Chapter Four
I hadn’t looked at the clock before I went to bed the night before, but it had to have been late, and I was not amused when someone thumped on my door at around nine in the morning.
“Go away,” I mumbled to my pillow, but the knocking persisted. “Go away!” I shouted.
Whether the visitor didn’t hear me or chose to ignore me, it became pretty obvious that I was going to hear knocking until I got out of bed and made it stop. I swung the door open, bleary-eyed, and encountered Stanley holding a plate of cookies.
“You are not a morning person,” Stanley observed.
“I didn’t know nine o’clock came twice a day,” I told him. “But I do like cookies.”
He pulled them back. “Those are a bribe.”
“A…bribe?”
“Yes. I want you to come to small-group tonight, at six in the church meeting room. If you do, I will bake you cookies tomorrow.” He pushed the plate back closer to me, close enough that I could smell warm chocolate chips.
“Cookies,” I repeated, wiping sleep crusties from my eyes. “But what makes you think I need bribing in order to come to small group?”
“I just want to make sure. I think you need to come, and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to guarantee you show up.”
By then I was totally mystified, wondering what kind of bizarre cult ritual they were going to do, but I figured that Stanley hadn’t steered me wrong yet. “Alright,” I agreed. “Small group for cookies. That’s the bargain.”
“Good. Now go back to sleep, son. You look terrible.”
“Thanks.” I closed the door behind me, but by then I was totally awake and I knew that my body wouldn’t shut back down to go to sleep again. I sat down with my notepad to put the finishing touches on a few of the album reviews I’d been meaning to get back to Danny.
An hour later, I was finished, and sat there tapping my pen on an empty page, wondering what to do next. I felt like I wanted to say something about what was happening to me, to write down a little bit about how God had invaded my life through the friends I’d made. When I looked at what had made the difference for me, living in community with those people was what had made the difference. I spent a few hours crafting an essay about that idea, treating it basically like an extended journal entry, then slid it inside the back cover of my notebook to come back to later.
I spent the rest of the morning reading more in the Psalms, then the afternoon on a long walk near the apartment. By the time I got back it was almost six, time that the small group was supposed to start. I hadn’t eaten yet, but I had misjudged the time and didn’t have time to eat. Truth be told, I also didn’t have the desire to eat another round of hot dogs in white bread. I hadn’t been grocery shopping since Jake and the others gave me all that money, and although I had thanked him for it and accepted it, on a deeper level I hadn’t really come to terms with the whole thing yet. I wasn’t comfortable enough to actually spend the money he had given me. I could watch it sit in my bank account, feeling a little bit better that there was some kind of cushion there in case my car needed repairs or my aunt decided to stop paying her rent, but I wouldn’t dream of using it to buy better food or even a few beanbags for my room – even though those were exactly the kind of things Jake had in mind when he gave it to me.
Thoughts like that were what reminded me that I was still badly broken, and that God still had an awful lot of work to do in me.
I swung by my room to pick up the Bible Stanley had given me and then climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. Upon pushing the door open, I realized that Stanley had not been lying. This really was going to be a small group. There were about ten chairs, already arranged in a circle, most of them occupied. I recognized Stanley and Jake; the rest of the faces were new to me.
“Right, let’s get started,” Stanley announced, as I took one of the empty seats. “This here is Eli. He’s new to the faith and I hope you’ll make him feel welcome.”
I nodded, feeling awkward with so many eyes on me.
Stanley didn’t let the moment dwell. “Right now we’re doing our study of Nehemiah. You might remember from last week that his big passion was to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall there. So what I want to know from you, as sort of an icebreaker question, is: what is a time in your life when you faced some kind of opposition?”
So this was why Stanley had bribed me. It was a discussion group. I was expected to share things about my life with strangers. My friends were one thing; they had shown me that I could trust them. But who were these people?
Before I knew it, it was my turn, and sixteen eyes were on me again while I fumbled for something to say. “One time there was this guy in the college dorm who played his radio too loudly while we were trying to sleep. That was opposition, I guess.”
“And how did you handle the situation?” Stanley asked patiently.
“Uh, well, it’s funny you should ask,” I said, trying to keep a straight face. “Someone took a trashcan from the bathroom, filled it up with water in the shower, leaned it against his door, and knocked. His room got flooded with fifty gallons of water.”
Shocked laughs escaped a few people, and some of the others just frowned. Jake had his hand over his mouth, turning red, trying not to guffaw out loud.
Undeterred, Stanley asked, “Did it work?”
“Oh yeah, it worked like a charm. Didn’t hear a peep out of him the rest of the year.”
Stanley pointed at me and told the others. “Make sure you listen to Eli, because we’re going to touch on that theme tonight. The way Nehemiah responded to opposition might surprise you in the same way that Eli’s answer did. We might have to recalibrate our ideas about what turning the other cheek actually involves.”
Now I was the shocked one, surprised that Stanley had found something worthwhile in my answer. But Stanley gave me a look, and somehow, I knew what he meant. “You snuck out of that one with humor,” he was saying. The next time I would be out of luck.
He made good on the unspoken promise, too, about fifteen minutes later. “This is the point, only halfway through Nehemiah’s book, that the wall is actually completed. Nehemiah is celebrating. So tell me, tell everyone, what’s something that you did that you were proud of and that you thought was worth celebrating.” His brown eyes swung to me immediately. “Eli, why don’t you go first.”
I didn’t want to go first; I didn’t want to answer at all, because nobody cared what I had done that I was proud of, and I especially didn’t want to go first because I had no immediate answer. “I graduated college,” I offered lamely.
“Did you celebrate?”
“Not exactly. Unless you count moving to Texas as a celebration.”
“What else?” Stanley was still looking at me. What was he doing? He knew I hadn’t done anything with my life. He had driven that point into me and it was one of the things that finally moved me to realize I needed God. So why was he making me say something that was going to embarrass me?
“I can’t think of any others right now,” I muttered.
“That’s okay,” Stanley said.
I stewed in anger as I heard the others talk about the things they had done, everything from winning a tennis championship to appearing on the national news. One of them had even saved a person’s life by doing CPR. Graduating college should have been an accomplishment, and I should have felt blessed considering some people never got the chance, but I had put forth minimal effort and earned mostly C’s. Graduation, in that context, didn’t seem quite an accomplishment.
After the session was over, the others had filed out the door, while Stanley and Jake lingered behind. I didn’t really want Jake around for the conversation, but I wanted to talk to Stanley sooner rather than later.
“Why did you embarrass me?” I demanded.
“That’s a nice Bible you have there,” he observed.
“Where’d you get it?”
I dropped it on the ground. “Thanks for it, but that’s not the point. You knew I wasn’t going to have an answer to the question about what I’d done that I was proud of. We’ve had that conversation. Why did you push me like that in front of everybody?”
“Because you needed a push.” He looked at me, calmly, and I felt very silly for being angry with him. “See, Eli, you have a self-esteem problem. That’s one of the ways you’re broken, so it’s one of the things God is going to fix. And what that means for you is that you don’t want to be seen as a failure, because you feel like a failure and you’re afraid that you might actually be one. You’re not, of course, but you’re not at the point where you know that in your heart yet.”
“That doesn’t explain tonight.”
“Yeah, Eli, it does. You should have told those people what you and I already knew, that you hadn’t done anything important with your life. You should have told them that realizing that was one of the things that drove you to faith. That would have been an awesome answer. But you were too worried about what they would think when they heard you hadn’t accomplished anything you were proud of. So you lied to them and to me. You ducked and ran instead of facing the truth. That’s the lesson you needed to learn.”
“Why not just tell me in private? Why make a fool of me in public like that?”
He laid his hand on my shoulder. “I didn’t make a fool of you. I told you, the real answer was not anything you should ever have been embarrassed about. You made a fool of yourself because you were worried about how the truth made you look. I could have told you in private, but who knows whether you’d believe me. I’m pretty sure you’ll remember the lesson now, though.”
We stood there looking at each other for a minute, and I finally dropped my head. “Sorry.”
“I’m sorry too, Eli. Maybe I pushed too hard. But I think that God is working in you, bringing your struggles to light so you can be healed of them. And I want to pray with you right now.”
I saw Jake looking at us, trying to figure out whether to stick around or leave, and I waved him over. We sat, and Stanley prayed for me. Maybe I should have focused on what he was saying, but I kept thinking about what he had told me, about honesty and all that, and I knew he was right. I had a glimpse, just for a moment, of the kind of person I could be if I was convinced of who I was, convinced that I was valuable, and I wanted that.
That night, I laid in bed, humming again the song I had written. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.” It sounded pretty, but he wasn’t really my shepherd yet, was he? He hadn’t gotten me to lie down next to still waters so I could rest, like the psalm talked about. But I got the sense that he was leading me there.
New Heart Church Page 23