Two Steps Forward

by Sharon Garlough Brown

  Becca and I had a good weekend together, and I’m grateful for that. We had a chance to go on a couple of walking tours and visited some museums together. And we got tickets to see Les Miserables. Oh, Hannah. What a powerful story about love, forgiveness, and grace. I wept my way through it. Becca really enjoyed the music and the staging, but I’m not sure if she grasped the heart of the story. I tried to talk with her about it afterward but didn’t get very far. She doesn’t seem interested in talking about faith, and I don’t know how to talk with her about what the Lord has been doing in me the past few months. Please pray.

  Tomorrow I’m going to do something very hard. The short version is that Becca has become involved with an older divorced man named Simon, and it’s breaking my heart. A group of her friends is going to ride the London Eye to celebrate the end of the semester, and Becca invited me to join them. I was so grateful for the invitation. Then she told me that Simon will also be there. I’m going to go, and I’ll meet him. I already resent him for everything he’s taken from my daughter. She’s blind to it and only says how happy she is. Please pray for me, Hannah. For us. I’m happy for you to share this with Nathan. I know he’ll pray. Please thank him for me.

  Thank you for sending me the words to the carol. I’m asking God to help me hear His good tidings of comfort and joy. Your description of going to see Handel’s Messiah made me long to experience it again, so I went online to see if there are any performances this week and discovered that Handel’s house is here in London. It’s where he composed most of his music, and now it’s set up as a living museum with concerts and rehearsals during the week. A description on their website made me smile. “For your own safety, you are advised to wear sensible shoes when visiting as the museum contains original eighteenth-century floors that can be uneven.” So, you can bet I’ll put on my sensible shoes and visit his house. I also discovered there’s a performance of the Messiah at a London church this week. I’ll be there, thinking of you and giving God thanks for your presence in my life.

  Sending my love,

  Meg

  Nathan

  “You seem weary,” Katherine said.

  Nathan stared at the flickering candle on the coffee table between them in Katherine’s office. “I am.”

  “End of the semester crunch?”

  “That, but more than that. I’ve had some things happen the last couple of days that have really pushed some buttons and stirred me up. Our appointment comes at a good time. Just not quite sure where to start.”

  “How about taking a few minutes for quiet first?” Katherine suggested.

  Yes, Nathan thought. That was the right way to begin. He’d had precious little time for quiet the past week. “Thank you,” he said.

  He cupped his hands and settled himself with the Hebrew word he had been using during Advent for contemplative prayer: hineni. Gently, whenever thoughts arose and distracted him away from the presence of God, he offered his prayer and returned to stillness. Hineni. Here I am.

  After they had sat in silence awhile, Nathan took a deep breath and opened his eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “You’d think after all these years of coming here for spiritual direction, I’d remember how desperately I need regular times of silence.”

  “We all need reminding,” Katherine replied.

  Nathan inhaled and exhaled slowly again. Already, the agitation he felt when he first arrived had begun to dissipate. Thank you, Lord.

  “I just had a really challenging meeting with one of my students that I’d like to process because it’s left me feeling agitated,” he said. “But I’m not sure how to handle confidentiality because you met her during the sacred journey retreat.”

  “That’s all right,” said Katherine. “I’m listening for what’s happening in your spirit, not to the particular details about her life.”

  “Thank you.” He wanted to speak with unedited honesty, and Katherine always gave him that space. Guide my words and my thoughts, Lord. Help me notice and name you as I offer what’s provoking me.

  He leaned back on the sofa. “I knew it was going to be a rough meeting with her as soon as she walked into my office. She’s upset over a decision one of her professors has made about an assignment—a fair decision, I believe—and now she’s disappointed with me for agreeing with my colleague. I’ve known this student for a few years. Worked closely with her. So I was really pleased to see a lot of movement in her this semester, mostly because she was so agitated by some of what you were doing in the sacred journey group.”

  Katherine smiled slightly at this.

  “Having said that, it’s clear her desire for control and honor and recognition still has a deep grip on her. It’s hard to see my old self mirrored back to me. Sometimes my patience and compassion are really tested.”

  “Toward her or toward yourself?”

  Ah, interesting. “I meant toward her. But I’m sure it’s also toward myself. The Type A perfectionist dies hard.”

  He replayed for Katherine the meeting with Charissa, how she was feeling deep shame about missing her presentation and how he had attempted to ask questions that would invite her to see how the Lord might work to free her as a result of what had happened. But the only thing that had given her any comfort had been his reassurance that her funding and academic standing had not been jeopardized by one isolated incident of failure.

  “Honestly, I wasn’t in a great frame of mind when I was with her. I think that’s why I’m so stirred up about it. I’m worried my own stuff was clouding my ability to be fully present to her.”

  “It’s so hard to set ourselves aside,” Katherine said, “especially if the one we’re with is tapping trigger points.”

  “Exactly! And Charissa was drilling into some deep ones inside me today. There I was, talking about how God uses the things that upset us to call us forth into deepening life in Christ. I was reminding her how we need to pay attention to the opportunities to say yes to that life, even when everything in us wants to resist dying to ourselves and being taken where we don’t want to go. And what became clear as I was speaking to her was that God was speaking to me about my own capacity for resistance, my own hardness of heart. My own resentment about being taken where I don’t want to go.” He shook his head slowly. “I got an email that threw me for an unexpected loop this morning. From my ex-wife.” Katherine raised her eyebrows. “Laura’s pregnant. And she’s moving back to Michigan.”

  Katherine’s eyebrows rose higher. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Oh.” He took another deep breath.

  “That’s a lot to process,” Katherine said.

  “That’s for sure.” He had read the email half a dozen times, each time getting more upset.

  “Does Jake know?”

  “Not yet. I’ll talk to him tonight.”

  How he dreaded having that conversation.

  “He hasn’t even seen her the last couple of years,” Nathan went on. “She’s been off doing her own thing in Europe and Asia with her husband, and now he’s taking a job near Detroit.” He shifted position on the couch and ran his fingers through his hair. “Jake and I have carved out this beautiful life together. It’s just been the two of us, finding our way. And now she wants to come in and be a regular part of Jake’s life again. Pitched it as how important it will be for him to know his sibling and have a relationship with the three of them.”

  “Some of that will be up to Jake,” Katherine said.

  “Right. You’re right. I guess I had just settled into this pattern where she was non-existent, and I was comfortable with that. I liked it that way. She’s done nothing—absolutely nothing—to nurture a relationship with him other than the occasional email or phone call or gifts for his birthday or Christmas. And now that she’s coming back, I don’t know what that’s going to do to me. To him.” He paused. “I don’t like the feelings that got stirred up today. It left me wondering if the anger I thought had died was actually just dormant, waiting to be awakened again. You walked that
road before with me, Katherine. You remember how toxic I was. I don’t want to go back there.”

  Katherine’s eyes were full of compassion. “God’s work isn’t fragile,” she said. “This is another deeper layer, another opportunity for his glory to be revealed in you and through you. You said it beautifully when you were telling me about encouraging your student about her own formation. Christ’s life in us is a resilient one.”

  He closed his eyes, and she shared the silence with him. It was several minutes before he opened his eyes again.

  “What’s your prayer?” she asked gently.

  “Hineni,” he said. “Here I am, Lord.”

  She smiled. “What a beautiful, costly prayer. That says everything.”

  Nathan nodded slowly. “It says more than I realized when I first started praying it a few weeks ago. And I want to be able to pray it with an open, sincere, trusting heart. But it sure isn’t going to be easy.”

  “No. You’re right,” she said. “It wasn’t easy for Abraham to say it. Or Moses. Or any of the others. And the Lord receives it, honors it. Treasures it as costly and precious.”

  A crazy thought occurred to him, and he tossed it around in his mind for a while before he spoke it aloud. Then he leaned forward and rolled down his left sock. “I think I know what I’m getting for Christmas this year,” he said. “A tattoo. Right where I can see it every time I’m barefoot.” He pointed above his ankle and said, “Hineni.”

  Charissa

  “Dr. Allen wouldn’t budge,” Charissa said to John when he picked her up on campus Monday after work. “I thought that maybe as my academic adviser, he’d advocate for me with Dr. Gardiner and suggest a way for me to present the paper sometime. But no! He agrees with her. Thinks she’s being very gracious. So there goes my 4.0. Definitely. The best I can pull from Dr. Gardiner’s class is probably a B+, but only if she’s extremely generous on my paper. And please don’t lecture me. I know I shouldn’t care. I know it’s not important in the grand scheme of things. It just makes me mad. Mad at myself for oversleeping. Mad at myself for caring so much about it. Just mad.”

  John placed his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Riss. I am.” There was no hint of reproach in his voice.

  “Thanks.” Over the past several hours she had managed to move from resentment to a quieter place of resignation. Not acceptance, but resignation. Maybe that was progress.

  “What about that integration thing?” John asked. “Will he let you write a longer literary analysis instead?”

  “Nope. Wouldn’t budge on that either.” She clicked her seatbelt into place. “He suggested reviewing my retreat notes so that I can be reminded of what God has been doing in me the past couple of months. And he offered an extension, if I want it. He said if I really think I can’t write an authentic spiritual formation piece by Friday, then I can take an incomplete in the course and submit the paper in January.”

  As John pulled the car forward, she stared out the window and continued to hit a replay button on the meeting in Dr. Allen’s office. “How might the Lord use this experience to form you and set you free from shame?” he’d asked. He was always asking such irritating, provoking questions.

  “Maybe he’s right,” John said when she recounted that portion of their conversation. “No offense, but you have been kinda controlled by the whole need-to-be-perfect thing.”

  She checked the impulse to become argumentative and defensive and instead said, “I know. He kept trying to get me to see the potential gift in this—that all of this actually might be a gift of grace in my life—but I was just angry. Not at him. At me. I hate that I care so much about it. I hate that it’s such a big deal, that I can’t stop playing back the moment when I realized I’d overslept. I still feel sick to my stomach every time I think about it. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Why can’t I just let it go?”

  Why was it so hard to let things go?

  She sighed and drummed her fingers against the window. “I just feel like I’m all over the place,” she went on. “Like the same issues keep coming up again and again. And I know what Dr. Allen would say. That spiritual growth isn’t quick or linear, that I can’t control it and make myself better by trying harder. He kept saying today that all of this wrestling is evidence of deeper maturity. But I get so frustrated.”

  “We’re far closer to the kingdom when we despair of our own righteousness than when we cling to it,” Dr. Allen had said. “You’re being stretched and opened to grace in ways you’ve never experienced before. Like contractions. Necessary. Painful. But fruitful. God is doing something new. But it takes real courage to trust that God is at work to shape and form you, no matter what happens. Take heart, Charissa. The Lord is near.”

  She turned toward John. “I’m sorry, John. I know I’m not easy to live with. I’m the most self-centered person I know.”

  He laughed.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Say that again. That was funny.”

  “I know I’m not easy to live with.”

  “No. The next part.”

  “What? That I’m the most self-centered per—”

  Ugh.

  She was self-centered even about her self-centeredness! John was right. It was kind of funny.

  She smiled in spite of herself and punched his shoulder lightly. “It’s like Mara says about how frustrated she gets, feeling like she’s walking around in circles, not making any progress. I feel like that. Like I’m taking two steps forward and then all these steps backwards again. I feel like I’m doing some kind of awkward dance.”

  He kept one hand on the steering wheel and rested the other on the back of her head. “Glad you’re my partner,” he said. “And if we trip and step on each other’s toes now and then . . .”

  “Yeah,” she said, “all I can say is, if you’re going to dance with me, you’d better keep your shoes on. Steel-toed boots.”

  He laughed and tousled her hair. “I’ve got a crazy idea,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Let’s go celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?”

  “How about imperfection?”

  She arched her eyebrows.

  “C’mon,” he coaxed. “How about ice cream for dinner?”

  She thought a moment and then said, “Okay.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. Why not?” She reached for the lever to push her seat back a couple of inches. “I have a sudden craving for a caramel apple sundae with cashews.”

  Charissa’s cell phone rang while they were eating their ice cream. “It’s Mom,” she said, staring at the screen.

  John shrugged. “Up to you,” he said.

  She set down her spoon. “Hey, Mom!”

  “Hi, sweetie. Sorry I didn’t call over the weekend. Got busy with things here. But we’re having a great time. Are you done with the semester?”

  “Nearly.”

  “How’s it going?”

  The expression on John’s face indicated that he could hear her mother’s voice. Clearly.

  “Ummm . . . fine.”

  “How did your presentation go?”

  “Oh . . . you know . . .” She shifted position so she wouldn’t have to look at John.

  “They didn’t happen to record it, did they?”

  “Uh . . . no. . . . No recordings.” Only the indelible recording in her own mind. And in the long-term memories of her peers.

  “Oh, well,” her mother said. “Maybe next time. I’m sure you were fantastic. How’s the nausea? Are you eating?”

  She stared at her half-finished sundae. “Some.”

  “Well, make sure you’re taking your vitamins and getting rest. You need to finish the semester strong.”

  “I know.”

  While her mother updated her on distant cousins she hadn’t met, she swirled her spoon in the caramel sauce. First in her class, Daddy often told the neighbors, his clients, anyone who might listen. Valedictorian. Summa cum laude. My daug
hter, the Ph.D. student. Going to do great things. Yes, very proud of her. Very proud.

  “You’re not going to tell them what happened?” John asked after she finished her conversation.

  It was her turn to shrug. “Why should I? It shouldn’t be a big deal, right? And if I tell them, it will become a big deal. You know them. They’ll make it a big deal.”

  A very big deal. They had always, always made her perfect record of achievement a very big deal.

  She pushed her bowl away. She had suddenly lost her appetite.

  Hannah

  “I’m gonna lose the house.” Mara sank into the passenger seat Tuesday morning and stared at the front windshield, where snow was rapidly accumulating.

  Hannah boosted heat from the air vents and placed her hand on Mara’s shoulder. “Don’t jump to any conclusions yet,” Hannah said. “I know it’s really hard to take this one step at a time. But you’ve got an advocate now to walk with you.” They had spent the past hour and a half with an attorney from Mara’s church who had tried to reassure her that she would get an equitable financial settlement.

  “You heard him,” Mara said. “Even if I get everything I’m entitled to, I’m still probably not gonna be able to afford the mortgage. Unless I find a really good job. And who’s gonna hire a fifty-year-old woman with no job skills? I’m screwed.”

  Hannah turned on the wipers and backed out of the parking space.

  Mara crossed her arms. “Well, I’ll just make sure Tom knows how much the boys will suffer if we have to move into some sleazy neighborhood. In fact, I bet I can turn Kevin against him if I tell him he has to switch schools because his dad is so selfish. Kev will be furious about that.”