Bobbie Jo Morrell is a mountain woman, poet, writer, leather crafter, rustic furniture builder, cat owner, technical writer, website designer. She says, “Colorado’s Front Range, with the smell of pine trees in the cool air of morning, is my home.” Her blog address: http://soulscompass.blogspot.com/.

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Deeper Warrior Chapter 18: F.R.E.D.

I rather surprised myself, introvert that I was (and am), deciding to spend four weeks of my summer break living in a sorority house at Drake University with about 50 Navigators from around the state at the Summer Training Program. Women at one end of the building, men at the other. Five people per bunk room.

We were to work each weekday; I had my real summer job with the corn breeders, and left the sorority house every morning after oatmeal for the 45 minute drive to the Agronomy Farm. I’d walk up and down corn fields that were more like rice paddies that wet year, then drive another 45 minutes back to Drake. I was very thankful for my solitary (or nearly solitary) work and driving time to counteract the crowded conditions of the training program.

Being a misfit in the Navs, I was fortunate to end up on a team of misfits—to varying degrees. Renee, our team leader, was a journalism student with definite artistic tendencies and sensibilities. One of our first team projects was to take a big sheet of butcher paper and many crayons and make a mural.

Teams had to accomplish certain tasks, in addition to attending the group teachings and events.

1. Come up with a Team Name that had a meaning relevant to the theme of the program (“Run to Win” based on 1 Corinthians 9:26-27).
2. Create and perform a skit to present the team name to everyone else—usually during dinner.
3. Travel as a team on the next to last weekend for two days of “evangelism” in the real world.

We quickly and easily decided on a team name: FRED. The hard part was determining how the team name was relevant to the program theme. Surely it must stand for something…but what? After much discussion we decided that it meant “Freely Running & Enduring Disciples.” But we just said “Fred.”

As a run up to our skit, we started writing notes to our fellow Navs, including encouraging words and mysterious questions, all signed, “Fred” and put them in the little mailbox cubby holes. Whenever we safely could, we tried to be present when the recipient read the note. “Who’s Fred?” they asked aloud. We kept quiet and moved on.

Then on the big day I hovered outside the dining hall with a hairbrush for a microphone. At the right time I jumped into the room, shocking everyone by launching into a loud talk-show-host patter, asking, “Will the real Fred please stand up?”

“Is it Fred Astaire?” Renee and Angie came tangoing out of the kitchen and did a twirl in the middle of the room.

“Is it Fred Flintstone?” Elaine burst into the room shouting “Yabba Dabba Dooo!”

Finally we all lined up together for our FRED cheer, lame, but suitable to us. I can’t remember if we got much applause.

For the evangelism weekend we went to Renee’s mom’s house, near the University of Iowa. Mom was an artist, and her house was small and white with a studio on the north side. She made us pancakes with cottage cheese for breakfast.

Mostly we painted her fence and served her around the house. But we had to do something evangelizy, so we all went to the University, scattered in different directions and tried to pretend to start conversations with strangers. I had taken my tenor recorder with me, stopped to play now and then (I should have had a hat with me, perhaps) and got into a five minute conversation with an older woman about the different sizes of recorders. My duty done, I went down to the river to meditate in solitude under a weeping willow.

story by bobbie jo morrell, all rights reserved

back to voca femina home

Francine Phillips is a poet, author, and editor living in San Diego, California. Please check out her blog at http://francinephillips.tumblr.com.

__________________________________________________________________________________________Because Chapter 2

Because God so loved me, Mike sailed into my life.

I was coming up to 40, a single Mom for nearly eight years. My marriage to my seminary boyfriend had broken and died, mostly because, like many Christian virgins at 25 years of age, the only thing I had been taught about being a wife came from Proverbs 31.

Ridiculous.

I was blessed with two incredible kids, Molly and Jesse, who had to compete for my attention after a demanding day on the job. My father died and left me a little money, so we moved to a wonderful property with woods, a pool and a pond. I had a lot — great kids, an interesting job, a cool home, and incredible women friends. I held writer’s salons, parties, painting gatherings, readings, and planted a garden.

But I wanted a man.

Sleeping alone is one of the most painful parts of being a single woman. Just the act of turning down the covers,getting in alone, and turning out the light by yourself is something that those who are alone can’t understand as the loneliest moment of the day. Whether you take a book to bed with you, a strong blast of Scotch, or a bowl of Rocky Road ice cream, nothing is like sharing the warmth of the bed with a man. It just isn’t.

So I prayed for a husband. I told myself I needed a “helpmate,” which is Christian code for sex partner, even though you try to convince yourself that it’s really someone to cut wood for the fireplace, fix the car, help wash dishes, and sit in the driver’s seat. Bottom line, I wanted a man. And I wanted God to bring me one. Pleaded for one.

Not that I had been alone that much. In fact, I had just been through a final break-up with my artist lover after four off and on years of whisking the kids away for their Dad’s weekend and scurrying downtown for two days of snuggling like puppies to the sounds of drunks shouting on the sidewalk, sirens in the night, Van Morrison soulfully providing back-up vocals. A million miles from cold, stuck Cheerios, homework papers, lunch boxes, and alarm clocks. That getaway to another world was fun while it lasted. Now I wanted a man in my world.

It’s a mistake that many divorced women make who have financial security and a certain professional identity. Most are looking for a guy to come into the world they have made for themselves and simply help. My girlfriends and I were like that. We were the “’80s Ladies” that gritty K.T. Oslin sang about. We were women who owned our homes, and had obtained success, recognition and job satisfaction. We got together for poetry readings, gala events, lots of glasses of wine on the patio and laughter over dates from hell. Over the years we had refined our criteria for a mate. I shared our findings, once, with a male friend.

“We have narrowed it down to two requirements,” I said. “Solvent and capable of erection. Is that too much to ask?”

He thought for a moment. “Actually, it could be.”

We didn’t want to particularly change our worlds, just have help with the ones we had created. Husbands to explain things to the pool man, accompany us to the plays that we like, give us a kiss on New Year’s Eve, hold us at the end of the day. We thought marriage was 50/50 and we could probably talk the right guy out of wanting his
50 percent because we were smart, successful, brought home the bacon, and gave head.

God so loved me.

story by francine phillips, all rights reserved

back to voca femina home

Bobbie Jo Morrell is a mountain woman, poet, writer, leather crafter, rustic furniture builder, cat owner, technical writer, website designer. She says, “Colorado’s Front Range, with the smell of pine trees in the cool air of morning, is my home.” Her blog address: http://soulscompass.blogspot.com/.

___________________________________________________________________________________________Christmas Merry Christmas to All

Christmas time. When families get together, and love and joy and peace fill the air.

Uh huh.

I went back to Nebraska for the holidays with a strange sense of trepidation. It was my first Christmasafter signing up to follow Jesus, and I wasn’t sure what it would be like to be back in the old neighborhood.

Sure enough, I resumed my avoidant behavior of staying up late at night, reading, so as to sleep a lot during the day. But one night as I stared at the book in front of me, a thought arose to consciousness—that sense of God thing again.

You should tell your mom about your sexual abuse.

Oh, hell, no! She’d kill me for sure. I mean, she would be so angry at me. I couldn’t face that. What would be the point?

You should tell your mom about your sexual abuse.

Are You crazy? No, really, why would I do that? Dredge all that up with mom. And how would I bring up such a taboo topic? At the breakfast table?

“Oh, by the way, Mom, I was sexually abused in second grade. Would you pass the salt please?”

Right. Conversations about big topics like that were not done in my family. No way.

You should tell your mom about your sexual abuse.

Okay, how ’bout this? I’ll tell mom about my abuse, but you have to have her bring up the topic. I can’t just bring it up out of the blue.

Silence.

I rolled over and went to sleep, confident that I had dodged a bullet. I mean, mom bring up the topic of sexual abuse of children? Never happen. Never.

In the morning after eggs and bacon I set about making the traditional “peppernuts” for Christmas.They are a kind of spicy cookie/candy thing that involves rolling a big lump of dough into lots of little tiny balls and baking them. I had just reached the rolling into balls stage of the procedure when I heard the Phil Donahue Show come on in the living room. The day’s topic was child sexual abuse.

Holy shit! I ducked my head down and kept rolling peppernuts, hoping that mom wouldn’t come into the kitchen. But presently she came sailing in through the dining room, speaking in an intense, angry voice. “If anyone did that to any of my kids, I’d kill them!”

Okay, God. You win.

With a heavy sigh I accepted my fate, and opened my mouth.

“Well, mom, I have something to tell you…”

I told her. Not in detail, just the bare fact of it happening. She sank, shocked, into a dining room chair. I continued to vigorously roll peppernuts while facing her across the peninsula of counter space that separated dining from kitchen. But I didn’t stop telling my story. I wanted to emphasize that I had turned all this over to God now, and he was working healing in my life—that the mere fact of being a victim was not the whole story by a long shot.

Suddenly she interrupted my nervous narrative to ask, darkly, “Who was it? Who did it?”

Great, she wanted to go kill him, I suppose. “Mom, that’s not really important right now…”

“Was it Pam’s brother?”

“No, mom…and it doesn’t matter because…”

“Was it Jack?”

“Well, yes, it was—but that’s not the main thing here. The main thing is that now Jesus is working to make me whole again…”

I don’t think she was listening. Maybe she was going over in her mind past interactions, responses,comments. Maybe she was thinking about how to rid the world of the pestilence that had done unspeakable things to her daughter. I don’t know.

The end of that conversation evades my memory. I know that the peppernuts got baked. I know that was the last time I ever made them. But something else odd began to happen. My mom suddenly became very touchy-feely-huggy. She was never that way before. I mean, the usual homecoming hug, or goodby hug. But now she was coming up to me at random times and giving me hugs and putting her hand on my shoulders and all kinds of affectionate behavior.

Was she saying she was sorry? Was she trying to make up for something? I had just shaken up her world pretty hard, after all. In any case, I kind of freaked out, kind of felt like a rogue vacuum cleaner was wandering around the house just waiting to latch onto me. What was that about? Wouldn’t I want extra affection from my mom? I didn’t know. But I trumped up some excuse and left several days earlier than I had intended, returning with a sigh of relief to the solitude of my tiny room in Ash House, and watched the eight-night-long PBS stage production of Nicholas Nickleby.

story by bobbie jo morrell, all rights reserved

back to voca femina home

Francine Phillips is a poet, author, and editor living in San Diego, California. Please check out her blog at http://francinephillips.tumblr.com.

__________________________________________________________________________________________
Chapter 1

For God So Loved the World that He Gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

John 3:16. Just saying the reference brings to mind a chorus of small children memorizing it in a sing-song tone, stumbling over the “whosoever” while the teacher waves her hand like a music conductor andmouths, “that means you!!!” And the room is getting hot and stuffy and my Dotted Swiss dress is starting to scratch the back of my knees and one of the boys is always too loud on the word “Begotten” and what does a six year-old know about perishing anyway. Life is already everlasting to a sixyear-old in Sunday School. Especially everlasting in a Dotted Swiss, too-tight dress.

Because God so loved me, Mike sailed into my life. I was coming up to 40, a single Mom for nearly eight years. My marriage to my seminary boyfriend had broken and died, mostly because, like many Christian virgins at 25 years of age, the only thing I had been taught about being a wife came from Proverbs 31.

Ridiculous.

I was blessed with two incredible kids, Molly and Jesse, who had to compete for my attention after a demanding day on the job. My father died and left me a little money, so we moved to a wonderful property with woods, a pool and a pond. I had a lot — great kids, an interesting job, a cool home, and incredible women friends. I held writers’ salons, parties, painting gatherings, readings, and planted a garden.

But I wanted a man.

Sleeping alone is one of the most painful parts of being a single woman. Just the act of turning down the covers, getting in alone, and turning out the light by yourself is something that those who are alone can’t understand as the loneliest moment of the day. Whether you take a book to bed with you, a strong blast of Scotch, or a bowl of Rocky Road ice cream, nothing is like sharing the warmth of the bed with a man. It just isn’t.

So I prayed for a husband. I told myself I needed a “helpmate,” which is Christian code for sex partner, even though you try to convince yourself that it’s really someone to cut wood for the fireplace, fix the car, help wash dishes, and sit in the driver’s seat. Bottom line, I wanted a man. And I wanted God to bring me one. Pleaded for one. Not that I had been alone that much. In fact, I had just been through a final break-up with my artist lover after four off and on years of whisking the kids away for their Dad’s weekend and scurrying downtown for two days of snuggling like puppies to the sounds of drunks shouting on the sidewalk, sirens in the night, Van Morrison soulfully providing back-up vocals. A million miles from cold, stuck Cheerios, homework papers, lunch boxes, and alarm clocks. That getaway to another world was fun while it lasted.

Now I wanted a man in my world.

It’s a mistake that many divorced women make who have financial security and a certain professional identity. Most are looking for a guy to come into the world they have made for themselves and simply help. My girlfriends and I were like that. We were the “’80s Ladies” that gritty K.T. Oslin sang about. We were women who owned our homes, and had obtained success, recognition and job satisfaction. We got together for poetry readings, gala events, lots of glasses of wine on the patio and laughter over dates from hell. Over the years we had refined our criteria for a mate. I shared our findings, once, with a male friend.

“We have narrowed it down to two requirements,” I said. “Solvent and capable of erection. Is that too much to ask?”

He thought for a moment. “Actually, it could be.”

We didn’t want to particularly change our worlds, just have help with the ones we had created. Husbands to explain things to the pool man, accompany us to the plays that we like, give us a kiss on New Year’s Eve, hold us at the end of the day. We thought marriage was 50/50 and we could probably talk the right guy out of wanting his 50 percent because we were smart, successful, brought home the bacon, and were good in bed.

God so loved me.

On the Receiving End, copyright 2009, by Francine Phillips

back to voca femina home

Bobbie Jo Morrell is a mountain woman, poet, writer, leather crafter, rustic furniture builder, cat owner, technical writer, website designer. She says, “Colorado’s Front Range, with the smell of pine trees in the cool air of morning, is my home.” Her blog address: http://soulscompass.blogspot.com/.

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Just Me and God and…the Navigators

That spring Christine graduated with honors with a degree in Agronomy (aka “dirt”) and went to Indiana to pursue a master’s degree in entymology (aka “bugs in corn”). We wrote letters and occasionally talked on the phone—mind you, this was before email, texting, and nationwide cell service was known outside of serious geek circles—but on a daily basis I was on my own with Jesus, the healing thing, and the Navigators.

Torn between the desire to return to my hermitlike ways and the desire to be active in the body of Christ, as St. Paul put it, I stretched myself and did what group things I could. I went on the canoe trip to Decorah and embarrassed myself hugely by rolling the canoe I was in charge of in the currents of an undercut bank. With great presence of mind I managed to catch the loose floating stuff: paddles, stray life jackets, etc. Unfortunately while my hands were thus engaged, the current swept my glasses off and carried them to the bottom of the Upper Iowa River. (When I told Chris about this she joked, “See, God wanted you to get rid of those glasses!” They were permanently tinted brown, and she didn’t like that I hid my eyes behind them.)

I spent the rest of the float in the bow of Barry’s canoe. He was a very tall and very kind young man who lived in the Richardson Court Dorms and I was grateful to be able to recover at least a little of my dignity in his quiet and gentle presence. That night at the campfire, not only did I not get teased to death for my dip, but everyone chipped in some change to contribute a total of fifty dollars to go toward a new pair of glasses.

I spent the summer working for corn breeder research projects—mostly walking up and down cornfields and, later in the summer, coming out yellow with pollen. In the fall when Nav activities resumed, I joined the Bible study led by one of the women from Christine’s old study, and went to the all-campus gatherings. There I got to talk to Trina, who had led Chris’ study group and was first to come see me the night I decided to follow this Jesus guy. And I got to know Becky, who was the women’s leader of the Navigator staff there on campus. She and Trina were both from Minnesota, and their greeting, “Hellooo, Bobbie Jooo” always made me smile.

The study was a great group of women, led by Sandra. We were going through the little red study books published by NavPress, with lots of fill-in-the-blanks in them. I wasn’t nearly as excited by this as I had been by the discussions Christine and I had had previously. I could always tell what answer they wanted to fill the blank with without reading the scripture passage, so I usually didn’t bother to do the study beforehand. Read the bible text, usually, but the questions were boring.

I enjoyed the meetings themselves, the discussions around the text; although we didn’t seem to get as lively or as interesting in our questions and explorations. They were fun people though, and two of them even went with me to a Halloween party thrown by some of my old drinking buddies. I’m not sure they had a good time, though.

At some gathering I was telling Sandra about how, as a freshman, I had had my left ear pierced, and didn’t pierce the right one to make a pair until about a year previous. Her response made me laugh, but also echoed in my mind a little oddly.

“You weren’t…weird…were you?”

I knew she meant “homosexual”. No, I wasn’t, but she put it so…strangely. I was both glad that I had pierced the other ear, and annoyed somehow.

What if I told her about my abusive past? Would that be weird, also?

I also wrestled with the book. Healing? Really? It talked about guilt, low self-esteem and the healing of it, depression, and above all, the Wounded Healer, Jesus. Yet I didn’t feel that I could get away, get anywhere with this. My only confidante was in Indiana, and no one else here in town knew my story. I didn’t trust people with it.

Finally, with long distance encouragement from Christine, I looked for more help. Who to talk to? I couldn’t imagine asking, “What kind of healing does Jesus offer for victims of childhood sexual abuse?” in the middle of a group meeting, or of the Bible study.

Becky. She was the leader of the women’s groups, Navigator staff. Kindness and compassion flowed from her like sweet perfume. We got together now and again, and finally I unburdened myself to her. I was so afraid, or so ashamed, that I slouched in my seat and told my story with my head practically lying on the table. But there it was: I was a victim of sexual abuse, and I needed help figuring out how Jesus’ healing could be possible in my life.

Becky listened with compassion and gently asked some questions. I think I was presenting her with a difficulty she wasn’t accustomed to dealing with, but she took it with grace and thought carefully about what should be done next.

“You know, the E-Free Church here has a christian counselor come up from Des Moines twice a week. I’ll get her phone number for you; the church helps out those who need financial assistance to pay for it, too.”

Raising my head from the table I expressed my incredible gratitude. Partly for the counselor information, but mostly for her kindness and acceptance of my broken self. Healing, indeed.

story by bobbie jo morrell, all rights reserved

back to voca femina home

Bobbie Jo Morrell is a mountain woman, poet, writer, leather crafter, rustic furniture builder, cat owner, technical writer, website designer. She says, “Colorado’s Front Range, with the smell of pine trees in the cool air of morning, is my home.” Her blog address: http://soulscompass.blogspot.com/.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Bobbie Jo Morrell is a mountain woman, poet, writer, leather crafter, rustic furniture builder, cat owner, technical writer, website designer. She says, “Colorado’s Front Range, with the smell of pine trees in the cool air of morning, is my home.” Her blog address: http://soulscompass.blogspot.com/.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Beth Bates is a blogger, living in the Indianapolis area. She says, “I wrote “Senior Photo” for the nonfiction workshop I’m currently taking at Butler University, in the MFA in Creative Writing. This personal essay was a rewrite of a larger work and is a snapshot of a moment in time when I was probably suffering from PTSD — a truth I would not grasp until about 20 years later.”

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Senior Photo

In a darkened studio on a seedy side of Indianapolis, swallowed by a purple blouse, I sat on a hard stool and posed for senior pictures. [Kids who missed the springtime shoot at my affluent suburban high school were penalized in this way.] Feeling twice my age, va-jay-jay aching, I contorted my face into expressions of purity and youthful optimism.

“How was your summer?” asked the photographer from behind a giant camera, clicking away. He didn’t necessarily want an answer, but I yearned to give him one. I felt wearier than a seventeen-year-old ought to, and alone.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said. He didn’t hear me, or pretended not to hear. He adjusted the umbrella to light my face, tilted my chin and stepped back behind the lens. No doubt he was immune to the attempts of teenagers to engage him in conversation that dipped too far into personal territory.

Something in me needed to talk about it, to bring it into the light. A tender place, a gnawing, two-week-old emptiness yawned, greedy to be tended, salved, and filled. I needed someone — anyone, even a stranger — who might help me apprehend this adult turmoil that had set up shop in my brain.

I didn’t feel grief, or at least did not recognize it as such. Mostly, I felt Odd. Old. Worn out. Thrust into adulthood with no adults with whom I could connect. To them, I looked like a kid. To kids, I was Different. The courageous girl. A cautionary tale. And relieved was what I was supposed to feel.

The emptiness was beginning to make itself at home in my heart, the void a fresh tattoo on my self. My appearance said “sweet young thing,” but beneath my size-three dance team girl exterior resided a dumpy, used up chain-smoker in a housecoat.

I was a baby, and two weeks earlier I had given away a baby. Per specific instructions intended to reduce emotional trauma, and to minimize proprietary attachment to the baby, masked people dressed in scrubs swooped my — whatever it was — away from my body and rushed it out of the room. For a moment, a sweet, strong cry filled the room, and then the doors swung shut.

Labor screams and infant song were replaced by the hushed, sober sounds of medical personnel repairing surgical slices. No happy tears; no shouts of “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!”

The blue-eyed Superman anesthesiologist who had stayed by my head through the delivery left to numb another patient. My mother and sister sat in a waiting room somewhere in the hospital smoking bummed cigarettes, maybe calling the prayer chain.

Chilled, I lay alone under blaring lights in the sterile room. I forced my mind to wander, to distract myself from the stinging needle in my lacerated young girl parts. “Purple,” I thought. “Maybe I’ll wear that silk purple top for my senior picture. I should fit in it by then.” But I did not fit, nor would I for many years. Not in the blouse, not in my own skin.

story by beth bates, all rights reserved

back to voca femina home

Bobbie Jo Morrell is a mountain woman, poet, writer, leather crafter, rustic furniture builder, cat owner, technical writer, website designer. She says, “Colorado’s Front Range, with the smell of pine trees in the cool air of morning, is my home.” Her blog address: http://soulscompass.blogspot.com/.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Bobbie Jo Morrell is a mountain woman, poet, writer, leather crafter, rustic furniture builder, cat owner, technical writer, website designer. She says, “Colorado’s Front Range, with the smell of pine trees in the cool air of morning, is my home.” Her blog address: http://soulscompass.blogspot.com/.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 12: Navigating a Sea of Navigators

by Bobbie Jo Morrell

Less than two weeks after my spectacular and personally mortifying barge into Christine’s Navigator group as a brand new christian, the two of us piled into my Pinto and took off down I-35 toward Kansas City. I was headed for my first Navigator conference.

The brochure describing the conference was simple black and white, the front looking like an excerpt of a page of want ads. In the middle was one large ad, circled in red: “Laborers Wanted” followed by a Bible reference. Yet I had no idea what the speakers were going to talk about.

After throwing our stuff in the motel room, we gathered with the two hundred other college students in a large meeting room with no windows. I stuck close to Chris, as I knew no one else who was there, not even the folks from our group at college.

Everywhere I heard excited young people reading out of Bibles, reciting verses off of little cards that they carried in their pockets, talking about being “sold out” to Jesus. Here and there the older Nav staff folks wandered, offering encouragement or listening with smiles on their faces. I hadn’t realized there were so many of these radical-type Christians in the whole world.

The speakers spoke, encouraging us to seriously consider what it meant to be a “laborer in God’s harvest” and the possibility of full time christian work. We met in small groups in our rooms to get to know each other better, and hear each others’ stories. I excited many people by saying that I had been a christian for only 9 days—they asked for all the details of my story, and Christine watched with a big smile. Tentatively I began to enjoy being a part of this group, this movement, although I still wasn’t certain what it all meant.

But Saturday afternoon Chris began to be irritable, and kind of upset about something; not her usual cheerful and extroverted self at all. Even I could see it. She wasn’t talking about it, though, and went at one point to our room to lie down for a while, leaving me alone in the sea of Navigators.

I was a relational moron at the time; I had no idea what was going on, or what to do. But I fidgeted, knowing that something was up with Chris and that I wanted to be there for her, to help her if I could. But how?

After some reflection, I decided to try this Jesus thing, and I asked God directly for help. What do I do about Christine?

“Just love her,” a voice rang in my head.

What the hell…? Quickly, furtively, I looked up and down and around the meeting room, but there was no one talking to me—much less anyone that could have read the question in my mind.

“God?” I answered in my head silently—I didn’t want people to think I was nuts. “OK, great idea, but HOW?”

“Just love her.”

“OK, yeah—but could you be more specific?”

The rich voice was endlessly patient. “Just love her.”

“OK, OK…”

So I walked back to our room muttering, “Just love her…” to myself. I had no clue what that meant or how to do it.

Christine was curled up on the bed, reading. Still without a clue I walked over and sat on the bed next to her. Then suddenly a strange and brilliant idea struck me: why not ask her what was wrong?

Terror washed over me at the thought. What if I pissed her off? What if she told me to get lost and stay that way?

I screwed up my courage, opened my mouth, and asked, “What’s wrong, Chris?”

She looked quickly up at me; my hands and feet were suddenly like ice, and my face flamed. But her expression immediately softened and relaxed, as though she had been waiting hours for me to ask just that question. She spoke with relief of the growing fears that had crept up on her this weekend, and what she thought God was doing in her life around them. I listened with relief and wonder. She trusted me! Later I spoke of my fears also, and of what God might do in my life.

A deep, serious conversation about important things, about relationship that didn’t involve a painful injunction for me to back off or go away, and in fact brought Christine and myself closer in friendship! Apparently, God was right.

story by bobbie jo morrell, all rights reserved

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