying to accept that reality. Sometimes I had to leave the room because there are places you can walk with someone, and then there are the places we have to go alone.

I think that is what the Wise Woman Chair held, not just decisions, but the quiet space where truth settles in, where letting go begins, and where we learn what it means to hold both things at once.

I am still learning that.

(from Pop’s Place: What Remains)