The Woman in the Wall

Field Note: Small Spaces and Holy Places

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

I was grounded once as a kid for something I am fairly certain was not entirely my fault. Sent to my room. Door closed. The world carrying on without me, just down the hall. I remember pressing my ear to the door and hearing the television, my siblings, ordinary life, all of it proceeding fine without my participation.

It felt like the end of everything.

It was not, of course. But I have never entirely forgotten that feeling.

Some seasons do not feel expansive.

They feel small.

A health scare that narrows your world. A family strain with no neat resolution. A job that feels more confining than life-giving. A calling that looks much quieter than the one you imagined.

We tend to think freedom means open doors, wide roads, and plenty of options.

But what if some of the holiest work of our lives happens in smaller spaces?

On the night of May 13, 1373, a thirty-year-old woman in Norwich, England, thought she was dying. A priest held a crucifix before her eyes. The room faded. What followed would shape the rest of her life.

She experienced sixteen visions of divine love. She called them “showings.”

We do not know her real name. History remembers her as Julian of Norwich, named for the church where she later lived.

And lived is an interesting word.

After recovering, Julian made a decision that sounds almost impossible to modern ears. She became an anchoress, choosing to live in a small room attached to the church wall. It was not imprisonment. It was a calling. Still, from the outside, it must have looked like the walls had closed in.

But here is what catches me.

The old word for that kind of place was anchorhold.

Yes, Julian was held within those walls. But over time, she also became an anchor for everyone outside them.

The same walls that limited her became the place from which she steadied others.

That will preach.

Julian was not hiding from the world. Her little room included a small window onto the street. Through it, people came with grief, questions, fear, and pain. She listened. She prayed. She counselled. Amid plague, uncertainty, and upheaval, she became a steady presence.

And from that small space came one of the most beautiful images in Christian history.

She described the whole universe as something as small as a hazelnut resting in God’s hand.

How does it survive?

Because God loves it.

That was not naïve optimism. This was a woman who knew suffering, uncertainty, and confinement. She simply became convinced that beneath all of it was something stronger still.

Most of us will never live in a stone room attached to a church.

But we all know something about constriction.

Maybe your world feels smaller than it used to. Maybe your options feel fewer. Maybe you are carrying a burden that has quietly built walls around your days.

Julian would not tell you to deny that reality.

But I think she might lean through her little window and remind you of this:

Being held is not the same as being trapped.

Faithfulness in a small space is still faithfulness.

And the God who holds a hazelnut-sized universe is more than capable of holding you.

More than 650 years later, her words still reach through that window.