Sweet Jesus (32 page)

When she opened her eyes a woman was sitting beside her, pressing with the first fingers of both hands the record and play buttons of a tape recorder on her lap. What’s your name, honey?

Connie, she said.

Well, Connie, what I got was, um – oh, I get pictures? And I saw the word
jewel
, and I believe God considers you his rare and precious jewel. And I just saw this treasure chest, and there were all these jewels in there, but
you
? God looked in this chest and you just shone the brightest.

I mean, you
sparkle
, she said, and that’s how he sees you. He delights in you. He has adorned you with his beauty and you carry that. He calls you beautiful, he calls you precious one. I see your heart, and I see that there’s been some, like, electrical wire that has been put around it, of
defence
, and I see that the Lord is just breaking that wire. I see him coming in with such a fire for you, that he’s coming in and he’s saying, no wire! I desire you! It’s like this passionate burning flame that wants to capture every corner of your heart. And it’s not like you’ve done anything wrong because you
haven’t
. But I see that he’s just breaking in there, in such a way that he’s actually surprising you. It’s like, nobody could ever love me this much, and he’s saying, but I
do
.

The woman’s voice was mellow and reassuring. Connie felt herself softening too. The woman patted Connie on the
knee, then turned to look up at another woman who was waiting to pray for her. She handed over the tape recorder and said, She’s all yours, Doris.

Doris sat down beside Connie and arranged the tape recorder and put her hand on Connie’s shoulder. She said, I’m getting a powerful sense that you are a mother. I sense that you have children, am I right?

That’s right, Connie said and a powdery bomb like a bag of flour went off at the base of her spine.

You have a girl, I think.

Yes.

And two boys, is that right?

How do you know this?

And your daughter, Doris said, squinting as she talked. She’s the oldest, and she’s a very strong and independent girl.

Connie started to cry and Doris handed her a box of kleenex from a nearby seat.

And the two younger boys, she said, maybe you worry about them a little more? Perhaps they seem a bit more vulnerable, out in the world?

Connie sucked in a jagged lungful of air.

You worry about their safety. And maybe about their spiritual welfare as well. The kind of role model their father’s been to them, and whether or not he’s been modelling good Christian values. Doris paused to give Connie a sympathetic look. You’ve had a bit of a rough time, haven’t you?

Connie was nodding and twisting the kleenex into a tight strand.

You’ve been carrying around a real specific burden of concern, and God is telling me, he’s saying that, by the grace of his son, Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit, today he’s going to lift that burden off your shoulders.

Doris lifted her hand off Connie’s shoulder and Connie felt lighter.

What I’m feeling in my heart, Doris said, what feels really obvious to me right now is this certainty that your children, all three of them, will come to know God. I sense that you’ve been troubled about this, am I right?

It frightened Connie how accurately Doris could read her.
And from whom no secrets are hid
.

All I know is what Jesus permits me to know, Doris said. And he’s saying have faith, Connie, that your children walk in righteousness.

How could this woman know these things about her, the things she needed to hear? When Connie opened her eyes and looked around, Hannah was gone. Have I been here a long time? she asked.

What’s a long time, Doris said gently, when you’re spending it with the Lord?

Connie thanked her and took the tape and sat holding it in her lap. She had been longing all her life to hear God’s voice, hear him speak to her, and she wondered now if she had. But regardless, she felt a confidence that was palpable, that was having a deeply relaxing effect on her body. Think of it as a holiday – wasn’t that what her mother had said? She opened her bag to put the tape inside, saw her Bible, and remembered Harlan’s letter. She opened it calmly and read.

Hannah left the room like a spy. When she’d arrived with her sister, she’d felt curious and open to what might happen but also guarded. It all came back to her, how she used to feel, sitting in church, ashamed of how detached she felt. Was it really a sin? The sin of being unconvinced? Wasn’t God powerful enough to overwhelm her doubts? There was Thomas in the Bible. He was a disciple, but he got proof. That’s all she wanted
too. A little wound oozing with blood and water that she could slip her fingers into, to lay her doubts to rest. Was that too much to ask for? Hannah looked around the room. The scene laid out before her – the ministrations, the whispered urgencies, the sudden distressing noises of agony, or ecstasy – it put her in mind of a temporary field hospital, at the edge of a battle, taking in the maimed.

She was waiting for someone to approach her. Did she look like a hard sell? She felt her body heat up with self-consciousness, then a woman with malformed hands sat down beside her. The woman’s knuckles reminded Hannah of antique, nickel-plated taps. What’s your name? she asked. Then she pushed the buttons on a tape recorder and started talking about a net, how Jesus was mending it, how Hannah was going to reel in a lot of fish. As she prayed, the woman’s eyes kept darting towards her. The effect was imploring, uncertain – as if she was seeking her approval. Hannah felt like she was dealing with an amateur, a novice in the prophetic ministries business. She looked across the room at Connie, who sat alone with her head bowed.

I see you out in a boat, she said. And just like the disciples, when he told them, they’d been fishing for a really long time, but the Lord said, cast your net on the other side, and when they did that, the net just became so full of fish. And I believe that God is
calling
you to this. All the pieces of the puzzle may not be there yet, but it is a time of mending and when it happens, you’re just going to cast your net out into the sea and it’s going to reel in a
lot
of people.

The woman stopped, and Hannah, out of consideration for the woman’s feelings and affected by her physical handicap, gave a gentle pushing gesture with her head to signify that it had, indeed, been meaningful, and thanked her. The woman
pressed eject on the tape recorder, but the slot was empty. Oh dear, she said. Another woman hovering nearby said, You’ll have to do a recall, Margot, and handed her a blank tape from her pocket. Margot, blushing and stammering slightly, repeated her story about the fishing net, into the machine.

When she was done, a man came over to Hannah and knelt in front of her with a look of heartfelt urgency. He was a good-looking guy, about her own age, with brown hair and hazel eyes. He was kneeling close to her and Hannah felt a stirring within her that meant she was in the proximity of the possibility of sex. Not in a literal sense, but alive to the possibility. It was distracting. It made her feel excited and shy and a little seedy, but she felt it must be undeniable to him too. There was acknowledgment in his eyes, some flirtation.

The man said, Jeremiah 29, verse 11, says,
For I know the thoughts
. And I’m just going to, for I know the thoughts I think towards you, Hannah, says the Lord, or Adonai.
Thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope
. I just felt that you’re a woman who he’s – you’ve – I’ll just put it plainly. He’s just madly in love with you, and he has a wonderful plan for you.

The man had a golden voice, the warm chestnut accent of the southern states. I know, he went on, I just believe, in the beginning of your life, the word
rough
wouldn’t begin to describe the kind of things you went through. I think you’ve had a long season of roughness. I still think you keep having these long seasons of roughness, but I hear him say this, Hannah, I am so in love with your heart for me and for other people. You’re an overcomer, you’re someone who is going to help many people see Jesus. There is, he says, there is thousands without hope, and you’re going to bring hope to thousands.

How? Hannah thought. How is this going to happen?

I just felt him say, just let her know this, that I know the thoughts that I think towards you, and that they are thoughts of peace. The man licked his lips and ran a hand through his thick hair and shifted sideways off his knees. He pulled a leg up and rested his Bible on his knee, close to his face.

An overcomer, Hannah thought.

The man found a new page. Psalm 56, verse 8, he said, glancing up at Hannah, and this will be a big one for you, because it is for me too, and I think we’re the same. There was a flash of masculine power in his look that quickened Hannah’s heart.

I think we’ve had the same kind of past, he said. Psalm 56, verse 8, says, he knows every wandering, which means every step we’ve ever taken, and every tear we’ve ever cried. He’s collected them in a bottle and recorded it in a book. He is going to, he is coming so
near
to you, and you’re a woman who literally has been snatched away from the enemy’s hands, to a woman of grace that you are right now, right here today, and you are a woman that he delights in and there is, um, there’s a treasure inside of you that’s going to be released to other people. Like there’s parts of Jesus that people will never know until they meet you. And they’ll say, hey, I never knew that about Jesus after talking to you. God’s restoring you. He’s totally restoring you. Okay, I’m done, and he sank back towards the floor, as if sapped of energy.

Hannah found herself crying a little. It felt good to be praised and she was crying a little out of gratitude, because she was flattered, and out of consideration for his feelings as well. She was crying a little out of politeness, out of a wish to conform – at which point, he whipped out a small pack of kleenex and Hannah felt shabby. Tears were the goal, and this whole business an indulgent theatre of sentimentality. I’m the big
stuffed bear at a shooting gallery, Hannah thought. Won and handed over to this guy who just shot down another sliding row of tin ducks for Jesus.

But then Hannah felt oppressed by her own cynicism and noticed that she
was
feeling moved, somewhere within her rib cage, high up in her chest, underneath the clavicle. There was a definite feeling of shelter in this room. They could be survivors from a plane crash and the Red Cross had just arrived. The raw, unspoken intimacy of being in a room with twenty strangers in various states of exposure or breakdown or joy. She experienced a similar, affecting intimacy during her cool-down exercises at the Y. She would drape her body backwards over a large rubber ball and stretch her stomach and a feeling would rise from her belly, and maybe it was muscle memory, but it was the same kind of grief or sadness that accompanies vulnerability, and she’d lie there without self-consciousness, surrounded by people she didn’t know, listening to their soft grunts, and the half-nakedness of being in a t-shirt and shorts, and the exhaustion of having pushed herself, and knowing she was safe and had a common goal, often gave her a feeling of being spiritually at one with those people, and filled her with a melancholy peace.

The man lowered his head for a moment, his Bible closed on the floor. Then he looked up again with his bright brown-green eyes and said, I also see where you had to paddle upriver and fight upstream and you were every single day just getting to be like, no way am I waking up and having to fight again. But there’s going to be a grace, there’s going to be a grace to just go with what God has brought you and you’re, you’re a
leader
. You’re going to learn to prophesy life into people. You’re going to learn to prophesy grace into situations. And he says this, I’m going to bring
young
ones to you. And I’m
going to let the young generation come to you. Because you’re safe. You’re very, very safe.