The Words I Speak (Anyone Who Believes Book 2)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “You don’t lose your personality,” he said, answering a question yet unformed in her distracted mind.

  The waters calmed slightly and the sky darkened a bit more, as if night had finally fallen behind the storm clouds. In that darkness they saw below them approaching lights, glowing greenish blue and fluctuating in their pattern. A school of jellyfish came to show itself under her feet to illustrate the point about translucence.

  “Your personality remains, but it allows my spirit, which has been united with yours, to shine through it. No two are the same, and my light inside you illuminates this. You will get to know each other by the way my light shines through you, instead of by what you fear, what you desire and how hard you strive to find it.”

  That first conversation while standing on water, about becoming a translucent soul, took place when Willow was in her early thirties. She had been allowing him to peel away the layers that obscured his light ever since. This is what she referred to, when she said that she was “getting better” before Scott came along.

  With her heightened awareness of the desires of her physical body, her social soul, her romantic heart, she felt as if her translucence had dimmed. She felt the obscuring desires for companionship and passion pulling her back to where she was years ago.

  “How do you know?” he said, back in the present.

  Willow knew he was challenging her ability to judge her own progress. She responded by trying to clarify what she was feeling.

  “It was easier to tell each desire to step aside, to relax my urgency for things and outcomes when I had only me to consider, pleasing only myself and you, and not concerned for a significant other,” she said. Her voice wilted a bit toward the end, doubt that she was saying it right, or perhaps seeing it right, tempering her declaration.

  “You have kept your heart to yourself, and to me, for so long that you expect that bringing someone else in this close will be like the last time you tried. But you were only a girl then. You are a woman now. You are a mother to many people already. You have conquered many fears since those days.”

  “A mother,” she thought, not even bothering to use her voice in that place where only he was listening. She knew he was right. But she had become accustomed to being a single parent, of sorts, or parenting as part of the village that was her church community.

  “I didn’t teach you to fear your desires,” he said. “I taught you to tame them.”

  Now she pictured a tame lion walking next to them, her desires fully formed and ferocious in appearance, as gentle as an old tabby.

  “Someday,” he said, in response to that thought. “Someday.”

  Stunning Discovery

  At the end of January, Scott and Willow went out to dinner and a movie. Afterward they stopped for coffee at Willow’s favorite shop, Bean Dreaming. None of the staff that she knew worked that late in the day, but she liked the idea of acquainting Scott with one of her favorite spots in town.

  They both laughed when they each ordered decaf, discovering that neither of them normally drank coffee that late in the day.

  “See what happens when you’re just being polite,” Scott said, punctuating their laughing duet.

  Willow pursed her lips and rolled her eyes off to the side in a show of being guilty-as-charged. “It’s a good place to stop and talk, anyway,” she said. “And decaf doesn’t keep me awake.”

  “But does it give you strange dreams?” Scott said, drawing out the word “dreams,” as he pointed to the carved wooden letters above the menu on the wall.

  “Ha! You figured out the attraction,” Willow said. She was kidding. The name of the shop had only seemed ironic to her, after someone had introduce her to it. She hadn’t attached herself to Bean Dreaming because of her penchant for prophetic dreams.

  “I had a strangely inspiring dream recently,” Scott said, as they collected their lattes.

  Willow imitated a therapist or two that she knew. “Really? Would you like to talk about that?”

  Scott laughed, carefully winding his way between empty tables, following Willow’s more elegant slalom.

  “As a matter of fact, I thought of you as soon as I woke up from it. But this is the first time I’ve thought of that dream while you were around.”

  Willow pulled out a chair and waited for Scott to catch up. “Is this okay?” she said, glancing at the window, dark as marble against the nighttime streets. An aggressive wind shouldered the glass on its way down the street, leaving the occupants untouched and warm under the canned lights in the ceiling.

  “Yep, it’s fine,” Scott said, setting his cup down and then helping Willow get her coat off, and adjusting the chair for her. He could see the brief look of pleasant surprise on her face just before she sat down.

  “My dad was old school about things like that,” he responded, in a low, apologetic tone.

  Willow just nodded, knowing she had communicated enough of her feelings about the old fashioned gallantry of her date.

  Without the mock therapeutic tone, Willow offered again to hear Scott’s dream. She was an experienced dream interpreter, as he certainly knew.

  “So what was this dream?” she said, before her first sip of latte foam.

  Taking his first sip and then licking his lips, Scott sat back a bit, as if for better recall. Then he began. “Well, I was a small child in this dream, which doesn’t happen often. And I remember it still in fine detail, another unusual point.” He sloughed off his coat in two easy movements and then straightened his tan cable-knit sweater with one thumb and forefinger.

  “It was all light and sunny, both in a physical sense and in the feeling of the place. I was in this big bed with white sheets, and it had this feeling of fun and rest and playfulness.” He stopped for a second and shivered slightly. “I get chills now remembering it.” He looked a little apologetically at Willow, but then froze.

  Willow was staring at Scott. She shook herself slightly and pulled out of the shock. Finding a clinical gear, she slipped into that. “Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Tell me... ”

  Scott held off for a few seconds. He finally returned to his narration when he guessed that Willow simply was seeing part of the interpretation of his dream. That thought made him more anxious to get everything out.

  “I’ve had a few dreams where I know I’m with Jesus, or with God. I even had one where I felt like the Holy Spirit was this funny person leading me around a forest. But this was the best time I can remember.” His smile took on a spacey gleam as his eyes drifted off to unseen objects above Willow’s head.

  “I knew the father was in the bed, and it was like a weekend morning, and I was sort of frolicking around, wrestling around. And then I realized that Jesus was there.” He stopped to laugh, sounding a little embarrassed again. “It was Jesus as a little boy, and he was right in there wrestling, too.”

  Scott stopped to look at Willow again, and his smile wilted. She was breathing rapidly and gripping the edge of the table with both hands.

  “You okay?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “Is there more? I want to hear if there’s more.” Her breathless voice alarmed Scott.

  He was monitoring her as if she were a ticking box that just might contain a bomb. “Okay... Well, the last thing I remember was discovering that there was another person in the bed, another child. But then I woke up before I could figure out who it was.” He shrugged and took another sip of latte. “Though, who knows if I would have been able to figure that out anyway?”

  “I do,” Willow said, but then tried to correct her direction. “I mean, I know, I... I understand what you mean.” She felt as if her teeth would start chattering at any moment, as if a deep inner chill was creeping up on her.

  “Okay, you have to tell me what’s going on, you look totally freaked out,” Scott said, his face full of concern, his voice earnest and heading toward desperate.

  Willow looked at that petitioning face and wanted to duck under the table. She felt as if part of her was preparing
to stand up and run for the door. She decided to resist those urges, remembering Jesus’s words about a translucent soul.

  “I am totally freaked out,” she said, using his phrase and with no irony in her voice. She decided to hold nothing back. “I had the same dream. I was the other child in the bed.”

  Scott took his turn at staring, stunned statuesque. Willow followed his eyes, as they plotted little movements, almost as if he were reading the fine print on an invisible screen in front of him. As he reviewed the last part of his own dream and the discovery of the other child, he pitched backward, just catching the edge of the table in time to keep from dumping his chair over.

  Willow was relieved to find him as shocked as she was. Somehow that felt safer, as if he had not been stalking her in her dreams, but had fallen into that dream as honestly as she had. Their heavenly father had set it up, and now they just had to deal with it... together.

  They sat in silence for nearly a minute. Then Willow started to laugh, a small but uncontrollable laughter. Her face turned red, the makeup of shock coloring her visage, as she discovered that her father had shared her secret with someone else, and it had become his secret, too. The hysteria that rattled through her, in silent seizures of laughter, blended that shock with relief, with a sudden awakening to a world in which she and her father were not alone.

  Scott didn’t know what to do. All he could offer was a hand stretched across the table to pry one of Willow’s off the perimeter of the brightly varnished wood. He held on, and so did she.

  He is Setting a Table

  Willow and Scott met with the small team of church members who would accompany them to the psychics’ conference in Southern California. Willow drifted off into thinking about the prospect of visiting the Dupere family in Malibu, not so far south of the conference. The uncertain prospect of delivering a message to a thousand psychics, tarot card readers and the like, repeatedly sent her thoughts in other directions.

  She had settled on giving her message on hearing God, a biblical and practical sermon/teaching she had done half a dozen times. She had never given it in a context like this, however.

  “Willow. Willow... ” Scott was trying to get her back into the room.

  She turned to him briefly and smiled like they were sharing an intimate joke, but that was more from habit than from the situation.

  Kylie Baker saw the reentry pause and filled in for Willow, briefly. “What I’ve been hearing is the Father promising that he is going to be ‘setting a table for us there.’ ” Everyone in the little conference room knew that this was not a promise for divine provision of the furniture for their booth.

  “ ‘I will set a table for you in the presence of your enemies,’ ” Willow quoted, from Psalm 23, and smiled a different kind of smile. She recognized not only those words, but also the voice.

  “That sounds good,” Scott said, more clarity and enthusiasm lofting his voice than Willow’s.

  Not only was she jousting with anxiety about a hostile audience, but she was still trying to fit Scott into her life, into a place that had stood unoccupied for decades. Staring into space and missing someone addressing her had become a regular personality trait for Willow lately.

  As with most people, Willow was grateful to finally be on her way to this strange meeting of minds, souls and spirits. She was copiously grateful for her companions on that trip, including Kylie, who served as Willow’s assistant in church and ministry matters, and for Scott, who had become a stronghold of peace for her, without much effort on his part, or hers. Also with them were Paul and Karen Songer, a couple in their seventies who had known Willow since she first arrived in Colorado. Though she had spent little time with them lately, they had once been surrogate parents for her.

  As for her real mother, Claudia, she stayed home. Before Claudia fully comprehended the nature of the little weekend trip, she had bowled a couple of weighty hints Willow’s way, that she would like to be included. Willow’s months of practice at accepting and gently leading her mother, served to calm her in that situation. She also managed to calm herself somewhat about the trip by explaining it so that Claudia could understand its nature.

  Claudia responded. “My, and you’re sure you wanna do this? Reminds me of those people that did so much bad stuff to you when you were a girl.”

  Willow put one hand over her mouth. She repressed a sudden laugh. Willow, the famous voice of clarity, had not until that moment been clear about one of the fears that lurked in between the brochure pages about this convention. Strictly speaking, the vast majority of the psychics and others at that conference would not identify with the sort of occult practice with which Willow was afflicted as a teen. But a segment of her heart had made the same connection that Claudia made, and dread ruled that small section of her thoughts and feelings.

  In California, even as they arrived at the hotel housing the convention and checked into their rooms, Willow was grateful for the dozens of people who she knew were praying for her and the team. Through the church, and through her own social media pages, she had thousands of followers. Many of these would take seriously her appeal for their prayer support of this unusual mission.

  Their bags settled in their rooms, Kylie led the delegation to assess the space and set up the booth in the main ballroom, which served as the convention floor. The little eight-by-ten spot was squeezed between the booth of a woman who expressed her spirituality in abstract and colorful drawings, and another woman selling fragrances with spiritual significance. When the latter demurred from shaking hands, “Because we need to be careful about getting into each other’s space, both of us,” as the woman said, Willow knew she had come to the right place.

  As they set up, a woman named Raylynn, who knew the Dupere family, arrived from the church in Malibu that was affiliated with Willow’s church. Raylynn had with her Marc, who appeared to be her boyfriend or perhaps fiancé. Neither Willow nor anyone else in the Colorado team had ever met the two from Malibu, but the trust between congregations was such that they felt like family separated by miles, but not in spirit.

  Late to the gathering, Willow’s booth received its first visitor just as they set up their signs. The signs said, “Free Spiritual Readings,” and “Free Healing.” Kylie had wanted to boast a bit about the kinds of things she and Willow, and others in the group, had seen healed over the years, but Willow asked her to keep it low key.

  That first visitor was a Polish woman who introduced herself as a tarot card reader and healer. “What are you selling?” she asked, in her rich Slavic accent. She appeared to be about seventy years old, in good health, and openly curious.

  Willow was the closest to where the visitor inquired. She said, “We’re not selling anything. We received it for free, so we give it for free.”

  The old woman scowled. “You should at least ask for donations.” And that question seemed to be settled. “Who is doing the reading?” she asked.

  Willow said, “We all are, myself included.” Scott had come to the front table to support Willow and meet this first visitor.

  The woman looked at Scott and said, “You? Are you reading?”

  He said a friendly, “Yes, I am.” But Willow knew he wasn’t quite as confident as he sounded.

  The Polish tarot card reader took one of his hands, apparently not sharing the neighbor’s concern about getting in other people’s space. She looked at Scott’s palm skeptically. Then she looked at Willow. “Let me see your hand.”

  Willow would never go to a palm reader to get direction for her life, but felt that it would be unfriendly to refuse to greet the natives in this customary way. At least, she figured it must be customary.

  The old woman seemed more impressed with Willow’s palm. “Yes, you can read.” She said, and then looked squarely at Willow and said, “What do you have for me?”

  Instantly, Willow felt that she knew something about the old woman.

  “You had a marriage that ended badly, and you still carry bad feelings
from that,” she said.

  The old woman nodded and raised her eyebrows. Her manner turned more conversational and confiding. “And why do you suppose I would do that, to hold onto something like that for so long?” Her tone sounded rhetorical. But Willow found that she had a specific answer.

  “When you went into the marriage, you were still carrying pain from your parents, from their difficult lives, and their lack of affection for you. That has not been healed, so neither has the breakup pain been healed.”

  The old tarot card reader was obviously impressed, but also a bit concerned. Her thin eyebrows started to sink toward her eyes. She stared hard at Willow, as if she suddenly recognized a threat in the slim stranger, and she turned to walk away.

  “Yes, you have the gift,” she said, as she fell into the flow of foot traffic beginning to build on that Saturday morning.

  Without taking time to assess and adjust, Willow and her friends settled into an atmosphere very different from what they had expected, even as the attractive fifty-year-old artist next door gave Marc a long hug, welcoming them to the convention.

  The church people had not accounted for the overwhelming desire for more and new experiences that attracted this crowd of attendees. Openness was their mantra, and that included openness to this odd little group of undercover Christians.

  They stayed under cover for only a very short time.

  “So where do you get this ability to read and heal,” a man carrying a plastic bag full of loot from the other booths asked.

  “We go through Jesus to get to the father,” Kylie said, without hesitation. And that became their often-repeated explanation throughout the day.

  The Songers specialized in healing. Repeatedly, Willow, Scott or Raylynn would tell someone something about their life that they could only discover supernaturally, and then a need for physical healing would come to light, often from Paul reading it on the person, like a newspaper headline printed on someone’s forehead.