The Steenkamps

• Michael

  To Come…

• Khyle

  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
  My name is Khyle Steenkamp,

  For much of my life, I had the feeling that there was something I was meant to understand, something beyond what I could see or comprehend. Even in the darkest periods of my life, I knew I had to keep going. I could not have explained why, only that there was a purpose in being here, something in each of us that reached beyond what we can see and know. I did not yet know how to believe in God, though I longed to. I think I had mistaken that longing for a search for understanding, when it was Him I was searching for all along.

  I had always been drawn to the beauty of creation. I could spend hours observing the natural world, trying to understand its order and the reason for its existence. I sought answers in philosophy and in the many explanations people had given for the world and our place within it. Yet I could never quite reach the end of those questions. I could see beauty, but I did not know its source. I could see how deeply people could love one another, and how deeply they could wound one another, but I did not understand why we seemed to carry both within ourselves. I had spent so much time trying to understand the world around me that I had scarcely begun to understand the human heart.

  I remember once coming across Holy Rosary Cathedral on one of my afternoon strolls. I went inside and found myself among one of their Byzantine icons. Watching all kinds of people coming forward to light their candles. I remember weeping, though I did not think much of the experience at the time. I would return there later in the autumn for my grandmother’s funeral. My experience of her passing dawned during one of the darkest winters of my life, a winter in which so much of what I had attempted to understand about the world seemed to fade away.

  I recall the cold, the grief, and the feeling that I had been emptied of everything I once relied upon. My thoughts and judgements would race until I could no longer make sense of them. I began spending long hours in the darkness visiting and reading Scriptures. It was there that I began reading Ecclesiastes. Its words about there being a time for everything gave me a consolation I could not quite find elsewhere. After discovering the Saints of our Church, I began to find rest in listening to the lives they led. In my grieving, I would return to the Psalms, especially Psalm 50. I hadn’t read scriptures before, and I did not understand all that I was reading, however I found myself returning to their words and the peace they brought forth.

  I first came to Saint George, when I had just received my driver’s licence. I remember waking up early in the morning, I began driving alone on our slippery winter roads for the first time, wearing the clothing that I had laid out the night before. I remember arriving to the Church while it was still dark out. The parking lot was empty. The windows were covered in frost, and the fragrance of incense met me as I entered through the entrance. I remember an elderly man named Curly greeting as I walked through the entrance. Matins hadn’t begun yet. We exchanged very few words. I never saw him again, but I have kept that first encounter with me.

  I continued to attend the services the Church offered. I remember the mornings when Fr. and I would arrive around the same time, and he would let me into the Church early. I would remain there quietly, before the icons. The mornings were dark, and the Church was still. I remember looking at the faces of the Saints written on the walls, and knowing that I had returned home. I had spent so much of my life searching for something I could not name. Here were the lives of those who had found theirs in Christ. They were not distant figures belonging to another age. The Saints were present in the life of the Church, and I was beginning to understand that I, too, was being brought into something much greater than myself.

  The writings of the Saints became very dear to me. I found in them an understanding of the human person that I had not encountered elsewhere. Their words on repentance, humility, and the importance of withholding our judgement began to change the way I saw life. I had always felt that there was something wrong in abiding in and being guided on my own woeful judgements, though I could not have fully comprehended the extent as to why. I began to understand that I had my heart to attend to, and that learning to love another person required a kind of patience and mercy that I could not give without first learning to receive it from God. The Saints did not pretend that we were free from weakness, nor did they overlook the suffering that follows us through life. They understood how easily the heart becomes troubled, how we wound ourselves and one another, and how much of our lives can be spent serving things that cannot give us life. The Saints also knew the mercy of God.

  I had spent so much of my life trying to understand what it meant to be human. In the Saints, I began to see it lived. Their lives drew me towards something I had longed for without knowing how to approach it. I began to understand that the things I had once considered separate from one another, suffering, beauty, love, repentance, and the longing for something eternal, were all bound together in the life of Christ.

  As I drew nearer to Christ, He drew me nearer to His people. I began to understand family in a way I had never known before. I remember my first Sunday attending Matins and the Divine Liturgy. It was the morning after Michael, my now-husband, Deanna and Natalie, my now-godsisters, and my godfather Jamie were baptized, and my godmother Gerlie was Chrismated. I had come to know Christ, but I was also beginning to know what it meant to belong. The faith was no longer something I encountered only in the services, the icons, or the words of the Church. I began to see it in the people beside me, in the lives they were living, and in the love that had brought us together. In drawing nearer to Christ, I had also been given a family with whom to walk towards Him.

  I remember how grateful I was for the life I was beginning to find in Him. I was trying, in the ways I knew how, to love Him in return. So when Fr. approached me about being received into the Church and marrying within it, I did not feel that I was beginning something entirely new. It was the natural unfolding of a life that had already begun to open before me. I was not yet aware of all that this life would ask of me, but I knew that I wanted to follow where it led.

  I have not ceased to struggle, nor have I come to understand everything that has happened in my life. There are still things I find difficult, things I must repent of, and things I have yet to learn. But I no longer look upon my life as something I must make sense of entirely on my own. I have come to understand that the heart can be wounded in ways that reach much deeper than we know, and that we cannot always mend ourselves by understanding how we came to be broken. We need Christ. We need His mercy, and we need one another. I am learning that the work of becoming whole is not finished in a single moment, but continues throughout our lives.

  I am still empty in some sense, but it is no longer the emptiness I once knew. There is still room in me that needs filling, still much that needs to be healed and brought before God. But I am learning to receive life rather than constantly trying to explain it, to love more sincerely, and to recognize Christ in the people around me. Even in the moments when life seems out of place, I have come to trust that the Lord is at work, bringing things together in ways I cannot always see.

  I still sometimes think of those winter mornings, arriving at the Church while the windows were still covered in frost. I could not have known then all that would come of those mornings, or how much of my life would grow out of them. I only knew that I wanted to be there, and carry it with me wherever I sojourned in this world. I had spent so many years searching for a reason to live, for a way to understand suffering, and for a love that could endure beyond the things that so often fail us. I did not realize that Christ had been carrying me long before I knew how to recognize Him.

  My life did not become free of sorrow when I entered the Church. Rather, I began to understand that sorrow was not the whole of life, and that even in our fallen and wounded condition, we are not beyond the reach of God’s love. What I had been searching for was not an explanation that would make every sorrow understandable. It was Christ Himself. And in finding Him, I found a life, a family, and a home that I am still learning to receive.

  With love in Christ,
  Khyle