At the end of our last journey, we arrived at a question we found no answer to. When priorities crowd together, which one comes first? I said that day that I would look for the answer not in my head, but in the lives of people, in the stories whose owners paid the price of a wrong ordering without noticing.

And the first story that stopped me was the story of Faith.

I did not know where to begin Faith's tale, not because the story is obscure, but because it hurts. Some stories do not frighten us because they are hard to understand, but because they are like a thin thread that snaps in your hands if you pull it too hard.

I wrote her name at the top of the page.

Faith.

I paused at the name for a long time. There was something in it of trust, of leaning on another, of the belief we place in a hand we think will hold us. But her story was not a story of faith kept. It was a story of threads that began to snap, one after another.

I did not want to write about her the way people write about the mistakes of others. I do not want to say to the reader, look what this girl did, nor to put on the robe of the judge and hand out verdicts from afar. For when a person hears a story after its ending, he thinks the right path was clear from the very beginning.

But life does not always hand us the story complete.

Faith began her story in high school. A passing glance, a small message, a wait at the door of the school, and simple words that grew inside her more than they should have. She was at an age where a person does not always know the difference between the one who truly loves him, and the one who only makes him feel that he matters.

When her father refused that young man, she did not understand the refusal the way he did. He perhaps saw it as danger, and she saw it as cruelty. He perhaps feared for her from a road he did not trust, and she felt he was standing between her and her life.

In that moment, the first thread snapped.

After her father's refusal, Faith no longer heard any voice around her. Her mother tried to talk to her, her sister tried to calm her, and a female relative said to her gently, take your time, Faith, do not burn everything for the sake of a single moment.

But in those days Faith was not looking for someone to wake her, but for someone to believe her anger. And when a person is angry, he does not always love the one who opens the window for him, but the one who sits with him in the dark room and tells him, you are right.

And that young man did exactly this.

He began to call more, to message more, and to repeat to her that her family did not understand her, that love needs courage, and that people would not let them live as they wished. And little by little, there was no longer a wide space in Faith's mind for the rest of the voices. There was one voice, growing until it covered everything.

She did not see that she was being pushed toward the decision. She thought she was choosing.

Then the decision came.

Faith ran away with him.

She left her family's home, and left behind her many doors open onto pain. She did not carry much with her, perhaps some clothes, perhaps a phone, perhaps a promise she had heard from him more than once, and perhaps she carried, more than all of that, a single idea, I will prove to them that I was right.

But life is not always concerned with what we want to prove to others.

They married after that, and in the first years everything seemed to move along the path she had imagined. He treated her with respect, spoke to her kindly, and tried to prove to her that she had not erred when she chose him. And perhaps she, deep inside, needed this greatly. She needed a single proof to calm her heart whenever she remembered her father's face, and the door she had walked out of.

But beginnings know how to make themselves beautiful.

Faith's husband faced problems at his work. A late salary, a dispute with the manager, tension at home, then dismissal from the job. He found other work after a while, and Faith thought the cloud had passed, but something in him had changed. He became more short-tempered and less patient, as if everything provoked him, her voice, her question, a late meal, even her silence at times disturbed him.

He began to smoke heavily, then other things entered the house. A strange smell, red eyes, a mood that shifted quickly, frequent going out, late returns, and unintelligible talk.

She watched him change before her, but she did not want to believe that the person she had defied the world for could become the very world she feared.

And little by little, another thread began to loosen.

At first, the cruelty was words. An insult here, a blame there, then words were no longer enough for him.

He began to raise his hand against her.

And something breaks inside a woman when the blow comes from the hand she thought would protect her. The pain is not in the body alone, the body hurts then quiets, but the inside keeps asking, how did love become fear? How did the home become a place where I feel out my steps before I speak?

And with each time he was cruel to her, Faith lost a new thread, the thread of dignity, the thread of safety, the thread of trust in her judgment of people, and perhaps most dangerous of all, the thread of return to herself.

Through those years, Faith did not cut off from her mother completely. She saw her in secret from her father, and you know a mother's heart. She may be angry, she may be hurt, but she does not forget the road to her daughter.

But Faith's home was no longer what it had been. It was turning, little by little, into a small hell, screaming in the night, quarrels over trivial things, doors slamming hard, and cutting words falling upon the hearts of those in the house.

And the greater problem was that all of this was happening before the eyes of her three children.

Her eldest child was a girl who had grown up before her time. She would watch her mother's face after every fight, and when her father was absent from the house, she would come close to her and say, divorce him, Mother, and be done with it.

A small sentence from the mouth of a child, but it was heavier than whole years.

Faith would look at her and not know what to answer. How could she explain to her that leaving the hell sometimes needs a door she does not own? She held no diploma, and she held no profession. She had left school since high school, and on that day she did not know that some papers we do not need on the day of joy, but on the day life closes in on us.

The questions stood before her like a wall.

What will I do? How will I feed my children? Where will I go? And what will I say to my father?

And so she stayed. Not because she did not see the fire, but because she could not see the door.

Faith chose to endure until her children grew up. She would tell herself, when they grow, something will change. She kept postponing her pain, postponing her decision, postponing her health, and every day she would say, not now.

But the years do not pass over the body the way they pass over a wall. Fear has weight, silence has weight, and the nights in which a woman sleeps with her heart clenched do not pass without a trace.

The eldest daughter grew up, and when she found work, Faith felt something like light. Perhaps she said inside herself, here is the thread returning.

But the first salary that girl carried did not go to a new dress, nor to a small gift. It went to the doctors, to the tests, to the hospitals.

Faith's health had deteriorated greatly, then the diagnosis came.

Stage three cancer.

Her eldest daughter fought alongside her. She would accompany her to the hospital, hold her hand along the way, keep track of the medicine schedule, gather the money, and hide her fear from her younger siblings. And perhaps she felt, in many moments, that the roles had reversed. She was no longer only a daughter, she had become a shoulder, she had become a small mother to her mother.

But Faith's body had carried much. It carried the fear, carried the beating, carried the silence, carried the regret, carried the children, and carried the idea of staying until they grew. And when they grew a little, the body had come too late for rescue.

Faith's last thread snapped.

This time the thread was not between her and her father, nor between her and her husband, nor between her and her health.

This time the thread was between her and life itself.

Her body could no longer bear any more.

Faith departed, and left behind a weary home, and children who had seen more than they should, and a mother and father whose hearts were shattered at the parting from their daughter.

She departed and left for us too a painful question.

How many threads must snap before we understand that love alone is not enough to be the first priority?

The Journey's Question

Take a small sheet of paper, then write three threads you do not want to snap from you no matter how much you love, no matter how angry you become, and no matter how much you feel that a single person has become the whole world.

It may be a thread with your parents.

It may be the thread of your health.

It may be the thread of your studies or your profession.

It may be the thread of your dignity.

It may be the thread of your relationship with God.

Then look at these threads calmly, and ask yourself, do I truly care for them, or do I treat them as if they will stay with me no matter how much I neglect them?

Remember: this is not my journey alone... it is ours.