Faith Wish

by James Bennett

  Now Anne-Marie was exhausted. She said, “Miracles are not so unusual. The Lord blesses people with miracles all the time.”

  “You’re scaring me, Ruth Anne.”

  “I don’t mean to,” Anne-Marie replied. The idea of death frightened her; she was not nearly strong enough to overcome the fear of it. “The Lord blesses people with miracles all the time,” she repeated. “There are miracles all throughout the Bible. Brother Jackson even had one on an oil rig. It changed his life.”

  Rachel said, “Remember how you said that sometimes I scared you? Well it’s the other way around now. You’re scaring me. You’ve got to remember that I don’t always know what my dreams might mean. Like the dream I had about my mother and the angels. I didn’t know it was a vision until after she died. I told you that, remember?”

  “I guess you did. I’m not sure what I remember right now.” Luckily, she remembered to unplug the iron. The headband was neatly pressed. “I think I need to go and take a nap,” she said.

  “I wish you would. And I wish you’d start eating again.”

  “Tomorrow I will. But I promised the Lord a three-day fast.” Walking slowly, she headed for her bed.

  June 30

  This was her time. She heard the Lord’s call and she would answer.

  She had to move carefully in the dark to avoid colliding with a bed frame or one of the hutches. Noise was out of the question because it would probably awaken someone, and this needed to be a private moment. It needed to be supremely private.

  In fact, she moved more cautiously than the situation demanded. The steady hum from the window fans created a blanket of sound that would muffle any bump or stumble. Because she was so shaky from the fasting, though, she watched her steps with extra care.

  There was enough light for maneuvering in the dark from the outside pole lamp, once her eyes got adjusted. She wasn’t sure what time it was, since she had been dozing in fits and starts. It was probably two or three A.M. Her belly was tight and acidic. The concrete floor was very, cool on the soles of her feet; it felt good.

  When she left the dorm, she was careful not to let the screen door slam.

  Ruth Anne was headed for the mountaintop.

  She was walking along the dark path in the direction of the footbridge, but the moon was full. She could navigate her way. She passed one of the shelters where evening testimony was held, as well as crafts and Bible study. It seemed so strange to see no faces, hear no voices. It was more than silence, it was hush. She took it as an underscore for her current spiritual mindset. It wasn’t long before she could see light at the rear end of the footbridge, peeking among the dense foliage.

  She was wearing her white Jesus shirt and her overalls. She had on clean underwear, because it seemed important to be presentable in the unlikely event they ever found her body. As a matter of fact, during the several hours or so since she had made her final decision to take her burden up to El Shaddai, the question of clothing had been a distraction: What will you look like if they find your body?

  But it was more or less irrelevant, because if her own death was indeed her final answer, she wouldn’t really be taking her own life, she would be flying to the Lord. That would be her personal miracle, to join Him in the air. Even dying would not be death in any conventional sense. She would be gone, but she would be in loving arms where no one left on earth could ever see her. The Apostles’ Creed said the “resurrection of the body,” not just the soul.

  There was a chance she would be vanishing without a trace. The Lord would lift her up on His own terms. When there was triumph over death, death was not a factor. If they did find her in the gorge, they wouldn’t find a corpse; they would find a glorified body rather than one of earthly substance. Nothing anyone could touch or experience like flesh—even if the corpse was still in the world, she herself would no longer be of the world.

  She was scared. Very scared. But just as determined. Damp and clammy clay formed the pathway. At another time, under different circumstances, the sharp pebbles which gouged her feet would have been painful. But now, navigating her way in the dark, weakened and woozy, it was all she could do to concentrate on watching her step. Under other conditions, she might have smelled the petroleum odor of the weather-treated footbridge.

  As she approached the bridge, nausea bubbled in her chest. She belched some viscous vomit into her mouth, swallowed, and then there was that bitter, metallic aftertaste like that of a penny resting on her tongue. It was fear that caused her to quicken her pace, but as soon as she did, she found herself so fatigued she needed to stop and rest against the railing. Whatever happens to me up on the high mountain shouldn’t be fearful, since I’m simply answering the Lord’s summons. “If God is for me, who can be against me?”…“Whither thou goest, I will go.…”

  She rested her head on her forearms for a few moments, waiting to recover her strength. She heard an owl hooting in the cottonwoods. They had owls here, and they had hawks. But no Canada geese. She hadn’t seen a single goose since she’d been here. This was the bridge that was the setting for Rachel’s recurrent vision of death. In so short a time, it had already become a bridge filled with memories.

  At first, listening to Rachel’s vision and trying to imagine how it might apply to her, Anne-Marie had thought of abortion. Even though the Lord hated abortion, and so did she, it might be different if she were carrying the demon seed. In the demon seed was the Antichrist. If Brother Jackson wasn’t really the father, if the incubus had visited her in her sleep and impregnated her, it might be the one exception which could make abortion acceptable in the sight of God.

  But then she’d pondered that perhaps the vision of death was more probably intended for her than for her fetus. If she took her own life, she would take the demon seed with her. Suicide was a sin and might jeopardize her place in the Lord’s mansion, but maybe the circumstances that consumed her would, again, be acceptable in the sight of God.

  But still: What death? In whose service? What kind? In what sphere? How glorified? Anne-Marie recognized her reeling questions for what they were: panic. It was her mission now to trust in the Lord and pray that those who might be left behind would be able to do the same.

  She spoke out loud for the first time: “But why do I presume death at all? Of any kind? My most fervent prayer is that on the mountaintop the Lord will give me an emphatic and bold answer to my prayer for understanding. I’ll have closure. I can move forward in the Fellowship without lingering doubts.”

  If she did die, she knew that Sister Abigail would understand and would even use her death somehow to exalt the Lord. It was obedience. It was faith. And death shall have no dominion.

  She moved with care along the planks, fingering the crude handrail gingerly as she went. She didn’t want any splinters in her hand. On the far side of the bridge, standing beneath the other feeble pole light, she stopped long enough for a few deep breaths. It was time to put the headband on before she went a step farther. She tied it neatly and deliberately; the two strands of excess ribbon hung limp at the back of her neck, except when the breeze fluttered them.

  The nausea she felt wasn’t the same as the nausea of morning sickness; this was nerves. But the trembling of her limbs was something different altogether. It was more than panic, it was panic intensified by three days without food. If my will is strong enough, though. If my will to serve and obey is just strong enough.…

  It was a long, draining climb up the steep and rocky path that led to the plateau of mountaintop, to the sacred height of Rachel’s El Shaddai. It was dark most of the way. She was feeling her way, not seeing, but she had traveled this path before. She had to stop and rest frequently. Fortunately, there were those familiar boulders she could sit on until she was ready for more climbing.

  She began her slow climb again, a few feet at a time between stops. In the clearings, the full moon helped to light the way. It had to be a sign that the Lord wanted her here. He wanted her here and now, in this plac
e.

  By the time she reached the top, she was utterly exhausted and light-headed. The rocky shelf of plateau was well-lighted by the moon. With no hesitation she made her way directly to the edge, sat down firmly, and let her feet dangle. The strong light from the moon enabled her to see clear to the bottom, even though the precipice upon which she perched herself was so very high above the shoreline. The reservoir was low from lack of rain, so the shoreline itself was a shelf of rocks and sand. Her feet were swinging freely back and forth.

  She sat without trepidation for several minutes, long enough to regain a sense of equilibrium. She made her heart wide open before she said, “Dear Jesus, Dear Lord Jesus,” out loud. She sought the words that would make the perfect prayer, so as to encourage the Lord to deliver her an unequivocal sign. Her wide-open heart was ready to submit. Even death couldn’t be scary, because to know the answer would overcome any fear. But she couldn’t find the right words, in spite of her best intentions.

  But how much would the words actually matter if the Lord knew the purity of her heart? Was it death? Was it incubus? The affairs of the Spirit were so elusive, but God would lead.

  She sat alone with the Lord, in the dark, at the top of El Shaddai.

  The Lord had led her here. It wasn’t likely that she would fall; instead, the Lord would lift her up. She expected her own private Rapture; her own personal miracle. She believed in it with all her heart and soul.

  In her escalating drowsiness, she didn’t notice that she was leaning forward precariously. Her mind wandered to Rachel’s supreme reluctance to share the meaning of her dream. I wish I had the gift of interpretation, but the Lord hasn’t blessed me with it. She remembered Brother Jackson’s advice to put all faith in Him and He will light your way. Well, there was light here for sure.

  She gazed at the beauty of the moon path where it streaked the surface of the lake. It was hypnotic. The water was so still, the path of moonlight was as unwavering as a royal carpet. The water carpet itself might be the sign, or at the very least the setting for the sign. The Word said that the Lord had walked on water.

  It would happen there, she felt certain. Could it be that the gleam on the water was the runway where the Lord would make himself visible to her? And would He appear all in white, cloaked in a resplendent pure gown of a special heavenly substance? And reach out His eternal arms so that she might step off the cliff to join Him in the air? And if so, there would be no body ever found, no corpse, only her glorified absence without a residue or a trace. Was this the way the Lord would bring closure and glory?

  But an hour of openness, of submission, and receptivity, and she didn’t hear an answer. Didn’t see one, either. It might have been longer than an hour, perhaps even two; her sense of time was as out of joint as her other senses. She watched and waited a little longer, but then fell asleep, on her side.

  When she awoke, just before dawn, she sat up slowly and rubbed her eyes. She felt keen discouragement combined with acute fatigue and drowsiness. The Lord’s answer had not come to her in spite of her climb to this sacred place.

  In His time, not our time, wasn’t that what Sister Abigail always said? Wasn’t that what Brother Jackson preached as well? In His time was what true submission was all about. She couldn’t let her disappointment weaken her faith.

  She thought of her sister Eleanor’s impatient ultimatum, but held no animosity. Eleanor cheated to win the Oneppo Medal. Had Anne-Marie thought to bring her diary notebook, she might have written this information on a page all its own. She thought of Nurse Howard, back at that clinic, who had shown her a pamphlet about parenting.

  She thought of her parents and the contemptible contract that had taken away her freedom and dignity. If she ever had any dignity to begin with. But haggard and spent as she was, lacking sleep and food, even the thought of her parents coming to take her home was all of a sudden not threatening anymore. Ruth Anne was empty.

  Still discouraged but weary and maybe even wiser, she stood up to leave. It had seemed so certain that the time for her sign was now. It was still dark, so at least she could return to the dorm without waking people. She would tell Rachel about this, but no one else.

  This morning I’ll have fruit. But she stood up much too quickly. Her head swam and her limbs tremored so that she nearly blacked out. There was nothing to reach out for or lean against.

  She lost her balance.

  In the instant before she fell, she thought of her parents, her sister, and finally of Brother Jackson. She didn’t think thoughts, she simply watched the faces racing through her mind’s eye.

  Then she was free-falling. The panic tore at her insides as she searched for perfect prayer words one more time. It took less than two full seconds before the rocky shore came up to savage her. She died without regaining consciousness.

  A later coroner’s inquest would reveal that had she fallen during a wet season, when the water level would have been higher, she might have survived.

  Epilogue

  “‘He who believeth in me,’” began the minister, reading from a series of Biblical passages, “‘though he were dead, yet shall he live.’” The minister was a Presbyterian clergyman, the pastor of the church in which Anne-Marie Morgan had been raised. He was a thin, pale man who wore a clerical collar. But his voice was rich and resonant.

  “‘Let not your hearts be troubled,’” he continued, “‘but believe in God and believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.’”

  The graveside service was a simple, brief one, limited to family and closest friends seated on folding chairs beneath a canopy. The canopy wasn’t really necessary because the weather was fine, but it provided a sense of additional privacy. Security personnel had cordoned off a section of the cemetery. There were curious onlookers and even a Minicam or two, because of the controversial nature of the circumstances of Anne-Marie’s death as reported in some of the articles in the local papers.

  The minister closed his Bible before clasping it firmly with both hands against his stomach. “Anne-Marie Morgan,” he began, “fell to her death in a camp in southern Illinois. We gather here to celebrate her life, to grieve for our collective loss, and to take comfort from the fact that she dwells now with the Heavenly Father.”

  Then he began quoting Scripture without reopening the book. “‘If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.’”

  At this point, Eleanor, who was seated on one of the folding chairs between her mother and her Aunt Grace from Cleveland, took steadfastly from her purse Anne-Marie’s handcrafted headband with EL SHADDAI in the vivid white letters. Slowly but carefully, she tied it around her head so that it was secured straight and firm above her long ponytail. Cheerleader hair.

  Her appearance couldn’t have been any more incongruous. She wore a simple, black sleeveless dress which was quietly elegant. She wore a string of pearls. And now, a ribbon headband.

  The minister seemed nonplussed. Whether he was distracted by Eleanor’s simple, dramatic gesture, or whether he wished to reinforce the poignancy of the Scripture, it was hard to tell. Nevertheless, he paraphrased the passage from First Corinthians. “If I have the powers of prophecy and tongues, and understand all mysteries, but have not love,” he said, “I am nothing. I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

  When he was finished with his remarks, which took no longer than ten or fifteen minutes, he quietly shook the hand of each family member and whispered his condolences. Eleanor, her father, and her mother each tossed a white lily on top of the silver casket.

  Her parents then headed for their car, her father’s arm around he
r mother’s heaving shoulders. Eleanor left them briefly to make her way across the lumpy terrain in the direction of a blue Topaz parked beneath a large oak tree.

  The car belonged to Sister Abigail, who was standing against the front door, her arms folded across her chest. It wasn’t easy for Eleanor to traverse the cemetery lawn, not in her high heels. She took them off. When she neared the car, Sister Abigail said, “May the Lord bless you with His peace.”

  “Thank you,” said Eleanor curtly.

  “I felt compelled to come,” said Abigail, “even if just to watch from a distance.”

  “You know,” said Eleanor, “I don’t think I’ve ever slapped anybody’s face before.” She didn’t raise her voice, but she must have had a tone, because Abigail flinched.

  “I see you’re wearing her headband,” said Abigail quickly. “I can’t think of a better way to honor Ruth Anne’s memory.”

  “There never was a Ruth Anne. That was just some sort of mystery fiction to satisfy your religious agenda.”

  “I would never quarrel with you at a time like this. The Lord would surely disapprove.”

  “Disapprove would be the word,” Eleanor confirmed. “I’m not wearing my sister’s headband to honor her memory. I’m wearing it to remind me of my own shortcomings and the humility I need to learn.”

  “The Lord blesses us for humility.”

  “Then He must bless us for learning something from it. I didn’t have the resourcefulness to give Anne-Marie the help she needed, and I certainly didn’t have the courage. I could have forced her to go back home, where she could have received the full spectrum of counseling and options. I didn’t do that. I didn’t have the spine. Neither did you.”

  “We put all our trust in the Lord,” answered Abigail quietly, “receiving direction from Him in His time, not our own.”