by Eric Metaxas
Well, what was I supposed to say? I really couldn’t believe my ears, so I asked a few more questions just to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding the wild facts of what my aunt was telling me. But I wasn’t. She made it very clear that that’s what the photograph was, and it was just as I had described the photograph in my dream, the dream that was so powerful and overwhelming that I had to tell my mother and when I couldn’t tell her, told my aunt. Hearing her corroborate this was one of those moments. Just how is one supposed to react? Could this be true? But of course it was true. It was also too much to take in.
“That’s unbelievable, Tante Eleonore!” I said. “That’s amazing!!!” What else does one say?
Of course, it was just as amazing to my aunt. Neither of us could believe it, but there it was. We were nonplussed. “What do you think it means?” she asked.
“Well, Tante Eleonore,” I said, “all I know is that it’s a miracle. That much I have no doubt about. But why exactly God would do something like that I don’t know. Sometimes he just does things like that to let us know he’s real and he’s with us, that he knows the intimate details of our lives and wants us to have a relationship with him. That’s all I can say for sure. But I know that it’s a miracle.”
And so we left it at that. But before I hung up I asked my aunt to please send me a copy of the photograph, which I got a few days later and which is indeed precisely from that time, because Jürgen, who is in the photo among all the others, is a year or two younger than I remember him being. So what was I to make of this? Beyond the idea that it was amazing and miraculous, I simply had no idea. I had a sense that God might reveal more about it in his time, but I didn’t know that for sure either. All I could do was shake my head and marvel.
But the more I thought of it, the more amazing it seemed. If I had reached my mother on the phone and had told her the story, my aunt would never have heard about it. I never had phone conversations with my aunt beyond maybe saying Happy Birthday or something along those lines. So the idea that I couldn’t reach my mother and then called my aunt to find her and then was told she wasn’t there and then told my aunt the story of the dream was itself strange. But if not for that, I wouldn’t be writing about this now. If I had reached my mother I would have never heard about the photograph from my aunt. There was nothing special about the dream or the photograph independent of each other. But because I told my aunt about the dream, it became an outrageous and amazing story. But how in the world could I have dreamt of a photograph that existed a hundred miles away in my aunt’s house on Long Island? And what was the point of it all?
I’ve earlier said that a miracle necessarily seems to involve God communicating to people and I asked if a miracle happens in the woods, and there’s no one around to see it, is it a miracle? As far as this miracle goes, the answer is emphatically no. The point of it seems to be that people have to be on the receiving end of it. God is trying to communicate to us in a specific way, to say, I’m here, in a way that’s calculated to get our attention.
So I now told the story of this insane convergence to my mother and brother and wife, and all everyone could say was that it was amazing, but beyond that, what could one say? In one way, it was all almost as annoying as it was amazing.
In any case, time passed and I forgot all about the dream.
In early 2007 my Wilberforce biography, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, was published and I did a lot of traveling to speak about Wilberforce. Invariably people would ask me about whom I would write next. Most of them assumed that I had found my life’s genre and would now write biographies of inspiring people. But I had never wanted to write a biography, and having written the story of Wilberforce, I assumed I was through with the genre. But the more I heard this question the more I thought that perhaps I might conceivably write one more, and if I were to write one more it would have to be about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
I had heard Bonhoeffer’s story the summer I came to faith in 1988 and was captivated by it. The idea that a devout German Christian had spoken up for the Jews—and had acted on their behalf by actually becoming involved in the plot to kill Hitler—amazed me. One never seemed to hear stories of people who did the right and heroic thing because of their faith, so I was stunned to hear about Bonhoeffer and doubly stunned I had never heard of him and his story. But I was also moved by his story because my mother had grown up in Germany during the horrible years of the Third Reich. She had lost my grandfather in the war when she was nine. He was thirty-one years old and a genuinely reluctant German soldier. My grandmother told me he would listen to the BBC with his ear literally pressed against the radio speaker, because if one was caught listening to the BBC in Germany at that time, one might be sent to a concentration camp. So the idea that Bonhoeffer was speaking out not just for the Jews of Germany, but also for Germans like my grandfather, moved me. But I had mostly forgotten about Bonhoeffer’s story until people who had heard me talk about Wilberforce kept asking me whom I might write about next.
It was less the idea that Bonhoeffer was German that really captivated me than that he had, because of his Christian faith, stood up for the Jews—and had been killed by the Nazis as a result. As Wilberforce had given his whole political life over to speak out for the Africans who were being enslaved, Bonhoeffer had given up life itself to speak out for the Jews. It seemed natural that if I were to write another biography it should be about Bonhoeffer. In my mind, the two stories complemented each other.
So I leapt into the story of Bonhoeffer, reading all I could about him and his era. I had been so disconnected from my German roots for so many years that reading about Bonhoeffer and this time in history began to slowly reconnect me to this part of myself. But it wasn’t until I was actually writing the book—some time in early 2008—that I was really thinking hard about that era and about my family, who had all lived through it. My mother and Tante Eleonore and my grandmother and grandfather and Tante Walli. All of them. They had all been there while it was unfolding. It had all been a part of their lives. So as I got into writing the book I thought about them and how they had actually lived through all of it. I felt more and more connected to them and to the fact that these were my people and they had lived through this painful time in history that I was now writing about.
One day during this time of immersion in this period it suddenly hit me. It was as if a loud bell had gone off in my head with a deep and resonant bong. I don’t mean that I actually heard anything, but it was as if I suddenly had a clear understanding of something I had previously not understood at all. It happened in a moment. I wasn’t thinking about it. One moment I wasn’t thinking about it and the next moment I had a full understanding. That’s because just now, for the first time in at least a year, I remembered the strange and powerful dream about Großstöbnitz, and now for the first time I understood what it had been all about. In the dream I had had a deep longing to be a part of my German family—but of my German family before I had actually been a part of that family when we visited in 1971. I had so wanted to be in that picture with all of them, before I was actually there, but I couldn’t. And now I saw that that powerful longing to be in touch with my German roots and family before 1971 was being fulfilled in my writing this book. The longing in that dream was so powerful that I had to call up my mother and when I tried to track her down ended up telling my aunt.
In telling this I realize it’s hard to communicate effectively what happened. It’s tremendously subjective, for one thing. But the fact was that I simply hadn’t thought about any of this before. It was a sudden knowing. I suddenly knew that that outrageous dream had been God’s way of showing me that he had created me to write this book, to tell this story of what happened to Germany, and that in a way it was my story too. Through my mother and grandparents and all these other relatives I had been there too, and now in writing this book I was reconnecting to that part of myself, to that
part of my own history as a German. And if there had been any doubt about any of this, God had performed the singularly outrageous miracle of having me find out hours after I woke up from that dream in 2006 that the photograph of which I had dreamt actually existed and had been printed out the night before. It seemed clear that he had done this to underscore it all in a very dramatic way so that I would know it was a miracle even before I knew the point of the miracle.
But there’s something more. Why would God want to communicate that to me? Why did he need to make me understand that he had created me to write this book, or had at least called me to write this book? It felt as though he had said to me, This is my book. I have called you to write this book. I put that longing in you to connect with your German roots for a larger purpose. But why did I need to know any of this? I was doing fine writing the book. Why did it have to be invested with such significance? Why did it all need to be so ponderous? Wasn’t it just a book—the story of an inspiring man?
I thought so and really didn’t understand why God felt it was necessary to underscore this in the undeniably dramatic way he had done until later.
The first part of that understanding came when I was in the awful throes of writing the book. Once the writing had begun I was on a tremendous deadline. I had never worked harder on anything, and that is not hyperbole. I knew that unless I finished the book in about five months, the publisher would not be able to get it out in time to coincide with the movie Valkyrie, which is a movie about the plot to kill Hitler. I felt that unless we had that little bit of extra help to promote it, it would sink—as any biography of a German theologian would be expected to sink—like a stone.
So one day at lunch I got the publisher to agree that if I finished the manuscript by a certain date they would fulfill their part of the bargain and publish the book a bit earlier than usual, to coincide with the release of the movie. So I fairly raced home from the restaurant and began writing like a madman, typing twelve and more hours a day every day, seven days a week, week after week after week for more than five months. It was like sprinting a marathon and in the midst of it I felt an agony I had never felt before, as though I were being chased by a lion and couldn’t stop, as though my heart might burst. I prayed a lot during the writing of the book, and when the agony of it all was too much, I remembered that God had communicated to me that this was his book, that he had his hand on it and all would be well. I needed to remember that. How I needed to remember that! Remembering that extraordinary miracle carried me through when I simply thought I couldn’t continue.
But the difficulties would get worse. After finishing this endless sprint and turning in the manuscript I heard nothing from the publisher. After quite a while I contacted them via e-mail and was told via return e-mail shortly thereafter that they wouldn’t be able to get the book out in time for the movie’s release after all. It would have to be delayed by six months. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I felt like I’d been hit with a shovel. Had all that craziness really been for nothing? It was too much to take in. To what shall I compare it? I felt like someone with a bad heart who is told that his relay team has a chance at the gold medal and the world record in the mile. So, risking a coronary, he runs his quarter with all his might and main, nearly dying for the effort, but handing the baton to the next runner with a decent lead on the competition and a good shot at the world record—and then collapses onto the cinder track, praying his heart will hold out. Moments later he looks up and sees the man to whom he had handed the baton leaning against a railing with the baton in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He hadn’t bothered to run his leg. So it was all for naught. That’s just how I felt when I heard this news. The agony of the endless sprint had been for nothing. The deprivation of time with my family and all else. I was numb from disbelief.
It took me months to get my head around what felt like a tremendous betrayal by my publisher. But eventually I had no choice but to pick myself up and proceed with them. They also had insisted that I cut the book by more than a third. But I didn’t see that there was much fat to cut. I felt that almost all that was there was bone and muscle and to cut into that would damage the book. I did my best and cut what I could, but it didn’t amount to very much. I then handed in the manuscript, making it clear that if I needed to do anything at all to assure the book came out as soon as possible, they needed only to say the word.
But once again I heard nothing for weeks and months. Finally I sent an e-mail asking what had happened. I was again responded to fairly quickly and was told that for some reason the book actually would have to be delayed at least another six months. Perhaps another nine months. And that it still had to be cut by more than a third. There is no way I can adequately describe how this made me feel. I was now simply beside myself with confusion, anger, and depression. I had never been that broken with despair, and in all of it the only thing I could cling to was the memory that God had, through the miracle of the dream and the photograph, dramatically communicated to me that this was his book and that he had his hand on the book, that he had a plan for it, a larger purpose. I took what comfort I could in that and reminded myself of it and of the miracle with the photograph at least daily.
I knew that to cut the book would compromise it, so I eventually elected to change publishers, and changing publishers presented its own difficulties. But in all of it I continued to remember the miracle: that God had let me know that he had called me to write the book and that all would be well. I knew that I could trust him and must trust him. What that meant specifically I had no idea. I only knew that God was trustworthy and I would trust him with the details and the outcome of it all.
That the book would eventually become a bestseller was not something I ever imagined possible. It is the six-hundred-page biography of a German theologian. How many people would buy such a book? That the book would be voted Book of the Year by the prestigious ECPA* was also not something I imagined possible, nor that the book would be translated into sixteen languages (and counting) and would allow me the tremendous honor of meeting two US presidents. All I knew was that God had done something outrageously miraculous to get my attention and to send me a message of comfort that I would desperately need to get me through the hard times—that did get me through the hard times and that to this day encourages me still, every time I remember it.
THE LOST KEYS
Part of what makes the concept of miracles and God’s intervention such a hot topic for so many people is that everyone wonders how a God who is presumably running the entire universe will not heal someone of cancer but will find someone else a parking space. How and when God intervenes—if he does—gives us a picture of who God is. And most people think that a God who wastes his time doing parlor tricks like finding people parking spaces, while allowing the Holocaust to happen, must be nothing more than an infinite-size superjerk. You cannot entirely blame them for thinking that. It’s a question that needs to be answered, or at least discussed.
For example, I have a very dear friend named Kimberly Thornbury, who once lost her keys. Losing ones keys has to be a universal phenomenon, at least in that part of the civilized world where people have keys. But if we’re not losing our keys we are losing our glasses, or a piece of paper with something on it that was important, or a shoe or a glove. People lose things. One study calculated that people spend 3,680 hours in their lifetime looking for lost items, which works out to 150 twenty-four-hour days. Can that be? Obviously a fraction of that is far too much.
Kimberly considers herself a fairly organized person, which is to say that those of us who aren’t terribly organized consider her an enviably hyperorganized person. She is the wife of my dear friend Greg Thornbury, who is the president of the King’s College in New York City, and her competence and attention to detail in what she does at the college and in general are practically legendary. But just like the rest of us, Kimberly once lost her keys.
This happened sometime
around 2005. But it was no ordinary set of keys. Kimberly had a very important job at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, at that time, so she had a tremendous number of keys on the key chain, most of them master keys to various buildings at the university. One might say that Kimberly had the type of job and responsibility given to people not prone to losing their keys. And not only were there a lot of keys on the chain; they were attached to a giant red plastic heart-shaped keychain that Kimberly had made during a mandatory shop class when she was in high school. So if they were anywhere nearby it would be exceedingly difficult to miss them.
Kimberly was during this time a full-time working mother, with two girls, then two and four years old. Her husband, Greg, traveled extensively during this period. In fact, he was away during the time Kimberly lost the keys, so she had no one to complain to about it, nor anyone to help her think through where she might have misplaced them. She was also so busy that there really wasn’t much time to slow down and look for keys. She had groceries to buy, dry cleaning to pick up, and clothes to drop off at a consignment sale. So that Friday afternoon, without missing a beat, she grabbed the spare car key from the manila folder in her laundry room (have we mentioned that she was organized?) and continued with her multiple errands around town. She was similarly busy on Saturday, but in the course of her many activities in and out of the house, the keys simply never surfaced. It was a conundrum. On Sunday, she drove to church services—both morning services and evening services—all the while using her spare car key and hoping her other keys would turn up. They didn’t.
On Monday morning, she drove her two girls to their nanny’s, just up the street, before Kimberly went off to work at the university, where the missing keys would be far more missed than they had been over the weekend. The nanny had cared for Greg and Kimberly’s daughters since they were born. They all considered her their Mary Poppins, wonderful in every way. As she usually did, the nanny stood near her garage waiting to greet Kimberly’s two daughters and begin the day. Both girls burst out of the car, gave the nanny a big hug, and dashed inside her house. But the nanny stayed outside for a moment.