The Mitford Bedside Companion

by Jan Karon

  “Tell me,” he said at last. “Tell me everything. I’m your priest, after all.” She thought his smile dazzling, a dazzling thing to come out of quietude. She had pulled a footstool to the love seat and sat close to him.

  “I’m terribly afraid I can’t make you happy,” she said.

  “But that was my fear! I finally kicked it out the back door and now it’s run over here.”

  “It’s not funny, Timothy.”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  He took her hands in his and lightly kissed the tips of her fingers and she caught the scent of him, the innocence of him, and her spirit mounted up again.

  “Why don’t we pray together?” he said. “Just let our hearts speak to His….”

  Sitting at his feet, she bowed her head and closed her eyes and he stroked her shoulder. Though the clock ticked in the hallway, she supposed that time was standing still, and that she might sit with him in this holy reverie, forever.

  “Lord,” he said, simply, “here we are.”

  “Yes, Lord, here we are.”

  They drew in their breath as one, and let it out in a long sigh, and she realized for a moment how the very act of breathing in His presence was balm.

  “Dear God,” he said, “deliver Your cherished one from feeling helpless to receive the love You give so freely, so kindly, from the depths of Your being. Help us to be as large as the love You’ve given us, sometimes it’s too great for us, Lord, even painful in its power. Tear away the old fears, the old boundaries that no longer contain anything of worth or importance, and by Your grace, make Cynthia able to seize this bold, fresh freedom….”

  “Yes, Lord,” she prayed, “the freedom I’ve never really known before, but which You’ve faithfully shown me in glimmers, in epiphanies, in wisps as fragile as…light from Your new moon!”

  He pressed her hand, feeling in it the beating of her pulse.

  “Father, deliver me from the fear to love wholly and completely, I who chided this good man for his own fears, his own weakness, while posing, without knowing it a pose, as confident and bold. You’ve seen through that, Lord, You’ve…You’ve found me out for what I am…”

  There was a long silence, filled by the ticking of the clock.

  “…a frightened seven-year-old who stands at the door looking for a father and mother who…do not come home.”

  * * *

  Give them wisdom and devotion in the ordering of their common life, that each may be to the other a strength in need, a counselor in perplexity, a comfort in sorrow, and a companion in joy. Amen.

  —The Book of Common Prayer

  * * *

  “Even after years of knowing You as a Father who is always home, I sometimes feel—I feel a prisoner of old and wrenching fears, and I’m ashamed of my fear, and the darkness that prevents me from stepping into the light….”

  “You tell us in Your Word,” he prayed, “that You do not give us the spirit of fear—”

  “But of power and of love and a sound mind!” she whispered, completing the verse from the second letter to Timothy.

  “And so, Lord, I rebuke the Enemy who would employ every strategy to deny Your children the blessing of Your grace.”

  “Yes, Lord!”

  “Help us to receive Your peace and courage, Your confidence and power,” he said.

  “Yes, Lord!”

  “Thank you for being with us now, and in the coming weeks and coming years.”

  “And Father,” she said, “please give me the grace to love Dooley as You love him, and the patience to encourage and support and understand him, for I wish with all my heart that we might grow together in harmony, as a true family.” She took a deep and satisfying breath. “And now, Lord…”

  As the prayer neared its end, they spoke in unison as they had recently begun to do in their evening prayers.

  “…create in us a clean heart…renew a right spirit within us…and fill us with Your Holy Spirit…through Christ our Lord…amen.”

  He helped her from the footstool and she sat beside him on the love seat and breathed the peace that settled over them like a shawl.

  “There will be many times when fear breaks in,” he said, holding her close. “We can never be taken prisoner if we greet it with prayer.”

  “Yes!” she whispered, feeling a weight rolled away like the stone from the sepulcher.

  “I smelled the chicken as I came through the hedge.”

  “Dinner in twenty minutes?” she murmured.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” he said.

  A Common Life, Ch. 7

  IN HIS ROOM across the hall, Dooley sat on the side of his bed and felt the creeping, lopsided nausea that came with the aroma of baking ham as it rose from the kitchen. He said three four-letter words in a row, and was disappointed when his stomach still felt sick.

  He hoped his voice wouldn’t crack during the hymn. Though he’d agreed to sing a cappella, he didn’t trust a cappella. If you hit a wrong note, there was nothing to cover you. He wished there were trumpets or something really loud behind him, but no, Cynthia wanted “Dooley’s pure voice.” Gag.

  “God,” he said aloud, “don’t let me sound weird. Amen.” He had no idea that God would really hear him or prevent him from sounding weird, but he thought it was a good idea to ask.

  He guessed he was feeling better about stuff. Yesterday, Father Tim spent the whole day taking him places, plus they’d run two miles with Barnabas and gone to Sweet Stuff after. Then, Cynthia had given him a hug that nearly squeezed his guts out. “Dooley,” she said, “I really care about you.”

  When he heard that, he felt his face getting hard. He didn’t want it to, but it was trained that way. He could tell she really meant it, but she’d have to prove she meant it before he would smile at her; he knew she wanted him to smile. Maybe he would someday, but not now. Now he was trying to keep from puking up his gizzard because he had to sing a song he didn’t even like, at a wedding he still wasn’t sure of.

  A Common Life, Ch. 8

  A VOICE MURMURED at his right ear; he felt a warm breath that cosseted his hearing and made it acute.

  * * *

  Searching for Something You’re Afraid You Can’t Find?

  Read page 83 of In This Mountain. I hope it will encourage you, as it encourages yours truly.

  —Jan

  * * *

  “O God, Light of lights, Keep us from inward darkness. Grant us so to sleep in peace, that we may arise to work according to Your will.”

  The voice ceased, and he waited to hear it again, desperately wished to hear it again. Is that all? There came a kind of whirring in his head, as if of planets turning, and then the voice warmed his ear again. “Goodnight, dearest. I love you more than life….”

  He could not open his mouth, it was as if he had no mouth, only ears to catch this lovely sound, this breath as warm as the tropical isles he would never visit. Nor had he eyes to see; he discovered this when he tried to open them. No mouth to speak, no eyes to see; all he could locate was his right and waiting ear.

  He tried to remember what the voice had just said to him, but could not. Speak to me again! he cried from his heart. Please! But he heard nothing more.

  The water poured in through the top of his head, as loud as a waterfall, and rushed into his neck and arms and hands and belly and legs and streamed into his feet. Immediately the wave came in again at the top of his head and flowed through him once more.

  The water’s journey was warm and consoling, familiar; it was as if he’d waited for this moment all his life, and now that it had come, he was at peace.

  Then he was floating somewhere, weightless, emptied of all doubt or fear, but not emptied of longing. More than anything, he longed for the sound of the voice at his ear, and the warm zephyr that came with it.

  The birdsong was sharp and clear, the sky cloudless. He was walking along a woodland trail, carrying something on his back. He supposed it might be a pack, but he didn�
�t check to see. In trying to balance the thing between the blades of his aching shoulders, he felt the weight shift wildly so that he lost his balance. He stumbled; the edge of the woodland path crumbled under his right foot and he fell to his knees, hard, and woke shouting.

  Lord! Where are You?

  He knew he had shouted, yet he hadn’t heard his voice.

  The room—was it a room?—was black, not even a streetlamp shone, and the dream—was it a dream?—had been so powerful, so convincing, that he dared not let it go. Where are You? he repeated, whispering, urgent.

  Here I am, Timothy.

  He lifted his hand and reached out to Jesus, whom he couldn’t see but now strongly sensed to be near him, all around him.

  The tears were hot on his face. He had found the Lord from whom he’d thought himself lost, and lay back, gasping, as if he’d walked a long section of the Appalachian Trail.

  Thank you! he said into the silence. Had he spoken?

  “‘And yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…’”

  There was the voice at his ear, and the soft, warm breath. Stay! Don’t go, don’t leave me.

  “‘I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me….’”

  He listened, but couldn’t contain the words; he forgot them the moment they were spoken.

  “I love you, my darling, my dearest, my Timothy.”

  A fragrance suffused the air around his pillow, and he entered into it as if into a garden. It possessed a living and deeply familiar presence, and was something like…

  …Home. But what was Home? He couldn’t remember. His heart repeated the word, Home, Home, but his head couldn’t fathom the meaning.

  In This Mountain, Ch. 6

  “DO YOU FEEL like telling me everything?” asked the bishop.

  He didn’t want to talk about it. Surely someone had given Stuart the details; everybody knew what had happened. He plunged ahead, however, dutiful.

  “I blacked out at the wheel of my car and hit Bill Sprouse, who pastors First Baptist. He was walking his dog. His dog was killed instantly. Bill had several fractures and a mild concussion.” He took a deep breath. “He’s going to be all right.”

  That was the first time he’d given anyone a synopsis, and he had made it through. His headache was blinding.

  “Yes, I heard all that, and God knows, I’m sorry. What I’d really like to hear is how you are—in your soul.”

  “Ah. My soul.” He put his hand to his forehead, speechless.

  “The Eucharist, then,” said Stuart. He bolted from the chair, took his home communion kit from the kitchen island, and brought it to the coffee table.

  Father Tim watched his bishop open the mahogany box to reveal the small water and wine cruets, a silver chalice and paten, a Host box, and a crisply starched fair linen.

  “I was reminded the other day,” said Stuart, “that when Saint John baptized Christ, he was touching God. An awesome and extraordinary thing to consider. When we receive the bread and blood, we, also, are touching God.” Stuart poured the wine and drizzled a small amount of water into each glass. “I know you recognize that wondrous fact, dear brother, but sometimes it’s good to be reminded.”

  “…Heavenly Father, Giver of life and health, comfort and hope; please visit us with such a strong sense of Your Presence that we may trust faithfully in Your mighty strength and power, in Your wisdom vastly beyond our understanding, and in Your love which surrounds us for all eternity. At this time, we ask Your grace especially upon Timothy, that he may know Your gift of a heart made joyous and strong by faith. Bless Cynthia, too, we pray, whose eager hands and heart care for him….”

  As Father Tim knelt by the coffee table next to his wife, the tears began and he didn’t try to check them.

  In This Mountain, Ch. 9

  AT THE FOOT of the bed, Barnabas scratched furiously, causing the mattress to throb like a great, arrhythmic heartbeat.

  Still awake at three in the morning, Father Tim lay in the dark room and looked out the window to darkness. The heavens were overcast, obscuring a nearly full moon, and the streetlamp had been knocked winding two weeks ago by a careless driver.

  Who was to say that Cynthia wouldn’t give up on him? In truth, he was wearing down while she was gearing up. How long could a bright, successful, beautiful woman be patient with a man who had no passion in him anywhere? His wife was all about passion, passion for whatever she was doing, for whatever lay ahead. At the beginning, she’d declared him charming and romantic—perhaps now she was changing her mind. But he couldn’t bear such thoughts, it was blasphemy to think these vile things.

  “Are you there, Lord? Sometimes I can’t sense Your Presence, I have to go on faith alone. You want us to walk by faith, You tell us so…don’t we go on faith that the sun will set, the moon will rise, our breath will come in and go out again, our hearts will beat? Give me faith, Lord, to know Your Presence as surely as I know the beating of my own heart. I’ve felt so far from You….”

  He remembered Miss Sadie’s story of falling into the abandoned well, of her terror as she cried out, unheard, in the dark summer night, unable to move—she said she’d known for the first time the deep meaning of the prayers she had learned by rote. “It was the darkness,” Miss Sadie had told him, “that was the worst.”

  The tears were hot on his face. His own life seemed overwhelmed by darkness these last weeks; there had been the bright and shining possibility, then had come the crushing darkness. Something flickered in his memory. “Songbirds,” he whispered. “Songbirds, yes…are taught to sing in the dark.”

  That was a line from Oswald Chambers, from the book he’d kept by his bedside for many years. But he couldn’t bear switching on the lamp to read it; his eyes had been feeling weak and even painful. He turned on his side and opened the drawer of the nightstand and took out the flashlight. Then he pulled Cynthia’s pillow atop his own and shone the flashlight on the open book.

  He thumbed through the worn and familiar pages. There! Page forty-five, the reading for February fourteenth….

  At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Songbirds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him…. Watch where God puts you into darkness, and when you are there keep your mouth shut. Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, or in your life with God? Then remain quiet…. When you are in the dark, listen, and God will give you a very precious message for someone else when you get into the light.

  The flashlight slid onto the bed beside him as he fell asleep, but his hand resolutely gripped the book until dawn.

  In This Mountain, Ch. 11

  HE’D JUST WRITTEN and delivered a sermon and now it was time to write another. A priest whose name he couldn’t remember had nailed it: “It’s like having a baby on Sunday and waking up pregnant on Monday.”

  He ran along the road toward Farmer, with Barnabas loping behind.

  He wanted Sunday’s message to count for something. Otherwise, why bother?

  “Your words for Your people,” he huffed aloud.

  In This Mountain, Ch. 16

  AT TWO O’CLOCK in the morning, he realized he’d fallen asleep in his chair in the study, and found his notebook on the floor. He regretted waking. There seemed a film over the lamplit room, as if he were wearing sunglasses. It had nothing to do with his eyes and everything to do with his spirit. He felt at the end of himself.

  Perhaps he should have gone forward with the medication for depression. The film, the darkness seemed always hovering nearby; if it disappeared for a time, it came back. He felt again a moment of panic—what if he were succumbing, as his father did, to the thing that brought down his marriage, brought down his business, ruined his health?

  But he mustn’t dwell on that. He must dwell on the message, for the message still hadn’t come right.

  He’d be forced to drum up someth
ing from days of yore, some antiquity that might be dredged from sermon notes stored in the study cabinet.

  But he didn’t have what it might take even to dredge.

  “Lord,” he said, “speak to me, please. I can’t go on like this. Speak to me in a way I can understand clearly. I’ve read Your word, I’ve sought Your counsel, I’ve whined, I’ve groveled, I’ve despaired, I’ve pled—and I’ve waited. And through it all, Lord, You’ve been so strangely silent.”

  He sat for a time, in a kind of misery he couldn’t define; wordless, trying to listen, his mind drifting. Then at last he drew a deep breath and sat up straighter, determined.

  “I will not let You go until You bless me!” he said, startled by his voice in the silent room.

  He took his Bible from beside his chair and opened it at random.

  Stop seeking what you want to hear, Timothy, and listen to what I have to tell you.

  He felt no supernatural jolt; it happened simply. God had just spoken to his heart with great tenderness, as He’d done only a few times in his life before; it produced in him an utter calm.

  “Yes,” he said. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  Where the book had fallen open in his lap, he began to read with expectation and certainty.

  He found the passage only moments later. Instantly, he knew: He’d discovered at last what God had held in reserve—expressly for him, expressly for now, and expressly for tomorrow morning.

  The peace flowed in like a river.

  In This Mountain, Ch. 19

  IT WAS ONE of those rare days when he sensed that all the world lay before him; that it was, indeed, his oyster.

  Upon leaving the Grill, he stood beneath the green awning, scarcely knowing which way to turn. Though the chilling rain continued to fall and the uproar between Velma and J.C. had definitely been unpleasant, he felt light; his feet barely touched the ground. How could someone his age feel so expectant and complete? How, indeed? It was the grace of God.