Sharing Jesus (Seeing Jesus Book 3)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “A lady with a red purse,” Kayla said.

  “Umhmm,” Jason confirmed.

  They entered through the automatic sliding door, the light inside the store just beginning to shine out onto the pavement of the sidewalk, as night took over the town. Neither of them had ever been so nervous and excited about going to the drug store.

  Without further instructions, they began to search the aisles for a woman with a red purse, walking across the front of the store, looking up each row. There was no woman in sight. A man with a little girl was looking at the chips in the snack aisle, and a pair of teenage boys were teasing each other about something in the skincare aisle, but there was no woman, either with or without a red purse.

  Jason led the way down the cosmetic aisle to the rear of the store, expecting to find the woman waiting at the pharmacy. But there was no one there, except an elderly gentleman waiting in one of the chairs next to the counter.

  Kayla and Jason stopped and looked down the nearest aisle. The man and his daughter were settling on some dip to go with the chips.

  “I feel like we should ask them,” Kayla said.

  Jason looked skeptical. “I didn’t hear him say anything about that.”

  Kayla just gave a half shrug. “How can it hurt?”

  Jason was thinking about embarrassment and awkwardness, but conceded that neither was truly painful. He also continued to look for evidence that the woman they were seeking had entered the store after them. It did seem possible for Jesus to leave that detail out of his directions, as a sort of test.

  Kayla led the way, much less shy about approaching strangers than Jason. When he saw the slight sparkle that Kayla inspired in both of the people she approached, Jason knew why she was so bold. People generally want to talk to pretty girls, before they want to talk to strange men. That was how he formulated it anyway.

  “Excuse me, we were told to look for a woman with a red purse. Would you know anything about that?” Kayla said.

  Jason was immediately critical of that formulation, which sounded to him like they were on a secret mission and that “woman with the red purse” was their code phrase. But the look on the faces of the man and his daughter silenced any criticism Jason was considering.

  The man, about thirty-five years old, had dark olive skin and black hair, with dark brown eyes. He was shorter than Jason and somewhat stout. His daughter had large brown eyes, curly black hair and wore a frilly pink dress.

  “My mommy always carries a red purse,” said the little girl.

  Instantly, Jason felt that he knew something about the little girl’s mother. But he hesitated, because, if he was wrong, it would be extremely awkward.

  “I’m Kayla,” said the instigator of this conversation, extending her hand to the man.

  “I’m Eduardo,” he said, with just a slight hint of an accent. “This is Isabella.”

  The way Eduardo sighed after making these introductions, hinted that Jason was right in what he thought he learned about them, so he took the chance.

  “Jesus told us to come in here and ask about the woman with the red purse,” Jason said. “Is she sick?”

  All three sets of eyes swung toward Jason, including Kayla, who simultaneously had to resist the urge to duck, when a thought zoomed into her head—a thought that Jason was right. The mother was, in fact, in the hospital.

  Before Eduardo could speak, Kayla added. “She’s in the hospital, isn’t she?”

  Father and daughter stared with open mouths, like matching statues. Finally, Eduardo nodded. “Do I know you?”

  Isabella grabbed her father’s hand and tugged on it. “Jesus told them, Papa. He’s going to heal mommy.”

  A chill ran up Jason’s and Kayla’s spines, when they both realized that this was true. Kayla just nodded, her eyes the widest of the whole group.

  Jason spoke up. “Yes, I think he is going to heal her. In fact, I think he’s going to her hospital room right now to do it.” By this point, his knees were growing weak, his credulity acting like a drug. Even as he spoke the words that popped into his head, Jason was asking himself, “Can this be real?”

  Eduardo, who had already done the adult thing once, editing out part of what Kayla and Jason said, in order to make sense of it, now yielded to Isabella’s child-like faith. “He’s going there right now?”

  To be clear, neither Kayla nor Jason knew any more certainly than Eduardo did, that Jesus was going to his wife’s side. But they had each spent the day seeing and hearing Jesus, so they were more inclined than usual to believe it might be true.

  “That’s what I believe Jesus is saying,” Kayla said, as if she had heard the same promise that Jason had blurted.

  Eduardo shoved the chips and dip into the closest available space on the wire rack and turned to Isabella. “Let’s go back and see your mother.”

  As the man and his daughter turned toward the door, not even bothering to say “goodbye” or “thank you,” Jason wanted something more. He took several quick strides and caught up with Eduardo.

  “Let me give you my phone number, so you can call us and tell us how she is.”

  Eduardo stopped and looked down at the floor, before rolling his eyes at himself. “Sorry. I got excited and didn’t even thank you.”

  Jason introduced himself and gave Eduardo his number, which the latter tapped into his phone with shaking hands. Jason patted him on the back and gave Isabella a little wave. Kayla had joined them again and she squatted down to get a hug from the little girl, who must have been about five years old.

  “Let us know what happens,” Kayla said to Eduardo, as he and Isabella headed for the door.

  Feeling a bit like parents sending their kids out into the world, Kayla and Jason stood for several elevated heartbeats and watched the father and daughter step through the automatic sliding doors, engulfed by the night, to be replaced by a reflection of the interior of the store.

  “So that was a treasure hunt,” Kayla said.

  They both heard Jesus’s audible voice. “Pretty fun, huh?”

  They laughed and shook their heads at the limping irony in the word “fun.”

  “Will they call us? Did the mother get healed?” Jason led the way toward the door.

  Kayla stopped him, and gestured toward one of the aisles.

  Jesus answered those questions. “Whether he calls, is up to him, and I won’t promise you that. But I did go to her room and heal her.”

  Jason followed Kayla on an impromptu shopping trip. Without thinking about the implications, he said to Jesus, “So you went while you were invisible to us.”

  Even as Jesus chuckled in reply, disembodied laughter trailing them into the bathroom supplies aisle, Jason realized how silly that connection was. He was just glad none of his professors or classmates had heard that childish conclusion.

  The thought about school apparently awoke a conversation that Jesus had been saving. “Speaking of school, I wanted to talk to you about that hermeneutics paper.”

  And, as Kayla compared prices and quantities of toilet paper, Jesus visited some of the key points in Jason’s final paper, regarding interpreting texts, particularly the Bible. Then he offered a single insight that changed everything for Jason.

  “Wow, I never thought of that,” he said, when Jesus had finished. “But, isn’t this cheating, I mean you giving me help on a final paper?”

  Jesus just laughed.

  Kayla interjected something. “You do know that you’re speaking back to him out loud, don’t you?” A twelve-pack of toilet paper propped up her smiling chin, as she said this.

  On the way to the checkout and out to the car, Jason practiced conversing with Jesus without speaking aloud. It began to remind him of the dialogs he rehearsed in his head, when writing a story. The key difference being, the way one end of this conversation seemed to take no effort on his part. It was also significant that Kayla was hearing the same things he was.

  They had just arrived home, stepping out of
the car into the dewy night, when Jason’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out without any particular expectations about who might be calling him. His mind had been carried away with the implications of Jesus’s help on his paper, cheating or not.

  “Hello.”

  “Jason, this is Eduardo.” His voice was high pitched and breathless. “It’s true. My Lucy is all better. It’s a miracle. And she said she saw Jesus walk into her room, just about fifteen minutes ago, right when we were talking.”

  Jason had stopped walking when he reached the sidewalk. They had to park on the street, since it was late, and all the parking spaces were full. Kayla, still lugging the toilet paper, stopped in the parking lot and looked back. She suddenly realized who was calling.

  At that same moment, Jesus became visible, again and Kayla jumped. Jesus helped her right the toilet paper, when she nearly dumped it on the asphalt. The smile on Jason’s lips, and the stars in his eyes, previewed the news for Kayla.

  “That’s awesome, Eduardo. That really is a miracle.”

  Eduardo said, “Isabella wants to talk to your…ah…wife.” During introductions, Jason and Kayla had not said they were married, but he had guessed right, nonetheless.

  Jason handed the phone to Kayla, taking the toilet paper from her. He realized that his knees were shaking again, as he stood smiling strenuously at his wife and the newly visible Jesus.

  “Hello, this is Kayla.”

  “It’s me, Isabella. Thank you for sending Jesus to heal my momma. I owe you for the rest of my life.” Her voice squeaked on that last word.

  Kayla’s eyes filled with tears immediately. “God is so good to us. You don’t owe me anything. Just love God.”

  Jason had long envied the way his wife could cry and talk perfectly clearly at the same time. When he cried, his mouth became spastic and cramped; speaking was nearly impossible.

  Eduardo got back on the line. “Hello. Lucy and I want to have you over for dinner this coming week, after we get her home, of course.”

  Kayla laughed, slipping toward the same hysteria she had witnessed in Jason earlier that evening. She handed the phone off without a word.

  Jason took over and heard Eduardo repeat the invitation. Both his knees and his hands were shaking now, but he still had his voice, and enough of his wits to accept the invitation.

  “Good. I’ll call you as soon as we know how soon she can go home,” said Eduardo’s breathless voice, over the phone.

  They hung up after an emotional goodbye, which included Isabella singing in the background, when she realized she was going to see Kayla and Jason at her house.

  The three people standing out under the stars, and the parking lot lights, beamed at each other. Jesus seemed to be holding back an outburst of laughter. Kayla collapsed her head onto Jason’s chest, wedged in next to the toilet paper, which he held under one arm. That did it. Jesus let loose his raucous revelry.

  He was so loud, that Jason worried about disturbing the neighbors, delayed in recalling that no one else could hear that slaphappy laughter.

  “I like that kind of treasure hunt,” Kayla said, looking over at Jesus, with her head still propped on Jason’s chest.

  With his phone back in his pocket, Jason wrapped his free arm around his beloved girl and chortled at yet another ironic understatement.

  Chapter 16

  This Much

  It had been a long day. And stressful. Jason and Kayla learned how stressful the most remarkable day of your life can be, even if it’s all good.

  The apartment was quiet. Early crickets sang from their posts surrounding the building, and within. Jason headed to the fridge, pulled out the first batch of ice tea of the season and offered some to Kayla and Jesus. It was hard not to smile a sideways grin at the idea of offering anything to Jesus.

  “It’s decaf tea,” Jason said. “Won’t keep you awake at night.”

  Jesus followed Jason into the kitchen, he slapped him on the back moderately hard and laughed harder still. Then his face turned a bit wistful.

  “Thanks for thinking of me,” Jesus said. “Sleeping was one of the best things about being human. Such peace.”

  Jason looked over Jesus’s shoulder in time to catch Kayla making a doubtful face, one fine eyebrow raised and her head cocked slightly. Jason decided to leave that bit of mystery to his wife. He brushed past Jesus with a pat on his chest and then kissed Kayla on the cheek, on his way to his computer.

  “I have some writing to do,” he said gently.

  “It’s ten o’clock almost,” Kayla said.

  “Strike while the iron is hot,” Jason said, pulling out an old cliché, the origins of which most people couldn’t identify.

  Jesus had known a few blacksmiths in his time and smiled at the reference, but he wanted to talk to Kayla about something else. “Maybe you could do a bit of painting while you wait for Jason,” he suggested.

  If she had paused to think about it, everything Jesus had offered had come in the form of a question or suggestion. Most people she knew, from school and church, spoke as if God gave them orders to follow, orders they often struggled to discover or discern. She liked the gentle way Jesus suggested things, and how fully palatable each idea seemed at the time, as if he knew what to suggest and when.

  “That does sound like a good idea,” she said. In their short marriage, she had gone to bed without Jason only a couple of times, always related to some academic deadline.

  When he saw her heading into her studio, Jason perked up a little. “Gonna paint and wait up for me, Dobbins?”

  Kayla winked at him as she led Jesus into her studio. When she let the door swing behind her, she realized that she was shy about slipping out of her clothes in favor one of her long painting shirts.

  “I can close my eyes,” Jesus said. “I know it’s awkward.”

  Kayla decided against that approach, choosing to risk her regular clothes, paying attention to wet paint and keeping her jeans and sweatshirt clean. She guessed that Jesus had some agenda in mind, so painting was probably not really the point of going into the studio that late at night. But, to her surprise, Jesus didn’t start some profound conversation about the rest of her life, nor an exposé of her past mistakes. He seemed to genuinely love watching her paint.

  On several occasions, Jason had also stood by watching, enjoying the progress of the painting, and admiring the painter. Jesus seemed to have similarly shaped interests, studying the swirl of colors together, the touch of brush to canvas, as well as the easy confidence of Kayla’s talented hands. Most of all, he seemed fascinated with her eyes, the way she looked at the photos she had taken of her subject and at her rendering of the image. This one was another little girl’s portrait, one she had begun before Jesus visit, then set aside, and decided to start again.

  Finally, Kayla raised a topic of discussion, since Jesus seemed to lack the expected agenda.

  “So, do you think I like to paint children ‘cause I wanna be a mother?”

  His attention to her brush strokes unflagging, Jesus spoke casually, as if they were simply two friends standing close in a painter’s studio, enjoying the detailed beauty of a little girl, appearing as if by magic, out of that brush.

  “We all love to look at things, or people, that represent what we want to be. Maybe it’s not that you want to have children as much as you want to be a girl again, to be innocent and carefree.”

  This answer stopped Kayla from her painting. She rinsed her brush in the plastic jar of cloudy green water set next to her pallet for this purpose, and then left it there to soak. She turned her attention to Jesus.

  “I get the feeling that you know so much more than you’re telling me. That makes me feel like a child in a bad way,” she said, surprised at her own boldness. “If you don’t mind me saying.” She finished with a diminished, apologetic tone.

  Jesus stepped closer and put his hand on her back, slipping his fingers up into her hair and just resting on the collar of her sweatshirt
. Everything about the softness of his expression assured her that he didn’t mind her saying what she did. She felt as if she could say anything to him.

  He asked her a question. “Isn’t it better to be taken care of than to always have to be taking care of yourself?”

  “If I was a little girl, I guess that would be so.” She caught a piece of a passing memory, and then felt his hand patting her back, or maybe it was just pulsating where it rested. Either way, she slipped out of the present, in favor of a scrap of her past.

  When she was eleven, her little cocker spaniel grew ill. He was nearly as old as she, and not looking as blessed by the years as little Kayla. In the kitchen, just barely out of earshot, her parents had been discussing what to do. They were discussing it without Kayla, who had practically grown up with the little dog, the only one in the house smaller than she.

  Ricki, the dog, groaned a high pitched complaint about the pain caused by the failure of at least one of his major organs. In that moment, the fragile life of her best friend fading beneath her powerless hands, her parents deciding his fate without her, she dug in for more traction toward growing up. Kayla didn’t want to stay small and helpless any more. The path begun by those determined steps, in the soft soil of her loss, had remained to this day.

  “I’m still young enough to regret all that stinks about being young,” Kayla said, swiping at a tear as she turned again to look at Jesus.

  He was nodding his head very slightly, a sort of gesture of permission, as much as acknowledgement.

  “Some things are meant to be beyond your control. That allows God room to be God. And he’s pretty good at it.”

  Kayla snickered at that little joke, but knew he was offering something serious.

  “Is this what you came to tell me? Is this why you showed up here?”

  Jesus took her face in his hands as he had done before. “I came to show you that I love you, and to show you that my love is all you need.”

  Kyla looked at him with glistening eyes—eyes that sought a way inside of his. “You love me.”

  It sounded like a question. But was it?