After enjoying the wind in my face and the trees flashing past, we pulled over to the grass. He was beaming with delight. He handed me a bottle of water from the basket on the front of the bike.
“Wasn’t that fun?”
I nodded. “But you scared me a few times. I thought I was going to fall off.”
He shook his head. “Just follow me. All you have to do is pedal and I will do the rest. You hungry?”
My stomach growled. “I guess so.”
This time he pulled a sandwich from the basket. I bit into it and it was great. Fresh soft bread piled with chicken salad, lettuce and tomato.
“Can I have one?” A small quiet voice asked.
I looked down into the olive face of a young Asian boy. He was dressed simply in a navy blue T-shirt, shorts and beat up tennis shoes. Where had he come from? I looked around and noticed the other people who had been biking had stopped too, but they were tending to flats, hushing crying babies, tending to cuts and bruises from falls on the path.
I looked at God. “Can’t we help them?”
“Yes, we can.” He reached in the basket and pulled out another sandwich and a bottle of water. “What would you like?”
“Peanut butter and jelly.”
“Here you go.”
The little boy took a huge bite and chewed slowly. He sighed. “Hhmmmm …”
I felt a tug on my bike shorts. I looked down and there stood a smaller female version of the little boy. She giggled at me, her finger in her mouth. “Who is this?”
The little boy looked up at God. “Can I have one for my sister too?”
“Of course you can.” God handed him another bottle of water and a sandwich. The boy handed them off to his sister, who scampered away. The boy shook his head, very grown-up like and looked up at God.
“Thanks, Abba.”
God leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “You are welcome, Lee.”
“Me, too, please?” Another voice spoke from behind me.
I turned and saw a line of people. I swallowed my last bite of sandwich and looked at God. “This happen a lot?”
“Yes. Still want to help?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Come over here on the other side.” Before I knew it we had two lines of people on either side of our tandem bike. And to my amazement whatever the person asked for – I reached in and out it came. Water plus a chicken sandwich, tuna on wheat, pastrami with mustard, turkey rollups, and even a taco.
I do not know how long we did this but no one was turned away. Everyone got something. And something extra too. God spoke to each, and smoothed worried brows, and healed cuts. He even fixed flats. When the last person walked away, I looked in the basket and there was still one sandwich left.
“Hey, there’s still a sandwich here.”
“I know.” He reached in and grabbed it up. “It’s for you and me to split. I worked up an appetite, how about you?”
I laughed and he halved the sandwich between us. I collapsed on the ground. “Now that was fun.”
“If you ride with me, you can do more of that. Every day.”
I sobered quickly. “You mean every night, right?”
“No, Elizabeth, I mean every day. You will learn how. You have to keep riding with me though.”
Day Eleven
November 16
I woke up hopeful the next morning. Not entirely sure why, yet still the happiest I had been in a long while. It seemed helping people, even if only in my dreams, made me feel useful.
“Mabel, why do you work here?”
I helped her now to straighten my bed, change sheets, and check my toiletries and towels.
“I like helping people,” she said.
“But I wasn’t very appreciative or grateful that first week. In fact, I was rude and hard to take care of.” I really wanted to know why she would stick with a sour puss like me and continue to show me kindness.
“I don’t do it to be thanked or appreciated.” Mabel said. “I do it because it’s the right thing to do. You needed help. You just couldn’t see that I was helping you. You needed to be loved through all your pain. God gave me the ability to do that. So I have to use it.”
“So you think God gave you the ability to love the unlovable like me?”
“You are not unlovable! But yes, God gave me the gift of loving those who are hard to love—-I always try to look to their heart, to see where they have been, to walk an imaginary mile in their shoes. I read the history and get to know peoples’ stories. We are all walking-wounded in one way or another.”
“But isn’t that hard? Not everyone gets well. Not everyone wants to. Some people are just cruel; I mean deep down to their bones nasty.”
Mabel nodded in agreement. “Some days are harder than others and you are right, not everyone gets better, but God still calls us to love with agape love. You are my sister-in-Christ. You are my family.”
“Even if I spent thirty days here, and was nothing but a pain in your backside?” I asked again.
“Even if you fought me every day about eating or taking your meds or not getting dressed or called me names. I would continue to love you as best I could. I am not perfect though. Only one was perfect. Jesus.”
I nodded. Jesus was the only perfect one. As I wrote my adventure from last night in my journal, I thought about what Mabel had said. Agape love was translated often as unconditional love, the love that God pours on us and which we should shower on others. We are to try to love each other. It had seemed so simple before, when my family was whole. The love had poured out of me to them and family and friends. But I had lost my connection to the source. Mabel said God helped her. Could he help me? I wasn’t sure.
The morning session was hard. Doc Aimee asked me to talk about the night I tried to commit suicide. I only remembered so much and then nothing.
“I wanted the pain to stop. It was 2 a.m. and I sat staring at the pills in their little brown bottle on the table next to the near empty bottle of rum. The pain was still so intense. Gnawing through my bones. I’d tried shopping, eating, sleeping, sex, gambling, and now alcohol … the pain wouldn’t stop.”
I breathed in and out, twisting my hands in my lap. I remembered God showing up, but I couldn’t tell them that. God and I talked, but I couldn’t say that either.
“…so I took the pills and called 911.”
“Why did you call 911?” Dorothy asked.
I shrugged. “I changed my mind.”
“What changed your mind?” Richard was listening. My gaze locked with his. Had he tried to kill himself too? If he had, no one had said it aloud. I looked at the pain in his hazel eyes. It was a pain I recognized. He needed to hear the truth. Even if it sounded crazy, he needed to know I had not been alone.
“God asked me to call 911.” The rest of the group squirmed, but Richard’s gaze remained steady locked with mine. “God’s the only reason I am still alive.”
“Me too,” he whispered, “but it still hurts.”
I nodded, leaning forward and keeping my focus on him. “Hurts like every nerve is exposed and raw.”
“Yes,” he agreed whispering still.
“You have to hang on.”
“I’m trying. Will you put in a good word for me?”
“Of course, but Richard, God would love to hear from you himself.”
Richard nodded, solemn. “I’ll think about it.”
***
“So let’s talk about what you didn’t talk about in the session this morning. Take me back to 2 a.m. on Tuesday …”
She made a few notes, and then looked expectantly at me.
“Doc … I told you all I remember.” I looked over her shoulder, out the window, and watched the leaves swirl in the autumn breeze. Surely she would let this subject drop.
“I think there is at least a bit more. You admitted to Richard—albeit in front of the rest of us—that God was there. Tell me about God asking you to call 911.”
I looked into her kind eyes. So blue behind her dark rims, so intent on helping me face what I had no desire to face. Yet somehow the anger, or most of it had drained away in the ten days I had been here. Was it the meds? Was it the group sessions? Was it God’s nightly visits? Was it all of the above? I didn’t know.
Clearing my throat, I settled in my seat, pulling a pillow in front of me and wrapping my arms around it. I began. “The pain wouldn’t stop. The pills were on the table in front of me. The almost empty bottle of rum sat next to them. I had tried everything to escape the pain, to numb it, but nothing worked … then He was there …” I fell silent taking a deep breath and letting it out.
“Go on,” she said.
“I’d tried everything … except me … God said.” I slipped back into the scene playing in my memory as if it were happening again.
“Go away.” I peered into God’s caring face for but a moment before hiding my face behind my hands. “You shouldn’t see this, see me.”
“Let me help.”
I shook my head, the tears falling. “Too much is wrong. I am so broken. Do you have any idea what I’ve done the last six months? I can’t even stand myself. I’ve hurt everyone—my family, my friends, co-workers …”
“…not all…” he inserted.
“Almost all of them.” I popped the top off the pills. “The pain won’t stop. I simply cannot live like this anymore, so I will die and be with them.”
God smiled sadly and reached across the table to take my hand, but I pulled back and took the pills, filling my mouth. I swallowed them with the last bit of the rum and Coke. “There. It’s done.”
“Sweet child. You can choose this but I want to show you something …” God leaned close to me and breathed a whisper, a caress, into my face. My eyes flickered shut for a moment it seemed and then popped open. I stared wide-eyed into God’s face. Alert and clear-minded, I reached for my cell phone …”
Doc Aimee waited for me to continue, but I couldn’t.
“What did God show you?”
I shook my head, wrapping my arms around the pillow. “I don’t know. I can’t remember, even though I try.”
“You should ask Him.”
Dream 11
“Why can’t I remember any more of that night?”
What did God show me that made me call 911 and ask for help? Whatever it was had faded fast because as soon as the emergency people arrived, I was drunk and belligerent again.
In a life that was in ruins, God had shown me something to bring me back from the dead. Yet it was gone like the wind, unseen yet not unfelt. It felt like hope. But hope for what?
God sat beside me on the bench at the beach as people strolled by. No one noticed us.
“Why can’t I remember?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is you chose life.”
“I chose life because of what you showed me. I need that to hang on to, a reason to get better.”
“Hold on to me.” God held out his hand and I took it this time.
“I hope you know what you are doing.”
God chuckled. “Yes. I Do. Although I am often accused of not knowing.”
“So what do I do now? Can’t you just …” I snapped my fingers, “…make me well.”
He laughed out loud. “I could, but what would you learn?”
“I’m supposed to learn something?” My voice rising an octave.
“Yes, otherwise you keep repeating the same mistakes.”
Exasperated, I shook my head. “So tell me what to do.”
“Listen to Aimee. Be still. Heal. Talk. Listen. Make amends. Rest. Lean on me. Learn to love yourself. Learn to forgive. Be kind to yourself and to others. Take your meds. And never let go of me.”
I squeezed his hand. “I’m really scared.”
“I won’t leave you.”
“How long will this take?” God pulled me up and we walked along the pier out over the water. The waves crashed below, the gulls circled and screeched above. A warm breeze caressed my face and swirled my hair all over the place. And I held tight to His hand.
“As long as it takes. You are body, mind, heart and soul. You need to heal physically, mentally and spiritually.”
“Physically—resting, meds, and eating properly. Mentally – talking, listening to Aimee and participating in group. Spiritually – these nights with you.”
“Not a bad combo, right?”
“And the tandem bike?”
“Is good for all three. Ready for a ride?”
“Yes, please.”
Day Twelve
November 17
I was writing in my journal just after breakfast and before session when I heard the alarm go off. Not the fire alarm—“the patient in need of medical assistance alarm.” Opening my door, a new privilege, I stood in my doorway. Mabel ran by and told all of us to stay put.
Five people converged on the room down the hall. Moments later a gurney was rushed in and then wheeled out. Cindy-Lou sat on top of someone doing CPR chest compressions, but I couldn’t see who it was because of everyone around them.
They rushed down the hall and through the double doors into the medical rooms.
I glanced at the people standing in their doorways. Some were patients like me, others were nurses or other staff. “Does anyone know who that was?”
Mabel came walking back through the double doors. “Okay everybody, go back into your rooms, get dressed and I’ll come by in a few minutes to check on you.”
I reached out for Mabel’s hand and stopped her. She was trying to hurry past without speaking to me. “Who was that?”
“Elizabeth,” she patted my hand and looked into my eyes. “You need to pray.”
“For who, Mabel?”
She just shook her head and glanced back down the hall. “I can’t say.”
I went back to my table and tried to write again, about the adventures on the bike and the lessons I was learning about myself. Yet I kept peering out into the dreary day and wondering what was happening down the hall. Anxious, uncertain, I laid down my pen. Mabel had said to pray. Did I remember how?
“Sweet Jesus,” the words stuck in my dry throat. “Dearest God,” I tried again, hesitant yet determined. “I do not know who that was or what happened, but I know someone needs your help. Please help them. Please help the doctors and nurses. Please help us all. Amen.”
Somehow I managed to shower and dress, between moments spent in the doorway, looking down the hall for signs of life. Surely they would bring whoever that was back to their room. But before I knew it, it was time for group. I slowly walked down the opposite hallway towards our room. Stephen and Annie were already present, but there was no sign of Aimee.
“Do either of you know who that was this morning?”
“No,” Annie shook her head, her nimble fingers guiding the crochet needle. This was a new hobby for her.
Stephen slumped down in his chair and shook his head too.
“Have either of you seen Dorothy or Richard?”
Richard came in then—-hair still wet from a shower—-it was the first time I’d seen him disheveled. Part of me had feared it was him.
Then Aimee came in and turned to shut the door. She stood there a moment, facing away from us. The click of the door triggered something in me. It was like the sound of a gunshot. Definitive. Deadly. ”Where’s Dorothy?”
Aimee cleared her throat and walked to her chair. “I have some bad news.”
I felt horror creep up my throat and close it off. Tears welled in my eyes. Not Dorothy. Not wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly-or-anyone-live-in-Oz Dorothy.
“Dorothy died this morning. She l
eft a note. She said she wanted to stay in Oz.”
“Noooo …” I whispered. ”This can’t be right. Not again.”
“How?” Richard asked.
“Not important. If someone wants to die, they will always find a way.”
We each sat in various stages of shock and disbelief. Crying, thinking, and praying. Anger surfaced. I jumped up and began pacing back and forth. “I thought this was a safe place. Isn’t that what you are always telling us? That this is a safe place? How could this have happened?”
“Elizabeth.”
Her calm tone was that of a professional counselor dealing with a client. It ticked me off. Even though I sensed her grief, mine was running wild and handling it was the last thing I wanted to do.
“Let’s sit down and talk about this,” she said.
“What’s to talk about? Dorothy came here to get better, right? And now she’s dead. Can any of us get better? Or are we all doomed?”
“Please sit down, Elizabeth.”
Her weariness silenced me somehow. I sat. But anger rolled like waves off of me.
“First, yes, Dorothy did come here to get better. You are not Dorothy. None of you are Dorothy. Each of you have to walk the path before you to healing. Dorothy looked ahead and did not want to get better. She could not see better on the other side of her mountain.”
“She was happier in Oz,” I added.
“But Oz wasn’t real.”
“But why couldn’t she stay there? Why couldn’t you or her family leave her in Oz?”
Aimee raised a shaky hand to cover her eyes. I saw her take a breath, but then one tear trickled down her cheek, and dropped off her chin. “I don’t know.” She raised her head and looked at each of us. “I don’t know. Some days the evil in this world wins. Today is one of those days. I hate it. She was sweet, loving, giving, and joyful in her make-believe safe world. But being Dorothy from Kansas wasn’t normal, and pretending to be a fictitious character isn’t normal. So we push, talk, analyze, medicate, and treat until reality is seen and accepted.
30 Nights with God Page 5