Norfolk

Norfolk. Don't pronounce the "l". It'll sound like you're cursing, but it's ok with the Englishmen.

I went to county Norfolk this weekend. I had the abrupt opportunity to take Monday off, and by golly I took it. I had a lovely trip planned out for Bath, Cardiff, and Wales. It fell through. Friday, the day before I was supposed to leave, I booked a hostel in Norfolk where I had original thought about going but rejected because I didn't understand where the hostel was or how to get to it. More on that later. Still, I was happy to get away. Because there's not really much to do in Norfolk, especially the area I was going to, I was going with a firm determination to do nothing but read, write, and spend a lot of time thinking about everything. Woke up a little later on Saturday, wrote off a few emails, got ready and packed and I was off.

Let me just say that on Friday night, I had the highest esteem for the British transportation system. By Saturday evening, it had fallen far from my graces. Apparently I need to start taking hiking boots, my map of Britian, and a compass on my relaxed weekend jaunts.

Because the ticket man couldn't find the station that the online itenerary told me existed, my ticket ended up costing me 15 pounds more than expected. Ouch. I had to go through London, which was unlucky, though I did get to see the London Eye and Big Ben briefly from my window. I will admit, I do love the train stations in London. The expense was the only disasterous thing about my train ride. I arrived in King's Lynn at 420, right on schedule (I left at 11). I wandered around King's Lynn for a bit, picked up When Harry Met Sally at a sale at HMV (that is where my weakness lies. I am redeveloping my distaste for shopping, but movies will always get me), and went to the bus station to hop on over to Burnham Deepdale, where my hostel was. No such luck. The only bus from King's Lynn to Burnham Deepdale had left at 420, the exact moment I had arrived in town. I tried to ring the hostel; no luck. Instead, I hopped on a bus to Hunstanton, about 15 miles further toward my goal. 5 minutes into the journey, the bus breaks down. Fortunately, we get a replacement bus speedily. I phone the hostel again, this time getting a person. They suggest that once I get to Hunstanton there may be a bus at 725 or I should be able to get a taxi. The bus runs only in the summer. I think July qualifies as the summer. When we finally arrive at Hunstanton, the view is breathtaking. The sun is about half way down the horizon over the sea. It's beautiful. It's also a bit touristy, there were loads of people about, and I'm stressed about the fact that I'm still 10 miles from my goal and I saw no taxis at the bus station. I go back to the station around 710. No bus comes. I wander around, looking for the taxis that are supposed to be hanging around the station. No luck. Looking back, the reasonable thing to do would have been to go into a hotel and asked if they could ring a taxi for me. At this point, unable to find a taxi and believing they all must have gone home for the night and feeling a little stressed about the amount of money I've had to pay for transportation for this trip, I do the irrational thing. I decide to walk it.

Three hours later...

It was not a fun walk. It was stupid, really. Obviously, the thing to do was to go to a hotel and have them order me a taxi. No person in their right mind walks for three hours to get to their hostel in the middle of nowhere. But still, even though those three hours were at some points really very awful, I don't think I would have done it any differently.

I wanted to go to Norfolk because I read about it in a book. Over the past week or so I've been reading Never Let Me Go because it's been jumping off the shelf at me wherever I go, bookstores, libraries. I thought I would finally give it a try. It's an excellent read. In it, the narrator refers to a joke she and her friends have going on about Norfolk being the "lost corner" of England and how the joke develops into an idea that anything anyone every loses in England somehow ends up in Norfolk. I was walking along the marshlands on Sunday morning and there were quite a few boats moored upon the grass, there for who knows how long, and I almost shivered when I thought that these abandoned boats had once been lost at sea, and those people that they held were still wandering around Norfolk as well. I suppose the strange thing is, though maybe it shouldn't be strange because I came to Norfolk with this purpose, but I did find something I had lost, or at least misplaced.

I found my lost faith. Going to Norfolk was one of the most spiritual experiences I've had in a while. And while it was at sometimes wretched and sometimes incredibly painful, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I came to think of that three hour walk as my road to Damascus, probably because it's the only famous walk in the Bible, but also because of the intense experience it turned out to be. It was during this weekend, when I have never felt so alone in my life, when I've never been surrounded by such devestating and bleak beauty in nature before, that God showed me He never leaves. And it was a scary experience when the next day I sat on a little hill surrounded by fields and cried because I felt like He had left me too, but the beauty was when I just told Him I wanted to come home to Him. And then there was on the train back, when reading C. S. Lewis' the Problem of Pain, that my conception of God's love was so altered that I felt like I was plunging into new depths. I went to Norfolk, perhaps a little reluctantly, because I knew the weekend was going to be a lot of pain mixed with healing, but I am so pleased that my plans for Bath and Wales fell through. I don't know. Even looking back now, I wondered if that book kept catching my eye just so I would want to go to Norfolk, just so I could meet with God.

I'm scared. I know the way that spiritual experiences often go. They usually jump start your faith for a while, and then the effects get dimished by the cares in your life. I'm scared that will happen to me again, as it's happened before. I'm afraid that this draining 12-hour day job will sap my enthusiasm, that the struggle I have with the things I've lost but didn't find in Norfolk will make me despair, but I know what my life is right now. I am the seed that's been cast among the weeds, and the cares of life are distracting me. Knowing that alone is going to help. This is something different than your typical post conference or concert or missions trip glow. This experience had some sort of revelation that's unique for me. I want that revelation to be life changing. I need it to be.