The Realities of Pollyanna and Puddleglum

“What can we do? We must live our lives. Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings . . . and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept . . . And we will live a life of radiant joy and beauty, and we’ll look back on this life of our unhappiness with tenderness and we’ll smile. And in that new life we shall rest, Uncle. I have faith. . . And we’ll look down, and we’ll see evil, all of the evil in the world, and all our sufferings bathed in a perfect Mercy, and our lives grown sweet as a caress. I know you’ve had no joy in your life. But just wait. Only wait, Uncle. We shall rest.” (Combination of two translations of Anton Chekhov)

I fear that, like the rest of the modern literary world, I tend to waffle Pollyanna and Puddleglum. Okay, those of you who know me might raise their eyebrows at the Puddleglum, but he's there. He's there under the slouch. The repeated snooze button. The hovering question: "Am I doing the right thing?" 

Recently I've been studying various works in my World Literature class. Don Quixote, Madame Bovary, and Uncle Vanya are just a few. What do these three works have in common? Longing. Intense, unspeakable. Longing to satisfy heart's desires, to be a hero, to be loved and respected. The problem with Emma Bovary is that she looks in all of the wrong places. She searches for love in romantic men when her dull husband's love burns stronger than theirs ever could. She tries to satisfy her desires. Searching . . . searching . . . searching . . . ravenously. Fruitlessly. 

At first, I loathed Emma Bovary and thought her actions despicable.

Then I realized that I do the same thing (minus the romantic men part). Don't we all? We look for answers to our hearts' dearest questions. We look for satisfaction for our deepest longings. And we look in all of the wrong places.

Meanwhile, Jesus is waiting.

Why does it take us so long? 

And life continues. We long for heroes, to be a hero. We dig out old armor and call ourselves knights, and we scan the landscape for a shiny new helmet. Failing, we'll accept a barber's basin. We strive and we blather and we huff at windmills. But we are forgetting something.

Someone doesn't need to be a knight in shining white armor in order to be a hero. The stuff of heroes walks around us every day--in the smile despite the pain, in the patience despite the wear and tear, in the song despite the inward screams. 

Sound like Pollyanna? Maybe. Perhaps I'm prone to fluffiness. Many writers are, but many more "realists" are prone to stark and unmitigated pain. And life isn't like that, especially the Christian life. With Christ, life is gritty but good. Deny the grit and we're naive, but if we deny the good then we're just stupid. 

Reading Uncle Vanya reminded me that there is a difference between longing and reality. Reality may not give us what we think we are longing for. Our life might be full of shadows when we had dreamed of only light. Yet what is a world with no shadows? Flat and two-dimensional. Shadows are not simply an absence of light. They prove that the light is real and that the world isn't flat but three-dimensional.

 “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” Psalm 30:5

Of course, we are meant to have this joy here and now. But if it isn't obvious to us, we must, like Puddleglum, believe that there is such a thing as a Sun and live like it. Stop looking for answers and turn to the real Answer. Stop trying to be a grand hero and be a real one. And stop longing for self-created non-realities. Maybe the joy is in front of us and we don't see it; maybe it isn't and we're meant to look beyond to the next life, when we will see "all our sufferings bathed in a perfect Mercy." In either case, the joy is there in the worst of circumstances. 

It's real, real, real. Act like it even when it doesn't seem so. 

Perhaps Puddleglum wasn't so glum after all.  

The Word

A door
Closed
Keyless
An impregnable barrier to a world just out of reach.
Another door
Rapier-like splinters
Prison bar stripes
Through the keyhole—
         Desert
Barren
              dry
                      deserted
Lusterless opportunity
Until choosing
with eyes not my own to
open
it.

Reaching
Blood not my own springs from my fingertips
Splashes the keyhole
A whisper!
Then it’s gone.
The door opens
Dawn rips through ragged mountaintops
each a gift to climb
Then I sense
        I’m not alone
A Presence
        echoes through the mountains
Alluring me
onward.
That same whisper
kisses my ear.
I climb
A footprint
the color of wine
passes before
The whisper grows louder
Now a still small voice
Saying—I daren’t say
But like dew it soaks my thirsty heart
once limestone, now saturated sponge.
A sprig of green along the path
Another splash of red
I press on.

Travelers cross my path
Hearts parched as mine was
I squeeze my sponge until it’s dry
so they too can hear the voice.
I stagger up the path
       Panting
                  to hear that voice.
Unyielding silence.
My stiff heart can only bleed
“Faint, yet pursuing”
At last I’ve clawed my way
to the summit
Touched the gauzy clouds
A shout!
Both clear and deafening

In the valley are dark shadows
of people passing by
The air is full of bubbles
heavy and immense
Each packed with all earth’s oceans
and labeled with a name
Every name is present
written out in blood
The shout rings from each sphere
Shout upon shout
       echoing
              raw joy
uttering
            one
                   word:
                            Loved
                                      Loved
                           Loved.

Green floods the wasteland
Again the door floats forward
Healing splinters, freeing stripes
Dripping at the keyhole
Whispering, echoing, shouting
          Loved.
As it had all along.

Delivered

            “You have got to be kidding me,” Loray peered through the tiny key hole. A vast, colorless wasteland yawned on the other side. She stepped back from the door and surveyed it. Gray paint peeled like a stale sunburn while splinters threatened to stab anyone who came near. The door had just arrived from the King’s palace, and even though it was not large, it seemed to fill the one room cabin.
             As long as she could remember, Loray had been looking forward to this day. Living on a remote island kingdom of orphans, everyone counted the days until their twenty-first birthday. Then, without fail, each person would receive a door shipped from far across the sea where the King lived. Each door was always different: sometimes speckled or painted bright colors, sometimes round with a handle in the middle, or sometimes engraved with battle scenes. People said that the King’s son himself handcrafted each door, but no one could be sure because nobody had seen the Prince or Door Maker.
            Still, the doors kept arriving right on time, always specially marked. No one knew exactly what lay on the other side. Each time a door arrived for someone, the person stepped through it and never came back—unless to bring back a baby for the island to nurture. But from these brief encounters, the young people on the isle of Limda had gathered that whatever lay beyond the door was good. And because each person who came back for a brief time always seemed wiser than they were before they left, Loray and most of her peers had concluded that each door led to a university in the King’s City.
            Loray ran her fingers through her dark choppy hair and traced the letters on the embossed card that had come with the door. Maybe they would rearrange themselves into a different name. But no—she might not be very educated, but she could read her name: Loray Isildree. The letters stood their ground.
            She went outside to chop wood.
            A few people passed by on the road. “Happy birthday, Loray!”
            “Yes, happy birthday!” Their unspoken questions bored into the back of head, but she ignored them. Her muscles burned and her hands ached from clenching the axe, but she swung anyway. She focused her breathing on the steady clank of metal pounding metal as she drove the wedge deeper into the wood. Her face grew wet and she tasted salt.
            She slouched inside with an armful of wood and delivered a baby fire in the hearth. It retched and glowed red in the deepening shadows of the little cabin. Loray shuffled to the cupboard, grunting as she pulled out a fresh plate of beef and taters. If only the Door Maker would provide for her like this magic cupboard did. She glanced at a letter she had received from her older brother across the sea. Clive had received his green door five years earlier, and he now lived in the middle of a cornfield where he listened to people’s problems and enjoyed the company of his “true love.” Loray shook her head. Clive had encouraged her to step through her door, but she knew exactly what lay beyond it: desert. No City, no university, and no way to expand her hungry brain.
           A knock interrupted the retching fire.
          “Come in,” Loray said. Safety did not concern her in Limdra.
          The door opened, allowing a slight breeze to breathe into the room. A young man came with it. The fire crackled brighter.
           “Oh, it’s you,” Loray’s eyebrows rose and she followed, but he motioned her to sit.
          “I wanted to make sure that your door was delivered to you safely,” Errol nodded to the gray thing in the corner. As the island’s shipping manager, he carried out the King’s business.
          “Yeah, it did.”
          “Aren’t you going to open it?”
          “I don’t think so.”
          “Why not?”
          “Why didn’t you?”
          Errol smiled and settled into a rickety chair next to her at the table. He was the only one on the island who had not stepped through his door. Actually, no one had seen whether Errol had even received a door. His twenty-first birthday might have been last year or fifty years ago. “That is my business,” he replied.
            “This is mine.”
            Errol remained silent for a moment. He may have been the leader of island, but he never used his authority to push anybody. He stretched his long legs out and crossed his feet, folding his arms as his deep brown eyes gazed into the fire, turned toward the door behind him, and swiveled back to her.
          “What do you see?” he asked.
          “I see a bundle of dusty sticks clamped together pretending to be a door,” she replied, “a door that could really use a new coat of paint. I can’t stand gray.” She wrinkled her nose.
           “And what did you see through the keyhole?”
           She stared at him. “Desert.”
           A smile burst on Errol’s face. “Aha! I see now.”
            “See what?”
            “Your problem.”
            “Yeah, my problem is that the Door Maker or Prince or King or whoever he is doesn’t care a thing about me. Can’t say I blame him,” she bent her head and tore into the beef, the salty juice squirting between her teeth.
            “Uhuh. Loray, do you have a mirror?”
            She shrugged and nodded toward her bed. Errol sprang forward and kneeled by her bed until he felt the hand mirror underneath it. A lock of dark hair fell into his eyes.
            “Aha! Yes, here we are,” Errol beamed. Then, more seriously, he pulled up the chair until it was opposite Loray and sat in it. “Tell me, Loray, what do you see?” He held up the mirror.
            “I see an orphaned girl with a red nose and stained teeth, doomed to remain brainless because she’s not going to study in any university anywhere.”
            “How about her eyes? Does she have anything over them?”
            “Yeah, dinky eyelashes.” She meant to make him chuckle, but he did not.
            He considered her for a minute. Then, suddenly, he pulled a knife out of his pocket, slit his palm, and wiped a drop of wine-colored liquid on her forehead. “Loray, give me your eyes.”
            “What? Why? What did you do that for?” Loray pawed her smarting forehead, but the blood was gone.
             “I want you to give me your eyes.”
             “What are you talking about? Have you gone crazy?”
             “Give me your eyes.”
             “Why? What will happen if I do?”
             His eyes softened. “I can’t tell you. You will have to trust me. Just give me your eyes.”
            “What will you do with them?”
            “You must trust me. Give me your eyes.”
            Her gray eyes peered into his brown ones. They radiated unnamable warmth. The gray door mocked her from the corner. She bowed her head and nodded.
            Errol’s hand shot forward and snatched at her tingling forehead. Something ripped and popped while a fire screamed in her eye sockets. Everything turned black and then red. The fire ravaged its way into her lungs where she let it out through her vocal chords. The peeling door danced with a green door, and the two spun in a circle faster and faster until blackness swallowed them. Somewhere metal clanked on metal, and a man’s voice rasped as he drew breath. Then nothing.
            Something bound her eyes closed. Loray stirred. A cool pillow caressed her cheek while a wool blanket scratched her arm. Her fingers groped toward her face and found a bandage.
            “Shhh, careful,” a voice said. Errol’s voice.
            “Errol, what happened?”
            “You had surgery, and you did wonderfully, I might add.”
            “Are my eyes—”
            “Gone.”
            “Oh.”
            “Cheer up,” his voice carried his smile. “I gave you new eyes. But you need to keep the bandages on for now. But no worries. I’ll be right here. I am very good at delivery, so I can be sure that the food in your cupboard gets delivered to your mouth.”
            “Errol, no, you have better things to do.”
            “Can’t think of one.”
            “You’ll fall behind in your deliveries.”
             A pause. “I’m always right on time.”
             “Why are you doing this, Errol?”
             “I promised to deliver you.”
             Weeks passed, and Loray sat in darkness. But even the darkness shone brightly. Every day the voice of Errol, the ageless delivery man, spoke to her, read to her, laughed with her. Soon she learned to recognize his voice even as he came whistling and mumbling down the street to check on her. Other friends would stop by, but their voices washed over her in confusing waves. His alone spoke clearly.
            “Today is the day, little lady!” Errol said one day, breezing through the door with a whiff of fresh rain and postage stamps.
            “Will it hurt?” she asked. She swung her feet over the edge of her bed.
            “I suppose it will a little. But the worst is over.”
            “Okay. Do it, then.”
             Scissors whispered through the bandages, and gentle fingers removed them. Light flooded everything. Loray blinked at a swimming face. Errol smiled at her. He was much more handsome than she remembered. Sunlight pierced the rain clouds into her cabin window, illuminating something that was brilliant blue.
             “Where did that come from?” she gasped. She scanned the room for her peeling gray door, but only a double-winged blue door leaned against the wall.
           “Oh that,” Errol laughed. “I delivered it a few weeks ago, but you didn’t seem to like it. Shall I take it back?”
           “No,” she said too quickly. She laughed too. “Is it really the same door?”
           “Handcrafted by the Prince and great Door Maker himself. I’d swear to it.”
           Loray closed her eyes and fingered her eyelids. “Where did these come from?”
          “They’re ours—mine,” he said.
          “They’re—good.” A tear streaked her cheek.
          “I know,” he nodded, his own eyes glistening. “Well, dear lady, there’s no time like the present! Are you going to go through that door or aren’t you?”
          “I don’t want to leave you.”
           He threw his head back and really laughed then. Clear notes echoed from the rafters. “Don’t worry,” he squeezed her hand.
            She rose and staggered over to the door. The blue cheered her. Just before she reached for the latch, Errol grabbed her hand.
            “Wait. There.”
            Blood dripped from her fingertip as he guided it toward the door. “Mine?” she asked.
            He shook his head. “Ours—his—mine. It’s hard to explain.”
             “You could have put the blood on the door yourself.”
             “I know. But you needed to experience it and apply it for yourself.” He traced her finger in a cross over the keyhole. She realized the name of the warmth in his eyes: Love. It dripped warm and fresh from her fingertips.
             Light streamed from widening cracks as the door swung away. Loray suddenly stood on the other side. A vista of mountains ripped an azure sky while an array of green-dotted valleys beckoned below her on the path. Purple grazed the far horizon, and in that haze stood a white city. She gasped and looked over her shoulder, but Errol was gone. An empty doorframe stood on top of a rocky mountain.
           “You made it!”
           She knew that voice. A man strode up the mountain to meet her. She knew those brown eyes that smiled into hers, though his stride did not breeze; it embodied authority.
            “Welcome to the King’s Country! Did you like the door I sent you?” He had reached her. His hands were scarred and weathered, and he smelled like fresh wood and paint thinner.
             She nodded.
            “I have the papers for you to sign, if you want to.”
            “Papers?”
            “Adoption papers. Everyone on your island has been adopted by my father of course, but he won’t recognize it until you’ve all agreed to sign for it yourselves. Do you want to?”
             “Of course! But—uh, why would the King want to adopt me?”
             “You haven’t looked in a mirror since you got our eyes, have you?” Before she could answer, the Door Maker pulled out a mirror and handed it to her. A captivating young lady with long dark hair and teal eyes stared back at her. The eyes sparkled with joy. Loray glanced over her shoulder. No one was there, so she stared at the mirror again, her pulse quickening.
             “This is how we have always seen you,” the Door Maker said. Errol’s same warmth radiated from his eyes.
             “Oh. I see now.”
             “Do you really? Good.” The Prince’s voice resounded with elation that hung in the air. After a long minute, he added, “So are you going to sign these papers? We have a City to travel to and some veils to rip along the way. I want more people to see what we see.”

My Love Languages, Part II

My second love language is words of affirmation.

Words are a part of who I am. I have genuinely come to love silence, but I need

Words

                      Words

                                                Words

I'm like a greedy little dragon that hoards words like gold.

But as I grew up through my teen years, I recognized a problem:

This gold has the power to blow my head to the size of a hot air balloon.

Okay. I know mixing metaphors is a terrible thing to do, but--we can deal with it.

As a daughter of Christ, then, what am I supposed to do with this gold? For a long time, I convinced myself that it was fools gold.

"Oh, you liked my violin playing? Well, I'm not really very good."

"Oh, you liked the way I said that? Well, I'm not very good with words."

"You like that story or drawing? Well, that's nothing. I'm nothing."

But when I was thirteen, my second cousin Andrew told us in Sunday school that we shouldn't take a compliment and tell the person that "it was nothing." That's like saying their opinion doesn't matter. Andrew died a few months later, but I never forgot that.

And I took that to heart somehow. Rather than saying, "That was nothing" when someone complimented me, I learned instead to just say, "Thank you."

But on the inside, I still told myself, "That was nothing." I was so afraid of puffing up that hot air balloon that I convinced myself that my talents were nothing but fools gold and that the words that pointed them out to me were equally empty. Occasionally I told myself that it was God's doing, but my words were weak and still didn't convince me that my talents actually existed.

However, such humility is false.

Today, I stand before you to acknowledge that I am talented. I don't know how I realized this exactly, but it has crept upon me like the slow splash of orange in an autumn maple.

But that realization has brought a joyful responsibility.

Because I know that I can take little more credit for my talent than I can for the color of my eyes, I now look at my talent as a kind of paint with a purpose: to glorify the Talent Giver. Yes, my pride still exists, but I am bent upon this aching purpose: to point upward. Point upward. Like Agnes standing on the stair in David Copperfield, I want to point upward. There are much greater things to look at than myself. There's a much greater Person.

 Of course, there are many ways to point upwards: service, art, music, stories, and athletic feats are just a few. One gift that God has given me to point is words.

Taking compliments is still a tricky business though, and as a daughter of Christ who is bent on using her talents with one purpose, I'd like to express what kind of compliments are the most meaningful to me.

Whether I am testifying or playing my violin, here are some compliments I'm never sure what to do with:

"Good job playing."

"If I didn't know that your father was a pastor, I'd say that you must come from a family of ministers! You sure have a way with words."

"You really know how to speak."

Well. Thank you? I mean really. I know you mean well, so I will accept your compliment gratefully because I see the good heart behind it. However . . . what if I were an artist trying to paint a picture of your sweetheart? Would you say this:

"Good job painting."

"Even if I didn't know your family were artists, I'd say that that you were an artist too! You know how to use paint."

"You really know how to slap some paint on a canvas with that brush of yours."

Well, yes; yes I do. Buuuut . . . aren't we missing something here? I didn't go to all the problem of painting your sweetheart just so you can tell me that I know how to use a paintbrush. What I really wanted was to portray a picture--specifically a picture of someone who should mean something to you. Do you see her face? Is the likeness close enough? Does it make you feel warm or happy when you look at it? Do you like it?

Don't tell me I know how to slap on paint! If you can tell who I'm painting and it stirs something in you, that will tell me that I know how to slap on paint. If you ignore the picture and only tell me about the nice paint strokes, all I can think is that maybe I did something wrong.

And that's how it is when I play or when I speak. In my own way, I'm trying to paint a picture of Jesus. When I play, I don't want people to tell me that I'm talented; I want them to tell me that my playing helped them to worship Jesus. When I speak, I don't want people to tell me that I have a way with words; I want them to tell me that my words encouraged them. Because if I am to point upward, then the spotlight is supposed to be on Someone else.

Who ever heard of someone complimenting a spotlight pointer, unless to say that they illuminated their subject perfectly?

Of course, I know that in this human frame I still manage to get in the way when I "paint" pictures of my Savior. I don't expect everyone to fall on their knees and sing "Hallelujah" whenever they hear me. I will be content with a "you helped me," "I enjoyed that," or a comment about the subject matter: "It truly is amazing how God can expand our heart." I would be very much surprised if everyone came up to me and told me that I really helped them to worship God.

But.

If one person did do that, their words would mean more to me than a hundred other compliments about how brilliant or lovely I sounded.

One of my favorite compliments came after playing my violin for church when I was about seventeen . I was playing a glorious rendition of "Holy, Holy, Holy" and I wanted so badly for it to express all of the worship that welled in my heart.

However, I messed up badly. I was nervous, and my hand shook. The bow skipped across the string like a rock skipping over turbid water. I know for a fact that I played horribly--no false modesty here.

But immediately afterward, a man came up to me and thanked me for it.

"It was the way that you played it."

I read the warmth in his eyes and knew that he wasn't just being kind. My own heart worshiped God for speaking through me as I had wanted. Sometimes the pieces most riddled with mistakes are the ones that can sing God's glory the loudest.

And maybe that's why I appreciate those kinds of compliments. If someone says, "Nice playing," I can bend that praise into silent worship, but I'm not certain if both the complimenter and I are doing the same thing. But if someone says, "You helped make earthly things seem dim," then it's easier and more joyous to bend that worship upward because I know that the complimenter is already worshiping the One I was trying to illuminate.

Yes, my love language is still words of affirmation. I sometimes pretend the gold means nothing to me, but I still crave it. However, as my identity becomes more intertwined with the One who created me, the compliments that bring Him into sharper focus are the most meaningful to me.

My purpose, after all, is never to show how I can use a paintbrush. It's to paint a picture.

Handing it over

I mentioned in my last post that sometimes I'm afraid to greet people because I fear their tepid response.

Well, guess what, folks? I have discovered that I have a problem with fear.

In a recent convention, I had a chance to share a few of these thoughts in a testimony, but I want to expand them slightly here.

I never really thought of myself as a fearful person. I'm pretty laid-back, right? Uhuh. Well, as I look back over my life, I can see that I am fearfully wrong. I've had my battles just like everybody else; I just might be naturally weaker than some. But, alhamdulallah! Praise be to God! He has shown me three practical things to help me out.

He showed me the first one when I was about seven years old. I had to go to the dentist to have my teeth pulled. My parents were smart enough to not tell me about it until the night before, but naturally I was terrified. Yet my dad gave me a verse to think about:

"When I am afraid, I will put my trust in God." Psalm 56:3

Lying in the dentist chair with the flavor of cherry novocaine leaking out in my saliva, I closed my eyes and thought of those words.

When I am afraid, I will put my trust in God.

When I am afraid, I will put my trust in God.

When I am afraid . . . . trust in God.

I blocked out the eery reflection of my mouth in the overhead light. Those words were all I had to hold on to.

"Are you all right?" the dentist asked.

Of course I was.

Twelve years later, I sat on a porch breathing those same words. Blood was everywhere--on the porch, on my shoes, down my legs, on my shirt, and in my braids. I kept spitting up blood into a plastic cup extending through the darkness as the world grew murky around me and I hoped I wouldn't pass out. My family seemed far away, and everyone around me was a stranger.

When I am afraid, I will put my trust in God.

That verse is the first thing that gave me strength when I had to face my fears. I have had very few accidents in my life and only a few tragedies. I used to always wonder how I would respond if I ever faced an accident like the summer I broke my nose and saw more blood than I've ever seen in my life. In fact, I was scared by the prospect. Would I burst at the seams? Would I get hysterical? Lose my faith?

Nope.

I may yet face unknown trials. But I know now that when I'm staring down cold panic in the face, remembering that verse has been my knee-jerk reaction. I no longer fear such experiences.

Secondly, sometimes I'm fearful when I think about volcanoes that I must traverse.

"Um, how can I handle this, Lord?"

"What about that course that has been known to make grown men cry?"

And through it all, He has reminded me, "I won't give you anything that you and I together can't handle."

I rarely fear those daunting experiences anymore. If I know that God has called me to this mountain, it will become a plain. Even if we have to soak the rocky path with our tears all the way up and down it.

I started learning the third lesson when I was about fifteen years old. When I was a kid, I had a huge fear of getting sick--particularly at inconvenient moments, like girls camp week. Oh what horrors! I could get sick any week of the year except that one!

Of course, I did get sick that week. I would be perfectly healthy for most of the year, but when girls' camp week came around, I got sick. I was sick for about three of the five weeks I went to through the years.

I still remember the second time. A lot of people from my community got the stomach bug that week, but since I was the only one from the community at camp in Rhode Island, I was the only one there who got it.

I remember telling Katie quite calmly at 7 a.m. that I had thrown up, "But I am better now." She laughed at me.

I remember pushing my way through a gaggle of girls eating taco salad. They kindly asked me if I was feeling better, but I couldn't answer them. I needed to kneel by that leaky toilet so I could throw up again.

And I remember lying on a mattress in a room all alone as all of the girls went to Boston without me. And then, at fifteen years old, I had a difficult conversation with God.

The end of it is that I realized that I needed to hand my health over to Him. I was too jealous of it, and I kept bungling it.

I remember going to a home school convention and hearing a dad talk about something he told his kids:

"Now you take care of those teeth! Those teeth are mine--I pay for them! So you better do a good job of taking care of my teeth!"

The analogy is unclear, but I decided that if I gave my health over to God, then it would be His problem to take care of it.

So I did.

I have never really been afraid of getting sick since.

And through the years, I've realized that giving up things I'm afraid about doesn't just apply to sickness. It applies to a lot of other things too. And one by one, I've been handing these things over: money, dreams, and whatever else. Of course, it would be simpler to just hand God everything and be done with it, but sometimes that's too much for us to comprehend. God demands our all, and I have given it. But sometimes it takes years before we come to realize exactly what that looks like. But like a father persuading a kid to hand over each crummy toy, He reminds us, one dingy teddy bear at a time.

Quite recently, I came face to face with a fear I never knew I had: the fear of rejection.

Why else am I afraid to greet someone when I don't know how they will respond?

It's a small manifestation of a very big thorn.

As I was praying about this fear and thinking about what God has taught me about yielding, I tried to figure out what "thing" I needed to give up in order to deal with this fear for good. If handing over my health cured me from a fear of getting sick, what could cure a fear of rejection?

Then I had it.

I needed to hand over myself. Because if I am wholly and irrevocably God's, what does it matter if people reject me? I belong to Someone else. Rejection becomes His problem, not mine.

Let's give ourselves completely over.

My Love Languages, Part I

Did you know that I have two main love languages? They are greetings and words of affirmation.

I've talked about greetings before. The way someone greets me can sometimes make or break my day. I think that's one thing that I love about Middle Eastern culture: it's considered rude if you don't greet someone when you come into the room. Of course, even when the greetings are all in Arabic you can tell who doesn't have their heart in it, but I decided that it doesn't matter and I can pour all of my warmth into the greeting.

"Alsalamalakum! Kaif halish?"

"Wa alakum alsalam. Alhamdulallah. Kaif halish?"

*Beam*Beam*

If the person doesn't have their heart in it, I don't mind. I figure that they must feel nervous around Westerners or they don't have the same Hope that I have.

But when I walk around my own Christian community and I get very little warmth from someone in a greeting, my often bad day usually just gets badder. Or what often happens is that some people don't greet me at all--that was one of the weird things about coming back. Then I can't figure out if I should charge forth with a smile and greet them anyway, or stay safe by being quiet so I don't have to risk their tepid response.

I know everybody can't be cheerful all the time. I've had an unusual bout of uncheerfulness lately that I've felt convicted about because I think it can be summed up in self-pity. So I understand that life isn't always peachy.

But, but, don't we have a responsibility to show love to each other even when we don't feel great all the time?

Because with most people around me, I can't assume that they're nervous around Westerners. And I know that they have the Hope that I have.

So what's our problem?

I say "our" because I recognize that I've let life drag me down lately too. I have not let the joy of Christ shine through me all the time. But when we stop to think about it, as followers of Christ we really do have it made. As a recently passed family friend used to say:

"I've had a few bad moments, but never a bad day."

Let's remember the stuff that our new hearts are made of. I don't want a stranger on the street to assume that I'm tepid because I don't have the Hope that they have.

The bad boy who loved me

I mentioned that I only caught one boy cheating twice.

Well, this post is about him.

Actually, I saw him do it three times. And what do I mean by cheating? I mean that I saw his eyes stray over to the paper next to him during test time. What he may not have realized was that this was pointless; I had an A and B test anyway so cheating this way was almost impossible, but I didn't tell them that. I just told them that cheating was bad and I would take off points for it if they did it.

I watched them like an American turkey vulture.

The first time Ammar cheated, he looked at me right afterwards. I gave him the look and shook my head. He quickly went back to his test and didn't try it again that day.

Before the next test, however, I told them that I had seen one or two of them cheating and that this time I wouldn't let them get away with it. I wasn't kidding. When Ammar did it again, I marched right up to his paper and wrote "-2" in red ink at the top of his paper. The tall nearly-fifteen-year-old knew I meant business. His kumah tilted forward on his narrow dark head as he leaned back over his paper.

But that is only a part of it.

"Teacher, Teacher!" Ammar would call, waving his hand in the air as I asked a question. The kid didn't have a shy bone in his body. If I asked a question, he would almost certainly raise his hand even if he really didn't know the answer. He often didn't, unless it was a number, but I admired his spunk. If I needed a volunteer, I could almost always count on Ammar. In fact, after a test one day I needed four volunteers for a translator drama game, and my four trusty boys I've already mentioned were the only ones either not too shy or not too cool to come forward: Iy, Ali, Abdul-Ahmed, and of course, Ammar.

One day, I asked my students to tell me about traditions at Eid.

"You get money," Iy told me.

"Yes, that is very good," Ammar chuckled. He may not have been a ham like Abdul-Ahmed, but he could see the funny side to anything, and that always made me smile.

Cheating, however, was not Ammar's only problem. He chattered and joked in Arabic repeatedly. The extra homework passed through his hands many times. I spoke to him multiple times about it, telling him that we would have to call his father if he didn't stop.

One day, I broke. I don't even remember what was happening, and of course I don't know enough Arabic to know what he said. But that was it. Next thing I knew I was saying, "Ammar! Someone will call be calling your father today." If you think you know me, you might be surprised by how very serious I could get with my students. He was pretty solemn after I told him this. In a culture where shame and honor is everything and where teachers are actually respected figures, I knew that contacting his family would have an effect.

The next day was a random holiday.

The day after that, Ammar was back. He was not Mr. Perfect, but he was better--at least I imagined it so. I did not refer to his transgression, but since he was the first (and only) student I had actually disciplined, I wanted him to know that I did not hate him. People crave praise wherever they are, and I had been told in this honor-shame society that praise might go a long way in winning students. I wasn't sure if I had praised my students very much or not, honestly. I was so conscious of not wanting to show the boys unprofessional favor while also not showing the girls favoritism, I couldn't tell if I praised them enough. But gradually, I got warmer in my affirmations when a student answered something correctly, and because I was worried that he might think I disliked him, I was most conscious in my praise of Ammar. I had put him down; now was the time to raise him up.

"Very good, Ammar."

"Awesome, Ammar."

"Excellent, Ammar!"

Little did I know that this might actually be affecting him. He did not turn into a star student immediately, but something seemed to change.

One day, a girl brought me a chocolate because it was her birthday.

After Ammar had his fifteenth birthday on the weekend, he brought me a heart-shaped bag of five chocolates.

Now, as my class reached its end and I hadn't received any invitations from my students yet, I decided to do a little shameless hinting, at my sister's suggestion.

"Shall I come to your houses during the Eid and tell your parents what kind of students you are?" I asked.

"Yes, Teacher!"

"Come visit me, Teacher!"

"We want you, Teacher!"

I was blown away by the effusive barrage my students flung at me, particularly from the boys' side of the room

"Give me a time and a place, and I will come visit you. Maybe I can tell A's family how he likes to go to D---. Or maybe I could tell Iy's family that he is a good student, but he listens to the girls speaking Arabic instead of studying in class."

The other boys laughed with me, while my mischievous Iy shook his head and said, "Not good." (Don't worry, he still talks to me.)

Still, despite the flood of flippant invitations, only one student stayed after class to make sure I knew I was welcome: Ammar, the student I had reprimanded, tattled on, and docked for cheating. The student who had the most reason to hate me was the only one who really wanted me to come for a visit.

Of course, when I actually did visit his house, I didn't visit with him. I spent the whole time with his mother and sisters. But I got to see him outside their gate, and he was absolutely beaming.

"I am very happy," he told me. And I realized that I was truly honoring him. And I also realized that this "bad" boy loved me. Not wrongly, but rightly.

But that's not all. On the last day of class, after a girl brought me a beautiful shawl and Iy gave me very nice frankincense, Ammar told me that he had a present he would bring that night to the party.

"But you already gave me a present." The chocolate had only come a few days before that.

No, he insisted he had something for me. This was a gift-giving culture, after all, and I've started to learn that you can't out-give an Arab.

That night, my boys showered me with perfume, lotion, and a real red rose. But I still hadn't opened Ammar's gift; he had hardly even looked at me as he gave it to me and ducked away. It was wrapped in shiny pink paper with hearts and the word "Romantic" written all over it. That might seem weird in American culture, but knowing this culture, it was nothing but sweet in my eyes. But I wasn't prepared for what was inside: a set of new paintbrushes and oil paints.

Here was a boy who had given me a gift that wasn't a typical girl-Teacher present. He had paid attention in class as I said what I liked to do and showed pictures of my artwork. And he remembered: Miss Kayla likes to paint. As I opened it, I saw the thoughtfulness of the boy I had disciplined and gone out of my way to praise.

I almost cried.

Of course, when Kendra described my gift from Ammar to his cousins as we were visiting with them a couple of days later, they laughed and said, "He got those for his birthday!"

Maybe re-gifting takes the beauty out of it, but it doesn't for me. In fact, it makes it more like him. Ammar, the tall dark boy who was sometimes bad but who was thoughtful and funny enough to give away his own birthday present. And who loved his tough teacher.

Abdul-Ahmed might be the most likely to make me smile, and Ali might be the most likely to make my heart melt. But Ammar is the most likely to do both at the same time.

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