Vachon Imagined

A friend of mine in college was Catholic.

She had incense in her dorm room, which instantly made her more interesting to me. I was in my own phase at the time—patchouli, thrift-store layers, and a general appreciation for anything that produced enough incense to make it feel like someone was summoning either enlightenment or a medieval monk.

I didn’t really care which one showed up. I was just hoping someone had snacks.

She was devout in a way I respected. She actually knew Catholicism. Meanwhile, I had a Christian upbringing that basically gave me two settings: heaven and hell. Efficient. Binary. Easy to remember. One I wanted. One I definitely did not. End of theology.

Then she started talking about purgatory.

This was fascinating to me.

Because “purgatory” sounded like something between being spiritually grounded and emotionally stuck in airport security with no gate number, while a TSA agent questioned whether your water bottle was really empty enough.

As a recovering Christian, I had questions. Mainly: why add a third option? We already had two that worked fine.

Now, I’m not a Catholic priest, so if you want a precise doctrinal explanation, you may need to consult literally anyone more qualified than me. I usually go to my husband when I need a biblical reference, which is its own kind of modern theology.

But here’s what I understood from her—and from life.

Purgatory is the place where you’re stuck between where you are and where you think you should be.

And once you’ve actually been there, you stop debating it.

You stop philosophizing about it.

You stop confidently explaining it at parties like you’ve transcended it.

Because you’ve lived it.

It’s the job you don’t want, the relationship that feels heavy, the season of life that does not match your internal vision board. It’s everything in you saying this is not it, while life calmly responds, noted.

And the uncomfortable truth is—it doesn’t really matter how long you stay there. Time has its own way of doing what it wants. Eventually something gives. Not because the situation changes, but because you do.

At some point, you stop negotiating with reality.

You put your hands up internally and think: Fine. This is where I am.

And that is where everything starts to shift.

Not because life improves immediately, but because resistance stops taking up all the space.

You begin to see instead of argue. You start to notice instead of fight. And sometimes—very reluctantly—you even learn from it.

This is where something quietly changes in a person.

Not perfection.

Not escape.

But acceptance.

What some traditions might call: not my will, but his or what is.

And from there, you walk through life differently.

Not weaker.

Strangely, stronger.

Like something in you stopped panicking and started participating.

The timid sheep doesn’t exactly become a lion overnight—but something in the posture changes. The footing steadies.

And you realize something else:

Nobody gets a free pass out of purgatory.

No one.

We just eventually stop arguing with it.