Coin in the Basket

The Felonist descends into a fierce stretch of spiritual wrestling, filling her journal with pages from Julian of Norwich, Bonhoeffer, Rohr, the catechism, and every scrap of wisdom she can scrape from the silence. She questions forgiveness, marriage, self recrimination, and the wreckage she has caused. She wonders whether suffering is love, whether she must carry everything, whether she deserves anything at all. Shame, despair, and exhaustion stalk her through the dorms, the chapel, the law library, horticulture, and the endless snow. She tries to hear God. She tries to forgive herself. She tries to understand why she feels abandoned. Letters arrive. Packages arrive. Women unravel. Bill pulls away. Grace grows distant. She dreams of Ireland. She rereads Bonhoeffer until her head throbs. She copies Julian’s promise that all shall be well, even when she cannot feel it. She fights the belief that she is evil, worthless, unlovable. She shovels and shovels and shovels, all while crying. She prays for direction, for mercy, for a way through the bankruptcy, the collapsing marriage, the future she cannot yet see. And then, in the middle of the grief and the static and the spiritual noise, one line breaks through: when you’ve hit rock bottom, your very next breath is a coin in the basket. Coin in the Basket captures a woman clinging to faith, discipline, and the smallest acts of survival as she tries to trust that even in the darkest stretch, all manner of things may still be well.