Travel Stories: My First Encounter with Mars Hill

It was September of 2010, and I strode down a street in Seattle under a monsoon-like rain (the first precipitation I had ever experienced in the city). I wore my hair braided into cute pigtails. Usually I dress to convey an image of confidence and power, but today was different, because I was not going to be wandering sketchy neighborhoods. I was headed to church. I wanted to look as cute, lost, and in need of free stuff as possible.

Mars Hill was my destination; I’d heard good things about them, and it was safe to say that the dress code would be relaxed. I’ve had way too many travel experiences where I was too intimidated by the Easter hats and three-piece suits to make it through the doorway.

Who needs feminine wiles when you can just be cute?

The past two weeks were rumbling around in the back of my head. I had been volunteering on a farm in rural Washington. The closest cell phone reception was a mile away, and the dial-up Internet was barely fast enough to run Gmail on its HTML setting. My hosts were Carl and Lorna: kind, passionate, knowledgeable, busy, flamingly liberal, and exuberant about life, nature, and their organic farm. My fellow workers were no less interesting, having volunteered everywhere from India to California. They loved food and social activism and ranting and singing, and we spent many hours in the blueberry fields and the kitchen, rubbing shoulders with each other’s worldviews. It had been a glorious two weeks of learning and cultural experience and broadening of my mind. Also, I had felt miserably alone.

Now I was back in Seattle for two days before heading to the next farm. I found Mars Hill, stilled my racing heart (I have major anxiety about walking into a new church), and sidled into the crowd in the foyer. I met a couple of friendly people, settled in for the service, enjoyed the sermon about Mary and Martha, and then listened as the pastor said that people up front to pray for anyone who wanted it. I casually thought that would be a good idea, so after the service, I headed in that direction.

As I waited for the “prayer woman” to be open, another one of the volunteers approached me and asked about praying for me. Upon my affirmative, he touched my arm encouragingly. “All right, what would you like me to pray about?”

I opened my mouth to tell him where I’d been, with a casual, “So please pray that I can be a light to the people I meet.” Instead, I began to bawl.

This completely took me off guard. I sobbed for a good five minutes before I could even choke out anything that was on my mind. The man waited patiently. When I finally was able to talk, I began babbling every prayer request I’d had for the past year. There were a lot. He listened. He prayed for me. He spoke some words of encouragement. Then he turned me over to the care of the woman I’d been headed for in the first place. She took me out to lunch for lentil soup at a little shop near the edge of the Pike Place Market.

By the time that was done, the sun had come out, pouring pure light onto the busker’s fair happening in the city. The woman and I said farewell and she gave my hands a squeeze before I returned to my travels, feeling a bit shaky, but ready to take on another two weeks of volunteering.

Travel reaches deep inside you and shakes you up. This is the reason you can’t travel to escape your problems. It makes you deal with your problems, often in a much more intense way than you would at home. Travel was a big part of my healing, and that day in Seattle was no exception.

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