I am excited to share with you my review of One Yellow Door: A Memoir of Love and Loss, Faith and Infidelity by my friend Rebecca de Saintonge. Rebecca, co-founder of LifeLines Press is an author, biographer, editor and mentor to new writers.
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“The contemplative enters into God to be created. What a terrifying concept, to willingly allow yourself to be created, re-created, by the God who is silent in the face of disintegration.” Rebecca de Saintonge begins One Yellow Door: A Memoir of Love and Loss, Faith and Infidelity with this powerful statement.
One Yellow Door is a memoir filled with love, loss, faith, tragedy, laughter. Rebecca reveals that life is often lived within the tension of paradox.
In One Yellow Door we discover how Rebecca coped after her husband Jack was diagnosed with Diffuse Cortical Lewy Body Disease (DLB). DLB is the second most common senile degenerative dementia after Alzheimer’s disease.
Diffuse Cortical Lewy Body Disease
Patients suffer repeated falls, fainting, slowness of movement, stiffness and tremor. This disease affects language, the ability to carry out simple actions, to judge distance and the ability to reason.
There is no cure for Lewy body disease and it usually ends in death, it often progresses more quickly than Alzheimer’s. “So now, my love, I know the worst. Your brain is shrinking inside your skull. You are going to disintegrate very slowly, mind and body.”
My father passed away in November of 2014 from complications of Alzheimer’s. Rebecca’s story resembled much of what my mother and sister experienced. They were my Dad’s caretakers for many years until it became physically and mentally too difficult and Dad was moved to the VA Home. As I read her memoir, I watched, felt, experienced her story.
New Space
Rebecca fought to thrive and survive within the new space that this debilitating disease placed both she and her husband in. “I was determined to live positively within our diminishing space, because diminishing it was.” Rebecca lived within the tension of this new space and the old space she desperately wanted to hold onto.
Just when her husband might make a comment that the old Jack would make he would also suffer from the inability to engage in the daily communication we all take for granted. “Now he sits in this straitjacket of silence, unable to think fast enough to join in. Unable, so often, even to find the words.”
Roller Coaster
Rebecca rode an emotional roller coaster. She wanted to give up and die yet her will to live was stronger. “Part of me wants us both to die. Yet it’s almost frightening how much I want to survive.” She marveled at her husband’s inner strength. “For me one of the most painful aspects of his suffering was the patience with which he bore it. It tore my heart out.”
She was brought to the point of emptiness and exhaustion. “Because I cannot bear it. Because I have no more to give.” She finally resolved that the only way to survive was to live on auto-pilot. “And now I must move into auto-pilot and love my broken man with all my power.”
New Understanding of the Divine
As she struggled to manage life after the diagnosis of this terrible disease she lamented. I think all of us do. I know I do. God seems to patiently listen. “You promised to be with us. You promised your peace, your underlying peace, in all circumstances. WHERE IS YOUR PEACE NOW, YOU BASTARD?”
Rebecca’s experience forced her to come to a new understanding of the Divine. She needed to find a new way to think about and comprehend the Divine. She desired to find new language, or even a wordless expression for the Divine.
Next Steps
Please do read One Yellow Door by Rebecca de Saintonge. I hope you discover something that resonates with your life, how you think about and experience God or how you live within the tension and paradox that life seems to throw at us. Enjoy One Yellow Door! I did!
Go Further
One Yellow Door: A memoir of love and loss, faith and infidelity by Rebecca de Saintonge
Pilgrimage of a Soul: Contemplative Spirituality for the Active Life by Phileena Heuertz
Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living by Shauna Niequist
Silence and the Spiritual Journey by Contemplative Outreach: The purpose of our historical lifetime is to provide us with space for the upward journey of evolution into vertical time and our assimilation of the eternal values that Christ brought into the world. This journey consists of everything from great touches of God (consolations) to the Dark Nights.
Lectio Divina Heart to Heart – Listening and Living with God by Contemplative Outreach: The ancient practice of praying the Scriptures is being rediscovered and renewed in our time. Known as Lectio Divina (Divine Reading), it is one of the great treasures of the Christian tradition of prayer.
The Gift of Life by Thomas Keating, Mary Anne Best, Susan Rush: This course will explore the gift of life in all its phases, even those of diminishment and death, as phrases of evolution and transformation in and through Christ. It is based on the recent DVD series with Fr. Thomas Keating, The Gift of Life: Death & Dying, Life & Living.
Sounds True has titles by teachers and authors such as Thomas Keating, Cynthia Bourgeault, James Finley, Richard Rohr, David Frenette, Parker Palmer , Eckhart Tolle , Michael Singer , Jon Kabat-Zinn , Marianne Williamson to name a few.
Contemplative Light offers courses on contemplative practices (Christian Meditation, Centering Prayer, The Examen, Lectio Divina, The Jesus Prayer), the Christian mystics (ancient and current) and spiritual writing. Peruse their wonderful offerings.
Prayer-Bracelet: Authentic Orthodox prayer ropes and bracelets are handmade by monks in the Orthodox monastaries reciting a prayer for every knot they tie. Peruse their prayer ropes and bracelets that are all handmade, provided by several orthodox churches around the globe.
