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Written by: Wanda Ashley

Category: Blog

Published: 09 June 2026

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Welcome to my Pilgrimage. This blog has been a heart's desire for many years now. It is the beginning of sharing my life's journey, the twist and turns of my life. I am seventy two and I will be seventy three in September. It has been quite a journey. I have experienced a great deal in my life and I want to share it with all. I cannot share my experiences without first speaking of the empty church. I chose a church but you may have a space or place where you sit in the quiet, with no one else around. If you have discovered the privleges of such a place you are off to a good start. If you have not, do something good for yourself, find one. 

My life has been a journey filled with both triumphs and challenges. Just when I believed I had gained understanding from certain experiences, a new situation arose that left me searching for meaning once again. In the latter years, my journals have served as a memory of the past. I started journaling in 1995. I have quite a bit of information available for my assessment of the past. The journals serve as a great reminder of past events, good and not so good. As I grow older I am coming to realize how important it is to be able to go back in time to take a look at the road that lead you to where you are today. 

The empty church has been my safe place. It is a place where I share my thoughts, my problems, my prayers with God. It is also a place that I talk to myself quite often so I might try to clear the path to my divine source. I exchange the world's noise for the silence and peace of God's presence. Crossing the threshold, exchanging the noise of the world for the stillness of the sanctuary. It gets your attention. It makes you stop in time to embrace something that is not ordinary. It can be overwhelming in the first few seconds if you allow yourself to listen to the sound of silence. 

As I am sifting through my journals, I realize that it was in the silence I had been rescued from adversity, from the demands of daily life and the mental stress of just living day by day. For me this time allowed me to discern the still small voice within. It was a constant reminder of my not being alone in the world. Being near the tabernacle within the sanctuary reminded me of my Baptism, my iniation into the family of God. As memory holds, once I sat and embraced that holy silence, my heart began to beat slower, my breathing slowed down tremendously and a deep sense of relief washed over me. I was safe. Nothing that had brought me to the empty church was still weighing me down. It had been lifted and I found new strength to carry on. Hope came alive again. Courage had raised its head in defense of a spirit that had been torn and battered. These encounters in the empty church have changed me. I have left that space renewed, restored and refreshed time and time again. Each time I crossed the threshhold back into the world's noise, nothing had changed externally but internally everything was different. It was within my inner being that I encountered the divine. I surrendered my fears, my doubts and uncertainties to something greater than myself. I surrendered over and over again through my life's journey to sustain the passing of time.

Come journey with me. I yearn to tell my story. There is a great deal to share and I have the rest of my life to do so. I want to be a ray of hope in this world, I want to share my story in  order that you might be built up, that you might realize you are not alone. 

 

PEACE

Wanda