Climbing the Steps of Death
Most of life’s great moments are unplanned.
I wasn’t planning on going to Rome. Maybe one day, when I retired.
I definitely wasn’t planning to go there by myself.
And I certainly didn’t plan on climbing stone stairs on my knees.
Yet there I was—on the Scala Sancta: the stairs Jesus climbed to be condemned to die.
The rules are simple and severe: you must climb on your knees. There are 28 steps, and the pain is real. Nothing compared to what Christ endured—but painful nonetheless. As I reflected on that pain, I noticed a strange Godwink right in front of me.
The person next to me was wearing shoes with a skull and crossbones.
And suddenly, my thoughts turned to the word death—and its many meanings.
I had gone to Rome because my life felt completely out of control. I couldn’t connect the dots in real estate sales the way I once had. At breakfast, my son casually told me he had met Mommy’s new boyfriend… and that it was someone I knew.
The life I had known had died.
More stairs. More pain.
Every door I tried to open felt closed. It felt like God was calling me in an entirely new direction. And there is no better place on earth to reflect on God’s calling than Rome. No better time to think about doors than while literally walking through the Holy Ones in Rome.
More stairs. More pain.
I thought about the first Holy Door I had entered. It was breathtaking—overflowing with history and artifacts. Yet my mind fixated on something unexpected: the shirt worn by the person directly in front of me.
It read:
“I’m sorry, the lifestyle you ordered is not available right now.”
Classic.
More stairs. More pain.
Then another thought crept in:
This hurts. These stairs are taking forever.
Two steps left.
And that’s when it hit me.
All of this pain…
was elevating me.
This pain had a purpose.
It wasn’t meaningless.
It was creating something new, a new life.
