A Story about the Spiritual Journey

by Sharon Garlough Brown

Just hearing his voice again after all these years caused her pulse to race: “How’s the woman I love?” She remembered the depth of tenderness whenever he spoke those words to her. They were his first words of greeting when he got home from work; they were his gentle words of intimacy as they lay in one another’s arms.

  She remembered.

  She remembered him holding her, comforting her, treasuring her, loving her. “You’re mine, and I’ll never let you go,” he would say, pulling her tightly to himself. She had forgotten how safe she had been in Jim’s arms. Forgive me for forgetting. She wasn’t sure whose forgiveness she was asking for. She just knew she needed forgiveness.

  By now Meg had reached the center. As she sat cross-legged on the cool pavement, she remembered the last time she’d walked the labyrinth. She had imagined the whistling shepherd coming and finding the little lamb. What had he said when he looked at her? “Don’t worry, little one; you’re safe. I have found you; you are mine.”

  Mine.

  The single word danced about in her head until she realized why the shepherd’s voice had sounded vaguely familiar.

  The shepherd had spoken with Jim’s voice.

  Why would she have imagined the shepherd speaking with Jim’s voice?

  She wished Katherine were with her. Katherine would know why. There was something Meg was supposed to understand. She just didn’t know what it was.

  She looked up. Mara had already finished her journey and had left the courtyard, but Hannah was approaching the center. Their eyes met for a moment, and Meg was speaking before she could reconsider. “Hannah? Can you help me?”

  As Hannah knelt beside her, Meg described the image of the shepherd with the little lamb, the memories of Jim loving and holding her, and her confusion about the connection. What was her subconscious trying to tell her? She waited breathlessly for Hannah’s reply.

  When Hannah finally spoke, her tone was hushed, almost reverent. “Maybe you heard Jim’s voice in your memory because Jim was the one who made you feel safe and secure with his love.”

  Meg nodded. Hannah was right. That was true. Jim had loved her far more deeply than anyone she had ever known.

  Hannah went on, her voice breaking ever so slightly as she spoke her next words. “Maybe it’s about knowing that you’re safe and secure with Jesus,” she said. “Maybe it’s about knowing that Jesus loves you with the same kind of love Jim had for you. Only more. I think God wants you to know that you really are the one Jesus loves, deeply and tenderly.”

  Meg’s hand went to her heart, and she heard herself inhale. Long minutes passed before her mind caught up with the visceral, reflexive response of her body. Could she really fathom the depth of that kind of love? Could she really comprehend Jesus loving her more intensely than Jim had? If that’s what the Lord was revealing, then everything changed.

  Everything.

  Suddenly, words Katherine had spoken on the courtyard bench winged back to her and rooted themselves within her spirit. “There is great love in God’s heart for you, Meg. Love you have yet to experience. More than anything else in the world, God wants you to know that you are the one he treasures and loves. That’s the heart of this journey. And I’ll be praying for you as you walk that path.”

  You are the woman I love. You’re safe. I have found you. You are mine.

  Meg felt as if she were awakening from deep sleep. Suddenly, she knew the answers to the questions. She didn’t yet know what the answers would mean or how her life would change with the knowing of them. But this was the beginning of a new journey. Yes, a sacred journey.

  Who was she?

  She was the one Jesus loved. Somehow—though she couldn’t fully grasp it—somehow Jesus loved her even more deeply than Jim had.

  What did she want?

  As she knelt in the center, weeping, Meg discovered she wanted the same thing the would-be disciples had wanted.

  She just wanted to be with Jesus.

  Charissa

  Mrs. Jackson’s fourth grade classroom was quiet for the geography test. Charissa had studied hard and knew the state capitals by heart. She also knew the state mottoes and flowers, even though Mrs. Jackson had not asked for that information. Just as Charissa was wondering if she would get extra credit points for writing in the mottoes, Susie Winslow whispered from behind her.

  “Pssst! What’s the capital of Tennessee?” Charissa stiffened and did not reply. Susie tried again. “What’s the capital of Tennessee?”

  Without turning her head, Charissa muttered, “I’m not telling.”

  “What?” Susie hissed.

  Charissa spun around. “I said, I’m not telling!”

  Mrs. Jackson happened to look up just as Charissa was muttering to Susie. “Charissa, no talking during the test, please.”

  “But I—”

  “Quiet, please.”

  Charissa fumed. She hated being scolded. After the test she marched up to her teacher’s desk to explain what had happened. But Mrs. Jackson wouldn’t listen. “Let it go, Charissa. It’s not a big deal.”

  Charissa disagreed. And she wasn’t going to let it go.

  It was getting dark when Charissa walked across campus after her last Wednesday class. As she passed by Bradley Hall on her way to the library, she noticed Dr. Allen’s office light was on. She looked at her watch. She still had nearly half an hour before John would arrive—enough time for a brief conversation.

  During her years at Kingsbury University, Charissa had taken several classes with Dr. Allen, including some undergraduate courses in medieval literature. She had always excelled, and he had often commended her for her aptitude in text analysis.

  His Literature and the Christian Imagination seminar, however, was becoming increasingly obtuse. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand the poetry they were reading: she was well-versed in the writings of Milton, Donne, and Herbert. But Dr. Allen had begun pushing his students beyond simple text analysis into a realm of personal integration which she did not comprehend. He was asking probing questions about faith and practice, inviting them to reflect on how the literature was impacting their life with God.

  For the first time ever, Charissa was measuring herself against her peers and perceiving some sort of deficiency. It puzzled her. She had spent years in church and had read the Bible cover-to-cover many times. She could have gone head-to-head with any one of them in a memory verse competition.

  But as she sat in Dr. Allen’s class, she felt as if she were listening to a foreign language. She wondered what kind of Bible training the other students had received. Her peers were speaking enthusiastically about the Spirit’s movement in their lives, engaging with Dr. Allen in faith conversations that discomfited and provoked her. She seemed to have lost her edge as “most highly favored student,” and she was determined to seek a remedy. She was equally determined to conceal her anxiety and her ignorance.

  And then there was her experience at New Hope. She still didn’t understand why Dr. Allen would have endorsed a class like that. In fact, perhaps the sacred journey group was the problem. Perhaps she should have signed up for a course in the Theology Department at Kingsbury instead—something with more direction and instruction. Perhaps things like labyrinth-walking and lectio divina were a waste of her valuable time, especially if there was a different course that would help her catch up with the other students.

  Even as Charissa knocked on her professor’s open office door, she wasn’t quite sure what to say.

  Dr. Allen looked up from his reading, removed his glasses, and rose from his chair. “Come in, Charissa.”

  “Am I interrupting?”

  “Nothing that can’t wait.” He motioned to an empty seat. “What can I do for you?”

  Charissa hesitated, not sure where to begin. She sat down on the edge of the chair. “Are you familiar with lectio divina?” she asked.

  He nodded. “‘Sacred reading.’ An ancient way of savoring text. And one of my favorite spiritual disciplines. Why do yo
u ask?”

  She shrugged. “Mrs. Rhodes presented it on Saturday, and I’d never heard of it before.” She still wasn’t sure how to ask what she really wanted to know. “I’ve done lots of Bible studies, but this was different.”

  His lips curled into a cryptic smile. “Still worried about orthodoxy?”

  Yes, she silently replied. And I’m also interested in efficiency. I’m interested in the quickest way of learning what I need to know so I can excel in your class.

  Aloud, she said, “No—it’s not that. It’s just that the whole method seems so entirely subjective.” And a waste of my time, she added to herself.

  He was studying her carefully, and it was becoming unnerving. “Tell me more, Charissa.”

  “About what? Lectio divina?”

  “Your experience of praying a text. Which text did Katherine give you?”

  “Part of John 1, where John the Baptist points his own disciples to Jesus.”

  He nodded. “A great text for the start of a journey.”

  She did not respond.

  “And where did the Spirit lead you?” he asked.

  She wasn’t sure the Spirit had led her anywhere. It was just her own imagining as she listened to Mrs. Rhodes read the same passage over and over again. That was her objection to the whole experience. There was no standard by which to measure personal thoughts and impressions; and without correct standards of interpretation, a person could easily drift into error. Even heresy.

  Dr. Allen was still waiting for her reply. How much did she actually want to disclose to him about her personal response to the lectio divina exercise?

  Charissa sat more erectly on the edge of the chair. “At first when she read the passage, nothing really struck me.” She spoke slowly, weighing her words carefully. “Then the second time she read, I started thinking about how I would answer Jesus’ question, ‘What are you looking for?’”

  He was leaning forward, listening attentively.

  She forged ahead. “Anyway, when I heard that question, a memory came back to me. And then the Scripture and my own experience got jumbled together, and I went off on a tangent.”

  He wasn’t saying anything. Why wasn’t he saying anything?

  “I don’t know if you’ll remember this or not,” she went on, fiddling with the tendril of hair near her left ear. “But when I first talked to you about the New Hope class, you asked me why I wanted to go. And when I said, ‘To learn,’ you told me that was the wrong answer.”

  “I remember.”

  She sighed. “Well, when I heard the ‘what are you looking for?’ question from Jesus, it was like I was hearing your voice again, and I still had the same answer: to learn. And everything kind of spiraled from there.”

  Again, the enigmatic smile. “Are you saying you lost control over the text?”

  Why did that same word keep coming up over and over again? She wasn’t controlling!

  “No, not control,” she responded with a measured tone, determined not to sound defensive. “I just ended up thinking about some other Bible verses, and one thing led to another, and I ended up in a place I didn’t expect.”

  He said, “‘The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.’”

  What, wind and sailing again? His response seemed a bit of a non sequitur, but he did not explain himself.

  “I don’t understand,” she finally said, though she hated admitting it.

  “From John 3, the story of Nicodemus,” he replied. “Nicodemus didn’t understand either. He was in the dark about Jesus, wasn’t he? He knew he was attracted to Jesus’ teaching, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to go deeper than that.”

  Charissa wasn’t sure she wanted to go deeper either. Then again, she was the one who had initiated the conversation. Why had she initiated the conversation?

  She put on her engaged, eager student expression and let him finish. “Nicodemus was a teacher too,” he was saying, “and no doubt he thought he had things figured out. But something about Jesus unsettled him. Then Jesus told him that his only way into the kingdom was to unlearn everything he thought he knew by being born again as a helpless infant. Well . . . you can imagine how bewildered Nicodemus would have been. And yet, light began to dawn in his darkness. He began to see.”

  See what? she fumed silently. What was she supposed to see? “So where am I supposed to go from here?” she asked, battling to mask her frustration.

  “That’s a good question to be asking.”

  She screamed, but only to herself. He was exasperating! “So are you saying I just have to start unlearning things? That’s impossible! How am I supposed to do that?”

  He didn’t speak for a long time, and the silence became unbearable. She shouldn’t have come. Why had she come? But she couldn’t leave. Not yet. She had asked him a direct question, and maybe he was actually going to give her a direct answer.

  Maybe.

  “Charissa,” he finally said, folding his hands in front of him as if he were going to pray, “if learning has become an idol and an obstacle for you—if your desire to learn is keeping you from encountering Christ—then the right place to begin is with confession and repentance. You begin by acknowledging the truth about yourself: you’re a sinner who needs grace.”

  She knit her eyebrows together. A sinner? How dare he call her a sinner?

  No one had ever—ever—called Charissa Goodman a sinner. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe she made mistakes. But there was a vast chasm between being intellectually aware of her need for forgiveness and actually embracing the identity of “sinner.” After all, she strived to live as correctly as possible, eager to avoid reproach and error. Her friends would have called her a model Christian. In truth, it was how she viewed herself, though she never would have said so aloud.

  She squared her shoulders.

  He placed his elbows on his desk, still clasping his hands together. “Your desire for control is keeping you from entrusting yourself to Christ, Charissa. And your desire for perfection is preventing you from receiving grace. You’re stumbling over the cross by trying to be good, by trying so hard to be perfect.”

  She did not speak. She would not look at him. She also found she could not get up, though she wanted to storm out.

  “I’m not standing in judgment over you,” he continued. “I’m not criticizing or condemning you. I only see your struggles because I have the same ones. It’s hard for a good rule follower to be converted to grace. There are so many defenses we perfectionists hide behind, especially the impulse to trust our own efforts to live rightly and faithfully. Believe me. I know what it’s like to try to add to Christ’s work of salvation by striving to be perfect. But God doesn’t need you to be good, Charissa. It’s not your goodness that saves you. Or your performance. It’s grace. All grace. And God wants to soften your heart and open your eyes so that you see how desperately you need that grace.”

  She clenched her jaw. He was still talking. Why was he still talking? She wished he would shut up.

  “Your sin hasn’t broken your heart,” he said softly. “You haven’t yet glimpsed the tremendous price Jesus paid to save you.”

  Enough. She’d had enough. She glared him down as she stood up.

  “My husband’s waiting for me,” she said tersely, striding out the door.

  Charissa’s mother had once cautioned John about her daughter’s power to bring her own weather system into a room. “I’ve never met such a wintry Greek girl,” she said. “She didn’t get my Mediterranean fire; she got her father’s ice. Dress warmly, John.”

  When John picked up Charissa outside the library, the temperature inside the car plummeted. During the six years he had known her, John had become sensitive to predicting changes in Charissa’s barometric pressure. But this unanticipated cold front took him completely by surprise, and no amount of warmth or humor thawed it.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Riss?” he
asked as he sat on the floor in front of her after dinner, massaging her feet. She pulled away and kept typing. “How about something from the store? I’ll run out and get you anything you want. How about some chocolate covered cherries?”

  Silence.

  “Strawberry cheesecake?”

  No response.

  “There’s still some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in the freezer . . . ”

  Nothing.

  “I wish you’d talk to me, Riss. I don’t know how to help if I don’t know what’s going on. Please, honey, talk to me. I’ve run out of comfort food suggestions.”

  She scrunched her eyebrows.

  “Okay . . . I’ll be sitting right here, waiting for you to command me to do something. Anything!” He sat down in the recliner next to the couch, resisting the temptation to break the silence by turning on the television. Since he didn’t want to do anything to aggravate her, he spent the next several hours aimlessly surfing the web and playing solitaire on his laptop.

  At ten o’clock he gave up. “Love you,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  John lay in bed, eavesdropping on one side of Charissa’s early morning telephone conversation. “It’s too late to change classes now, Mom.” At least she was talking to someone. He just wished she would confide in him. “I know. It was totally inappropriate. I’m furious. But I also don’t want to give him any satisfaction by walking away. And besides, I don’t want to lose a whole semester.” Pause. “I know. How dare he, right?”

  How-dare-he-what? Who?

  “No,” Charissa went on. “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet.”

  Pause.

  John wished he could hear how her mother was responding. She usually had strong opinions to express. Charissa was silent a long time. And then, “I know, Mom. I don’t have class again with him until next week, so at least I don’t have to see him. I can easily avoid him until I figure out what to do.”

  Dr. Allen. It must be Dr. Allen. John couldn’t think of any other professor who might provoke his wife like this.