Meet the Heart Melter

"Teacher, what's dancing?" Abdul-Ahmed asked.

I performed a mini waltz at the front of the room.

"Ooh! Ballet!" Ali cried. This was a word he knew.

If Abdul-Ahmed is the student who makes me smile, Ali is the student who makes my heart melt.

His name isn't actually Ali, so it's a little hard for me to get all soupy over that name, but oh well. I think it's better if we call him Ali.

He came to class on time every morning, and he usually sat in the second row along the aisle. His twelve-year-old eyes would light up when I called for a game or darken with terror when he heard of a test the next day. Then he'd come early and pore over his textbook.

"Studying is for babies," an older boy remarked. I chided him.

Yes, when the other boys were too shy or cool, this is the boy who loved to volunteer for charades or pictionary or whatever, and he seemed to enjoy acting out fighting--particularly punching scenes. If I gave an optional writing assignment when they finished their test early, Ali was one of the few who would scribble away. One time when I asked them to tell me a funny story, he put his soul into a tale about a ship that crashed on an island that had dragons in it. He would ask me to come over so he could figure out words like "cave" and "scream." The story was chock full of grammatical errors (this was only level 2 after all), but it was one of the most charming things I've ever read.

I only wish I'd saved a copy for myself. Still, I told him that I think he will be a great writer some day. I am convinced of it.

"Teacher, are you always happy?" Ali asked me once.

"Teacher, am I good?"

"Teacher, I don't understand."

Gaah! Those last words are ones that an English teacher LOVES to hear! I mean, half the time you're only half-sure that everybody really "gets" it, so when somebody is humble enough to tell you they don't, I'm delighted to know.

One day, as Ali handed in his homework, he said, "Teacher, I'm sorry. My auntie--she help me, but, uh--" I looked at his paper. Yes, he obviously had gotten help, but the "help" had turned into her doing most of it for him. He had tried to cross it out or work around it, but there it was.

I saw it for what it was. We had been told to expect our students to cheat. Of course, I had laid a pretty hard line about it repeatedly. I had explained what cheating was, asked them again and again if it was okay, and even told them why we don't do it.

"Do you think you'll learn if you cheat?"

"No."

"No. That's right. If you cheat, you are hurting yourself," I smacked my own wrist. Point, smack, point. "You are hurting yourself!" Point, smack, point.

I don't know if my class was especially good or if I just got the message across, but as far as the tests went, I only caught one boy kind of cheating twice. That might seem like a lot, but then you haven't heard all of the problems that my fellow teachers had in their classes. To put it bluntly, my class was made up of angels.

Still, I had no way of knowing if they were cheating on their homework, so I just hoped for the best and graded away.

I now looked at Ali's paper. Here was a boy who was telling me he had cheated and was apologizing for it. He didn't have to tell me. I might not have noticed. But he did.

I rewarded him for his honesty by taking very few points off for errors. I hate cheating, but I love honesty more.

Ali did one more thing that caused him to burrow his way into my heart even further. Not that he needed to do anything to get there, but this made him nestle and lodge there all the more firmly.

"Whose extra homework is this?" I asked one of the boys who was still in the classroom after everyone had left. It was the same boy who had mocked Ali for studying.

As a deterrent for speaking Arabic in an all English class, I usually handed out extra homework to the guilty person. But if he or she heard someone else speaking Arabic in class, he or she could pass it on. This was sometimes a brilliant scheme and sometimes a disaster. It was brilliant because it slowed the flow of Arabic considerably and it got them listening for it so that I didn't have to. But it was a disaster sometimes when people on both sides of the room were accusing different people of speaking Arabic.

"Teacher, she speak Arabic!"

"Teacher, he lies!"

"No Teacher, she lies!"

Aah! Lord, give me the wisdom of Solomon! I would have divided that baby in two, but that would have defeated the purpose of giving out the homework.

Other times, they handed the homework around almost like a joke. Who was going to speak Arabic next?

When A had decided once to keep the extra homework because he "needed it," I chose to have two copies of homework floating around the room.

But now, almost everyone had left, and someone had left their extra homework behind. An accident? I doubted it. The only problem was that I couldn't remember who had it last.

"Hassan, do you know who had this?"

"It was Ali, Teacher."

"Okay. Please take it down and give it to him."

"Yes, Teacher."

Two minutes later, I heard someone huffing on the stairs. Ali dashed into the room to where I stood in front of the whiteboard. He gasped like he'd just run a marathon.

"Teacher!" Pant, pant. "Teacher! Hassan--he always speaking Arabic! But you don't see! This is his!"

I looked at him for a long hard moment. Pain and indecision battled within me. This was still early on in the class, and I didn't know who to believe. Hassan had always seemed trustworthy to me, yet here was Ali telling me otherwise. Who should I believe? What should I do? Was I going to have to keep chasing boys down?

As I deliberated, Ali read everything in my eyes in just a couple of moments. "No problem, Teacher." He closed his mouth, gripped the homework, and marched out of the room.

He may as well have puffed and pasted me to the whiteboard.

Maybe he was lying all along and recognized his guilt. But I suspect that in that little moment, his twelve-year-old heart grasped the concept of grace. Grace is willing to take the punishment even of the undeserving. And in that little moment, a Muslim boy displayed the kind of grace that Jesus Christ has shown toward me.

He melted my heart indeed.

Meet Huck Finn, Middle Eastern version

He slipped into class late again. I didn't think anything of it. In a culture where being fifteen minutes late is practically being on time, I usually didn't dock my students for tardiness unless they didn't come back when I said to after the break. Then I'd show them the attendance sheet with X's next to each of their names. They were always on time the day after that.

But still, he slipped in late and sat in his usual corner in the back.  A mustache struggled to poke out of his youthful face. As they worked individually on an exercise, his dark eyes glazed. He leaned back and adjusted his cap until it was nearly over his eyebrows. I gave him the look, and he pushed his cap back and leaned over his textbook as if he were the most industrious student in the world. I wasn't fooled, but I smiled at his charade.

"Abdul-Ahmed," I said to him during the break. That is not his name, but it is equally difficult to pronounce correctly. He grinned away the first couple of days when I struggled to pronounce it. "Where were you? You have missed class for three days."

"I was--sick," he replied. His eyes twinkled. His eyes always twinkled when he spoke, except when asking a question. He gestured toward his foot, graced by a hefty foot brace.

"Oh, I'm sorry! What happened?"

He tried to explain in his broken English. I didn't really get it, but I thought he was telling me he kicked his dresser or something. I was pretty sure I misunderstood.

"Where were you, A?" I asked the boy sitting next to him, the one who often skipped half of class.

"The same," he beamed.

"I don't think so," I laughed, observing his perfectly healthy feet. I asked them then if they had ever dreamed they were playing football (soccer) and woken up kicking the wall. They hadn't, but I have. Of course, I doubt they knew words like "dream," so I acted it out for them.

Abdul-Ahmed chuckled heartily.

But the next day, when Abdul-Ahmed came to class, his brace was gone. He walked normally.

It was then I realized that I had met Huck Finn, Middle Eastern version.

And I LOVED him.

I can't describe it exactly, but everything he said or did felt like a joke. Not the annoying bad boy kind of joke, but the I-can't-but-help-always-being-funny kind of joke. Even the other students smiled and exchanged glances when he entered the room.

I drilled a word like "jumper" (yeah, teaching from a British curriculum).

"Jumporrrr," Abdul-Ahmed growled, his hands flailing as he scowled then grinned.

 His efforts were so dramatic, I almost lost it laughing in front of the whole class.

I taught them how to play Mafia, and when Abdul-Ahmed woke up as the mafia, he stood, peering about the circle and rubbing his hands together. I had to keep repeating "Mafia sit down" before he got the message. I felt like I was putting a damper on his evil fun, but the others would have most assuredly heard him if he'd started pacing the circle like he was clearly about to do. (Not that it would have mattered; probably at least one or two of them were cheating with their eyes open anyway.)

He also was my worst hooky player. In fact, he's the only student who flunked my class. He simply wasn't a good student to begin with and he skipped half of the classes. But in his defense, Ramadan is an incredibly difficult time to take English classes. You try staying up until all hours of the night, fasting all day (with no water!), and getting up for class at 9 a.m., then you might understand.

But even if he wasn't the best student, he was the best speller. In the first test I gave out on the days of the week, he is the only one who spelled every single one of them flawlessly. And that is saying a lot.

Yet he still skipped classes.

But . . .  he always had an excuse.

"Abdul-Ahmed, you need to stay after class to take your test," I told him.

"Teacher, no time. I go to mosque to pray," he smiled. I happened to know that prayer time wasn't for another forty-five minutes after class ended, so I didn't believe him of course. But I might have pretended to.

"Ah, you are a very good Muslim," I laughed.

Poor guy, I think my sarcasm confused him. But he smiled anyway and left.

How stupid do these guys think I am? 

Still, privately, I thought for awhile that if I had to choose a favorite student, I might choose Abdul-Ahmed, the student who could always make me laugh. I wished he'd come to class more often because teaching suddenly became more fun when he was there.

"You should tell him that," my housemate and also one of my supervisors told me.

So one day, during the second-to-last week when Abdul-Ahmed showed up, I said, "Abdul-Ahmed, where have you been? When you come to class, I am happy. When you don't come, I am sad."

He came to class every day after that. Except for the last day, of course. The final test was that day.

But that's just what Huck Finn would do, isn't it?

Now all I need to do to smile is to say his name. And I have fun imagining how much God must smile when He thinks of him too.

The concept of "no child left behind" has taken on a whole new meaning for me.

Shampoo

Did you know that shampoo is an awesome word? At least, that's what my boy students think.

In teaching shopping vocabulary and how to say "I want" or "I don't want," I pulled out my realia and told them to pass each thing down the line and ask the next person if they wanted it.

"Do you want these jeans?"

"No, I don't." Pass them over.

"Do you want these jeans?"

"Yes, I do."

The jeans were my house mate's and the T-shirt I had wasn't clean, but I shrugged and handed them out anyway. I pointedly handed my make-up to the girls' side of the room. I didn't trust the boys with that.

"Teacher, I like this," said Iy, my fourteen-year-old with the humor and charisma of my cousin Ryan. He had draped my jean jacket around his shoulders. He looks like he's twelve, but his apparent innocence didn't fool me. I had pinned him down awhile ago. Once when a girl accused his neighbor of speaking Arabic in English class, Iy told me in all sincerity: "He no speak Arabic! He's my friend!" 

Uhuh. I looked at the jacket now. This kid cracks me up.

"Oh really?" I smiled. "You can't have it!"

"Teacher, this jacket small," one of the older boys informed me.

"Well, I'm small." 

"Teacher, we want the shampoo."

I had let the girls use the shampoo for the exercise.

"Why?" they had chuckled so much when we drilled that word, I suspected that they enjoyed how much it sounded like a less savory English word. 

"Is fun to say, Teacher!"

"Yes, we want shampoo!"

These kids might have lied to me every day, but I realized that my suspicions sometimes tinted their innocent fun. I relented.

A chorus of shampoos echoed around the room as it made it's journey. 

A few weeks later after I got home, Iy sent a picture to my phone. It was of a Head and Shoulders bottle on the floor of a shower.

Is this even appropriate? 

As I pondered the deeper meaning of this hygienic bottle, Iy followed it with a message.

"Shampoooooo."

Suddenly, my day was made.

Just a few days ago, I received a two second clip of Iy's seven-year-old sister saying in a heavy accent: "Shampuuuuuu!"

The shampoo legend lives on. 

A prologue to possible anecdotes

Ha, I told you I was going to inundate you! If you have followed my blog through the ages, you will know that when it rains here, it pours.

Then it returns to a desert. (Sometimes.)

The flat kind with mountains tantalizing you in the distance.

Or maybe a graveyard with mysterious headstones.

But if you stick around, then the journey might get a little more interesting.

Now that I’ve overcome some inertia, I will say something. There’s still so much! Okay, deep breaths. I’ll start small.

I love my students.

Hhmm, still too big. Oh well.

I love, love, LOVE my students.

If you’re a teacher, you’ll understand. I didn’t until I started doing it. It’s kind of indescribable, but a student is like a beloved worm that finds a way to snuggle into your heart. And even if the student really is a worm, somehow you’re delighted anyway. After all, this worm is your student and he or she is already in your heart! 

That is clearly logical.

Anyway, I had nineteen students this past summer, 11 boys and 8 girls, ages roughly 12-17. And I love 

them.

Oh yeah. I said that already.

You should know something though: they weren’t actually that easy to love all the time. Sometimes they drove me crazy, and I’d start each day asking God to drive out the spirit of confusion from my classroom and to fill me with His love for them so that I could actually function well as a teacher. But that’s probably the story of every teacher, to an extent.

The prayers mostly worked.

If you let me, I could tell you anecdotes all day long about each of my students. But I should probably limit myself to one or two at a time. That way I won’t get overwhelmed and you won’t get too bored.

Hhmm.

“Where’s A?” I asked, after the break.

“He left, teacher. He said tell you he’s sick.”

“Really? Okay.”

Next day. “A, I’m so sorry to hear that you were sick!” My sincerity was enthusiastic. Too enthusiastic. 

Of course I suspected him; he had been missing the second half of class for awhile now. “I’m glad to see you feel better today.”

Nothing. Just grins.

During the break, he came up to me. “Teacher, I went to D---.” He named a large city about five hours away.

“Really? I don’t think so.”

“Teacher, I go with my brother.”

“Hhmm. D--- is a long way away.”

“Only four hours, Teacher! I go yesterday, I go today, and I go again tomorrow.”

“Really, A? You know what I think? I think you are smart. You think, ‘I am smart, I only need to come to half of class. I can take the test and still get a good grade!’” I pointed at his latest test I had given him to look at—he was regularly scoring 85-90%. “But if you came to all of class, you could be getting 100! But you don’t, because you don’t come to class. That’s very bad. Very bad.”

He didn’t answer me. He just smiled that fresh 16-year-old smile he’d been giving me almost every day and left during the break.

But the next day, he stayed all day. He came to all of class every day afterwards.

Doors

If you've followed my blog over the past year, you've heard this next story before. But it's a little different this time:                                                                      

    

The door had slammed shut. Or had it? I stared at the words on the page, but they refused to cower. 

“I’m so nervous for you!” my brother had exclaimed as I fumbled with the seal. He hustled out of the room. I had only laughed. My mother would not look at me; she remained in the kitchen where she enveloped herself in the savory smells of dinner. 

In my hands I held a letter. My first brother, my second brother, and my third brother had all once held a letter similar to this one. In a family that God has called to remain debt-free, scholarship letters are often the key to the door of college and life beyond. Reaching for a jimmy wrench in the form of a loan was not even an option—God had just not led us that way. But we had never suffered for it. My brothers all had Bachelor’s and even Master’s degrees safely tucked in their back pockets, and they had never owed a cent to anybody, thanks to the Great Key Maker.

I examined the key in my hand, and it was not a key at all. It was a stick.

 

I actually laughed; I did not know what else to do. I had been scanning the mail for weeks in search of my key, consciously choosing to breathe and trust. The Great Key Maker always delivers, right? He had never let me down yet.

            

 I stared at the stick in my hand.

“Dinner time!”

I pasted on smiles as I consumed a meal fit to make any other mouth water, but everything tasted bitter. Conversation flowed all around, but I was trapped on the other side of a relentless door, shriveling. My world was constricting, and all I could see were closed doors with no keyholes and no Key Maker.

           

As soon as clean-up was over, I grabbed my stick and my weighty Book of Key Maker’s promises, and I marched to the Key Maker’s house just down the road. But before I could share words with Him, I had to share tears with Him first. Many tears. Tears that rained anguish and disillusionment yet had the same salty taste of faith; these are the tears that dissolve bitterness. And there, before the Silent Key Maker, I handed over my prized door. My chest burned as if a hot knife had made an incision in raw flesh. 

           

 “Now what, Lord?” 

            

The shadows lengthened in the cavernous sanctuary, but I heard nothing.

           

 As I rose to change seats, the Key Maker directed my gaze to a different door. This, too, was in an envelope, and in curly script the front said, “You’re Invited.” I knew exactly what it meant. The Key Maker was inviting me to go through a door of his own making, and all I needed was a tiny key called faith to see what was on the other side. 

            

I chose to accept the invitation. 

           

Taking the Key and Door Maker by the hand, we turned the key in the lock together and pushed it open. A breeze cooled my hot cheeks, and a dusky vista stretched out, jagged with unmapped mountains and valleys. In the distance, the dimness of pre-dawn rouged the horizon. And then he started speaking.

             

“You wanted that other door more than you wanted me,” he said.

           

 “Of course not,” I protested.

           

 “Oh, but you did, and I know why. Do you?”

           

“Well—um. No.”

           

“You don’t really know my opinion of you. You have heard it, but you’ve refused to believe it,” he squeezed my hand. “And because you don’t know my opinion of you, you decided that you needed other people to validate you. And because nobody is pursuing you, you decided to pursue everyone’s good opinion. You thought that door was the way to get it. I am right.”

           

It was not a question, but I nodded anyway. 

           

“Don’t you want to know what I really think of you? Ask me your question.”

             

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I loosened my hold, but his grip was warm and firm.

           

 “Ask me your question.”

           

I peered at the dim landscape, particularly at the path disappearing around a dark corner below. The sun refused to rise.

           

“Ask me your question.”

           

“Okay,” I said, my face warm again. “Um, do you think I’m captivating?” 

             

Yes. 

            

It was both the loudest and quietest word I had ever heard, charged with a love and joy that zapped my skin and shook my whole body. I blinked as a rainbow of colors hazed my vision, and my heart swelled as something filled it. When I could see again, the sun had risen, and the Door Maker was smiling at me.

           

“Let’s begin,” he said. We started down the path. 

           

 A week later, I stood gasping next to a chasm deeper than imagination. In reality, I was reading on a car trip home from Niagara Falls, but there was no water in this gorge. My book did not describe a chasm, but I felt it. I saw the blackness of its depths and smelled its stench of death, and a spear twisted in my gut: this was a world without the Door Maker’s Love. I shuddered and fought the urge to scream. 

           

Climbing into the driver’s seat, I gripped the steering wheel with clammy hands. As we carved through the dark mountains of Vermont, I gazed into that loveless abyss and wondered if the Door Maker had actually created it and let go of my hand. Then I felt a firm squeeze.

           

“Do you think my Love falters? I’m not going anywhere.” The chasm vanished, and I started breathing again. 

            

A few days later, the Door Maker and I stood at the foot of a craggy mountain that rent the sky as if to declare its presence. Yet it still stood shorter than some other mountains in the distance, and music drifted down the path leading up it; the music sounded familiar. 

           

“Here, this is for you,” said the Door Maker. “Though it looks different from what you were expecting.”

             

I knew why that music sounded familiar—its strains resembled the music that had echoed from behind the other door I had once wanted. I hesitated at the foot of the path. “Is this okay?”

           

“Dear one, I wanted a college education for you all along. Why else would I have given you that desire? I just didn’t want you to want it more than you wanted me. I’m the only one who can fill you.”

            

“Why didn’t you just tell me then?” 

             

“I did. But I had to show you,” he nodded to the scar on my chest, now healed. 

              

I ran my finger along the ridge just below my collar bone where I would never forget it; then I squeezed his hand. 

           

“By the way, I have other mountains for you to climb too. I’m bringing four girls into your journey. I want you to love them.”

           

“How, Lord?”

          

“As I have loved you.” 

            

One black night a couple of weeks later, I sat with one of these girls. Her dark hair sprang down her back, while scars very different from mine crisscrossed her arms. The wind moaned in the trees just outside the closed-in porch while rain wept on the window panes, but for a long time we did not say a word. She had cut herself again, and I had grappled, not with her, but with her enemies. But we pulled the downy comforter more tightly over us and faced our helplessness together. Words came, but they were unnecessary. 

            

Another companion on my journey concealed hurt and anger with smiles as she watched her family tear apart, while another ached to solve everyone’s problems but could not open up to share her own. The fourth girl fought and won battles alone, unseen, and forgotten. I strained to hear what their hearts were saying, and I waited. 

             

Months passed, and the Door Maker poured Love into me as we forded swamps with songs and clambered up snowy mountains by moonlight. I came off of my beloved craggy mountain often to spend time with my new companions: the scarred ninja, the bleeding damsel, the tightlipped superwoman, and the overlooked champion. Sometimes we climbed mountains together. Ice crystals budded on our eyelashes as we ascended, but laughter warmed us as we pressed higher. As my heart intertwined with theirs, their pain throbbed in my ears, and the smoke of sizzling flesh burnt the air as a hot knife cut me yet again. 

           

“Door Maker, why does this hurt? You told me to love these girls.”

           

“I told you to love them as I love them,” he replied.

             

Accepting my new vulnerability, I continued to pursue my new friends with all of the creativity the Door Maker had given me. I led expeditions, wrote glow-in-the-dark messages, crafted treasure hunts, delivered six a.m. coffee, picked flowers, and hung two hundred and ninety-two Crayola crayons from the ceiling. Joy flooded my heart as I discovered new ways to cry out, “You are loved, loved, loved!” 

         

However, as I loved, beasts stalked my path, growling lies. They questioned me, my task, and my motives. I doubted my purpose and my purity. “Should I go somewhere else, Lord?”

        

“Wait. Love as I have loved.” 

         

And so I did.

         

One night, I crept down a dark hall and knocked on the scarred ninja’s door.

          

“Come in.”

          

I entered. Light beamed from the overhead light and radiated off the lime-colored walls. Peace flowed from the girl’s dark eyes as she cradled a letter she was crafting in her lap. My eyes absorbed the first line before I could stop them. It said, “Dear Jesus.”

           

“Sorry, I know it’s after 9:52. I’ll just grab my stuff and get out of your way.”

           

“It’s okay,” she said as I gathered my things. When I finished, her steady gaze sought out mine. “I love you, Kayla.” 

             

“I love you too.” So much, it hurts. I glanced at the letter in her lap, mildly pleased that I knew the person she was addressing there ranked first above me in her affections. Still, as I returned to the shadowed hallway, a thought panged me. Do I love him more too?

              

Love is a strange doctor. It can sedate its patients or slice them open until they nearly bleed to death. It also can tell patients to exercise an unused muscle before turning around and telling them to rest and eat. After giving me his door, the Door Maker had taken my shriveled love balloon and filled it to capacity. Then he told me to inhale that Love and practice blowing it into the balloon again for others. As my lunges grew stronger, I forgot the Love that powered my exhalation to people, and I wrestled to remember the Love I had for the Door Maker. 

           

“Here,” the Door Maker said when I told him this. He pulled out another balloon.

           

“I’m just so tired of pursuing people,” I complained. “Why can’t someone pursue me for a change?” 

            

The Door Maker’s eyes arrested me. They were deeper than any ocean, and they rippled with pain as he stretched the balloon out. “Why,” he said, “I have been pursuing you every day.” And with that, he breathed into the new balloon until it expanded to the size of a mansion. 

              

My own breath fled as I saw that Love, so expansive and complete. The scars on my chest pulsed, but they were pleasantly warm over the fullness of my heart. “I’m sorry,” I said.

              

“It’s okay,” he smiled, the ripples gone. “You have done well loving people here. Now let’s see how you do loving people over there.” He pointed to a mountain in the distance, so tall that the clouds wrapped it like dark smoke. I wondered if the mountain had ever seen the sun.

              

“It hasn’t,” said the Door Maker. 

              

A few months later, I entered the smoke on that mountain. The rugged and exotic beauty of the country enthralled me, reminding me of the Door Maker, especially since among the most beautiful things were the doors. Yet I woke to the mournful call to prayer before sunrise and sighed, knowing that these devout people were not praying to the Door Maker of Love but to a distant door maker of prisons. 

               

One night, I stood on a rooftop looking over the city. Clad in flowing black with my hair hidden away by a headscarf, I blew green apple-scented bubbles into the darkness. They hovered in the stifling atmosphere and popped over the bustle of boys yelling on their motor bikes, cars honking, and men striding down the street to socialize at a local coffee shop. I stared at the dim lights below and the thick smoke above as I talked to the Door Maker. 

            

“They’re just a mass of people under a cloud. I don’t see how I can love them.”

            

“Let me show you,” he whispered at my elbow. The smoke cleared, and as I blew my bubbles, larger bubbles filled the air. They were not round or empty; they were full of the heaviest kind of Love ever seen, as if all of the oceans in the world and more were packed into each one. Each bubble had a focal point upon which it was resting: the head of each man passing below in the street. Then the smoke closed in and left nothing but darkness.

               

And they don’t even have a clue! So many will die—have died—having never even heard of that Love. Salty tears blinded me. 

             

“Do you see now?” the Door Maker asked.

             

“Yes.” Another incision parted my chest.

             

Over thirteen months have passed since the door slammed shut and I stared at the stick in my hand. People say that when God closes a door, he opens a window. I disagree. He closes windows and opens doors. When I gave up my window-sized door, he pushed me through a real door more wondrous than any I could have conceived. He showed me Love, and he showed me how to give that Love to the people close to me. Then he showed me more Love and how to give that Love to people far away. And with his Love, he gave me purpose: to live that others may know that Love. This Love is the only reason I am a whole person today, and it rips my heart apart to imagine so many people never even hearing of it. 

              

I need to help people find that Door. 
            

“Redeeming Love has been my theme, and shall be, till I die.” -William Cowper

More than It Seems

Going thousands of miles away from a people I have come to love was a difficult step for me to take as I came home. It's easy to feel helpless here. But isn't prayer where all of the real work happens anyway?

More than It Seems

            Shadowy gorges crisscrossed the woman’s face as her eyes closed in concentration. A book lay open in her lap. A cat leapt on top of it, purring and unabashed by the heavy scent of mothballs around the rocking chair. The woman’s eyes remained closed, her lips twitching as she stroked the cat’s back and rocked, rocked, rocked.

He threw down the cigarette and ground it with his foot. His neon skater shoes scuffed the cold cement floor. Light slanted in through the high windows of the abandoned warehouse, highlighting the streams of dust flowing in the air. The letter crinkled in his pocket. He felt it and muttered, “Pop will always hate me.”
            He picked up the rope he had brought and jerked it with both hands to test its strength. The rough bristles scraped them. He winced.
            “Feels good.” He squinted up at the rafters, “See if I can remember those Boy Scout knots.”

            

             “You can’t have him, Snakeson,” the warrior said, his eyes locked on his opponent. He held a drawn sword which gleamed blood red in the predawn light.
             “Really? And what makes you the noble one?” Snakeson gripped his hooked blade, a sound like rusty chains erupting from his throat as he laughed.
            The warrior nodded at his red sword, “Only this.”
            Another rasp of rusty chains. “So I should cower before you because of a little sword?” His eyes flickered toward a gap in the heaving bodies around them. Metal clanked and fighters swore as the sweat of battle poured on every side, but they faced each other as if alone.
          “No,” the warrior replied, “you should cower before the One who gave it to me. You can’t have him, Snakeson.”
          “And why not?” Snakeson clenched his weapon more tightly, ready to spring. “I’ve worked hard to get him to this point.”
         “He has been bought.”
         “Oh?”
         “He has been paid for.”
          “Is that so?”
          “Yes.”
          “He doesn’t seem to think so,” Snakeson jeered. “If you’re so confident, why don’t you just come and take me down? You know you want to. Or have you lost your courage because nobody on Earth cares for your pitiful human?”
          The warrior’s eyes flashed, but he did not move. “May I?” he said to the air. He nodded, and a shield materialized at his side. A smile broke his face while Snakeson’s disappeared.
          “She cares!” he declared. He leapt forward, red sword swinging.

            

             His phone had been ringing, but he ignored it. He hunched his shoulders and tightened the rope around the rafter, not daring to look down. His phone beeped a text in—maybe he would look before he did it. He slid it open and read three words: Pop: I’m sorry.

            

             The gorges flattened on her face as the woman opened her eyes, nodded, and smiled. She shooed the cat away, closed the book in her lap, and eased out of her rocking chair. Setting the Bible on the kitchen table, she put the kettle on to boil. Tea sounded nice after a morning’s work.

Found and Lost

I was told to write two aprox. 500 word stories, and this is one of them. I had already done a dialogue exercise and a description of one of the characters from two points of view, so I was too fond of them to let them go. My dialogue exercise was between these two cousins (in a culture where marriage between cousins is appropriate and even preferable because you can get to know them more ahead of time), but I left it hanging at the first two lines of this story. This story is the continuation. I'm posting it alone because hopefully you can understand it without the background--although I may post the background at another time.                                                        

                                                                         Found and Lost

            “Don’t worry. I won’t tell your father. I don’t wish to shame our families.”
            “Tell me what?” a voice rumbled. Asma’s breath caught. Her pulse pounded a war drum, and she tucked a midnight strand of hair into her purple hijab, or headscarf, as she turned. Check-out scanners cheeped in the distance, and a huddle of women in black abayas brushed past them, leaving behind a scented trail of incense.
            “Alsalamalakum, Abi,” Asma murmured. She examined the cracks in the mall’s tiled floor.
           “Tell me what?” her father’s voice hardened. Asma forced her eyes up the length of his white dishdasha, past his beard and into his eyes. They steamed like burning wet asphalt.
           She glanced at her cousin Ahmed standing in the doorway of his pharmacy s yhop. His face was smooth, untroubled by the storm his words had caused. He would be calm, Asma thought. He’s not the one about to lose everything that matters to him. He returned her gaze, his eyes murky ponds.
             “Tell—me—what?”
             “Well,” she said. Two little boys shied past, hand in hand. One wore shoes that squeaked like rubber ducks.
             “She means to say that we have been meeting in secret—at night,” Ahmed said.
             “What? Is this true?” The steam intensified.
            Asma did not answer. She stared at Ahmed.
           “Oh yes,” Ahmed nodded, straightening the embroidered kumah on his head. “We have managed to keep it hidden until now.”
           “Asma, I’m surprised at you! You know our ways. This is not how it is done,” her father sighed. “It must be that American English teacher.”
           “No, actually, she told Asma to stop seeing me. She’s the only one who knows. Asma would have listened to her long ago, but I am very—insistent. It’s over though,” Ahmed shook his head, “she told me last night that she’d stop meeting me. She has principles. She must study hard in English class if she’s going to get that scholarship to study in university in the U.S.A.”
            “Is this true?” her father asked. The asphalt had cooled.
            Asma kept staring at Ahmed. “Why—” she stopped as he nodded at her, “yes.”
            “You know what this means, don’t you? You may not see my daughter.”
            Ahmed bowed his head. “I understand.”
            “Come, Asma,” taking her elbow, her father steered her away. The floor blurred past.
            What just happened? She had never met Ahmed alone before today. She had been meeting another boy—from English class; Ahmed had seen them together last night. If her father had known, he would have removed her from the class immediately, and her dreams to attend university in the U.S.A. would have disappeared forever. But why did Ahmed take the blame?
           Last week, when she brought in coffee and dates for both of their fathers, they stopped talking. There could only be one reason Ahmed had lied. Now that all of her dreams remained open to her, she glanced back toward a lone figure in the doorway of a pharmacy shop. One dream was lost forever. A dream she never even knew she had.