 
# "Rachel's Confession"  
Part One

THE CONFESSION

A novel by  
ROBERT LADD

Smashwords edition, copyright 2012

Sun Literary  
Kansas City
THE CONFESSION

by

Robert Ladd

www.robertladdbooks.com

Copyright © 2011 by Robert Ladd

All rights reserved.

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise – without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to Sun Literary.

Published by Sun Literary, 7922 Darnell Lane, Lenexa, KS, 66215

office@sunliterary.com

International Standard Book Number 978-1-4499494-3-3
This story was written for my children:

Robert, Michael and Stephanie

And dedicated to my wife

Molly

You are my coat from the cold.
Entry #43

... _and sometimes extraordinary things happen to ordinary people._

JD Salinger

 _  
"A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte"_

By  
Georges Seurat

# ONE

Entry #17

In the nature of things, we live in a world of broken hearts.

Virgil

**It snowed the day my husband died.** I was in the kitchen, chopping onions for my famous eat-now-pay-later chili when the phone rang. The voice on the other end informed me, in carefully measured words, "Mrs. Walker, I'm afraid there's been an accident..."

That was nine months ago. Two days before Christmas and the afternoon of my twenty-eighth birthday. After I hung up the phone I grew suddenly nauseous and threw up in the sink. I know that's not a delicate thing to say but it's what happened. I rushed to the hospital but by the time I got there, it was too late, my husband was gone. And with his death, part of me died as well.

We buried Joe three days later in his best blue suit. Actually, his _only_ blue suit. As they lowered his casket into the frozen ground, the priest said that my husband's body was now "delivered into the arms of angels, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," which was such a lovely phrase that I wrote it down on a tissue I found deep in my purse – not the dust part, but the part about the angels. I still have that tissue, safely tucked away in the back of my underwear drawer. Words of comfort on a Kleenex. A wadded-up memory.

After the funeral, a group of people dropped by my apartment to offer their condolences and heartfelt wishes, plus snack on little sandwiches my mother and Aunt Ida prepared. Everyone was kind and attentive and respectful, but still it was a little awkward, standing around with such long faces and dark clothes, trying to be relaxed without being _too_ relaxed. Funerals are one of the few occasions in life where you have to be somber and social at the same time. It's a tough combination.

A friend of my husband's, whom I'd never met before, told me the funniest story about Joe in college. I'd re-tell it now but it wouldn't be nearly as good. Sometimes the magic of a story is not in the story itself but in the _story-teller_ , and to be honest I'm not very good at telling them.

Anyway, it felt wonderful to laugh at something for a change. All I'd been doing for three days straight was trying to figure out how to breathe normally again. The moment I heard the news about my husband, it felt like someone punched me in the stomach. All the wind just rushed out of me, and I crumpled up like a spent balloon. It was awful.

When Joe's friend finished his story, he said the nicest thing. He said, "Whatever happens, Rachel, always know that Joe has been given the Morning Star, and shines with the splendor of the sun."

There are times when someone says something small, but it fits just right in that empty space in your heart.

I considered asking how he could be _certain_ that Joe had been given those things, and _who_ gave them to him and why _those_ things in particular, but decided not to. There was simply no way to ask those questions without sounding sarcastic or cynical, which I wasn't. I really wanted to know.

Later that afternoon, when all the family, friends and strangers were gone, I went back to the cemetery and removed a single white flower from Joe's grave. I took the flower home and pressed it between the pages of my Bible, as a keepsake. Once the flower was safe and secure between the words of Jesus, I turned off all the lights in my apartment and, though it was only seven o'clock, went to bed. I dreamed about my husband that night; a dream so strong that when I awoke I could smell him. I still can at times.

I miss my husband. Every day. I miss his smile, his laugh, his voice. I miss his sweet brown eyes. He was my best friend and I loved him completely.

Not long after the funeral, I made two discoveries. One: If you have to keep telling yourself over and over again that you're OK, you're probably not. And two: I was pregnant.

I decided to keep the second discovery to myself for a while, just in case the at-home test kit I used proved defective, which I'm told they often are. As for my first discovery, I must have worn my sadness like a hat, because even before I realized how depressed I was, my dad realized it for me.

"Are you OK?" he asked with a level of concern that told me

this was more than idle conversation.

"I'm doing fine," I replied.

"You sure? Cause if you need to talk..."

"No, really, I'm fine."

But the look on his face said he saw right through me. I _wasn't_ doing just fine and he knew it. It was like the word "grief" was tattooed on my forehead.

"I think you should see a professional," Dad said. "Someone who specializes in this area."

Which I did. I found him in the Yellow Pages under "Bereavement Counselors." His name was Geoffrey Hart.

"Rachel," Geoffrey said at the end of our first session, "you have several symptoms that indicate a Post-Traumatic Bipolar Syndrome with Atypical Features Specification."

I recognized most of the words in the first half of that sentence but few in the second half, so I asked what they meant when put together.

"You're depressed," he said.

Which more or less cleared up the meaning of the diagnosis, but didn't provide me with any new information. I already knew I was depressed.

"So what do I do?" I asked.

Geoffrey handed me a pamphlet titled _Healthy Grieving, How to Move From Helpless to Happy._ It was written in purple ink and had a picture of a butterfly on it.

"I want you to take this home," he said. "And read it. Pay particular attention to page eight, where it discusses the foundations of grief." He smiled knowingly then winked. "We'll get you back to normal in no time."

I politely thanked him then left his office, fairly certain that I would not return. He seemed nice enough, but I couldn't get past the wink. Somehow the wink was too confident. Plus the speed at which he diagnosed me as being bi-polar scared me a little. Who knows what else I might become if I saw him again.

When I got outside, however, just to be on the safe side, I read page eight. It explained, also in purple ink, there are five stages to the grieving process: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance.

Which was good information to have but something I already knew. I learned it in a college psych class. Trouble was I seemed to have skipped right over the first three stages and went straight to depression. As for denying that my husband was dead, that seemed odd. I went to his funeral. He was dead and no amount of denying that fact was going to bring him back. I never felt anything close to anger, even at the guy who was driving the other car because he died also. Getting mad at someone who was dead seemed like a waste of time. As for the bargaining stage, I hadn't the slightest clue what to bargain with or for, so that one was lost on me as well.

At first, I was worried about _not_ feeling what the experts said I should be feeling. Maybe there was something wrong with me. Maybe I _should_ be mad at somebody. In a way, being mad made sense. But mad at who? Myself? My husband? God? Hmmmmm. I hadn't thought of him. Maybe God was behind this whole mess. Maybe I should give God a piece of my mind for what he did to Joe and me, not to mention the drunk who plowed into my husband's car. Now that I had a chance to think about it, maybe there _was_ someone to blame after all.

I stewed on this idea for most of the day. That's what I do. I stew on things. I turn them over and over and over again until I practically wear them out. I'm very dedicated to this process. Finally I ruled out anger. I reasoned that if you have to _talk_ yourself into getting angry, then it wasn't a real emotion to begin with. Either you're mad or you're not. Plus the simple fact of the matter was this: I didn't hold God responsible for Joe's death. How could I? I mean, well, he's _God_. And God doesn't cause car crashes that kill people just for kicks.

At least that's what I thought for a really long time.

# TWO

Entry # 144

Not only does God play dice, but he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

Stephen Hawking

**If I was going to be saddled with depression, I figured** the smart thing to do was find out what it was. So I went where I always go when I need the hard, cold facts: _Wikipedia.com._

The first thing I discovered was that more people in America suffer from depression than I imagined. One source put the number at 20 million, while another reported twice as many. This seemed like a pretty big discrepancy until I realized that half the people who have it are too embarrassed to report it, so the numbers are somewhat skewed by denial.

I tried a couple other websites. One, titled "Famous People with Depression" was interesting. The famous people it listed weren't all artists, writers and poets like I expected. Some were lawyers, scientists, and athletes. There was even a Nobel Prize Winner and a couple U.S. presidents. And even though I wasn't any of those things, I found comfort in knowing that there were a lot of people out there like me. Being sick is bad enough without being sick all alone.

What surprised me though was how sneaky depression could be. I read that with some people it comes on so slowly they don't even know what it is until it's too late. With others, it comes and goes with the seasons. With me, I mistook it for exhaustion. I was just tired all the time. And since everyone gets tired from time to time, I thought I could lick it. I thought that one morning, after a really good night's sleep, I'd just wake up and be happy again. Of course that never happened. In fact, the more I slept, the more I wanted to sleep.

My mother understood depression almost as well as I did.

"When you find yourself in a hole," she told me, "the first rule is to quit digging."

Which is the kind of thing my mother would say. She had a snappy quote for almost every situation. _Comfort never produces_ _character_ , was one of her favorites or _Don't buy criticism just because_ _someone is selling it_ or _Don't believe everything you think._

She got most of her sayings from "Dear Abby." But that was OK, because more often than not, Dear Abby was right.

"The second rule," my mother said, "is to find something each day that you can look forward to. Something to get your motor going."

Which made sense, even if it was my mother who said it. I have since learned that almost anything makes sense if you don't know what you're talking about. But at the time, it was all I had, so I ran with it. Beginning that night, I tried to think of something interesting to do that would help me get out of bed the next day. About half the time, however, when I awoke, I forgot what it was I was supposed to do, so I might lie there, wide-awake but unmoving, until noon. Eventually hunger would get the better of me and I'd toddle off to the kitchen and make myself some toast. By that time, I had usually recalled what it was that I was looking forward to, but by then most of the excitement had worn off.

As a memory aid, I began writing down those things I would look forward to on small post-its. I placed them in strategic spots throughout my apartment where I was sure to see them: the bathroom mirror, my refrigerator, the coffee pot. But, almost without exception, when I read them the next morning, the ideas weren't nearly as interesting as they had been the night before. In fact, some were so odd that I had to double-check the handwriting, just to make sure it was mine.

I went to a medical doctor, whom I liked immediately. Or I should say I liked his appearance immediately. With me, a good physician should be middle-aged, with a little gray hair but not too much. Too old and they're apt to leave a sponge in you following an operation. Too young and all they want to do is try out the latest thing they just read in the New England Journal of Medicine.

His name was Dr. Bones.

I'm not kidding. That was his real name.

Within minutes of meeting me, Dr. Bones prescribed an anti-depressant, which made me wonder if he handed out drugs this easily to all his patients or if he saw something in me that told him he didn't have a minute to spare. Either way, I was amazed at how simple it was to get better.

Except I didn't.

So he prescribed a "combination regimen," which meant two pills instead of one. Two eventually led to three, then four. Evidently, when it comes to pharmaceuticals, more is better. I asked him if there was any danger in mixing pills with pregnancy.

"No, no, no" Dr. Bones explained, "untreated depression represents a much greater risk to the fetus. The regiment I've prescribed for you is perfectly safe. Trust me."

I was OK with his explanation until he told me I could trust him. When someone has to _tell_ me they're honest, I start looking for a crook.

"And besides," he continued, "if the baby is born with any chemical dependencies, they can be easily treated."

Which told me all I needed to know about Doctor Bones. He considered me a lot more important than my baby. Trouble is I didn't. I never took another pill after that. I didn't care how much Dr. Bones looked like a real doctor, as far as I was concerned, he was a quack.

"What you need is a dog," my mother announced one day. "Whoever said you can't buy happiness has never owned a puppy."

Mom always said the average dog was a better person than the average person, so we always had one around the house when I was a kid. Sometimes two.

I went to the pound and began my search. It didn't take long. I found one that was scheduled to be put down in less than a week. As soon as I discovered his fate, I knew I had to have him. There was no way I could turn my back on a puppy that was on death row.

I named him Pepper, after Sergeant Pepper, from the Beatles' song. Pepper was part collie, part shepherd and part something else that must have been smaller because he was smaller than the other collies or shepherds. In fact, he was the runt of the litter.

Turns out mom was right, too – you _can_ buy happiness. It costs twenty-eight dollars and nineteen cents. Plus they tossed in a rubber chewtoy and some flea powder to boot. It was a real bargain.

Pepper was perfect. He loved me unconditionally, whether I was scolding him for sticking his nose in a light socket, or hugging him because I'd had a rough day. He peed a lot, but I figured if that was the worst thing I had to contend with, I got the better end of the bargain.

For a while I was so happy that I forgot how sad I was. Pepper and I slept together, played together and ate together. We were like brother and sister, friends to the end, totally inseparable. That is right up until the day he ran away. I was shocked. I had no idea he was a flight risk.

I put up "Have You Seen This Dog?" posters all over the neighborhood with his picture on it, but nothing came of it. I thought I saw him a couple times, and even called out his name once, but there was no reaction except from the person who was walking him. They looked puzzled but unafraid, which told me it was a case of mistaken identity.

I gave up on pets after that. I couldn't take the potential rejection.

My aunt Ida suggested I talk to a priest.

"Take it to the Lord," she said. "He's the great physician. His healing touch can cure any disease. I know. He cured me."

The disease she was referring to was not actually a disease but a bad back. Apparently Ida tried every remedy known to man and pharmacy without success. Finally she went to a priest. He talked to her about the power of faith, and how prayer was known to help people overcome all kinds of physical problems, including arthritis.

"I'll pray for you, Ida," the priest told her. "But more importantly, pray for yourself."

That night Ida got down next to her bed and prayed. She prayed for comfort. She prayed for relief. She prayed for God's healing touch. Guess what happened the very next morning? No, the pain was actually worse. But as the week wore on, it lessened. Within a month, it was gone. She was cured.

"That was two years ago," Ida told me as she easily bent down and touched her toes. "Once I started praying, it was just a matter of time."

I wish I had that kind of faith. The kind that says I believe in something so strong that even when it doesn't work right away, I still know it's going to work. With me, instant gratification takes too long. I'm willing to spend the time and effort to get better, as long as I can see immediate progress. So far, all I was getting was heavier.

And heavier did not help things at all.

I tried visiting a support group of others who had lost a spouse, but never found their company all that supportive. The leader of our group, a very nice woman who had lost not one but _three_ husbands, told me that a loved one's death is a "passport to intimacy." She explained that losing someone close to you makes it easier to share with others the intimate details of how rotten you feel. Armed with this information, I approached my group with an open mind and expectant heart, anxious to get the weight of death off my chest.

It didn't work.

All we ever seemed to talk about was coping with grief and exploring our inner-fears of mortality or the resentment of being abandoned. For a while I pretended as though I understood what they meant, and that I too felt all those things. But after the third or fourth session, I realized I didn't.

"You just need to dig deeper," they assured me.

And so I dug deeper. Still, I came up empty-handed.

"Deeper yet," they said.

Back to the emotional well I went, digging so deep I was afraid I might come out the other side of me, and still – nothing.

Despite my failure at being unable to grieve-on-command, they told me I was still a unique spirit and a worthy human being. Which was good to know, although it didn't do much to cheer me up. In fact, it did just the opposite. A person can take only so much comforting before it begins to backfire a little. I know that those in my group meant well, but there are few things in life that make me feel worse than to have people I don't know trying to make me feel better by telling me things I don't believe. Plus, at the heart of it, I think I'm the kind of optimist who deep down knows things are not really going to work out anyway.

What I needed was someone to explain why things in life are the way they are without trying to stuff them down my throat. Sometimes it's not the truth I resist but the manner in which it is presented. With that need in mind, I knew where to turn next: a journal I'd been keeping for ten years.

As a freshman in college I began collecting thought-provoking ideas and quotes that helped me understand the ups and downs of life in general. I numbered each entry and placed them in a spiral notebook. I called my collection "Thoughts and Things." Whenever I was in a jam, I'd look through my notebook for a quote that spoke to me about the situation at hand. Not long after my failed experiment with my support group, I went to my journal. Sure enough, there it was: Entry #22 from the longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer, who said...

# THREE

Entry #22

You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.

Eric Hoffer

**By this time I wouldn't say I was getting desperate.** Anxious maybe but not desperate. I figured time was on my side. Then again, with each passing day I felt worse than the day before, so maybe time wasn't the answer. In my quest to overcome depression, the only thing I knew for sure was this:

Support Groups didn't work, at least in my case. Nor did counseling. Pills were dangerous and puppies unreliable. I considered going to a priest, but opted not to. Most of the priests I knew were about a hundred years old, and, well, I just couldn't picture myself crying in front of one. Friends and family were great at feeling sympathy but not much help in the "here's what to do" category.

The only remaining choice seemed to be therapy. I did not, however, make the mistake of picking one at random from the Yellow Pages. My husband's insurance provider picked one for me. Theirs was a much better choice.

His name was Goldberg. Dr. Isaac Goldberg.

"It's perfectly natural to deny your emotions," Goldberg told me the first time we met. "It's the brain's defense mechanism that does it, actually. To prevent a condition known as 'psychic-overload.'"

Goldberg was middle-aged, which was a plus, and surprisingly looked a lot like Sigmund Freud, except without the wool suit and cigar. He had a voice like falling water, smooth, comforting, melodic. Although I enjoyed listening to him, I sometimes have the attention span of a gnat. Without realizing it, I lost track of what he was saying, and wound up staring at a large print hanging on the wall in his office. It was "Sunday in the Park with George," although I think it had a more French-sounding name. I couldn't recall the name of the artist, but I liked the painting. And the title.

"Wouldn't you agree with that, Rachel?" Goldberg said.

I tried not to act startled.

"I'm sorry, what?" I replied.

Goldberg templed his fingers in a way that made him look like he was praying.

"I said medication is important to recovery. You're still taking your medication, aren't you?"

I told him of course I was then frantically tried to remember the names of the pills I was supposed to be taking, in case he asked a follow-up question.

Trouble was I tend to classify medicines not by name but by color, size and function. The small blue one was supposed to help me sleep; the medium-sized pink one helped me wake up; the large white one was supposed to make me happy, but never did; and the triangle-shaped gray one, well, I'm not sure what it was supposed to do, but it said on the bottle to take it once a day on an empty stomach, and so I did. Until I quit taking them all together.

Fortunately Goldberg went on to another topic.

"Depression," he said, in his falling-water voice, "is a natural side effect, a by-product, if you will, brought on in your case by the trauma of death. Let's talk about that, shall we?"

Actually the last thing in the world I wanted to talk about was death and depression. I found that talking about them was, in a word, depressing. But Goldberg was in his element now. There was no turning back.

As he began talking about psychosomatic something or other, my mind wandered again, and took me with it. I glanced out a window and caught sight of a woman who looked vaguely familiar, but somehow much older and heavier than I remembered. Suddenly I realized it was me. I stared at my reflection, and thought _My god, what happened to you?_ I looked like my grandmother. Surely my image was distorted in some way. Maybe it was the angle of the light or an imperfection in the glass. Then again, maybe I was just thirty pounds heavier than I remembered, and all the weight had lodged itself in my jowls. That must have been it because the woman in the window was enormous from the neck up. I wasn't sure if that explained the half-moon bags under her eyes or the blotchy skin, but it might have. I made a mental note to ask Goldberg if fluid-retention was also a natural by-product of depression, or should I blame it instead on being several months pregnant.

"Tell me what you see when you look in the mirror," Goldberg said.

I thought for a moment he'd caught me staring at my reflection then realized he meant something else all together.

"I see a woman who misses her husband," I said, proud to have thought of something so quickly. "But a woman who is getting stronger every day. I truly believe that, Dr. Goldberg. I am getting stronger, better, in fact."

I sat back, satisfied I'd done a good job, even though it was a totally made-up answer.

Goldberg shook his head.

"No, Rachel," he said. "I mean what do you _see_ when you look in the mirror _._ Literally. Describe yourself."

I told him when I'm not pregnant or depressed, I see a woman who weighs around 150 pounds, which, according to a chart I clipped out of _Marie Clare,_ is about right for a 15-year-old boy my height, but a little heavy for a woman my age.

Goldberg laughed then realized I was serious and ended up clearing his throat as a cover. Suddenly a look of surprise came over his face.

"Did you say _pregnant_?" he asked.

It got kind of quiet then. I knew I'd said _pregnant_ because I could still hear me saying the word, but I wasn't about to say it again.

What I said instead was, "Pardon me?"

Goldberg put down his pen.

"Rachel," he said, "are you expecting?"

I tried to look nonchalant, but felt pretty sure my voice betrayed me.

"Probably not," I said. "It was just an at-home test. False-positives are pretty common."

Goldberg smiled. "Congratulations, nonetheless."

He sounded pleased, but I couldn't tell if he was sincerely pleased or was just so well rehearsed at sounding sincere that it came out that way naturally.

"So, when are you due?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," I said. "I'm scheduled to see my OB/GYN on Tuesday."

Which was a lie. I didn't even _know_ an OB/GYN much less have one. Although, I was proud at being able to use the acronym so conversationally, like I said it all the time, which would be a clear indication that I, in fact, did have one.

"So, how do you feel about being pregnant?" he asked.

"I think there's a poetic justice to it," I said. "With one life gone, another begins."

Goldberg seemed to like that answer, even though it sounded like an ad for a Disney movie.

"Ah, the Circle of Life," he said.

"Yes," I replied. "The Circle of Life."

No one said anything for a moment, which gave me time to feel something totally unexpected: a genuine connection with my therapist. I felt maybe, just maybe, that he understood something deep inside me that I did not understand myself. If that was the case, then this therapy thing might have a future in it after all.

"Very good," Goldberg said. "Very good. Now then, where were we?" He glanced at his notes. "Ah, yes. The mirror. Tell me, Rachel, what is it you see when you look at yourself in the mirror?"

"I have more freckles than I would like," I said. "Plus my hair get kind of frizzy when it's humid. But I've been told those traits make me attractive, in a 'Sally Fields sort of way.'"

Which was something someone actually said, but since it was my mother who said it, I couldn't be sure if it was true or not. A mother's compliments are almost always suspect. Except with my mother, they're almost always non-existent.

"I wish my hips were smaller and my boobs bigger," I continued. "But I think most women would like that."

Goldberg jotted down a few notes as I talked. Probably something about my boob comment. Men usually notice things like that, even therapist.

I went on for several minutes telling Goldberg what I thought he wanted to hear, but of all the things I said about me that afternoon, what I didn't say was that sometimes when I look in a mirror I don't see me at all. What I see is a picture I drew when I was a kid. It was a picture of this beautiful green lawn with all kinds of colorful flowers, shrubs and trees. But right in the middle was this scrawny little blade of grass. The other blades of grass were taller, straighter and a much better shade of green. I never told anyone but the grass represented all the other kids in my class and the scrawny little blade was me.

Talk about revealing yourself in art.

I wasn't about to share that with Goldberg, however. He was sure to read into it all sorts of negative self-imagery, most of which were probably true. I saw no need to get into it now. In fact, I saw no need to get into it ever.

Finally my first fifty-minute hour was up.

"Rachel," Goldberg said. "I'm glad you came to see me." He smiled and extended his hand. "In fact, I'd like to see you again next week, if that's convenient."

"Why?" I asked.

Goldberg withdrew his hand and cleared his throat, without necessity or success, making a small noise like a mouse that's been stepped on.

"I'd like to continue our discussion," he said. "You see, therapy is a _gradual_ science. Today, we laid the groundwork. Next week, we start the healing process."

To be honest, I could do without the discussion. Since my husband's death, I'd discussed me until I was blue in the face. But I liked the idea of healing. Healing was something I knew I needed, even if it meant talking about it. Plus, my therapy sessions were free, thanks to Joe's insurance.

Goldberg extended his hand again, and I shook it, squeezing especially hard to show him how pleased I was.

"Thank you, Dr. Goldberg," I said. "I can't tell you how much that means to me."

And it did mean something to me. It meant a lot.

I left Goldberg's office then, feeling better than I had in several weeks. Although I did most of the talking, he was really good at listening. And good listeners are hard to come by. They're practically a dying breed.

I also left more curious than ever about the painting "Sunday in the Park with George." I made a pact with myself to find out three things: One, the name of the artist; two, who George was; and, three, where the park was located. I was pretty sure it was in Paris, but if it turned out to be on Lake Michigan, I thought it might be a nice place to visit on my next free weekend.

# FOUR

Entry #39

What I'm looking for is not out there, it is in me.

Helen Keller

**The next morning, I gave the at-home pregnancy** test another shot. Positive. Then again the following morning. Same results. Three false positives in a row seemed unlikely so I visited a gynecologist who told me in a bright, sunny voice that I indeed was pregnant.

"Lucky you," she said happily. And since I still wore a wedding band, she added, "Tell Dad congratulations."

Funny how the happiest moments in life can sometimes lead to the saddest. One minute I was ecstatic, the next crushed. But I tried not to let it show. I figured doctors get enough of the crushed side of life, so I decided to show her the sunny side.

"Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so much," I said, beaming like a flashlight with new batteries. "The whole family is thrilled."

I left her office, trying my best to keep smiling like the woman I wanted to be and not start crying like the child I knew I was. I made it almost all the way to my car before I broke down. It's tough being a walking contradiction.

The next day, I went to the bookstore and bought two books on parenting. One was entitled _Your Baby's First Six Months: How to Create a Stress-Free Environment in a Stressed-Out World._ On the book's dust cover, it explained how critical the first six months are to a child's emotional and cerebral development, and how familial stress could lead to a severe reduction in cognitive memory and lower self-esteem. I wasn't exactly sure what _cognitive_ _memory_ was, but the person who said it was a PhD, an MD and a Board-Certified something or other, so it must have been important. People with three titles rarely make frivolous statements. Also, simple math told me that if the first six months were critical, and if there was going to be one less parent than normal during that time, my baby's cognitive development phase would likely be reduced by fifty percent. If so, I was determined to do my half of the job twice as well, just to even things up a little. No child of mine was going to suffer because of a labor shortage.

The second book's title was _36 Ways to Make a Baby Laugh_. It was written by a woman from Atlanta, Georgia, which for some reason I found comforting, probably because I'm from Georgia, also. Plus I liked the title. I figured that, of those 36 ways, there was bound to be one I could use on myself.

Just around the corner from the baby books, I found the Self-Help section, and was excited to find that they had on display the Top Ten best-selling books on how to help yourself overcome all kinds of problems. I went in for a closer look.

Two of the top ten were dedicated to helping me have a happier sex life. I had no idea so many people were unhappy with theirs, but apparently they were. Otherwise there wouldn't be selling so many books on the subject.

Two more of the top ten dealt with anger-management, which had never been a problem of mine. Happiness-management was more of an issue with me. Not so much how to manage it but how to find it.

One book with the title _Believe in Miracles_ claimed that, with its help, I could become a better me in thirty days or less. Guaranteed or my money back. I almost bought it until I discovered the guy who wrote it had been dead for three years. I figured if everything didn't work out the way he said it would, getting my money back might prove to be difficult.

I was ready to give up on the whole idea and go back to just wishing I'd improve when I ran across what appeared to the perfect choice: it was entitled _Be Optimistic NOW!!_ with capital letters and two exclamation points, which always gets my attention. In it, the author claimed that pessimists are their own worst enemy because they believe three things: that bad events are their fault, will last a long time, and happen only to them. Optimists, on the other hand, believe that bad events are no one's fault, are typically short in duration, and happen to everyone. Also, the author boasted she could teach me the five skills necessary to change from being a pessimist to an optimist, almost overnight. And this change would ultimately enable the reader to take charge of his destiny, beat depression, enhance his self-esteem and accomplish more in life.

OK, I was in favor of all those things. Especially the one about beating depression. Plus the one about enhancing my self-esteem would be nice, and I have to admit I wanted to accomplish more in life – I mean, who doesn't? But once I saw the price tag, I developed sticker-shock. It was $29.99 plus tax. It wasn't that I didn't value getting better; it's just that I valued eating more.

I ended up buying the one written by the dead guy. Even if it took longer than thirty days for the new me to show up, I was OK with not getting my money refunded. Becoming better was my goal, not getting reimbursed for a delayed miracle.

I started making regular trips to an OB/GYN, which was I was glad to do because it meant I no longer had to lie about having one. I can't remember which visit it was, but after examining my sonogram, she delivered the wonderful news.

"Rachel, you have a healthy little baby," she said. "Would you like to know if it's a boy or a girl?"

I told her yes.

She smiled and handed me the photo.

"Then I'd like for you to meet your daughter."

I'd seen sonograms before, but could never make heads or tails out of them. Literally. They all looked like squiggly, mushy, misshapen heads of cabbage more than a real baby. But when I saw _my_ daughter, it took my breath away.

She was beautiful.

She was lying on her left side, and there was nothing squiggly, mushy or misshapen about her. In fact, you could see her little arms and legs and elbows and knees clear as day, and she was sucking what would soon become her thumb. She had an enormous head but that's OK because all babies have enormous heads before they're born.

"Have you considered any names?" the doctor asked.

I had.

"If it was a boy," I said, "we were going to name him Joe. Teresa if it was a girl."

The doctor nodded with approval.

"Are those family names?" she asked.

I said Joe was, but Teresa came from Mother Teresa, who we always considered the perfect nun, if not the perfect person.

The doctor laughed and said she was named after an actress from the 1930s, Fanny Brice.

"Never got used to Fanny," she confided with a grin.

Which only goes to show that naming your child after a celebrity may sound OK at the time, but could come back to haunt the child. We figured Mother Teresa was a shoe-in to become a saint, so we were on solid ground.

I took the sonogram home with me and kept it on the nightstand next to my bed. It was the last thing I saw when going to sleep at night and the first thing to greet me when I got up in the morning.

Knowing my pregnancy was for real, I soon fell head-over-heels in love with my daughter. I worshipped the ground she would someday walk on. I found myself wanting to give her all the things my mother never gave me, and tell her all the things I never heard growing up. I wanted her childhood to be better than mine. I wanted her to be safe and happy and filled with wonder. Gradually, however, I found myself wanting something else. Something as lovely as it was awful: I wanted my husband to see all the things I was seeing and feel all the things I was feeling. I wanted him to see the fuzzy black and white photo of the new life we were bringing into the world. Sometimes when I thought that, I'd start crying. Sometimes not.

I'm not sure when or how it happened, but one day I went from _wanting_ Joe to know his daughter to _knowing_ he would know her. I became certain of it. I knew that someday he would meet her and hold her and love her, just as I would. Don't ask me how I could be sure of something so far-fetched, but I did.

I felt it in my bones.

About this time something else happened. That painting from Goldberg's office kept popping up everywhere I went. I saw it first on a calendar, then the cover of a book and finally someone at school was using it as a screensaver. I did some research. It was painted over a two-year period from 1884-1886 by the French artist Georges Seurat. Its official title was: _A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande_ _Jatte._

I think what captivated me so much about this particular painting was the woman at its center. She was holding an umbrella in one hand and a small girl by the other. For some reason I identified strongly with her. In fact, over time I _became_ that woman and the little girl in the white dress became my little girl in the white dress, and we were simply out in this lovely park on a sunlit Sunday afternoon, taking a pleasant little stroll, just the two of us. It was lovely. It was more than lovely, it was heavenly.

I promised myself that someday I would take Teresa to Europe to visit La Grande Jatte, just to see if it was as picturesque as Seurat envisioned it. I printed off a small image of it that I found on the internet, and placed it on my refrigerator door. I stared at it daily. I wouldn't say it was an obsession but it was definitely something that helped me escape; a reminder that the world I lived in was not the only world out there. That somewhere there was sunshine and grass and trees and people with nothing on their minds except enjoying a slow, lazy afternoon in the park.

Yes, I was going to La Grande Jatte someday. Someday soon.

This too I felt in my bones.

# FIVE

Entry #106

It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.

Aeschylus

**As my daughter put on weight and my stomach swelled,** I received all sorts of interesting but useless advice, most of which came from my father's side of the family. Since then I have become a firm believer that you should never judge someone by her relatives.

"Smoking can cause a loss of weight in newborns," my Aunt

Nina told me, in those exact words, as if reading the printed warning word for word on a pack of _Lucky_ _Strikes_. I'm sure that what she said was a medical fact, but as I have only smoked one cigarette in my entire life, the information was of little use.

My Aunt Mertis warned me to avoid alcohol, specifically malt liquors. It seems Mertis once knew a girl named Henrietta Pike, who publicly drank malt liquor during much of her pregnancy, and subsequently gave birth to a baby boy with three testicles.

"Can you believe that?" Mertis whispered to me, one confidant to another, her hand fluttering to her mouth as she spoke. "My god, two of them are bad enough. But three of them? Just imagine."

A baby born with three of anything that was supposed to stop at two was more than I cared to imagine, and I told my Aunt as much. But Mertis wouldn't let up; she was onto something about which she had privileged information, and was determined I wasn't going to make the same mistake as that drunkard Pike girl.

"Henrietta's doctor said it was genetics," Mertis whispered in her paper-thin voice. "But I have it on good authority that her husband is 'perfectly normal' down there, if you catch my meaning."

For a fleeting moment, I considered asking on whose authority Mertis was basing her claim, but decided that was a no-win discussion, so I dropped it. And though I had my doubts that alcohol could produce such anatomical abnormalities in a child, I decided not to chance it. I gave up drinking for the duration of my pregnancy. No booze for nine months seemed a small price to pay for a child to be born with properly-formed gonads.

My Aunt Ida, however, gave me sound advice.

"Sing to her," Ida said.

"Sing what?" I asked.

"Something sweet. She can hear you."

Which worried me a little. If my daughter could hear singing, that meant she could also hear talking. I decided to clean up my vocabulary, plus I cut out any TV shows that allowed curse words or blatant sex. Correcting what I said was easy. I hardly ever used four-letter words to begin with. Eliminating the TV stuff, however, was tougher. It seemed like every show I watched was chocked full of sexual references and casual cursing, even the ones with little kids in them. Pretty soon I quit watching TV all together.

But I did start singing to my daughter. Mostly songs like _Itsy-bitsy Spider_ and _Puff the Magic Dragon_. Occasionally though I'd work in a Beatles song. I love the Beatles. I think Teresa did, too. Every time I hummed _Here Comes the Sun_ , she'd start kicking up a storm.

Life itself, however, was a continuous adjustment. Some adjustments, like having hot water anytime I wanted it, were pleasant; others, like eating most of my meals alone, were not. For weeks, I made coffee for two in the morning when there was only one to drink it. I was always surprised when the toilet seat was down. I slept on "my side" of the bed. Simple habits, I discovered, are the hardest to break.

Eventually though I got used to being home alone. In fact, that's where I was when, right in the middle of doing a load of laundry, I started crying. Only I couldn't stop. I cried off and on for three days until my eyes were dark and swollen to twice their normal size. I looked like a baby bird.

I told everybody it was allergies. But after a while that story wore itself out, so I went to see Goldberg again. I wanted to make sure I was still on the road to recovery. Something told me I wasn't.

# SIX

Entry #72

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Eric Hoffer

" **How do you think you're doing?" Goldberg asked.**

I wonder why people do that: ask a question when they already know the answer. I trusted Goldberg's intentions, however, so I gave him my standard response.

"OK," I said.

He nodded thoughtfully.

"What does the word OK mean to you, Rachel?"

I was at a point, mentally, where I wasn't sure how much of what I said was true, but I gave it a shot anyway.

"It means I feel good," I said then added without knowing why. "Or at least as good as I deserve."

Goldberg leaned back in his chair and tapped the side of his nose with his pen.

"As good as you deserve," he repeated slowly. "When you hear that phrase, how does it make you feel?"

He kept doing that – question after question after question, like peeling back the skins of an onion. I mean, I was really beginning to like Goldberg, but I was also dying for him to tell me what he knew and quit asking me to think for myself about stuff I didn't understand. After all, he was the expert, not me. I tried to think of a question I could fire back at him, to turn the tables a little, but all I could think to say was this.

"It's something my mother used to tell me."

Goldberg quit tapping his nose and leaned forward.

"I see," he said even slower than before. "Your mother used to tell you that." He scribbled something in his notebook, paused then scribbled something more.

"Tell me about your relationship with your mother," he said.

"What do you want to know?"

"Do the two of you get along well?"

"Oh, absolutely," I lied. "We're very close."

"Do the two of you ever argue?"

"No, never."

Goldberg nodded.

"Never?" he said.

For some reason I panicked and replied with one of those truths you should never share with anyone, except maybe your best friend, which Goldberg was not.

"There are two theories of arguing with my mother," I said. "Neither one works."

No one said anything for a moment, and so that phrase just hung out there all by itself, twisting and turning. Finally Goldberg nodded and said the absolute worst thing you could say under these circumstances.

"I see," he said.

Which is exactly what I was afraid of. So I started in on this whole made-up monologue about how nice my mother was and how one time, when I was sick with the flu, she sat next to my bed for two straight days, reading Dr. Seuss aloud as she nursed me back to health with chicken noodle soup and Tang.

It was such a good story that when I finished, even I had a higher opinion of my mother than when I started. But I could tell Goldberg wasn't buying it. Apparently he had seen enough of my kind not to be fooled by my fake story of maternal devotion. He was an expert in these matters and I was the amateur, which was a lesson I took to heart. I decided right then and there to be more careful in the future when trying to trick him into believing how wonderful my life was.

"If you could choose five words that best-describe your mother," Goldberg said. "What would they be?"

"Let's see," I said. "Five words. Boy, that's tough."

But it wasn't tough at all. The first word that leaped forward in my brain, as if on a tiny coil, was the word _cold_ followed by _distan_ t then _intelligent_ and _sad_ then _cold_ again. But I kept those words to myself; those words would only lead to further questions about my me and my mother, and I didn't want Goldberg to go digging around in that area of my life. So the words I spoke were warm and fuzzy words. Words like _sweet_ , _kind, loving_ and _attentive_. Words that sounded like what I thought a mother should be.

My little ruse failed me though. I know it failed because Goldberg didn't write down any of the five words I gave him. He was obviously on to me.

"Do you want me to do the same thing for my father?" I asked.

Goldberg looked surprised.

"If you'd like," he said.

"I just thought you might want to hear both sides," I explained.

Goldberg nodded thoughtfully again.

"Is talking about your father important to you?"

"No, not particularly," I lied again. "It's just that I want to be fair to them both, that's all."

"Do you think talking about one and not the other is unfair?"

That sounded like a trick question. One whose answer was simple on the surface and complicated underneath. I hate those kind of questions.

"Well," I replied. "I don't think it's a matter of being fair or unfair as much as it is about being thorough."

Goldberg nodded. "You get along well with your father, don't you?'

"Yes," I said honestly. "He's my best friend."

What I didn't bother to say was that my mother and father divorced when I was a sophomore in high school.

"Do you spend much time with him?" Goldberg asked.

"No. He's in the Army, stationed in Iraq."

Again the nod. "Would you say the relationship with your father is the stronger of the two?"

"Probably."

"Why do you think that is?"

I knew exactly why, but wild horses couldn't drag it out of me, especially not when Goldberg was there to hear the answer. Suddenly a horrible thought occurred to me.

"It's not incestuous, if that's what you're thinking," I said.

Goldberg raised a single brow, then caught himself and let it fall.

"Actually," he said. "I wasn't thinking that."

"Well, you don't have to because it's not."

"I see. How then would you characterize it?"

"About normal," I said, hoping that would end our conversation, which of course it didn't.

"How would you characterize the relationship with your mother?" he asked.

"About the same."

"Which would be normal."

"Right."

"Do you love your father?"

"Yes, very much so."

"Do you love your mother?"

How I got painted into this corner, I'll never know.

"Yes, very much so," I said.

There must have been too much of a pause between his question and my answer because as soon as I said it, Goldberg dove back into his notebook, making more notes than usual. It was then I realized that, in my case, clinical therapy has little to do with what you say, and everything to do with what you mean.

Goldberg finally resurfaced.

"Excellent then," he said. "Which five words would you choose to describe your father?"

_Warm_ was the first word that came to mind, so I said it first; followed by _loving_ , then _intelligent_ , _funny_ and _honest._

Goldberg scribbled, then paused, scribbled some more, then underlined something. Twice. I didn't mind the scribbling part, I'd grown used to it; but I wasn't sure what to think about the underlining part. Underlining meant some words were more important than other words, which meant I'd just said something that was more important, thus more revealing, than I intended, which couldn't be good.

"Is there anything else you'd like to add?" Goldberg asked. "Anything that's important to you about your father?"

I wanted to say yes, but said no instead. I now seemed to be making statements that were being scrutinized beyond the norm, and didn't want to risk saying the wrong thing.

But if I had added anything about my dad, it would have been this: I'd give anything if mom hadn't chased him off.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" Goldberg asked.

"I used to," I said without thinking. "A brother. But he died when I was young."

As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn't.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Goldberg said before I could take it back. "Do you mind if I ask how he died?'

I minded all right, but since it was too late to change my answer about having a brother, I had to say something.

"In a swimming accident," I replied, which was true.

Goldberg nodded with both sadness and interest.

"I see," he said. "That must have been difficult for you. Were you close to your brother?"

"No," I said. "I was only two at the time."

Which was a lie. I was eleven. But I had to end this conversation somehow. There was no way in heck that Goldberg and I were ever going to talk about my brother. Not now, not later, not in a million years.

Fortunately my fifty-minute hour ended. I was pretty sure Goldberg had not uncovered anything in me he didn't already know, but realized one should never assume anything about therapists. They hear stuff you don't say, and so the secret-you is always at risk.

"Shall we see each other again next week?" he asked.

"Sure," I replied, then asked, "So what do you think about all the crying?"

Goldberg smiled but did not wink. I liked that.

"Crying," he said, "is symptomatic of many things: anger, love, frustration, stress. It's a physiological release of a psychological condition."

It was then I realized something important about Goldberg's approach to therapy. I was certain he wanted to help me get better again; to help me understand why I felt a little off-kilter and cried for almost 72 hours straight, with only a couple breaks for meals. But not once did we talk about my crying, as if it had never happened. In fact, we talked about everything but my crying, which led me to believe he wasn't really interested in my behavior as much as what was _beneath_ the surface of my behavior; the "root cause" he called it, or the "symptomatic" something or other. If that was what he was really after, I could have saved him a lot of time. If he had only asked, I could have told him the fact that I didn't get along with my mother wasn't nearly as important as how much I missed my husband. My mother wasn't at fault here; my husband's head-on collision with a '98 Oldsmobile was the problem. If Goldberg had known that, it might have helped him understand what makes me tick. It might have helped him understand that what I needed wasn't therapy or pills or the support of strangers. What I needed to help me sleep at night and to stop bawling like a baby over nothing in the middle of a perfectly good day, was the love of my husband – but I wasn't going to get that because he was dead.

As for my brother's death, that was something Goldberg and I would never discuss. Never. I knew, however, that sooner or later the topic would rear its ugly head again. That's what therapist do, search for the ugly stuff. But I was positive we would never talk about it. In part because I loved my brother too much to discuss it. But mainly because I was the reason my brother died.

# SEVEN

Entry #102

What we got here is...failure to communicate.

Strother Martin

**My outlook improved over the following week.** Whether my improvement was due to therapy or books or both, I wasn't sure. All I know is that I was able to string together five straight days of feeling normal, and feeling normal for a change felt pretty good. From that point on, I decided to make it a game; to remain positive at all costs. Wallowing in misery is easy – the brave choice is to be happy. And while I don't consider myself to be an especially brave person, I don't always look for the easy way out.

My mother had a suggestion.

"When it comes to beating the blues," she said, "better to throw yourself into a job rather than under a bus."

Which I decided to do. Throw myself into my job, that is.

I'm a school teacher by profession. Tenth Grade World Literature. I teach everything from Homer to Hemingway, Plutarch to Poe, and all the other stuff in between: short stories, poetry, plays and the occasional Shakespeare. I enjoy teaching and generally speaking the kids enjoy it, too. Except for the occasional Shakespeare. Four-hundred-year-old Elizabethan English is a little hard for some of them to swallow. To be honest, I have a hard time with Shakespeare myself. Either he's too deep or I'm too shallow, because when I read him, I spend so much time re-reading him in an effort to make it make sense that I forget where I am in the story. Usually, I have to lean on my _Teacher's Guide_ or _Cliffs Notes_ to help me muddle through.

In fact, that's where I was, sitting at my desk after class, muddling through Shakespeare, when Buddy Timmons walked in.

"Rachel," Buddy said, "I'm afraid I have some bad news."

Buddy was the high school principal. His real name was Bernard but we all called him Buddy.

The bad news was this: state funding for education was being cut and three teachers were not having their contracts renewed. I of course was one of the three.

"But your salary will continue through August," Buddy said. "And all your benefits as well, with the exception of vacation and sick days."

He paused for a moment, but it wasn't a pause like he was through talking; it was more like a pause where I was supposed to say something, but since I was fresh out of small talk, we just stared at one another instead.

Which was not as easy as it sounds. Staring at Buddy Timmons, I mean.

For one thing, Buddy had a body shaped like a pear: short, plump and pale. Plus he had a really bad comb-over and one eye that didn't quite track with the other, so that it appeared he was looking in different directions at the same time. He looked like one of those lizards that can move its eyes independently of each other. It was hard to have a normal conversation with him because you couldn't tell if he was looking at you or the blackboard.

"Rachel," Buddy said, "if there was any way I could keep you, believe me I would. I know how tough this is going to be on you and Katie."

"Who?" I asked.

"What?" he asked back.

"You said this was going to be tough on me and Katie. Who's Katie?"

Timmons opened a manila folder and glanced through it.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought you had a daughter." Finally convinced I was telling the truth, he looked up and sighed. "Believe me, I hate telling you this worse than you hate hearing it."

Which I seriously doubted. I mean, how could he possibly know how much my job meant to me? How could he know the absolute sense of hopelessness that threatened to engulf me when I wasn't at school? How could he possibly know that what kept me going day after dreary day was my students and my books and my precious Shakespeare, with whom I struggled but loved nonetheless. Teaching was no longer what I did; it's who I was.

"These things happen," Buddy said. "Lay-offs are just a side-effect, a natural by-product if you will, of reduced enrollment."

When I heard the phrase _natural by-product_ , I detected the vocabulary of Goldberg, and my heart sank.

"I know," I replied. "It's just that they've never happened to me."

Just then a couple strands of hair sprang from Buddy's scalp, and dangled loosely on the side of his head like wayward antennae. For a moment I was so distracted I forgot which eye I was talking to.

"If it's any consolation," he said. "I lost my job a few years back. I thought it was the end of the world, but turns out it was a godsend. In fact, it couldn't have come at a better time."

I know he was trying to make me feel better but it wasn't working.

"God hardly ever sends me things like that," I said. "All I seem to get from him is crap."

I was surprised something so honest and raw came out of my mouth. Usually I'm not that candid or quick-witted.

Timmons nodded, as if he knew exactly how I must feel, then assured me that a bright, attractive girl such as myself would have absolutely no trouble finding another job elsewhere.

"Who knows," he said. "You might choose to get out of teaching all together."

Which was pretty much the straw that broke the camel's back. I suddenly wanted to tell Timmons to go to hell, but somehow that didn't seem to be the correct response. On the other hand _Thanks, Buddy_ didn't sound quite right either, and so I continued to say nothing. Buddy patted me lightly on the shoulder, I'm sure to demonstrate how badly he felt, then picked a piece of lint from my jacket, turned and strolled from the room.

I watched him leave, his antennae swaying to and fro, and found that more than anything in the world I wanted to say something terribly clever, a scathing remark that would indicate how unscathed I felt at the moment, but I couldn't. For one, I'm just not that type of person. And two, I have to plan those types of remarks in advance – they never come naturally to me like they do to other people. I wish they did. I wish I was more spontaneous or ruthless or both

Instead, I simply watched Buddy Timmons waddle out of my room and my life without saying another word. That's me. The eternal pacifist. I hate confrontation so much I bend over backwards to avoid it. It's a character flaw I will admit to. What I won't admit to, at least openly, is that there's a fine line between being a pacifist and a coward. I guess I won't admit it because deep down I know which side of the line I am on.

# EIGHT

Entry #60

I don't believe in luck, but I do believe in angels.

Tennessee Williams

**Later that afternoon, a fellow teacher Chrissy, invited** me out for drinks, to commiserate my newfound unemployment. Bad news travels fast. I knew I couldn't drink anything containing alcohol, especially malt liquors, but accepted her invitation anyway. I'm a pushover when it comes to people who feel sorry for me.

As soon as we reached the bar and sat down, she asked the one question for which I seldom have an answer:

"So what are you going to do now?" she said.

This time however it was an OK question. Maybe not an easy-to-answer question, but one I had been thinking about long before I was forced to. And this is what I thought: _I'm going to write a novel._ A wonderful story had been bouncing around inside my head for years, and now I finally had the time to put it all down on paper. The fact that since college I hadn't written anything longer than a grocery list didn't faze me in the least. After all, I was an English teacher, and everyone knows English teachers are closet novelists to begin with. That settles it, I decided: I'm going to be a novelist. Relieved to have reached a decision, I looked Chrissy straight in the eye and surprised even myself when I heard my answer.

"I don't really know," I said.

I felt a deep shock at those words, because the minute I said them, I knew they were true. I didn't have a clue. I knew what I _wanted_ to do, but I knew me well enough to know I would never do it. Typically I live my life under a banner of denial, but not this time. This time I admitted I was a ship lost at sea, which scored me some points in the honesty category, but failed to provide me with any real sense of direction.

Just then a man who, from the look _and_ smell of him, had been at the bar quite a bit longer than Chrissy and I, staggered by. He glanced first at me then Chrissy then me again. I couldn't tell if he was trying to decide if he knew us or if he was just trying to focus both eyes at the same time.

"Either of you gals wanna dance?" he said much slower than necessary.

He addressed both of us but it was clear he had only one of us in mind. Chrissy. He spoke directly to her chest.

"How's bout you, sweetheart," he said. "Want to join me for a swing around the room?"

Chrissy smiled this radiant smile, thanked him, and said that as tempting as the offer was, we gals were waiting on our guys, who were on their way from work. They were policemen.

Romeo cocked his head sideways and smiled. He was probably used to being turned down and was now an expert at spotting flimsy excuses.

"Chicago's finest, huh?" he said with an air of sarcasm.

"Yep," I chimed in. "And they have guns, too"

Romeo looked at me then, and suddenly didn't seem as drunk as I'd originally thought.

"Funny you should say that," he said. "I got me a gun, too."

It got kind of quiet then. I didn't feel nearly as witty as I had a few minutes earlier. I stared at the table, hoping someone would say something without the word _gun_ in it.

Finally Romeo did.

"You ladies have a good night," he said, then shuffled away.

I looked at Chrissy who was looking at me. We both started laughing, shook our heads and said the exact same thing at the exact same moment.

"What a jerk."

Later in the evening, I caught Romeo staring at us a couple times from across the room, but he never approached our table again. Apparently he wasn't as desperate as I thought. Either that or he was so drunk he didn't trust himself to cross the room without falling down. In an odd sort of way I felt sorry for him. There are not many things in life as sad as a grown man trolling bars in search of a dance partner. Nevertheless I kept an eye on him, just in case he might sober up enough to take another run at us.

After a couple Diet Cokes and a bowl of pretzels, Chrissy and I left.

"Rachel," she said as we walked through the door. "These things happen for a reason. So keep your chin up."

I told her I would.

The last thing she said was, "Let's keep in touch."

Which is such a sad statement because it's the thing people say when they know they will never see each other again.

I followed her sad remark with one that was even sadder.

"I'll give you a call," I said as we hugged. "We'll have lunch."

And that pretty much did it. We parted company, telling each other we'd call and eat and stay in touch, knowing full well we wouldn't. Funny the lies we allow ourselves to tell, just to avoid an uncomfortable truth.

I found my car and had the door half-way open when I heard the man's voice.

"I see that Sheriff of yours never showed up."

Which I thought was a strange thing for someone to say until I saw who said it.

It was Romeo.

He was standing at the front of my car, hands on his hips, a toothpick dangling from the side of his mouth.

My heart skipped a beat.

"Guess we got stood-up," I said.

Romeo nodded without smiling. It was then I realized how tall, fat and hairy he was, but it wasn't his size that concerned me; it was his _not smiling._ Plus the fact that we suddenly seemed to be all alone. A drunk stranger talking to you in an empty parking lot is one thing but a drunk stranger talking to you in an empty parking lot who isn't smiling is another thing all together.

He took a step toward me.

"Well, hell, sweetheart, since you got stood up, why don't me and you have that dance?"

"Listen," I said, "I don't know what your problem is but I bet it's hard to pronounce."

As soon as I said, I wished I hadn't. In part because it was just a mean thing to say but mostly because Romeo thought it was mean also. He grabbed me by the elbow and dug his fingers into my skin, to show how much stronger he was than me. Which was a lot.

"Whassa matter?" he said, his voice full of whiskey and cigarettes. "Not in the dancin' mood?"

I began to panic. Unfortunately when I panic, I also begin to laugh. It's purely a nervous reaction. I know it, and people who know me know it, but unfortunately Romeo did not know it. Romeo took it as a sign that I was laughing at _him._

"Think that's cute, do ya? Me wantin' to dance with you?" He pulled me tight to his chest. "Well, maybe we should try something else then."

That's when I heard another man's voice.

"Everything OK?" he asked.

I was never so glad in my life to see someone I didn't know. Even if he was a total stranger, he was my hero.

"I'm just trying to leave," I said.

Hero opened my door.

"You can let her go now," he said calmly.

"Who the hell are you?" Romeo asked.

Hero didn't respond. He just stared at Romeo with a look of amusement. I think bullies hate it when you do that.

Slowly Romeo's face changed. Less cocky, more confused. His grip loosened. I pulled free and slipped behind the wheel in two seconds flat.

Romeo squinted, as if trying to figure out what to do next, when Hero made it simple by telling him what to do next.

"I think you should leave now," Hero said firmly. "Go home. Go to bed."

Romeo snorted with contempt. He outweighed Hero by at least fifty pounds and was much taller and a great deal hairier but none of that seemed to matter to Hero. Hero kept staring and smiling, cool, calm and collected. Superman still dressed up like Clark Kent, staring down the bad guy with absolute confidence that he could beat the tar out of him without breaking a sweat. It was magnificent.

"Go home," Hero said again. "Lie down and sleep it off."

Romeo swayed a little, as if thinking and standing were more than he could handle. Instead of toppling over though he did the unbelievable – he turned and walked away.

I waited until he was gone, then rolled down my window.

"Thank you," I said in a trembling voice. "Thank you so, so much."

"Not a problem," Hero said. "You OK?"

I nodded.

"You sure?"

"I think he was just trying to scare me," I said bravely.

"Probably. Did it work?"

"Yep," I said with a laugh.

Hero smiled and patted my arm reassuringly. "Don't worry, he won't bother you again."

Don't ask me how, but somehow I knew he was right.

"Be careful driving home," Hero said, then turned to go. He was half-way across the parking lot when I shouted.

"Excuse me, I didn't catch your name."

"Daniel," he said without turning.

And that was it. A moment later, he disappeared into the shadows.

I didn't stick around to see who else might show up unexpectedly and want to dance. I'd had enough romance for one night.

On the way home, something kept nagging at me, however. It was the idea that I'd met Daniel before. I was sure of it. Was it at the grocery store? The building I lived in? At work? No, no and no.

Then it hit me.

Daniel was at my husband's funeral. Rather he was at my apartment _after_ the funeral. He was Joe's friend who made the comment about Joe having the morning star and shining like the sun.

But was that possible? What were the odds that the same guy at my husband's funeral would turn up in a parking lot at the exact moment I was being grabbed by a drunk with an imaginary gun?

A thousand to one? Ten Thousand? A million?

It was too strange to fathom. But if life has taught me anything, it's this: strange things happen.

It didn't take me long to quit worrying about Daniel, however. I had way more important things to worry about. Things like how to pay rent and buy food and get along all day on my own without thinking about how lonely I was.

That night, lying in bed, I listened to the night sounds of my apartment and the world outside.

A siren in the distance made me think of ambulances, which made me think of Joe, which made me sad, so I quit listening so intently. Of course the more I tried not to listen, the more I heard. The ticking of a clock, the dripping of a sink, the constant clack, clack, clacking of a ceiling fan.

It occurred to me then that the truth many people don't understand until it's too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer because insignificant things begin to torture you. Things like sirens in the night or bullies in bars or Buddy Timmons combing his hair the way he did. Under normal circumstance those things would never bother me, but now they did. Now they bothered me like a three-day-old toothache. And the more I tried to think positive thoughts and concentrate on the goodness of life, like that $29 book said I should, the more miserable I became.

No one said life was supposed to be fair, but I had reached the point where I didn't care about fair anymore. Fair seemed like a distant dream. The only thing that made sense, and in a very real way, saved me from going over to the dark side, was this little human being inside me that nudged me from time to time, as if to say, _Hey -- I'm here. Don't forget about me. You haven't lost me._

Thank God for little elbows.

After a while I finally drifted off to sleep. The last thing I remember was a song that was either playing in my head or coming from the apartment next to mine, I couldn't be sure. A woman was singing in the most beautiful French voice, and although I can't speak French, I knew it was a love song. One of those lovely French songs they played during World War II that was slow and sad and dreamy. A perfect lullaby for a pregnant woman who had nothing much left in the world to live for except the precious little baby inside her.

But it was enough.

# NINE

Entry #13

And if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

**Mornings have a way of coming way too early some** times. So does morning sickness. I was lying on my stomach when I woke up, which is odd because I can't sleep on my stomach. Especially since my stomach was now bigger than my butt. I peeled one eye open, then the other. I glanced at the clock. It read 8:03, with a little red dot in the corner, which meant it was a.m.

"It can't be eight o'clock already?" I actually said aloud.

I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. When I awoke, I was on my back, which was a good sign. And I felt much better, which was another good sign. I glanced at the clock again; it read 8:22, with that same little dot. I did the math in my head, realizing I had done one of two things: slept for twenty-four hours straight or slept for a total of nineteen minutes. One was too long to be possible and the other was too short to be helpful. I knew it had to be nineteen minutes.

Earlier, when I said I felt better, that's because I hadn't tried to move. When I finally sat up, my stomach flip-flopped, and I spent the next five minutes kneeling over the toilet. Afterwards, I took a shower and had some toast, which at first made me feel better then nauseous again. I quit eating and just sat there in my little all-white kitchen, staring out the window at a scraggly tree across the street.

A while later I glanced at the clock. It read 2:00, without the little dot, which meant p.m. Once again I did the math in my head, realizing I'd done one of two things: sat in a chair for five hours without moving or, well, there was no "or." I had sat in a chair for five hours without moving, staring out the window at nothing but leaves.

I was sinking into the abyss, despite the assurances Goldberg had given me to the contrary. But up until that very moment I thought I could lick it. I thought I was stronger than a little missing serotonin in my brain or a few misfiring synapses. I was wrong. Anyone who can sit and stare at leaves without flinching for the better part of the day is a goner. Or at least on the road to becoming a goner, which was no longer the road less-traveled for me.

I knew I had to do something and something fast. I ran through the various options in my head, weighing the strengths and weaknesses of each one then settled on the course of action that made the most sense: I went back to bed.

While asleep I dreamed the most wonderful dream. I dreamed I was flying. Flying high over the little house I grew up in as a kid, sailing like a great white bird on the warm summer winds. Gliding, soaring, sailing, feeling majestic. My flying was oh so graceful – _I_ was oh so graceful... and free and happy and serene.

Dreams are marvelous. Flying dreams especially.

When I awoke, it was the next day. I didn't care what time of day it was because I felt marvelous. More marvelous than I'd felt in months. And I was awake a full ten minutes before I remembered I was suicidal with depression.

Once again, I climbed out of bed, but this time avoided the kitchen, which had become for me the Bermuda Triangle of my house – a place where someone could lose up to five hours at a time without realizing it. And since I didn't have any spare hours to lose, I decided to take a walk.

I made it as far as the sidewalk when it began raining, so I did the one thing I should have done to begin with: I trudged back inside, made myself a bowl of soup and went back to bed.

And the next day I did the same, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that for I don't know how long. A week? A month? It was the tyranny of the same old thing. Over and over and over, _ad finitium, ad nauseam._

I read somewhere that the poet Emily Dickinson lived in her home for over twelve years without once leaving it, which is both fascinating and weird. Fascinating that she could write such lovely poetry while staring out a window, and weird because, well, it's just weird _not_ to leave your house for twelve years. It wasn't that she was lazy; rather I read she had a social-anxiety condition that made her so shy that apparently the only way she could feel like a normal person was to avoid normal people all together. She was a shut-in by choice not circumstance.

A lifestyle, quite frankly that I was beginning to appreciate.

# TEN

Entry #143

Tell me of your certainties. I have doubts enough of my own.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

**The next few weeks were pretty much what I expected** them to be: bleak, drab and dreary, plus it seemed like it rained an awful lot. I had a baby on the way, rent to pay, food to buy and no employment in sight. Evidently I wasn't as marketable as Timmons led me to believe. I thought about calling home, but decided against it. I felt bad enough without having my mom tell me how bad it was.

I tried watching TV but every time I did, a commercial would come on with attractive people my age having more fun in thirty seconds than I've had in three years. It was that way with everything. All my favorite songs sounded like dirges, even the Beatles; and you have to work pretty hard to make them sound sad. I might be ten minutes into a good book before I realized I was still on the first page. Magazines were the same. Even the ones with nothing but celebrity photos and gossip. Food lost all its appeal. Toast tasted like cardboard, bacon like leather and I don't even want to tell you what eggs reminded me of. But I continued to eat. I wasn't about to short-change my daughter's nutritional needs. Even if I couldn't taste anything, I think she could.

Aunt Ida sent me a postcard with a smiley-face on it. On the back she wrote that said she was praying for me and that Jesus was the answer. I had the urge to write her back and ask what the question was, but didn't. For some reason though I placed her postcard on the refrigerator, next to the picture of Seurat's painting. In some inexplicable way, they seemed to go together.

Aunt Mertis called several times, along with other relatives, offering to come visit but I kept them at bay, claiming I was doing all these fun and interesting things with my friends from school. Which was more than sad because most of my friends from school had disappeared. Whether I left them or they left me, I'm not sure. All I knew was this: I was alone.

It's not an easy thing, being alone.

You tend to think about all the stuff you keep telling yourself not to think about. And the more you think about the dark side of life, the darker it becomes. So dark, in fact, you begin looking at the common everyday things in a whole new and disturbing way.

Gradually, everything in my apartment took on ominous features. I'd pass the gas stove and think about the poet Sylvia Plath, and wonder what was going through her mind as she stuck her head in the oven and inhaled herself to death. An open window was how Bruno Whatshisname snatched the Lindbergh baby. The sofa was where they found Mr. Borden, after Lizzy delivered her forty whacks. I didn't own a gun but the broom in the corner became Hemingway's twelve-gauge, and I couldn't help but wonder what the great master of American literature thought as he pulled both triggers and showered that once-lovely mind of his onto the ceiling.

I think it was Nietzsche who said "Stare into the abyss long enough and the abyss stares into you." Like most of Nietzsche's stuff, however, I wasn't absolutely sure what he meant, but I was beginning to get the drift of it.

Also I started sleeping again. A lot. Little bedsores began popping up on my elbows and heels from the constant friction of the sheets. It didn't take long before I was spending more time lying down than standing up. It was easier to do nothing than to do anything so I continued doing nothing all day long. It's remarkable how easily sloth can take over your life.

Then one day, while lying in bed, watching the ceiling fan going round and round and round and round, and waiting for it to get dark outside so I could go back to sleep, I realized something:

I was going mad.

Slowly, surely, ever-so-steadily mad. Quietly mad. Effortlessly mad.

I wasn't surprised though. I think everyone has madness inside them, hidden deep in some dark and forgotten corner. Mine had just found its way to the light.

But the fact that I _knew_ I was going nuts was a good sign. Crazy people don't know they're crazy. Recognition therefore meant there was still hope. The question then became what to do with that hope.

Fortunately, I knew there was at least one place I could take it.

# ELEVEN

Entry #133

Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.

William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

" **So," Goldberg said. "How have you been?"**

"OK," I replied.

Before he could ask me what OK meant, I asked him a question. One that I'd been mulling over since my aunt sent me that postcard with the smiley-face on it.

"Do you think the Church might be able to help me?"

Goldberg looked surprised. "That's depends on the church, I suppose. Are you a Christian?"

"Yes," I said. "Roman Catholic."

Goldberg studied the tips of his fingers for a moment.

"Do you consider yourself religious?" he asked

"No, not really," I said. "But I went to church all the time when I was a kid."

"Were you forced to go?"

"I wouldn't say _forced._ It sure was _expected_ of us, though. By my father."

Goldberg's mouth moved slightly. It could have been a smile.

"Did you ever resent having to meet those expectations?"

I shrugged. "Sometimes, when I wanted to sleep in, but mostly it was fun getting to hang out with my friends."

He scribbled something in a notebook.

"Did your father ever talk about the consequences of _not_ going to church?" he asked.

"Consequences?" I said. "Like would he get mad if I skipped confirmation class or something?"

He shook his head. "No. Consequences of not following his Faith."

"I'm not sure I understand."

Goldberg paused, as if trying to recall the exact phrase from a book he'd read.

"Substantial damage," he said, "can be done to the psyche of developing children if they grow up in an atmosphere of, shall we say, judgment and fear."

"I still don't follow you," I said.

"Did your father ever speak about life after death?"

"I'm sure he did," I replied. "Or at least I'm sure our priest did."

"And did either of them ever talk about the concept of eternal damnation?"

"You mean Hell?

Goldberg nodded. "Quite a few studies have been done on the long-term effect that religious consequences have on one's emotional stability. Living in fear of punishment over a long period of time can be very debilitating."

I was confused. "But I didn't live in fear. I loved my father."

"I'm not talking about living in fear of your father," Goldberg said. "I'm talking about living in fear of God."

Which made even less sense.

"Why would I fear God?"

Goldberg put his pen down.

"Rachel," he said. "All religion is based on judgment. Behave well and you're rewarded. Don't behave well and you're punished. But Christianity's punishment for the sin of _not_ believing in Jesus far exceeds the sin itself. The Christian punishment is physical torture. _Eternal_ physical torture, I might add."

Goldberg let those words linger a moment then smiled.

"Now, I ask you," he said. "Is that _really_ the act of a loving God? Is that truly a religion you're comfortable with?"

I was really puzzled now. Goldberg may not have known what he was talking about, but he sure did sound like it. Suddenly I thought of something.

"Are you Jewish?" I asked.

Goldberg slowly leaned back in his chair.

"Yes," he replied. "But I don't practice Judaism."

"What do you practice?"

"Actually, I don't follow any formal set of religious doctrine."

"So you're an atheist."

"Agnostic," he replied slowly, cautiously.

"So, it's not that you _disbelieve_ in God," I said. "You just don't care if there is one or not."

Goldberg smiled. "Let's stay on task, shall we? Now, about your Faith –"

I make it a rule not to interrupt people, even when they interrupt me first, but this time I made an exception.

"Excuse me," I said. "May I ask another question?"

Goldberg's eye twitched a little.

"Certainly," he said.

"In your opinion, psychologically-speaking, is religion a good thing or a bad thing for someone like me?"

Goldberg considered his words carefully.

"I would say any institution that offers moral support and ethical instruction has definite merits."

I wasn't sure his answer answered my question.

"So does that mean it's a good thing?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, "as long as it doesn't become the _only_ thing."

"What do you mean, the _only_ thing?"

"Anything," Goldberg replied, "can damage one's health if overindulged. Food, alcohol, exercise – "

"Religion?" I said.

He nodded vigorously. "Especially religion."

"How so?"

Goldberg took in a deep breath.

"Simply put, faith is a good thing, Rachel. Obedience to that faith is a good thing. But _blind_ faith in a rigid set of dogma can only lead to disappointment and ultimately despair."

I stewed on that for a moment.

"So, it's OK to be religious," I said. "As long as you don't take your religion too seriously."

Goldberg shifted in his chair.

"I think you should keep an open mind," he said. "And simply ask questions of your faith, regardless of the religion."

"What types of questions?"

"To begin with, is your religion rational? In other words, does your faith ask you to believe in doctrine that is illogical?"

"What's illogical about Christianity?" I asked.

Goldberg leaned forward onto his elbows.

"The greatest argument against Christianity" he said, "is _exclusivity_. It teaches that Christ is the only means of salvation. That if you don't follow him, then you can't have a proper relationship with God."

"What's wrong with that?" I said.

Goldberg's eyes grew even larger than they were normally.

"Don't you think that's a little arrogant?" he said. "What about the four billion people in the world who believe in something other than Christianity? Are they doomed to Hell simply because they don't believe in your Christ?"

I'm not sure when Jesus became _my_ Christ, but it was clear I was the only one in the room who believed in him. And alone as I was in my belief, I felt suddenly vulnerable.

"So what else is wrong with Christianity?" I asked timidly.

Goldberg sat back in his chair. He looked toward the ceiling then back to me. He smiled.

"Well, the problems are manifold..." he began.

He then proceeded to tell me that Christianity is, as Marx said, an opiate for the masses. A drug that lures people in with eloquent words of peace, love and forgiveness, then empowers its leaders to launch such atrocities as the Inquisition and the Crusades, where thousands were murdered – all in the name of the Church. All in the name of Christ.

Suddenly I regretted having asked the question, but it was too late now. Goldberg was just getting warmed up.

"Christianity," he continued, "is a self-proclaimed moral institution that preaches brotherhood, acceptance and equality for _all_ God's children, with, of course, the modern-day exception of homosexuals, women and the occasional Democrat."

Which I realized was true in some cases but not all. But knowing it was true in some cases suddenly bothered me. A lot.

"How," Goldberg asked, "in this day and age, can a reasonable human being believe in the sort of god who stands idly by as poverty, AIDS, and cancer – all of which he created – destroys the very creation he supposedly loves?"

This whole tirade was making my stomach turn. Not because it was heresy, not because it was sacrilegious, not even because it was downright mean. It was making me ill because it made sense.

"You see, Rachel," Goldberg said in conclusion. "The issue you have with your religion is not that you believe nothing, it's that you believe _everything."_

It was then that I realized something important. Something both shocking and unexpected: _Goldberg was right_. I _did_ believe everything I was taught about my religion. All my life I'd accepted my Faith on, well, faith. All of it. My father believed in it, so it must be true. He was seldom wrong about anything. Plus it was pounded into me by the nuns at church and school. _Don't think, just obey. Don't question, just follow. Don't doubt, just believe._

Consequently, I was a Christian by circumstance not choice.

Which meant the ugly truth of the matter was this: I really didn't know the first thing about God. I just thought I did.

And that ugly truth led to one that was even uglier. Maybe my family members weren't dying because God was trying to teach me a lesson. Maybe they were dying because there was no God.

# TWELVE

Entry #117

We have found all the questions that can be found. It is time we stopped looking for questions and started looking for answers.

G. K. Chesterton

**One of the most difficult times in life is when you dis** cover up is really down and black may be white. When I left Goldberg's office, that was precisely my state of mind.

Faith or no Faith?

Church or no church?

God or no God?

I needed time to clear my head. Fortunately, I do my best head-clearing when I'm walking. I'd taken a cab to Goldberg's office but decided to walk home instead, glad to have the time to sort things out a little.

Five blocks into my journey, the one thing I hadn't counted on, but should have, happened: I had to go pee. I don't know what I was thinking when I set out. My bladder was roughly the size of a walnut _before_ I got pregnant. Now it seemed to have disappeared all together.

Luckily I passed a church. The sign out front told me it was St. Michael's. I was sure the door would be locked but was desperate enough to try it anyway. To my surprise it opened and I went in.

The sanctuary of St. Michael's was deserted. I hadn't been in one for years, but it smelled like the church of my youth. It smelled of roses, cinnamon and furniture polish. Thin shafts of light made a crisscross pattern on the pews and the stained glass windows emitted a surreal glow, as if creating light instead of merely allowing light to enter through them. There's something about a church sanctuary for me that's hard to describe, especially in older churches. It's a hushed silence that's more than just the absence of noise; somehow it's quieter than that. It's as if the room itself is infused with reverence. Even if I had been blindfolded, I'd have known I was in a special place. I could feel and smell it as much as see it.

A large crucifix hung on the wall behind the altar, and on the cross was the body of Christ, his head turned down and to one side, his eyes closed. I think in the sculptor's mind he was already dead.

This Jesus wore a small towel around his middle and his hair was long and tangled, with a crown of thorns pushed low on his brow. His feet were crossed one over the other, his arms spread wide with nail-driven palms. And despite the pain he must have felt, his face was calm in death, serene in fact; I could see that plainly even from fifty feet away. As I looked at him, a line from Emily Dickenson sprang to mind:

Because I could not stop for death,  
death kindly stopped for me.

It was odd that I should recall that bit of poetry just now. I suppose I did so because seeing Jesus on the cross made me wonder if he had welcomed death, or fought it until the very end.

I haven't the slightest clue why I would ask myself a question like that. Even if someone were to give me the answer, I doubt that I would understand it; it was far too metaphysical, so I quickly dropped that line of thinking all together and went in search of the Ladies Room.

As luck would have it, the first door I went through led me to another door with the magical sign "Women's" on the front. Afterwards, when washing my hands I half-expected a nun to walk in, which would have been awkward. For some reason, bumping into people I know in public restrooms is always awkward, but bumping into a nun would have been doubly so. Fortunately none appeared, so I escaped back to the sanctuary and headed for the door.

I don't know how I missed it when I entered the church but on my way out, I passed the Confessional. I attended Catholic schools all the way through tenth grade, and Confession was a weekly requirement, or as they liked to call it _Reconciliation._

I stopped and recalled all the things I'd said in them as a teenager. Silly things and made-up sins. I never once told the priest what I was really up to. How could I? How could some guy twice my dad's age understand all the things that were going on in a girl's body much less her head? Consequently the Confessional of my childhood was not a place I was drawn to, but a place that was forced upon me.

Yet for some reason I found myself drawn to _this_ Confessional. But why? I hadn't been to Confession since high school. Still, something inside me softly whispered that the answers I was seeking were in a small dark room behind this large wooden door. Was that possible? How could I benefit by telling a priest secrets I couldn't tell my parents or Goldberg or even myself?

And yet, something deep inside of me, in a place I didn't even know existed, told me I should do this; I should go through this door.

Today. Right now.

Ever so slowly I touched the doorknob. It turned in my hand. Just as it opened, a voice sounded behind me.

"Good afternoon," he said.

I tried not to act surprised but I spun around too quickly for it to be a casual spin. A priest stood a few feet away.

"I'm sorry," he said, smiling. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"That's OK," I said. "I get startled all the time."

The first thing I noticed about him was that he was younger than most priests. Probably in his 30s, and he was deeply-tanned with jet-black hair and a really nice smile.

"Would you like to speak to one of the priests?" he asked.

"Oh, no, no," I reassured him. "I just came in to..." I searched for a plausible answer. "... to light a candle for my father," I said.

The priest nodded. "I see. Is your father ill?"

"No, he's in Iraq. He's in the Army."

"I understand," he said. And the funny thing was, he sounded like he really did understand. A good priest can do that though. Connect on an emotional level in a matter of seconds when it takes most people years.

I suddenly felt the urge to ask him about religion. About the dangers of it becoming the _only_ thing in one's life, but I didn't. That question would have led to a whole slew of other questions that I wasn't ready to get into.

"Are you a member of St. Michael's?" he asked.

I told him no, and asked if it was OK that I dropped in like I was.

"Of course it is," he said, again with that terrific smile. "You're always welcome in God's house."

I thanked him for his generosity then just stood there, waiting for what, I had no idea. The priest waited with me.

Under normal circumstances, standing in a strange church staring at a priest I'd met only minutes before without talking would have been awkward, but not this time. This time, more was being said in the silence than in any words we could have spoken.

Finally he broke the silence.

"I'm glad you stopped by to see us today. Come back anytime."

I told him I would, and meant it.

I left the priest with the nice smile and roomful of flickering candles, none of which I had actually lit, and continued my walk home. I still had a number of things to sort through. Some big, some little. Trouble is, sometimes I get so caught up in the little things that I miss the big ones.

Which is precisely what just happened.

I missed a big one. A really big one.

In that dimly-lit church that smelled of cinnamon and roses called St. Michael's.

# THIRTEEN

Entry #41

You never know the weight of the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Sylvia Plath

**It happened on a Thursday afternoon**. I'd just finished my bath when I noticed a slight bleeding, which stopped, but just to be safe, I called my doctor, who, as usual was not available. I wound up talking to my doctor's nurse's practitioner's assistant, who told me that my condition was nothing to be concerned with. The next day the bleeding started again, only this time it didn't stop. This time my situation was much more acute, and so I got straight through to the nurse practitioner herself.

"You better come in... _now,_ " she said.

I wished she had been more casual with the way she said _now_. The tone of her voice told me everything I didn't want to know, that I – we – were in trouble.

I called a cab and shuffled out to the curb to meet him. On the way to the hospital the bleeding worsened, and I realized I should have called 911. Of course, realizing what you should have done after you can no longer do it is really counter-productive, so I switched to another subject that had been on my mind lately, which was why things were turning out so rotten for me? I hadn't done anything I could think of that would precipitate my husband dying or me losing my job. For the most part, I was a decent, honest hard-working woman who waited her turn in line and drove the speed limit, yet here I was on the verge of a miscarriage.

Just then we drove past St. Michael's and it made me realize what I should do, what most people do in these situations: Strike a deal with God.

"Dear God," I whispered then shut up. I didn't want the cabbie to get the wrong idea, even though I wasn't sure what that would have been.

Dear God, I said to myself, in case God didn't hear me the first time. Please don't take my baby. Please, please, please don't. I can't bear to lose her. I'm hanging on by a thread as it is. Whatever it was I did or didn't do, I swear I'll start doing it or quit doing it. I promise. I'll commit my life to serving others, if you'll just help me make it through this OK. I'll start going to church again. I'll teach Sunday School, to any age kids, it won't matter. I'll serve hot meals for the homeless at that shelter over on Freemont. I'll do anything you want – just don't take my baby from me. You took my brother, you took my husband. Don't take her. Please, God, don't take her. Please. Please. Please. Amen. Oh, and that time in Goldberg's office when I almost didn't believe in you – well, I do believe you're real. I really do. Amen... again.

By the time I finished telling God what I'd do for him if he got me out of this jam, we pulled into the emergency entrance of the hospital. They whisked me inside. It was loud and crowded. A baby was crying. A man was moaning. Women dressed all in white hustled back and forth. I sat in my wheelchair for a few minutes that felt like a few hours before they wheeled me into another room. Someone handed me a form and said something I didn't understand, then put a pen in my hand and I signed my name. Before I passed out, I remember a nurse looking at me with eyes filled with urgency and something else – sadness perhaps. Whatever it was, it was both comforting and alarming at the same time.

"How long has she been bleeding?" was the last thing I heard anyone say.

And then it was dark. So dark that it wasn't even black; it was somehow darker than black. Out of the blackness, I saw a faint light. I walked toward it. The light grew brighter until I saw what can only be described as a white wooden gazebo. Sitting in the middle of the gazebo was a man, wearing a white suit and reading from a book. His hair was very short, spiked and gray. Perched on the end of his nose was a pair of small round reading glasses, the kind Benjamin Franklin wore.

He looked up from his book, and directly at me, but remained silent. We stared at one another for a few seconds and then he spoke.

"I'm sorry, Rachel," he said in this wonderfully rich voice.

And he _was_ sorry. I could tell. Some people have a certain quality that conveys a sense of honesty, even though you've never seen them before in your life. I had no idea what he was sorry for, but I knew he meant it. And somehow knowing he was sorry gave me a warm feeling in the pit of my stomach where up until now it had been ice cold.

I awoke sometime later, alone in a real hospital bed, dressed in one of those flimsy hospital gowns. The curtains were pulled all around me. There was an IV in one arm and what I assumed was a temperature gauge on the fingertip of my right hand.

A few minutes later, a man walked in.

"Rachel, I'm Doctor McCowen," he said. "How do you feel?"

"OK, I guess."

"Any nausea? Dizziness?"

"No."

"Cramping?"

"No."

He examined the chart in his hand, nodded then looked up. A nurse walked in and stood at my side. She and the doctor exchanged glances before he spoke.

"I'm afraid I have bad news," he said matter-of-factly. "There was a problem with your placenta. It detached from the uterine wall and...well, complications arose. We did everything we could. I'm sorry."

And that was that.

My little girl was gone. Dead. As dead as my brother, as dead as my husband, as dead as they come. Now I knew why that man with the spiked hair apologized in my dream. He was apologizing for death. A death that brought with it a raw wound for which there was no relief. An open gash that burned and burned and burned, and there was nothing I could do but sit there and take it. Take it like an animal tied to a post, whipped, kicked, and beaten within an inch of its life. I tried to block out the pain, but most of it crept through, devouring me with its razor-sharp teeth.

Again the doctor said, "I'm sorry."

To which I heard someone say, "Me too."

The someone was me.

And I _was_ sorry. More sorry than I've ever felt before. Given the chance I would have gladly traded my life for that of my daughter's. It's terrible, but when I try to speak from the heart, I'm rarely comprehensible. _Please, God, take me, not her_ is what I would have said if I'd had the chance. But God didn't give me that chance. God said this is the way it's going to be, so deal with it.

Only I couldn't deal with it. I wasn't strong enough. I dealt with losing my husband; I dealt with losing my job; but losing my daughter was more than I could bear. And so I shut off the part of my brain that housed my grief. I slammed the door tight and locked the lock on it. My way of dealing with it was refusing to deal with it. No doubt Goldberg would have called it denial, which was OK; just because he was right didn't mean I was wrong. It might be called denial, but it was also called survival. Physically I was out of danger, but the psychic wounds were real.

I was bleeding to death.

# FOURTEEN

Entry #69

Life is a gift horse in my opinion.

J. D. Salinger

**They let me go home a few days later.** I explained that I had no family and that was why no one visited me in the hospital. Of course the awful truth was I hadn't told anyone what had happened.

When I got home, I went straight to bed and slept off-and-on for three days. I got up a couple times to get a drink of water and use the bathroom. Other than that I restricted myself to bedrest and no food. Actually I ate a couple crackers and half a banana that looked like it wasn't going to make it through another day, but other than that I took no nourishment. Funny thing is I never got hungry. In fact, I felt so full after the banana that I thought I might puke.

On the fourth day, when passing the bathroom mirror, I glanced at myself, and for the life of me I couldn't remember the last time I washed my hair or took a shower. Not eating is one thing, but not washing is another. Clinical depression is no excuse for poor hygiene. I took a shower that lasted maybe two hours, judging from the way the water went from hot to cold to ice-cold. I was in the stall so long I ended up sitting down. I considered bringing in a chair but that felt like too much effort so I just sat in the middle of the stall, hugged my knees tight, and let the water cascade off my back and shoulders with an unhurried yet determined rhythm.

As I sat there, I realized that life showed no promise whatsoever of getting better. In fact, it showed quite a bit of promise of getting worse. And since I was pretty sure I couldn't take worse, I decided the best thing to do was to call it quits.

Ironically, once I made that decision, I felt a great sense of calm; my life had purpose again. I realized it wasn't the most positive of goals, but at least it was a concrete thing to strive for. French novelist Honore de Balzac said 'There is something great and terrible about suicide.' I'm not sure about the great part, but at the moment, it was all I had. As for being terrible, only time would tell.

Of course, I'd have to come up with a way to do it. In the back of my mind, however, I always knew the answer; the final solution as it were: sleeping pills.

I saw a woman on _Oprah_ who talked about a strange experience she had with pills. She battled depression also. Funny thing was she had a fairly ordinary life: no heartbreaking deaths or divorce to deal with. No cancer or financial crisis. In fact, she was married to a nice guy, had two nice kids and lived in a nice neighborhood on a nice little street, lined with trees, homes and flowers. She was the very picture of domestic bliss, yet was so miserable that one day she took a fistful of Quaaludes, drank a half bottle of cherry vodka, and waited for the bliss to end. Instead of dying, however, she threw up all over the kitchen table.

Now comes the strange part.

The last thing she'd eaten was alphabet soup. When she threw up, three undigested letters formed the word G-O-D, which startled her into a whole new way of looking at suicide. She rushed herself to the hospital, had her stomach pumped, quit her job, and became a missionary, all inside of a week

I was determined not to make the same mistake, so I avoided soup all together, choosing instead a toasted cheese sandwich and a glass of milk as my last meal. Odd that it tasted as good as I could remember. With that done, I tidied up the kitchen, took a final look around my apartment then headed to the bathroom.

Over the past several months I'd accumulated 62 sleeping pills. It wasn't difficult to do. By the time I quit going to Dr. Bones, I had 50. Plus another 12 my mom sent me for some reason when I was in college. I figured 62 ought to do the trick, especially when combined with a nice glass of Chianti I'd been saving for a special occasion.

So there I was, in front of the medicine cabinet, holding an amber bottle of life-taking capsules and a long-stem glass of wine. I poured a half-dozen pills into my hand and stared at them. Strange how something so small could be so big.

The first handful went down without a hitch. I actually said, "Bottoms up."

I've never had trouble swallowing things. I guess I've been blessed with a large esophagus. I popped a second handful into my mouth. Down they went. I took a small sip of wine, as a chaser, then gulped down another ten or so, followed by another sip. Within a few minutes I'd swallowed all 62 pills and drank a half-bottle of wine that tasted strangely like the grape juice they served at church communion when I was a kid.

That's when the phone rang. I considered answering it but decided it was probably someone calling to ask how I was getting along. And since I wasn't prepared to explain why I was too busy to talk, I let it go to voice mail. It was Aunt Mertis.

"Hello, dear," she said. "I hope everything is OK. I called to let you know that the funniest thing happened this morning. I was looking through an old scrapbook, and ran across this little picture of you when, oh, you couldn't have been more than three or four years old, and you were sitting on the porch in your little Easter dress. The one with the pink flowers. And, well, you looked so sweet, and I don't know, I had the strangest sensation just now that I should call and tell you that."

Under normal circumstances, hearing something so sweet would perk me right up, but this wasn't exactly the best time. I had other things on my mind, and getting sidetracked with an unexpected compliment was throwing me off my game a little.

"Silly, isn't it?" she said. "I mean, it's just a picture."

There was a long silence, but I knew she hadn't hung up because I could hear her breathing.

Finally she said, "I love you, dear."

Click.

So there I was, a stomach full of sleeping pills and a knot in my throat the size of a golf ball. Was it a fluke that Aunt Mertis decided to call at this very moment, or was God sending me a message that said what you're doing is even more terrible than Balzac knew?

But it was too late for second-guesses. The die had been cast.

I stood perfectly still, half-expecting my fingers and toes to go numb, but realized after a few minutes that apparently it doesn't work that way. I was a rank amateur when it came to suicide, and it was beginning to show. As a precautionary measure, I finished off the wine and decided to wait it out by lying down on the bed. As it turns out, I didn't have to wait long. As soon as my head hit the pillow, the room started to spin.

I was actually surprised how calm and relaxed I was about the whole thing. It's always easier to think about doing something than it is to actually do it, especially when it comes to killing yourself. I was afraid I'd get started then chicken out half-way through, which meant I'd probably down enough barbiturates to cause brain damage without finishing the job. The thought of becoming a vegetable scared me twice as much as becoming dead. Dead I could handle; half-dead was not something I wanted to experience.

I was also surprised that my mind seemed to be going blank.

I'd always read that at the moment of death, your past flashes before your eyes. So, I kept waiting for something, anything, a memory, a thought, a desire, but there was nothing. Just the sour taste of wine on my tongue and a feeling that I was sinking deeper and deeper into the bed.

Then the strangest thing happened: I heard giggling. I looked across the room, and saw a girl maybe ten or eleven years old lying on the floor watching TV. She had long brown hair and dimples and my freckles and Joe's eyes. I knew instantly it was my daughter Teresa. She was watching a rerun of "I Love Lucy," and she was laughing because it was the episode where Lucy thought Martians had landed on the roof of her apartment, and were out to get her, when actually it was Ricky and Fred dressed up like Martians to teach Lucy a lesson.

Then, without saying a word, Teresa turned on her side and looked straight at me and smiled, and more than anything in the world I wanted to hug her, and stroke her hair and kiss her cheek and tell her that everything was going to be all right, even though I was going to be dead in a few minutes. And then I started crying. I couldn't help it – before I knew it I was bawling like the baby that Teresa never became, and Teresa's smile disappeared and tears came to her eyes and rolled slowly down both her cheeks and onto the carpet. I hated what I had done to her; I hated what I was doing to me. It was wrong and I wanted it to stop. I wanted to live. I wanted to grow older and have more Teresas and... and...and I was getting so tired that I couldn't keep my eyes open. It got dark. It got quiet. I felt sleep overtaking me... I felt _death_ overtaking me, and I sank slowly, ever so slowly, into the abyss that Nietzsche often spoke of but never visited.

# FIFTEEN

Entry #77

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.

Thomas Aquinas

That's when I started throwing up.

I only threw up twice but they were doozys. Luckily I managed to turn my head to the side so that most of the puke landed on the floor and not on me. The room was still spinning a little but not like before, so I lay perfectly still until the ride was over. I must have dozed off because it felt like time had passed, although I don't remember closing my eyes. All I knew was that I felt less nauseous and more like myself.

Then I had this vision which was kind of like a dream only without going to sleep. In my mind's eye, I was walking up an impossibly long and steep hill. I felt OK when I started out but the farther I went, the more exhausted I became. Soon, clouds rolled in and blocked out the sun; the wind grew sharp and it turned cold, but still I climbed, walking, trudging ever upward, forcing myself to place one foot ahead of the other. It felt as if chains were tethered to my legs and I was literally dragging an enormous weight up the side of this pitch-black mountain. My legs burned, my side ached, sweat poured down my back. The task before me was impossible, the hill too steep, the effort too great. Then, just when I knew I could go no farther, I came upon a door, standing alone in the middle of my path. I opened it, and from out of the darkness came a brilliant burst of light. The light engulfed me in its warmth and the night became as day and the chains fell away. I walked into the light, knowing I was safe, that I was home, and that the long terrible journey was finally over.

I opened my eyes then, and looked back to where I'd seen my daughter watching Lucy and the Martians. She was gone. Then somewhere in the distance that sad French song I'd heard in one of my earlier dreams started up again, except this time it wasn't a dream. I was wide-awake. When the song faded away, a man's voice spoke to me in perfect English.

"When you're ready to talk, he's ready to listen."

Since I'd never had a disembodied voice speak to me, I did the one thing I thought made sense: I waited for it to speak again.

And it did.

Except this time it used my name.

"Rachel, when you're ready to talk, he's ready to listen."

Instead of getting the willies, I got a sense of Deja Vu. I'd heard this man's voice before. Twice. It was Daniel. The same Daniel at my husband's funeral and in the parking lot. I had no doubt. And for the first time in a very long time, I knew exactly what to do and where to do it. I climbed out of bed, cleaned up the floor, which wasn't nearly as disgusting as I thought it might be, and left my apartment.

Twenty minutes later I was standing in front of St. Michael's, filled with a sense of anticipation mixed with dread.

I opened the door and went in.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did, I walked forward to the altar, kneeled and stared up at my concrete savior. It was beautiful – _he_ was beautiful. Whether it was the light or the shadow or the aftereffects of my near-death experience, this Jesus looked real. So real, in fact, I was sure that if I reached out and touched him, he'd move or flinch; and that the stone he was made of would turn out not be stone but warm soft flesh instead.

And since I was already kneeling, I felt like I should be praying, too. But what should I say? How should I say it? I bowed my head and waited. Within minutes, from some dark and desperate place, the words came pouring out.

Dear, God, I said, why them? Why me? Why now? Am I being punished for something? Something I did or said or didn't say? If that's it, why not take me instead of them? My husband, my brother, my daughter. Why? Why?

If you're trying to get me to say I'm sorry for something, OK, all right, enough – I'm sorry. I'm so, so, so, so very sorry. Forgive me. Forgive me for everything. Just tell me what it is I've done. Just tell me and I'll try to make it better. I'll change.

Or if you're trying to teach me a lesson, what is it? What's so important that the only way you can make your point is to take from me the only things in life that matter? I have nothing left. Nothing. Not one thing.

Dear God, I don't know...I'm just tired. So tired. So very tired. Help me. Please. I can't take it anymore. I just can't...

Quite suddenly, a lovely warmth, like the breath of my late husband, caressed the back of my neck. My face tingled, my skin went to goose bumps, and I felt the urge to do something besides pray. But what?

I turned my head slowly to one side. There, directly in front of me, was the answer.

The Confessional.

When you're ready to talk, he's ready to listen.

Above the door a small green light indicated a priest was inside. I rose to my feet and walked slowly forward. I paused a moment just outside the door, wondering if I could really tell a priest all the things I could barely tell myself. Wondering if this was, at long last, the answer to my prayers or just another dead end.

I took a deep breath, opened the door and walked in, ready, I told myself, for anything.

But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could have prepared me for what I found inside.

# SIXTEEN

Entry #93

Here comes the sun...

George Harrison

**The Confessional was similar in size and shape to oth** ers I'd been in. It was small, maybe four feet square, with a wooden bench on one side facing a mesh screen, behind which sat the priest in an adjoining booth. I drew in my breath, closed the door and sat down. After a moment's silence I made the sign of the cross.

"Forgive me, Father," I said. "For I have sinned."

I waited for the obligatory response, but there was none. I peered into the screen, and could make out the vague form of someone on the other side. Thinking I'd spoken too softly, I cleared my throat and tried again.

"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

Silence.

"Ah, Father?"

"Yes," came a man's voice from beyond the partition.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't sure you were there."

"I'm here."

I began again.

"It's been a while since my last confession," I said. "Quite a while actually. In fact, I can't remember the last time."

Silence.

"Would you like to hear my sins?"

"Yes, please."

The rules of Confession state that you start with the big sins and work your way backwards. I, on the other hand, started with the little sins and stayed at that level. I had no intention of progressing to the big ones. At this point, I figured any confession was better than no confession at all. I also had to be careful because talking to a priest was not unlike talking to Goldberg, in that both of them were going to find out more about me than I wanted them to know. Plus, regardless of how non-judgmental priests were _supposed_ to be, they were sure to make judgments. I mean, after hearing all my secret thoughts, how could they not form an opinion; and based on that opinion, think more or less of me as a result? Any way you slice it, that's a judgment.

So I went on cautiously for a couple minutes, sharing my petty throw-away sins, like not praying enough or thinking mean thoughts about Buddy Timmons, things like that, and all the while the priest was perfectly quiet, as he should be. Once I heard what might have been a sigh, but could just as easily have been the air-conditioning unit kicking on.

When I was done, I sat there, pleased to have made it through the experience without a major faux pas, expecting to be told that, while regrettable, my sins were not all that bad, and to say some "Hail Marys" and everything would be all right. So it surprised me when I didn't hear any of that. What I heard instead was this:

"Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?"

Over the years, I'd been to Confession dozens of times but not once did I recall a priest asking a question like that. It almost sounded like he knew I was holding out on him, and wanted me to get on with the big stuff.

"I'm not sure what you mean," I said.

"How are things in your life? Really?" he asked.

Suddenly, and with good cause, it felt like I was talking to Goldberg, so naturally I lied without giving it a second thought.

"Fine," I said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," I said. "I'm absolutely, positively sure."

As soon as I added the _positively_ I knew it was a mistake. Only really guilty people use two modifiers when one will do. I also racked my brain trying to recall a time when my Confessor challenged me on the quantity and quality of my sins. It didn't take me long to decide the answer was never.

And so we sat in the silence. Me waiting for my unconventional priest to say something about how Jesus loved me, and him waiting for me to spill my sin-riddled guts, which apparently neither of us was willing to do. It was a Confessional Standoff.

Finally, I decided to break the impasse with Father-whoever-was-on-the-other-side-of-the-screen. It wasn't so much the dead air that got to me as the question that suddenly popped into my head.

"Father," I said, "just for the sake of argument, what if my life hasn't been all that great lately. Can you help me understand why? "

I expected the standard priestly response that pain is God's megaphone to rouse us from our sleep, or that adversity builds character, but again I got the unexpected.

"Yes, Rachel, I can." He paused a moment, allowing me ample time to register the fact that he used my name even though I hadn't given it to him.

Then he continued. "Regardless of how abandoned you might feel at this point in your life, remember this: _the doors of Hell are locked from the inside."_

I wasn't sure what that meant, but I liked the sound of it. It sounded like I might have more control of my life than I originally thought.

"How did you know my name?" I asked slowly.

"I know a lot about you, Rachel Louis Walker," he replied. "More in fact than you know about yourself."

Normally, if someone I don't know says something like that, the first thing I do is reach for the pepper spray. But not this time. This time, I had no fear whatsoever.

"If you don't mind my saying so, Father," I said. "This is the strangest confession I've ever been to."

I heard him chuckle. "That's because all the other times you confessed to a priest."

It took a moment for that to sink in.

"You're not a priest?" I said.

"No, I'm not actually."

"Then who are you?"

"Who do you think I am?" he asked calmly.

Rare moments occur in one's life when knowledge comes from a strange and hidden place. Without having a shred of evidence to support it, I knew who was in the booth next to me. It felt ridiculous to say it, but I did anyway.

"You're God, aren't you?" I said.

"Yes," he replied. "I am."

OK, nothing gives me the heebie-jeebies like a whiff of the supernatural. Especially when the supernatural knows my name.

"How do I know you're God?" I said.

He chuckled again, only this time louder. "What, you want me to prove it?"

"Yes. Do something god-like."

"Were you thinking a mighty wind?" he asked, with a hint of amusement. "Lightning ? A burning bush perhaps."

"Could you do those things?"

"Sure I could. I'm God."

"Then do them."

"Sorry," he replied. "I don't work that way."

"But I thought God could do anything."

"I didn't say I _couldn't_ do them. I just said I don't work that way."

Before I could ask another snappy question, God said the most wonderful thing.

"Rachel, I am so sorry for all the sadness in your life."

The words he spoke were not rehearsed. They were a true and authentic expression of sorrow.

"I don't understand any of this," I said. "God is not, well, he's just not... "

"Someone who shows up in the flesh?"

"Yes. At least not to people like me."

"Rachel," he said. "I want you to do me a favor. I want you to stop thinking for a moment. Allow your mind to empty itself, and listen to what your heart is telling you. Close your eyes and give yourself _permission to believe_."

I wasn't sure what permission to believe meant, but I knew how to close my eyes, so I did. My heartbeat slowed. My mind cleared. My heart opened. And a rock-solid assurance came to me. The absolute, indisputable knowledge that I was talking to God.

"That's good," he said. "Now do you believe?"

"Yes," I said truthfully. "I do."

I'd told Goldberg I believed in things dozens of times, just to keep him from probing deeper with his questions, but that wasn't the case this time. What I said this time was a statement of faith, of resolute conviction in something that otherwise was impossible. I opened my eyes.

"Can I look at you?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied, "I'd like that."

Slowly, I pulled back the screen and leaned forward to get my first glimpse of the Creator of the Universe, the Alpha and Omega, the King of Kings, Yahweh himself... and was shocked to see that he was the spitting image of my great-uncle Gordon, who owned a small funeral home in southern Georgia.

God looked to be in his mid-60s. He was clean-shaven with salt and pepper hair, more salt than pepper. His eyes were pale blue and he had a ruddy complexion that made him look healthy, like he spent a lot of time in the sun. He had on a well-worn green tweed jacket and a cream-colored shirt and brown tie; and the look on his face, his entire demeanor actually, said he was perfectly at ease with me staring at him through my tiny little window.

"Hello, Rachel," God said. "I can't tell you what an honor it is to finally meet you."

# SEVENTEEN

Entry #53

God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full – there's nowhere for him to put it.

Augustine

MONDAY

**I'd read stories of divine apparitions**. Stories about the Virgin Mary popping up on a regular basis near some little town in southern France. Or the one where Jesus was spotted strolling around on this huge lake outside Buenos Aires; not _around_ the lake, mind you, but _on_ it. Stories of apparitions, however, don't hold a candle to the real thing. When you see the real thing, up close and personal, it adds a whole new dimension to your faith. In fact, if someone had told me yesterday that today I would be sitting face to face with, well, God, and that he would say how glad – how _honored_ – he was to meet me, I would have thought him insane.

But here he was. In the flesh. God. Looking more like Uncle Gordon than Uncle Gordon did.

"Hi," I said sheepishly.

God smiled. "It's a bit awkward to peer at me through this small window, isn't it?"

In answer to his own question, he waved his hand, as if cleaning a mirror, and the wall that separated us vanished.

"There," he said, obviously pleased with the results. "That's much better, don't you think?"

I told him I did, mainly because I couldn't think of anything else to say. I'd never seen a wall just disappear.

"Would you mind terribly if we dispense with the Confession?" God asked. "I have a pretty good idea what you were going to say."

I started to laugh but wasn't sure if he meant it as a joke, so I just nodded instead.

"Perhaps we could just talk," he said. "Or better yet, do you have any questions you'd like to ask?"

Questions?

Sure, I thought to myself, I have questions. Lots of questions. Big questions. Important questions. But the first question to pop out was a little bitty one.

"Why me?"

God smiled. "Why not you?"

I was used to Goldberg answering questions this way, but with God, it was different. It felt like his question _was_ an answer.

"OK," I said, "let's see. There are six billion people in the world and you chose me. Why? I mean, I teach 10th grade English. I'm nobody special."

Again that warm and wonderful smile.

"Which is precisely why I chose you, Rachel. You _think_ you're no one special." He paused for a long moment then added, "But you're mistaken."

I wasn't sure what to do with that compliment, so I left it alone.

God gently took my hand in his.

He said, "Let's just say I've been watching you for a while now, and decided, well, I decided you could use some help. I've come to make you whole again."

I've come to make you whole again.

Seven of the most beautiful words ever spoken.

Those words meant no more therapy, pills or books. No more counselors, doctors or therapist. No more advice that is supposed to help but can't. No more remedies that are supposed to work but don't.

I've come to make you whole again.

It was just that simple.

What happened next surprised me almost as much as meeting God. I felt lighter. Physically lighter. It was like some great weight was suddenly removed from my shoulders, and I could breathe again.

I couldn't help it. I started crying.

God wrapped his arms around me and held me close to his chest. He didn't say a word. We just sat there, the two of us. A girl who'd lost everything and a father who understood what that meant.

After what seemed like an eternity, I stopped sobbing and pulled back.

"I'm sorry," I said, "It's just that..." I couldn't finish my sentence.

God brushed back my tears with the palm of his hand.

"Don't apologize," he said, smiling sadly. "I'm the one who should be apologizing."

Which was the first of many surprising things I was to hear from him.

"Rachel," he said, "why don't you ask me the question you came here to ask?"

I was puzzled. Did this mean what I thought it meant? Was God actually asking me to ask him about the deaths in my family?

"It's perfectly all right," he said.

And his kind, blue eyes told me it was all right. It might not be easy, but it was all right.

I cleared my throat.

"Well," I said softly. "There is something I'd like to know."

I studied my shoes for a moment then looked up and straight into the eyes of the Almighty. Here goes nothing.

"Why did my husband and daughter have to die?" I said.

It got really quiet then.

"And by that," God said, "are you asking did I intentionally cause their deaths?"

My voice was stronger than I expected it to be.

"Yes," I replied.

The silence grew louder.

Finally he said, "Rachel, the answer to that question is not as simple as I would like for it to be. Before I share it with you, would you do me a favor?"

I nodded.

"I want you to spend some time with me," God said. "A few days perhaps. I want you to get to know me a bit better. Then, when the time is right, I'll answer that question. In fact, I'll answer any question you have."

God smiled at me with his eyes.

"Is that acceptable?" he asked

I told him it was.

"Excellent," he replied. "Tell me, what you think of this idea? I'm working on a project, and I could use your help. While we work, we can talk. How does that sound?"

I told him I was ready when he was.

He said today was a good day to start. We both stood. God gestured toward the door.

"After you," he said.

And so began the greatest day of my life.

# EIGHTEEN

Entry #98

When I grow up I want to be a little boy.

Joseph Heller

**I stepped through the doorway, but not into the sanctu** ary. Instead it was an open field. The change was so abrupt, I lost my balance. God placed his hand on my shoulder to steady me.

"Sorry," he said. "I should have told you we were going to have to travel a bit to get here."

The field was covered in wheat, three-feet tall and swaying gently in the breeze. The sky overhead was blue and cloudless. There was a hint of honeysuckle in the air. It seemed to be late-spring or early-summer.

I noticed that God had changed clothes. Instead of the tweed jacket, he was now wearing blue jeans, boots and a denim work shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

"I love being out here," he said, inhaling deeply. "The sun on your face, the wind, the smell of the outdoors. Nature is a wonderful thing."

God seemed so suddenly human, I almost forgot who he was.

"Do you live indoors?" I asked.

"Technically," he said, "I don't live anywhere. I exist everywhere, but I don't have a place I call home." He looked at me and smiled. "That doesn't make sense, does it?"

I assured him that it did, although I'm pretty sure he knew it didn't.

"Let's just say I spend a lot of time indoors," he clarified. "So when I get a chance to get outside and do something physical, I relish the moment."

He turned very slowly in a circle as he spoke, surveying the terrain around us.

"Before we begin our project," he said, "we have to find the right piece of ground."

At this point in our relationship I wasn't sure what I should or shouldn't ask. The last thing I wanted to do was make God think I was a smart-aleck. But the harm in not asking questions is that you have to make up your own answers, and somehow, in this situation, that didn't seem like a good idea, so I plunged ahead.

"What happens if we run into other people out here?" I said. "I mean, you know, _normal_ people. Aren't they going to wonder what we're doing?"

God laughed. "Don't worry, we're not going to see anyone else. For now, it's just you and me."

Instantly I liked that idea. Spending time away from people was something I had grown to enjoy. Of course spending that time with the Creator of the Universe was an added bonus.

God scanned the horizon.

"Now, for that piece of ground," he said then pointed his finger. "That direction looks promising. What do you think?"

I looked in the direction he indicated but all I saw was wheat. Who was I to argue though?

"Yep," I said. "That direction's good."

So off we went at a leisurely pace, as if we had nowhere to go and all day to get there. God plucked a stem of wheat and stuck it in his mouth.

"Now then," he said, "what should we talk about?"

I figured the best place to begin was at the beginning.

"How old are you?"

"The short answer," he said, "is that I have no age. Time, as you know it, doesn't exist for me. I wasn't born or created. I simply am and always have been."

I blinked slowly a couple times.

"Are all your answers going to be like this?" I asked.

God laughed, "I hope not. I promise to be as direct as possible. It's just that the age question is a little complicated."

I tried one that was simpler.

"Is this what you always look like?"

"Do you mean am I normally this age in this body?"

"Yes."

He shook his head. "No, I chose this appearance because I thought it would be easier for you to talk with me."

I told God how closely he resembled my Uncle Gordon. He said he was flattered.

"So what do you look like when you don't look like one of my relatives?" I asked.

God thought for a moment.

"Sunlight," he said. "Think what a shaft of sunlight looks like when it breaks through the clouds on a rainy day – that bright, effervescent sheet of light."

OK, I thought, that makes sense. God looks like a ray of sunshine. I confessed, however, that I'd always pictured him as a white-haired grandfather, with a long beard and sandals.

"A lot of people think that," he laughed. "I believe Michelangelo had something to do with it."

I told him he was much better looking in person than on any ceiling I'd ever seen. He thanked me for the compliment.

"Do you ever get angry?" I asked.

God moved the stem of wheat from one side of his mouth to the other.

"Yes," he replied. "From time to time I get quite upset."

"Mad enough to blow stuff up?"

God's shook his head and smiled.

"No, Rachel, I don't blow stuff up. People are punished _by_ their mistakes, not for them."

Which was good to know. There was a moment when I thought God might be behind Joe's car wreck, but I never really bought it. When I thought that, I was at rock-bottom emotionally. And when you're at rock-bottom, you get all kinds of strange ideas

"There's nothing wrong with being angry," God continued. "As long as you get angry at the right time, for the right reasons and to the right degree. In fact, some things _should_ make you angry."

"Like what?" I wondered.

"Poverty, hunger, injustice. Those types of things."

I was thinking much smaller.

"What about the guy who cuts you off in traffic?" I asked. "Is it OK to get a little steamed at him?"

God smiled.

"Getting upset at a bad driver is acceptable," he said. "It's a natural response. What's less acceptable is the name-calling that sometimes ensues."

Which made me embarrassed to have ever done it. The name-calling, I mean. I always knew the other drive couldn't hear me, but I'd never thought about God listening in.

I made mental note of that. Just because you're the only one around doesn't mean you're really the only one around.

"If you could change one thing in the world today," I asked." What would it be?"

I expected God to say less war and more love, or something about saving the planet, or maybe just being better people in general. But that's not what he said. What he said surprised me.

"I wish people were less solemn," he replied.

I wasn't sure I heard him right.

"Less solemn?"

God nodded.

"Some people," he said, "have the mistaken idea that in order to be pious they have to be serious. They've come to believe that faith in me is more sincere if it is solemn." He shook his head slowly. "Such a shame. Such a waste."

I was confused. "Are you saying we shouldn't be reverent?"

"No," he replied. "I'm simply saying you shouldn't spend each day as if you're attending a funeral. Life is a celebration, not a wake."

I tried to think of something worth celebrating but all I could come up with was my birthday, which was the day I got the phone call about my husband. Maybe that was my problem. Every time I tried to get happy, I got sidetracked with tragedy.

"Remember what it was like when you were a child?" God continued, his voice rising with excitement. "How each day was an adventure; how you sang and laughed and ran and played? How you enjoyed jumping through a sprinkler in the backyard or chasing fireflies at night or looking for animal shapes in clouds?"

I remembered doing all those things, but I was surprised that God considered them a time of celebration. I figured we did it because we'd just loaded up on sugar and had to find some way to work it off.

"But aren't kids happy," I asked, "because they don't have the responsibilities that come with growing up?"

Again God shook his head.

"Not at all," he said. "Children have all manner of responsibilities. They may not have to pay a mortgage or worry about employment, but they have to learn everything from scratch. Think how difficult that is. They have to learn how to walk and talk and eat and behave. How to study and learn and grow. In a very real sense, that is a much greater responsibility than they will ever face as an adult.

Of course I'd never looked at it quite that way.

"So why are kids happy and we're not?"

"I gave you a happy heart," God said, "because I intended for you to live happily. But something happens along the way to that happiness. It gets beaten down to the point where no one recognizes it any more. You lose that simple childlike joy and enthusiasm. You forget how to play."

"But," I observed, "don't we sometimes lose our childlike enthusiasm because we're no longer children?"

God shook his head.

"The loss of joy doesn't come from growing older," he said. "It comes from losing touch with what made you happy to begin with."

Which made me ask this question of myself: what _was_ it that made me happy as a kid? The house we lived in? The car my dad drove? The school I went to?

No, it was none of those things. What made me happy was something different. Something simple.

So simple it was amazing.

In my mind's eye, I was ten-years-old again, playing hide-and-go-seek with a bunch of my neighborhood buddies. It was almost dark and I remember feeling a pure and absolute sense of joy. I was young and healthy and doing exactly what I wanted to be doing with exactly the people I wanted to be doing it with.

God was right. Life _was_ an adventure then. Not because we were doing something special. But because we were doing something fun. We still knew how to play.

"It's not to say that every day is a celebration," God cautioned. "Some days carry with them pain, disappointment and heartache."

"Which can make us feel lousy," I said. "No matter how young at heart we are."

"Exactly," God agreed. "It's not that pain doesn't exist. It's real, and can't be denied. But there is a way to find joy in the midst of the pain."

"Is that something we'll talk about later?" I asked

"Yes," God said, "and quite a bit more."

I felt really good about this conversation. I felt God was trying to share with me the truth. The truth about why the world turns the way it does, and why I am the way I am. Which were two things I was anxious, yet fearful, to discover. Anxious to come face to face with the truth, yet fearful that when I did, I wouldn't like it.

Truth can be a double-edge sword sometimes.

# NINETEEN

Entry #7

To know all is to forgive all.

Thomas a Kempis

**By this time in our conversation we had long since left** the wheat field and were walking along a trail through a stand of beautiful trees with silver bark and pale green leaves. Aspen I think. Eventually we passed through the woods and into another field, one that was clover-filled, with bright patches of wildflowers and small shrubs with bright red berries. I remarked to God that the scenery reminded me of a vacation to Colorado our family had taken when I was a kid.

"I remember that trip," God said. "You and your brother Steve thought that if Colorado wasn't heaven, then it was the closest thing to it."

As soon as he said the name, I went quiet. Like some spectral spirit, the physical image of my dead brother suddenly arose before my eyes.

I quickly switched subjects.

"You mentioned earlier that you don't get angry all that often, but you do get sad. So what causes you sadness?"

God was careful not to look at me when he spoke.

"His death was not your fault, you know."

My breath quickened along with my heart. I didn't want to do this. I wasn't ready yet.

"I imagine a lot of things sadden you," I said, trying to sound nonchalant. "Like cancer and war, stuff like that?"

God remained silent.

"Or that guy who discovered the face of Jesus on a cheese sandwich and sold it for a thousand bucks on e-Bay. Boy, the things some people do, huh?"

More silence.

I knew I was babbling, but that's what I do when I'm rattled, I babble. I'm a compulsive babbler.

"Then again," I said, "that cheese sandwich was something else. Did you see it? I mean, it was a dead-ringer for somebody with a beard and long hair, but – "

"Rachel," God interrupted. "You are not responsible for what happened to Steve."

I paused. I nodded. I smiled.

I kept on babbling.

"But holy cow, a thousand dollars for a cheese sandwich! Come on, there's just no way that someone – "

"It was an accident," God interrupted again. "Nothing more, nothing less. An accident."

Now, it was my turn to go silent.

Now it was my turn to listen.

"No matter what you think," God continued. "No matter what you _believe_ your mother thinks, you did not kill your brother. You are not guilty of anything."

But isn't that what happened? I thought to myself. I didn't mean to hurt him, but in the end, I'm the one who did. And in the end, he's the one who died, so how could I _not_ be guilty?

God chose not to say anything further.

Slowly, the day my brother died came back to me. Slowly I remembered it all.

***

"OK, on the count of three," Steve said, "we jump."

I peered over the edge of the bluff. Twenty feet below was the James River, all green and cold-looking. I had no idea twenty feet could look like a thousand.

"You go first," I said.

Steve laughed. "Yeah, right, I've heard that before."

I shook my head.

"No, really. You jump, I jump. Promise."

Steve was thirteen. I was eleven. Parents say they don't have favorites, but some do. My mom did anyway. Steve was her favorite by a mile.

"We'll hold hands," Steve said. "It'll be like in the movies."

I looked back to the river. It now seemed greener, colder and much farther below us than before.

"I don't know," I whined. "What if we hit a log or something?"

"C'mon, you big chicken!" he laughed. "We're not gonna hit anything but water!"

Mom loved my brother because he was an underdog. Born prematurely, he weighed a little over two pounds at birth. Steve's lungs were so tiny that he literally had to fight for every breath he took. _He was a fighter_ , Mom said. _My brave little fighter._

I was not a fighter. I was a chicken.

"Are you gonna jump or not?" Steve goaded one last time.

I stepped to the bluff's edge, closed my eyes, and took in a really, really deep breath.

"OK, on the count of three," Steve said. "One, two..."

Before he finished the countdown, however, I jumped backward. I just couldn't do it.

That's when the worst thing that could have happened, happened: Steve grabbed my wrist.

If only he hadn't grabbed my wrist.

Oh, how I wish he hadn't done that.

I yanked my arm free, then for some unknown reason, I did the unthinkable – I pushed him. It was instinct. I didn't mean for him to fall.

But he did fall.

Sideways off the bluff onto the rocks below.

And the look on his face as he fell – that wonderfully tan and beautiful face – haunts me to this day.

"I'm so sorry, Mom," I cried the day of the accident. "I'm so, so sorry. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't mean to..."

But it didn't matter. The day her favorite child died, my mother's heart closed up like a fist. I could see it in her eyes. I could see it in her face. She was dead to me. Dead to the world.

***

That was seventeen years ago. Seventeen long and lonely years. And hardly a day passes when I don't think about it. When I don't think about him.

"Rachel," God said. "I'd like for you to call your mother."

"And tell her what?" I asked.

We stopped walking. God turned to face me.

"Tell her you love her," he said.

This was a much bigger deal than it sounded like. I hadn't told my mom I loved in her in years.

God wasn't finished though.

"Then ask her if you and she could talk about Steve," he continued.

Uh-oh, I thought. I can't do that. I can't ask her to talk about that. There's just no way.

But God wouldn't let up.

"Because," he said, "if you ask her, you might be surprised at what she has to say."

No, that was the problem. I knew exactly what she would say. She'd say I was the one who screwed up her life; and that no matter what I said or did, it would never ever bring back her little fighter. She lost him, and got me. Which was never going to be enough.

God stood by quietly as I beat myself up over the past. When I finally worked up the courage to look at him, his kind blue eyes were somehow kinder than before. When he spoke, his soft voice even softer.

"Call her," was all he said.

Which pretty much ended the debate right there. I just couldn't argue with someone who was being so nice.

"OK," I said. "I'll call her."

He seemed pleased with my decision.

It was then I realized how sad it is that we all hide behind masks. All of us. Some, like my mother, do it to conceal heartache; others, like me, do it to bury guilt. But we all do it. All the time. And the tragic thing is this: the masks we wear only serve to produce more of the things we try to conceal. When hidden, broken hearts and guilt compound exponentially.

So why do we do it? Why do we punish ourselves?

Maybe that guy who said we are our own worst enemy was right. Maybe the one person doing me the most harm was _me_.

I glanced at God. He was smiling.

"The doors of Hell are locked from the inside," he said.

I nodded with a sudden understanding.

"Yes they are," I replied. "Yes they are."

And on we walked in search of the right piece of ground.

# TWENTY

Entry #97

Let God be God, not what we would like him to be.

Martin Luther

**The one thing that surprised me most about God was** how easy it was to make him laugh. He had a good laugh, too. Not too loud or soft or fake-sounding. Plus he had happy eyes. I liked his eyes a lot.

"Are you always this way?" I said. "Light-hearted, I mean."

He nodded. "Actually I am. It's my default position."

"So what makes you happy?"

"Oh, small things, really," he said. "The smell of burning leaves in the fall. The sound of distant thunder. Sunsets. Rain. Children laughing.

He looked at me and smiled.

"You make me happy, Rachel. Just being out here with you brings me a special kind of joy."

I was suddenly so proud I thought I'd pop. Maybe I was wrong about that picture I drew of me as a little blade of grass. Maybe, just maybe, I wasn't so scrawny after all.

"But," I said, "do you ever stop and ask yourself, what was I thinking when I created this place?"'

He shook his head. "No, I never think that. There are some people who disappoint me, certainly, but as a whole I'm delighted with the way things have turned out. After all, I didn't create you because I was lonely."

"So why did you create us?" I asked.

Just then we crested a small hill and stopped walking. God placed both hands on his hips, and surveyed the horizon. I followed his gaze. A large body of water stretched out in front of us.

"Is this it?" I asked.

God nodded. "It's beautiful, don't you think?"

I told him it was. We stared at the water for a few moments. Finally God turned to me.

"It's getting rather late," he said. "I'm going to send you home now, but if you're willing, I'd like for you to return to St. Michael's first thing in the morning. I'll meet you there."

I told him I was already looking forward to it, and I was.

"Also," he said, "I'd like for you to walk to the church, if that's not too much trouble."

I told him of course I would.

"Excellent," he said. "Tomorrow we'll come back to this very spot. We're going to have fun over the next day or two."

God took both my hands in his.

"Rachel," he said, "I've enjoyed myself immensely this afternoon. Thank you so very much for spending the day with me."

Unaccustomed as I was to getting compliments from anyone, much less God, I blushed a deep shade of red. I think I actually said something like _Don't mention it_ , but I'm not sure.

"Oh, and tomorrow," God added, "I'll answer that question of yours."

"What question?"

"Why I created you," he said. "You might be surprised at the answer."

God hugged me then. It was wonderful. He smelled clean, like he'd just gotten out of the shower, and was cool to the touch, not hot and sweaty like me. I hugged him gently at first with my eyes open then closed them. Gradually my arms tightened, squeezing so hard I was afraid I'd cut off his circulation. His arms pulled tighter in response.

It reminded me of the time I was twelve years old and my dad caught me smoking a cigarette behind our house. Instead of yelling with anger, he hugged me instead. Feeling my father's arms around me taught me all I needed to know about unconditional love. I felt so good about him and bad about me that I never smoked another cigarette again.

Sometimes the best lessons are taught with a hug.

A moment later, I felt a slight wind against my cheek and the sensation of rapid movement. I opened my eyes. Once again I was back in the Confessional at St. Michael's. Alone. I paused to collect my bearings then hurried out of the church, half-afraid that some priest might tackle me before I made it outside, and force me to tell him what I'd been up to.

But I got away clean.

Twenty minutes later I was home.

# TWENTY-ONE

Entry #81

Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

**By the time I made it back to my apartment, it occurred** to me I'd gone the entire day without eating or drinking anything, and yet I wasn't hungry or thirsty. The only time I could remember doing that was when I was sick, and even then I had a sip of water or Sprite. I couldn't be sure if my lack of appetite was due to neglect or a miracle. In the off-chance it wasn't a miracle, I made myself some tomato soup then sat down in my "reading chair" to think about the events of the day.

My reading chair is an old-fashioned recliner my mom gave Joe and me after we got married. I named it that because when I was a kid, Dad would put me in his lap just before I went to bed and read the most wonderful stories to me: _Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are_ and _The Giving Tree_. Sometimes we watched old TV shows. Shows like _Andy Griffith_ or _I Love Lucy._ Comedies mostly. I loved them all. Still do.

My recliner didn't recline all that well anymore, and the arms were thread-bare and a couple springs sometimes poked me in the rear end when I sat down, but none of that mattered – I loved it. It was _our_ chair.

After I sat down, the first thing that came to mind was the overwhelming fact that I'd spent the afternoon with God. I had not merely been in the presence of a godly-person, but had actually talked to, walked with and listened to the Maker of all Mankind, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End. Me, Rachel Walker. God chose me.

Suddenly a long-forgotten memory came rushing back. I was ten years old and our family traveled to Italy on vacation. Being the good Catholics that we were, we scheduled a tour of the Vatican. We were just outside St. Peter's Square, which I discovered is actually round, when from out of nowhere here comes a guy we thought was the pope. As it turns out, he wasn't the pope, but it must have been someone important because he was surrounded by a gaggle of other priests who seemed to hang on to his every word. He was dressed all in red, including a red cape and a little red beanie for a hat. They were all talking with serious faces and hushed tones about who knows what, when the unthinkable happened. Just as they passed us, the man in the middle glanced in my direction. I'll never forget it. Our eyes met and locked together as if a thin, silver wire had suddenly pulled tight between us. He stopped abruptly, which forced his little band of priests to bump into each other like you see on the cartoons, except nobody laughed. Without saying a word, the main priest broke ranks and, much to my horror, walked straight as an arrow toward me. No one said a word. In fact, I think the whole place fell silent as the important man in red stopped directly in front of me, smiled and placed his hand on my head.

"What is your name?" he asked.

I told him, and to this day I can still hear the five words he spoke

"Rachel, God is with you."

Then he rejoined his group and a moment later was gone.

Mom was so flabbergasted she immediately had to go pee. Dad kept kicking himself for not taking any pictures, and Steve was so awed by the experience that he wouldn't let me wash my hair for a week afterward.

Me, on the other hand, I felt none of those things. What I felt instead was that I had been _chosen._ Chosen for what, I had no idea, but still I had the definite sense of being singled out for something. And since it was an important priest in an important place that did the singling-out, I felt _I_ must be important.

When I got back to school, our teacher asked what we had done over the summer. I told them about the priest but not about the feeling. They wouldn't have believed it anyway. Of course, as time went on and nothing spectacular happened, I quit believing it, too. I wrote off the whole episode as a Vatican publicity stunt. Something the pope instructed his priest to do every so often, just to make the little people feel important.

Of course today all of that had changed. I now had reason to believe I _had_ been chosen, and that somehow the man in the red beanie knew it. I made a mental note to ask God about it when I got the chance.

Twice that night I picked up the phone to call my mother but chickened out both times. I believed God when he told me the best thing I could do for her was listen and care. I was OK with listening. It was the caring I wasn't sure about. Caring was risky. It's a dangerous thing to give your heart to someone who has pulverized it so many times that you've lost count.

Nevertheless, God asked me to do it. So I did it.

I picked up the phone a third time. To my relief, after a couple rings, it went to voicemail.

"Hi, Mom," I said. "It's me. No particular reason for calling. Just wanted to check in and see you how you were doing."

I pictured my mother standing by the phone, arms crossed, a slight frown on her face, wondering what had gotten into me.

"Hope you're OK," I continued. "I love you. Call me when you get home."

Click.

After I hung up, I realized I'd just done three things I hadn't done in years. One, expressed an interest in how my mother was doing. Two, told her, unsolicited, that I loved her; and three, asked her to do the one thing that I daily dreaded she would do: call me.

This was totally unlike me. I'm an avoider by nature. When given the option of doing or not doing something uncomfortable, I almost always avoid doing it. But I guess being around God for half a day was changing me. It was making me do things I once thought unthinkable.

I've heard it said that God moves in mysterious ways. Well, the way he was moving with me was mysterious beyond belief. But believe it I did.

Little did I know at the time how mysterious it would soon become.

# TWENTY-TWO

Entry #111

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

TUESDAY

**The next morning, I awoke early, around seven a.m.,** showered, ate a bowl of Coco-Puffs and sat down at the kitchen table with a small notepad. I wrote down a list of questions I wanted to ask. If I was going to spend a couple days with the smartest guy in the universe, I wanted to make sure I made good use of our time.

After two cups of coffee and six really good questions, I stuck the notepad in my back pocket and headed for St. Michael's. The day was going to be special. I just knew it.

I considered calling my mother before I left but opted not to. She was still probably trying to figure out why I called last night. If I called again so soon, she might panic. And the morning was starting out so well that I didn't want to mess it up with a panicked mother.

Twenty minutes later I walked into St. Michael's and went straight to the Confessional. The green light was on. I went in. As I stepped through the door, I wasn't sure if I would arrive back at the lake or if I had to go through Confession all over again. I hoped for immediate transport, but what I got was nothing. The Confessional was empty, as was the booth next to me, as far as I could tell. I checked my watch. Almost 8:30. God had said _first thing in_ _the morning_ , which I now guessed could have been earlier. This caused a terrible question to pop into my head. What if God had been waiting for a couple hours, got impatient and left without me? He said he didn't get angry very often but didn't mention anything about getting antsy. Leaving without me hardly made sense, though. I was the reason he showed up in the first place, so the last thing he would do is take off empty-handed. Finally I decided I was early, and sat down to await instructions.

After a few minutes I started my confession.

"Bless me, Father," I said. "For I have sinned."

I said that just in case God snuck in without my realizing it. I got no response. A couple minutes later, I tried again, but got the same answer. After another ten minutes, which seemed like ten hours, I opened the door to the Confessional and peeked out. Maybe I'd passed God somehow without knowing it.

The empty sanctuary was no longer empty. Sitting in the front pew, directly in front of the crucifix, was a young black woman, wearing a bright yellow dress and, of all things, a pair of sunglasses. She moved to the prayer rail in front of the altar and kneeled. She was tall and slender and there was something about the way that she moved that was graceful, almost cat-like. I took a seat in the back row and watched carefully.

She bowed her head for a few moments then stood, made the sign of the cross and turned up the aisle toward me. I dropped my gaze so she wouldn't think I was watching her. When she passed by, I heard this...

"Good morning, Rachel. Sorry to keep you waiting."

I'm sure I looked as surprised as I felt. I react that way anytime someone I don't know calls me by name, especially when it turns out I _do_ know them, but when I did they were much older, and of the opposite sex.

"Oh, good morning," I said. "I didn't recognize you."

God smiled a radiant smile, her teeth sparkling white against the dark skin of her face.

"I should have prepared you for this," she said. "I try to appear according to people's expectations, but occasionally I like to help them stretch those expectations."

I told her I liked the idea of God being female, and asked if she would be someone else later in the day.

"No," she replied with another smile. "One person per day seems to do it."

"May I ask you a question before we go?" I said.

"Of course. Anything."

"What were you doing just now? At the altar. It looked like you were praying."

"I was praying," she said.

Which struck me as ironic, but I didn't want my next question to sound cynical, because I wasn't. I truly wanted to know.

"But if you're God, who do you pray to?"

She sat next to me.

"Rachel, prayer is not always about you talking to me. It's also about me talking to you. I begin each day listening and responding. Sort of like when you check your e-mail."

"Does that mean you only listen once a day?"

"No, I listen all day," she said. "But whenever I get the chance, I like to kneel in a house of worship. It keeps me in touch with the roots of my creation."

"Do you do that very often?" I asked. " Appear as a human in a church here on earth?"

"Oh, several times a day," God said as her smile widened. "And not always in a church. Sometimes it's a school or the grocery store or occasionally I might just turn up at night in an empty parking lot."

She paused long enough for me to put the pieces together.

"That was you?" I asked.

She laughed. "No, that was Daniel. He's an angel. An arch-angel actually. He's very special."

I was amazed. "You sent an angel to protect me?"

She nodded. "And to comfort you at your husband's funeral," she said. "And especially to speak to you after you took the pills."

Suddenly I was embarrassed. Ashamed actually. I'd hoped God hadn't noticed the pills. I was wrong of course. God notices everything.

"May I ask you another question before we go?" I ventured.

"Of course," she replied.

"Why are you wearing sunglasses?"

She didn't answer as quickly as I thought she might, and when she did, her response was not one I anticipated. She removed her sunglasses. It was obvious that she had been crying. Then for reasons even I don't understand, I told her I was sorry.

"Don't be," she said. "Tears of sadness can sometimes be an expression of joy." She turned and looked at the crucifix. "But looking at what they did to him always makes me sad. Sad for him that it happened, but joyful for the world that it did."

Both of us quietly stared at the concrete Jesus nailed to the concrete cross, and I too felt a sense of sadness. A sadness I'd never experienced before when looking at the crucifix.

"It was horrible," she said, tears in her eyes again. "They stripped him, beat him, kicked him, spit on him. They nailed his hands and feet to a dirty piece of wood then hung him up in public so that everyone could watch."

Now I was the one crying.

"So why did you allow it to happen?" I asked.

God looked steadfastly at her Son without speaking then slowly, quietly, she whispered these words.

"Because they wanted to kill him."

There are times in life when you know the best thing to say is absolutely nothing, so that's what I did.

After a few minutes, God patted my hand, and asked if I was ready to go. I told her I was, and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, we were standing at the edge of the lake from yesterday. God was nearby, adjusting the legs of what looked like a small telescope, which I later discovered was a transom.

Our work for the day had begun.

# TWENTY-THREE

Entry #31

Buddha, was he where it's at/Is he were you are?  
Could Mohammed move a mountain/Or was that just PR?

Tim Rice

**As we began our work each day, I noticed that some** where between St. Michael's and the field, God always changed clothes. Yesterday he started out in a jacket and slacks, but ended up in jeans and a work shirt. Today she started out in a dress and heels, but now had on a baseball cap, khakis and a white t-shirt. I guess being all things to all people means dressing like them, too.

"Have you ever done any surveying?" God asked.

I told her no, but that once when I was in the third grade my cousin Leonard and I buried a jar full of pennies and drew a pirate's map leading to it.

God laughed. "I remember that map. It was really quite good. Especially the part with the skull and cross-bones and the words 'Here There Be Dragons.' That was a nice touch."

I was surprised that God would remember something as trivial as a kid's map, but even more surprised that she seemed to take delight in the memory itself. She sounded more like a doting parent than the Lord of the Universe.

"The section of ground that we need," God said, "needs be three hundred meters deep, two hundred meters wide, and incorporate the lake on one side. If you'd like, I can shoot the four corners of our plat with the transom and direct you to the spot where you can mark it with these." She held up a handful of small white flags. "As we measure, we can talk."

"Is it OK if we pick up where we left off yesterday?" I asked.

God agreed, so that's where I began.

"Why did you create us?"

She unfolded the legs of the tripod.

"I hope this doesn't sound like a glib answer," she said. "But I created you out of love."

"Because you needed something or rather someone to love?"

She shook her head.

"Not exactly. I don't have the emotion of love that needs to be expressed – I _am_ love. It's at the very center of my being. And the quality of your entire being is measured by how much of it you're willing to give away."

I was in danger of getting lost in the metaphor, so I took a stab at what I thought she meant.

"So the gift of our life is your contribution of love."

Her smile was warm like the sun.

"Exactly," she said. "I didn't create you in order to love you. I created you _because_ I love you."

I was glad to hear that. I was afraid God created us to keep her company, and we screwed everything up in the Garden of Eden.

Suddenly I recalled the last conversation I'd had with Goldberg. The one about how messed up religion is in general and Christianity in particular.

"What about Heaven?" I said. "Is there such a place?"

God attached the transom to the tripod.

"There is," she replied. "I created the heavens and the earth at basically the same time."

"And good people end up going there, right? To heaven, I mean."

God nodded. "That's why I created it, yes."

And being a good Christian will help me become a good person."

Another nod.

I thought hard about my next question. I wanted to make sure I got it right before I spoke. Finally I just ended up saying it.

"So is Christianity the _only_ road to Heaven?"

Instead of answering me, God kept fiddling with the transom. She'd take a sighting, twist a couple knobs, then take another sighting, then twist a couple more knobs. I couldn't tell if she was stalling or trying really hard to make sure she got the measurement right.

"Think of it this way," she replied finally. "Christianity _is_ the only road to Heaven, but I've made provisions that allow other religions to travel that road."

I had no idea what she meant.

"OK, here's what I really want to know," I said. "Will there be Jews in Heaven?"

God winked at me.

"Jesus was a Jew," she said. "And he's in Heaven."

"But," I countered, "will there be Jews in Heaven who don't think of Jesus as your son?"

"Certainly."

I was somewhat surprised. "How about Buddhists?"

"Yes."

"And Muslims?"

"Quite a few actually."

"But how is that possible?" I asked. "Doesn't Christianity teach that in order to get to Heaven, you have to be, well, a Christian?"

God spoke with infinite patience.

"What Christianity teaches," she said, "is that I loved the _world_ so much that I gave my only son to save it. That includes everyone, not just the few."

I ran that through the mill a couple times.

"So" I said finally, "it's possible to believe in Jesus _without_ being a Christian."

"Absolutely," God replied. "The world doesn't consist of one hundred per cent Christian or non-Christian. Their camps are not so evenly divided. There are people who call themselves followers of Christ who are slowly ceasing to be Christians all together. And there are others who have never heard of Christ, who are great followers of his without realizing it."

I had a sudden epiphany, which was wonderful because I don't get them too often.

"That sort of levels the playing field, doesn't it?" I said. "For those people living on an island somewhere in New Guinea who've never seen a book much less a Bible."

God seemed pleased with my breakthrough.

"Rachel, I would never exclude anyone based on something as trivial as race or nationality or even religion. My only requirement is that your heart be the same as mine. And if it is, the only thing I ask of you is to give me your hand."

Suddenly the doubts I had about Christianity crumbled like a house of cards. Thanks to Goldberg, I had trouble accepting my own religion as true because I thought it taught all other religions were false. What I now understood was that far from excluding people of other Faiths, Christianity embraced them instead.

"I love all my children," God continued. "Whether they pray in a church, bow in a mosque, or kneel in a temple. I created them all out of love, and can do nothing but love them regardless of what they think of one another."

It was at that moment, while standing in a field the color of gold, surrounded by a cloudless sky, a placid lake and the truth, I came to understand who the man Jesus really was. He was not the Savior of Christianity – _he was the Savior of the world._

"Shall we start measuring now?" God said.

And so we did.

# TWENTY-FOUR

Entry #51

Be kinder than necessary to everyone you meet because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.

James M. Barrie

**Here's the way our measuring worked: God established** a point fifty meters in the distance through her transom. I'd walk in a straight line to that point, stick a flag in the ground, and wait for her to catch up. She would take another shot and we'd repeat the procedure. As I walked I formulated new questions. When she caught up to me, she answered them. It was a very good system.

At the first flag I pulled out the notepad with my six questions, and fired away.

"You say we should love our neighbors, right?"

"Right."

"Even if we don't like them all that much."

God chuckled a little.

"Especially those you don't like all that much."

As a kid I always wondered how I was supposed to like someone I couldn't stand. I once asked a nun to explain it but all she gave me was a dirty look, so I quit asking.

Not that the question went away. I mean, how was I supposed to love the terrorists of the world or the guy who just committed a murder or the woman who left her three kids to fend for themselves while she went out dancing night after night?

I asked God to help me work through this dilemma.

She handed me a handful of flags.

"To begin with," she said. "You have to understand what the word _love_ means."

"I always thought it meant simply liking someone a lot," I offered.

"That's a partial definition," she said, then indicated I should walk fifty meters to the next point, which I did. When she caught up to me, she picked up our conversation exactly where we left it.

"Love," she said, "has several meanings. There's the romantic love you feel for someone, which is different than the love you feel for your best friend, or even the love you feel for your family. Those are three different and distinct emotions."

"But" I said, "I don't see how I can apply any of them to people I don't care for."

"That's because there's a fourth love," she said as she took her next sighting. "The Greek word for it is _agape."_

I told God it sounded familiar but I wasn't sure what it meant.

"It means," she said, "that no matter what people do to you by way of insult, injury or humiliation, you will never wish them harm."

God set up her transom and began another round of measurements.

"Agape," she continued, "is a feeling of the mind, Rachel, as much as the heart, the will as much as the emotions. It is the deliberate effort to only wish the best for those who wish for you the worst."

... _the deliberate effort to only wish the best for those who wish for you the worst."_

That was so good I yanked out my notebook and wrote it down.

"So does that mean if someone hits me, I shouldn't hit them back?"

"No, no," God replied. "That's different. If someone spits in your face, you don't have to say it's raining. Hitting someone who hits you without cause is not revenge, it's self-defense. But if someone calls you a name, it is not necessary to call him one in return."

"So I don't necessarily have to like someone to love him," I said.

"Precisely. Always remember that kindness is within your power even when fondness is not."

I wrote that one down too.

Suddenly it occurred to me how I could love the only person in the world I ever hated: Old Man Martin.

Martin lived next door to us when I was a kid. He had more hate in him than anyone I've ever known. He hated kids, animals, traffic, the weather, you name it, he hated it. Once he called the police on me and my brother because he claimed we knocked out one of his windows with a baseball. Actually we _did_ knock out one of his windows, but here's the thing: he only called the police _after_ we went over to apologize for it. He didn't even know it was broken until we told him.

But that's not why I hated him.

I hated him because he poisoned my dog.

My dog Echo dug a hole under our fence and got into Martin's trash, dragging some of it out into the street. Unfortunately, his trash included several magazines with explicit content. By the time Martin figured out what was going on, half the kids in the neighborhood (I was not one of them by the way) were happily ogling the photos right there in front of his house.

Martin had a meltdown.

He ran outside, still dressed in a bathrobe, flailing his arms and yelling for everyone to get off _his_ street. He didn't call the police though. He was probably too embarrassed to get them involved. He just grabbed his magazines and stormed back in the house, muttering words I'd never heard before.

Two days later Echo was dead.

The Vet said he'd eaten a poisoned piece of meat that was still in his stomach. Everyone knew who did it but it was impossible to prove.

And so I grew to hate Old Man Martin. When you're a kid there aren't many things worse than knowing you have a dog-killer living next to you. But when he kills _your_ dog, it's ten times worse. It's like he killed a member of our family, and got away with it. I hated him for it.

Today, however, just this minute in fact, agape taught me that I could actually love a man like Old Man Martin without really liking him. I didn't have to have warm, fuzzy thoughts for him. All I had to do was tell myself that if I ever got the chance to kill his dog, I wouldn't do it.

So that's what I did. I told myself exactly that.

And the moment I made that conscious decision, I felt a sudden load being lifted from my shoulders. Literally. It was almost a physical sensation of becoming somehow lighter, more buoyant. It was the same feeling I had the first time I met God.

And in having that sensation, I had this thought: For twenty-one years I'd carried with me the weight of hatred for a man I barely knew. And somehow that particular hatred had poisoned my life much the same as he had poisoned my dog.

Was that possible?

Surely not. Surely I was too mature for that.

But if it _was_ possible, what other forms of hatred or anger or unconscious bitterness was I holding onto that were equally as poisonous?

I looked at God who was looking at me.

She smiled.

"Agape makes life easier, doesn't it?" she said.

I told her it did.

"All you need is love," she said.

I told her it was.

And then we went back to work.

# TWENTY-FIVE

Entry #42

Everyone says forgiveness is such a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.

C.S. Lewis

" **You said you love all your children, right?" I asked.**

God was busy with another measurement.

"Absolutely," she said.

"And that means everyone, even those who don't love you."

"Especially those who don't love me."

I fought with asking the next question. In fact, I decided not to ask it when, much to my surprise, it popped out anyway.

"Do you love someone who commits murder?"

God pushed her glasses onto her forehead, which I thought was either a really good or a really bad sign. I was pretty sure by now that if I upset her, she wasn't going to turn me into a lizard or anything, but I hated the idea that I might offend her.

Turns out it was a good sign.

"Yes," she said, "I love a murderer, but not in the way you think of love. I have no admiration or affection for him. I love him in that I created him; he is one of my children."

"Does it bother you," I said, "when they harm other people?"

"It breaks my heart," God said. "But it doesn't diminish my love for them."

She went back to the transom.

"Nor," she continued, "does it mean I will quit trying to help them change."

Once again I wasn't sure if I was crossing the line with my questions, but there was something I had to clarify.

"Are there any sins you won't forgive?"

"No," she said. "None whatsoever."

"OK," I said, "let's say Adolph Hitler, on his deathbed, asked forgiveness. Would you have given it?"

God answered without hesitation.

"Yes," she said then quickly added. "If it was sincere."

I was surprised. Somehow I expected her to tell me what a vile and despicable creature Hitler was, and that she had reserved a special little place in Hell just for him. One that was hotter than normal.

"But let me make one thing clear," she continued. "Hitler did not ask for forgiveness. In fact, he couldn't."

"He _couldn't_ ask?" I said. "Why not?"

God handed me another flag.

"Because the kind of remorse that merits my forgiveness does not occur instantaneously. Contrition is a gradual process. Deathbed confessions are seldom sincere. More often than not, when someone confesses their sins at the moment of death, it's not because he's sorry, it's because he suddenly believes in Hell."

I started to laugh but didn't because God said it with a straight face.

"Does that mean Hell is a real place?" I asked.

"Yes, most certainly."

This was a major letdown. I was secretly hoping that Hell was something the early Christians made up as a scare tactic to keep people on the straight and narrow. I know it worked for me as a kid. The image of fire and brimstone gave me more than a couple nightmares. I'm not sure it actually kept me from doing some things I shouldn't have, but it was always at the back of my mind as I was doing them.

I asked God about the fire and brimstone part.

"The best way to describe Hell," she said, "is that it is eternal separation from me. A separation, by the way, that is much worse than a fiery furnace."

Suddenly my stomach dropped.

"Does that mean Satan is real, too?"

"Oh, yes," she replied. "Satan exists. He doesn't have hooves, horns and a forked tail, but he's real. Very real."

What does he look like?"

"Like anything or anyone he wishes," she said. "He's the Great Chameleon. The Dark Changling."

This was not going well at all.

"Then is he someone who can harm me physically?" I said.

God shook her head.

"No, I would never allow that. First and foremost, Satan is a liar. He's known in Hell as _Diabolos_ or Deceiver. In fact, his greatest deception is convincing people he doesn't even exist."

We arrived at the next spot and again God set up her surveying equipment. I flipped open my notebook, anxious to go onto another question. I'd heard enough about the Great Chameleon for now.

"How old is the earth?" I asked.

God adjusted a couple knobs on the transom.

"The latest estimate your scientists have is around 14 billion years, give or take."

"Is that accurate ?"

"Not even close," she said. "It's twice that age. But 'The Big Bang Theory' is a very good explanation of how it all started."

I was thrilled for some reason.

"So," I exclaimed. "There was an explosion after all!"

"Oh my, yes," God said. "It was enormous. I made sure of that. In fact, it was so great that the earth is still receiving sound waves generated by it."

This idea staggered me.

"Do you mean we can still hear the Creation?"

"Absolutely," God replied. "Anyone can. Turn on your radio, and switch it between stations. That static you hear – a very small portion of it – is the actual sound of the Creation 28 billion years ago. Your scientists call it _cosmic background radiation_ , but nicknamed it 'God's Whisper.' I always liked that name."

Suddenly a related thought popped into my head.

"What about evolution?" I asked.

"What about it?"

"It's such a big controversy. Some people believe we evolved over a long period of time. Others believe you created us the way we are now."

"What do you think?" God asked.

This was the first time God asked what I thought before she gave me the answer. It was a tactic Goldberg used, but with God it felt different. It felt like she really wanted to know what I thought.

"I want to believe in the Creation story," I said. "But it's hard to ignore the fossil record."

A thin smile spread across her face.

"And what does the fossil record show?" she asked.

"That we evolved over a long period of time."

"And what does the Bible say?"

I took my time with this one. I wanted to make sure I got it right. Finally I answered with a degree of certainty.

"That you created us the way we are."

The thin smile widened.

"Are you sure it doesn't just say that God created man and woman in God's own image?"

Again I took my time.

"OK," I conceded. "Technically that's probably what it says, but it does say you did it in one day."

"When Moses wrote that," God said, "he didn't mean twenty-four hours. To me a day is a thousand years and a thousand years a day."

"So which one is right?" I asked. "Creation or evolution?"

"They both are," she replied. "Creation and evolution are different sides of the same coin. They can and _do_ co-exist."

I felt a headache coming on. That happens when I've been using my brain more than normal.

"I'm still not sure I understand," I said.

God kneeled down and with a stick began drawing figures in the dirt. The first figure was a fish, followed by a bird, then what appeared to be a monkey, but could have been my Uncle Sal who was so hairy he had to shave his back. Last of all she drew the outline of a man.

"If," she said, "evolution means that a positive thing called a fish evolved over a long period of time into a positive thing called man, then evolution is a non-issue."

She drew a circle that encompassed all the figures.

"Why should it matter," she said, "if I chose to create man slowly rather than quickly? Especially since time, as you know it, doesn't exist for me."

I concentrated hard. Finally it hit me.

"Then Darwin got it right," I said with surprise.

God nodded. "Most of it, yes. But then so did Moses."

I liked that. It was nice to know one side could be right without the other being wrong. I wish more of life was like that.

We both stood then and surveyed our work for the day. We had a large rectangular area of grass, marked by white flags at fifty meter intervals, with a large lake at one end.

"This is a good beginning," God said. "What do you think?"

"What exactly is it that we're building?" I asked.

She winked at me.

"Something magical," she said.

Without further explanation, I got two impressions: one, whatever we were building was going to be a surprise; and two, our day's work was done.

"It's time for me to go, isn't it?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, and again thanked me for spending the day with her, like it meant as much to her as it did me.

Then she hugged me. And once again the touch of God's skin against mine was marvelous. Hers was satin-smooth and cool like porcelain, and she smelled just like God did yesterday, fresh-out-of-the-shower clean, but this time with a hint of jasmine. As I pressed my head to her chest I felt her heartbeat against my cheek. She seemed so human and yet so much more. A moment later I closed my eyes, and just like that, I was back in St. Michael's.

Twenty minutes later I was home.

# TWENTY-SIX

Entry #25

If someone proved to me that God is outside the truth, then I should prefer to remain with God rather than with the truth.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

**As soon as I walked into my apartment, I checked my** phone messages. There were none. I wasn't all that surprised. Just because I'd called my mother out of the blue was no reason why she should return the favor, even though I'd asked her to. It occurred to me that maybe she had tried and I wasn't home, so I checked all incoming calls. There were two: one from a number I didn't recognize and one from the same area code as my mother's but not her home or cell phone. Maybe she got a new cell phone. Maybe she got a new home. Either way, it gave me hope that at least she'd tried to get in touch with me, and even false hope is better than no hope at all.

After dinner, I plopped down in my reading chair and went back through the events of the day.

The morning had started off with a surprise when God showed up looking like someone else. But that shouldn't have surprised me really; after all, the way she appeared to me was not even close to what she actually looked like, which was sunlight.

One time Joe asked me, Rachel, what would happen if we get to Heaven, and find out that God's black? Or female? Or both? Wouldn't that be great?

I told him it would be great. Of course at the time I had no idea that God was also elderly and white, and who knows what he would be tomorrow. Which was OK with me – I like surprises.

Another thing I discovered today is that God has the same emotions I do. When I met her this morning, she was crying. Crying over the fate of her son, which was horrible enough to make any parent cry, but still, it surprised me that after two thousand years, it continued to affect her so.

Then again who is to say what should or should not bother you when you don't just have love, but you _are_ love. Try as I may I couldn't get my head around that one. I think the concept was too big for me to grasp. It was like an ant trying to explain the Internet. But if love was the reason she created us, then who was I to question her motives?

Suddenly a wonderful thought occurred: Just think, if God loves me so much now when there is so little to love, imagine what it will be like when I clean up my act?

Up until now I always felt like no matter what I did, it would never be enough to please God, so at some point in time I think I quit trying. Now I had a reason to start all over again. But start over in a less frantic way because I didn't have to earn her affection – it was free. And free beats earned any day

What it all boiled down to was this: God's love is not based on what I do, but who she is. And there's an unspeakable comfort in knowing that the way she feels about me today is based on knowing the worst about me tomorrow.

Amazing.

What was also amazing was the fact that Christianity was not what I had grown to believe it was, which was this fraternity of bishops and priests and nuns who felt they, and they alone, had all the answers. As it turns out, a lot of people outside the Christian faith have answers. Jesus may be the only road to God, but Christianity is not the only road to Jesus. Which was OK by me. At least it gave the other two-thirds of the world's population an equal chance on reaching Heaven.

I scratched off the questions in my notebook that we had discussed, and underlined the ones we missed. I figured tomorrow, I'd ask them.

Next I pulled out my Bible, turned to the first page and read these words:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  
The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness.  
And the Spirit of God was hovering over its surface. Then God said,  
"Let there be light," and there was light.  
And God saw that it was good.

I'd read this passage as a kid, thinking of it more as a fairy tale than for what it actually was: the simple truth. A poetic yet genuine rendering of how the universe began. Told in a way that made sense to its readers thousands of years ago but one that was still valid for the world I lived in today.

I glanced at the clock. It was twelve-thirty. I felt tired, but it was the good kind of tired, the kind of tired you get after a full and rewarding day.

I brushed my teeth and crawled into bed. I lay there for a few minutes before I decided to do two things; one, I said a prayer, which I hadn't done in I don't know how long at bedtime. It was short and to the point. I simply thanked God for coming into my life, and that I hoped I wasn't too much of a disappointment to her.

The second thing I did was turn on my bedside radio and select a station that produced only static. Then, in the darkness of my bedroom, while the world outside rushed along in its frenzied pace, I listened to the sounds of the universe being created – _God's Whisper_ – and drifted off into a perfect and dreamless sleep.

# TWENTY-SEVEN

Entry #70

The great tragedy of this age is that we are standing at the crossroads, and the signposts have fallen down.

Mark Twain

WEDNESDAY

**I was up early the next morning, showered, ate breakfast,** and was on my way to St. Michael's, all within the hour. As I passed Rainy Day Books, a large poster in the window announced the arrival of the latest installment of the Charlie Winston Chronicles. This was the fifth of seven books chronicling the adventures of a young wizard-in-training Charlie Winston. The first book was released with little fanfare in Great Britain, where I assume witches and wizards are more common, but surprised everyone everywhere when it took the publishing world by storm. Before you knew it, the author was bigger than the Beatles and richer than the Queen of England.

Standing next to this poster was a woman holding another poster, also about Charlie but not nearly as flattering. Her poster had Charlie's picture on it, only a set of horns had been painted on the top of his head with a magic marker, and these words were printed beneath his photo:

Behind this innocent face is the  
power of Satanic Darkness!  
Christians Unite!  
Charlie Winston is the anti-Christ!

Evidently a very small group of very vocal people with the Bible on their mind and a lot of free time on their hands, not only read the Winston books but read _into_ them all sorts of evil and subversive messages. They called themselves the "Disciples of Truth" or DOT for short. I read the first couple Charlie Winston novels when they first came out, long before anyone found Satan lurking in their pages. All I noticed was a group of hyper-active but run-of-the-mill kids who stumbled onto some exciting adventures with mythical creatures and imaginary villains. None of which were half as scary as the average Grimm's Fairy Tale or those flying monkey's in the Wizard of Oz.

Nevertheless, DOT, whose mission in life was to ferret out the dark forces in children's literature, decided that Charlie was up to no-good, and that it was their job to stop the children of America from falling into Satanism. The fact that they did it in the name of Christ seemed to me ironic because the ultimate goal of Charlie was to defeat the ultimate bad guy Pendergast, which I thought more or less is what Christianity was all about. Evidently, one group's Satan is another group's Savior.

As I walked past the lone protester, I avoided direct eye contact, but she managed to thrust a flyer into my hand nevertheless.

"Stop Satan in his tracks," she said with surprising passion. "Ban Charlie Winston!"

I thanked her and pretended to read the information she'd given me. I hate to hurt other people's feelings, regardless of how far removed those feelings are from mine. As soon as I rounded the corner, I chucked the flyer in the nearest waste bin.

A few minutes later, I reached St. Michael's, entered the sanctuary and was half-way to the Confessional when it occurred to me to look toward the altar for God. Sure enough, there she was, kneeling in prayer as yesterday. I sat down quietly in the last row of pews and waited.

It wasn't more than two minutes that she rose, made the sign of the cross and turned in my direction. As soon as she did, I could tell she was no longer a she. God was once again a man. A middle-aged man, in fact, with distinct Asian features. I barely had time to wonder if maybe this wasn't God, but an actual member of the church who had just dropped by for an early morning prayer, when he stopped directly in front of me.

"Good morning, Rachel," he said. "I hope you slept well."

I told him it was the best night's sleep I'd had in six months.

God sat down next to me, quietly folded his hands in his lap and stared straight ahead. I mirrored his body language, and we sat like that for a few moments before he spoke.

"Church buildings are interesting, don't you think?"

"Interesting?" I asked. "In what way?"

"There's such variety. Some are built on a magnificent scale with spires and arches and leaded stained glass while others are quite simple and plain, with wooden floors and pews."

"Do you have a preference?"

"No," he replied. "I like diversity – in everything."

"How about some of the megachurches today that have gone high-tech?" I asked. "With those big screen TVs and sound systems? Going to their worship service is like going to a rock concert."

"Oh, I love what they're doing!" God replied happily. "Anything that will get people into the seats, especially the young ones."

"I used to go all the time, but don't anymore," I confessed. "The thing is, I don't know why. I just sort of drifted away."

"That's the way it usually happens," God said with a sigh. "Slowly. Very slowly."

A sudden thought occurred.

"So going to church is important," I said.

"It's one of the most important things you can do," God said.

"And people who go to church tend to be better people as a result, right?"

He nodded. "It's not a guarantee, but more often than not, yes."

What I said next surprised me so much I blushed.

"But some of the meanest people I know go to church all the time."

I was referring to Old Man Martin. He was even what they called a deacon at his church, which I think was a big deal.

"I agree," God said. "Merely going to church doesn't make you a better person any more than standing in a garden makes you a flower."

I wrote that one down, too.

"So if going to church doesn't make you a better person," I said, "what does?"

"You become a better person," God said. "when you're kind. When you treat others with respect. When you genuinely care for the man who is homeless or child who is hungry. That is what people of faith do."

"That's it?" I said.

God nodded. "More or less."

"Well, heck," I said. "I care about all kinds of people."

"Ah, yes," he said with a smile. "Caring is good, but what are you _doing_?"

Good question.

Granted, of late, I had little time or energy to think of ways to help the less fortunate because I _was_ one of the less fortunate. But what had I done when times were good? When I had my health, my family and my sanity? Very little I'm afraid. I might donate a sweater or two to the Salvation Army, and once I served meals at a shelter for battered women, but that was about it. Whenever I saw pictures of those skinny little kids starving in Africa or someplace, I just wanted somebody to get them another bowl of rice. I never once thought maybe I should give them that bowl of rice.

I never thought that. Not once. Ever.

Why?

I mean, I had so much and they had so little.

It was easy to say I didn't do it because of how busy I was being a daughter, a friend, a wife, and a teacher. I simply didn't have time. It was much harder to say I didn't do it because I wasn't nearly as concerned about them as I led myself to believe.

I stewed on this revelation about myself a few minutes. It was tough to accept at first, but sometimes the truth is tough.

Finally I said to God, "I understand what you mean about feeling less and doing more."

God smiled while staring straight ahead.

"I know you do," he said. "And I appreciate it."

We spent the next few minutes just sitting there. We didn't talk much. We just sat and thought and admired the church we were in. It was a lovely time of silence.

Finally God stood.

"Very well," he said. "We have a big day ahead of us. Shall we go to work now?"

And so we did.

# TWENTY-EIGHT

Entry #9

There are no shortcuts in life – only those we imagine.

Thomas Carlyle

**In the blink of an eye, we were once again back at the** worksite. At St. Michael's God was wearing all black: black shirt, slacks and shoes. Now he wore blue jeans, sweatshirt and boots. His sweatshirt bore the University of Notre Dame logo.

"Are you a fan of the Fighting Irish?" I asked jokingly.

"Oh, I never miss one of their games," God said. "Especially when they play Michigan. Now that's a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon."

I was surprised. "Does that mean you favor one team over the other?"

God allowed me to stare at him for a moment before I noticed that his sweatshirt now had the University of Michigan logo on it.

"I don't play favorites," he said with a smile. "I just like the sport."

I told him I felt the same, although I was a Cubs fan, which was sort of like not having a sports team. I meant it as a joke, and that's the way God took it because he laughed.

"You might be surprised how the Cubbies do in a couple years," he said.

I made a mental note of that, just in case I got a chance to bet on them.

"OK," God announced. "On Monday we found the ground, on Tuesday we surveyed it, today we're going to mow it."

"Mow it?" I asked. "With what?"

He pointed behind me.

"With that," he said.

Behind me was a huge green tractor, a bush hog I think they call it, with not one but two seats. God climbed behind the wheel.

"Hop on," he said. "This is going to be fun."

I plopped down into the passenger seat.

"Are you all-powerful?" I asked.

God turned the key in the ignition and the tractor came to life, but without the loud roar I'd expected.

"Yes," he said, in answer to my question.

"And all-powerful means you can do just about anything you want?"

God shifted into gear, pressed the accelerator and the tractor lurched forward.

"Yes," he said again.

"Then wouldn't it be quicker, just to blink your eyes and whatever it is we're building would, you know, just _appear_?"

"Ah," God said, "but is quicker always better?"

"It may not be better," I answered. "But it would be more efficient."

God looked at me with a twinkle in those Asian eyes.

"Then the question becomes," he said, "is more efficient better?"

If Goldberg had been asking these questions, I would have felt I was being challenged. As it was, I got the feeling I was in the process of learning something.

"But isn't anything done more efficiently usually better?" I asked.

God shifted gears and our speed increased.

"Remember when you were ten years old," he said. "And you and your brother Steve built that wonderful tree house?"

Which of course I did. Vividly.

"Yes," I said. "How could I forget it? We worked on it all summer long."

"Remember the feeling you had when you just finished the job?" he said. "When you stood back and looked at what you'd accomplished?"

Which of course was easy to do also. Originally Steve and I asked Dad to build it for us but he declined, which surprised us both a little. So we did it ourselves.

We found just the right tree and somehow managed to haul all our materials to just the right spot and built a fairly impressive platform, walls and a roof. All summer long, we worked and worked and worked on it, in the heat, humidity, wind and rain, fighting off mosquitoes (it was Georgia, after all) and flies while ignoring minor cuts, mashed thumbs and splinters galore. On the day it was finally done, we stood back with a small sense of wonder, awe almost, and admired our handiwork. It was a very special feeling; one that had stuck with me all these years.

"Sometimes," God said. "work is its own reward."

"OK, I get it," I said.

God smiled. "Excellent. Now, what would you like to talk about today?"

I pulled out my notebook and fired away.

"Have you ever done anything you've regretted?" I asked.

God shook his head.

"No, never," he said then laughed. "Although the hairless cat didn't turn out quite the way I planned."

I told him we had a cat once. Her name was Goldie. She lived to be fourteen years old, which was amazing considering all the dogs in the neighborhood were out to get her.

"Goldie was a sweet pet," God said. "And a very good climber. I made sure her claws stayed nice and sharp."

Which I thought was interesting.

"You mean you keep an eye on pets, like you do us?"

"I keep an eye on everything," he said. "It's what I do. It's my job."

"So you've never done anything you wished you hadn't."

God thought for a moment then shook his head.

"No," he replied. "But I've surprised myself a few times."

"Surprised yourself? How is that possible? I thought you knew everything."

"I do know everything," God answered. "But after the Creation, I gave myself a little on-off switch. Whenever I choose, I can flip that switch and I no longer see what you know as the future, I live only in the present."

We reached the far edge of the ground we'd measured, turned and head back in the opposite direction.

"That's why everyday is as fresh and exciting for me as it is for you," he said. "I have absolute confidence that the world is going to turn out well because I know how it's going to end. And knowing that allows me to, as you might say, sit back and enjoy the ride."

I had to admit this was a side of God I had not anticipated: the human side. But why not? He said that he created us in his image. I just never thought the two images would be so similar.

We spent the rest of the day mowing, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, which may sound boring but wasn't, it was fun. Plus I got to keep firing questions at God and he kept firing answers right back at me. In the course of the afternoon, he explained how Moses didn't really cross the Red Sea but crossed a body of water called the Sea of Reeds, which was a lot smaller but still a pretty big deal anyway. I also found out how Noah got all those animals on that boat of his; why Cain killed Abel and what a great guy King David was until he fell in love with a married woman and had her husband killed so he could marry her. David was still a great guy afterwards, but he spent the rest of his life making up for his mistakes. Which in a way was comforting. If God would let a guy like him off the hook, it wasn't so farfetched that he would do the same with me. My mistakes didn't seem so big after all.

I also found out there were actually eleven commandments but God changed his mind at the last minute and cut one. After hearing what the eleventh commandment was, I was really glad he did. It would have been a tough one to keep.

Much to my surprise, I found out that the story of Jonah and the whale really did happen. Jonah was a little bitty guy who got tossed overboard when his buddies accused him of being a jinx, and a whale swallowed him whole but after a couple days puked him up instead.

How anyone could survive for three days in a whale' stomach was amazing. The smell alone would have killed me.

Another big surprise was the story of Adam and Eve. Turns out it wasn't an apple that Eve took a bite of, but a pomegranate. It was changed to apple because no one could spell pomegranate. Plus it wasn't a snake that tricked them into doing it. It was Satan. Who disguised himself to look like a snake, to throw them off the track.

Interesting the things you can learn when you go straight to the horse's mouth.

When the day was done, God and I looked back at our handiwork. The ground we mowed was smooth and uniform, almost carpet-like. It looked like the outfield at Wrigley Field.

God turned off the mower's engine.

"Well, Rachel," he said. "I guess that about wraps it up for today. Thank you so much for your time and questions. I really appreciate them both."

Before I left though I asked God what he thought about the ruckus some people were making over the fictional character Charlie Winston. He just shook his head and gave me a two-word answer:

"Misguided passion."

Which was pretty much what I thought he'd say.

We hugged then, as we did every day. Within seconds I was back at St. Michael's.

But the day was far from being over.

# TWENTY-NINE

Entry #6

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.

Helen Keller

**It was raining when I stepped outside** St. Michael's, which I hadn't prepared for. I had no umbrella. It was one of those rains that looked like it wasn't going to let up for a while, so I walked back into the sanctuary to wait it out. I chose a seat in the back row. A few minutes later the front door opened and a man walked in from the street.

I make it a rule not to stare at someone unless he can't tell that I'm staring at him, which was the case this time. I was far enough removed from the aisle and deep enough in a shadow that I was invisible. The man sat down ten rows in front of me. A moment later he turned in profile. When I saw who it was I almost fell out of my pew.

It was Buddy Timmons.

My stomach did a little flip-flop, which it does when I see someone I'd just as soon forget. I stared at him for a moment then decided I'd start my walk home. A little bit of rain was better than staying here. Just as soon I stood, however, Buddy did the only thing that could make me sit back down again – he placed his head in both hands and started crying.

Typically the sight of someone crying elicits in me a sympathetic response. In fact, I've been known to start crying just because I'm around someone who's crying. But this was Buddy Timmons. The same Buddy Timmons who fired me at the worst possible time in my life, then told me it was no big deal because I was sure to land on my feet. Which never happened. And somehow I think he knew it wasn't going to happen either; but it was no skin off his nose to tell me something nice when deep down he knew he was doing something awful. Now that the tables were turned a little, I had zero interest in showing him the level of kindness he denied me. And if I was honest with myself, which sometimes I am, I was sort of glad that something was bothering him to the point of tears.

I got up again and made my escape, glad to be out of there before Buddy figured out I was spying on him. I'd gone maybe a dozen steps in the direction of home when quite gently and unexpectedly, I heard the words _Kindness is within your power even when fondness is not._

I abruptly stopped walking. It wasn't like I actually heard a voice, not like I did that time in my bedroom; I _thought_ these words more than heard them. It was my conscience speaking, which sometimes can be louder than someone shouting at you.

Kindness is within your power even when fondness is not.

There it was again.

Of course I recognized this as something God had told me earlier in the day, when talking about agape. And so I did what I did with Old Man Martin the dog-killer. I told myself that given the opportunity, I would never fire Buddy Timmons the way he fired me. I would let him down gently and not pretend that it was no big deal and tell him how rosy the future was going to be. Also, I promised that if he had kids, I would at least get their names right.

This was agape, I told myself. This was love.

But somehow I didn't feel that sense of relief I did when applying agape to Old Man Martin. No weight seemed to lift from my shoulders. Something was different. Something, in fact, was wrong. I had no idea what it was, but finally decided I didn't have time to figure it out. I kept walking.

When I got home I checked my messages. There were none, from my mom or anyone else, which was OK because I wasn't quite sure what to say to her or anyone else anyway. I chose not to call her again. As far as I was concerned, the ball was in her court. At least for now.

After I took a shower and ate dinner, I turned off the lights and climbed into my reading chair to think about the day. I tried to recall the events chronologically, beginning with the angry woman who hated Charlie Winston. God dismissed her efforts with two words: _misguided passion_ , which was an accurate way to sum it up. If only she, and people like her, would take half the time and energy they put into making up signs and standing outside book stores, and put it into something that mattered, like, well, I'm not sure what she could have been doing, but at least something _constructive_ , think of all the good that could be accomplished. That would be _well-guided passion._

Granted, I wasn't doing any of those constructive things myself, but I knew that I soon would. Now that I understood the importance of doing over caring, I was a believer in helping others.

I pulled out my notebook and wrote this: _Volunteer._

As soon as I did, I felt better. Better about me, which is something I hadn't felt in a long, long time. Funny how just making the decision to do something good becomes something good.

God and I also talked about how going to church wasn't a guarantee that you would become a better person, although it improved your odds considerably.

The last thing I did before going to bed was pull out my Bible. I opened it at random, and here's what I read from a book named Mark.

" _So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received, and it will be yours."_

This passage was written in red ink, which meant Jesus was talking, so I paid really close attention. Not that I don't pay attention to what the other guys wrote, but when it appeared in red, it was especially important. What Jesus seemed to be saying was that God would give me just about anything I asked for, as long as I asked while praying.

Was that possible?

Anything?

There had to be a catch. Something told me that whether I liked it or not, God was going to give me what I needed, not what I think I wanted. Nevertheless I was determined to get to the bottom of it when I got the chance.

I said a short thank-you prayer then and turned off the light. I was physically tired but mentally wide awake. Sometimes when this happens, I get stuck on one word that keeps repeating itself in my head for some reason. The word tonight was _psychological._

I thought how odd it is that we live in such a _psychological_ world today. A world in which we know so much about why we do the things we do that it makes us feel smarter than any generation before us. Thanks to Goldberg and some information I picked up online, I was now familiar with behavior modification, avoidance syndromes and conditioned responses, not to mention a whole slew of defense mechanisms that I'm told help keep me sane. Thanks to my numerous rounds of therapy, I know about projecting my needs and fears onto others. And how my problems with my mother are deeper and more dangerous than even Freud realized. I'm not sure if all this psychological information was accurate but I do know a lot of people I've met recently are good at talking about it. Including me. Which is not a bad thing in itself – the ability to clinically describe what's going on inside your own head. But what I'd really like to know is what's going on inside my heart. In fact, having all this technical knowledge makes me wonder this: will I ever be as articulate about my _spiritual_ journey as I am about my psychological one? And in the end, isn't my spiritual journey the one I should be more concerned with?

It may not sound like much now, but this train of thought was a major breakthrough for me intellectually. Normally, I don't think this deeply. Certainly not late at night when I'm trying to go to sleep. Before I met God, when I went to bed, I'd drink some milk, close my eyes and hope for the best. But it was apparent that spending time with the Almighty was changing not just the way I thought about things, but it was changing me as well. I'm not sure it was making me smarter, but it was certainly making me more inquisitive. And nine times out of ten, inquisitive people find out more than people who don't care one way or the other. I used to be one who didn't care. Now I do. Now I care a lot. A new me was beginning to take shape.

And I liked her.

# THIRTY

Entry #21

Better to have lived your life as though there were a God, and in the end find out you were wrong, than to have lived your life as though there were no God, and in the end find out you were wrong.

Blaise Pascal

THURSDAY

**I was up early the next morning** , excited to get to church and continue the discussion about the nature of God, me, and everything in between. I had just finished my shower when I caught a glimpse of someone in the mirror that made me stop and stare. It was me. The woman staring back was not the one I remembered from just a few days prior, however. The Rachel I last recalled had bags under her eyes and little crow's feet that no twenty-eight-year-old should have, and a pale complexion and lifeless hair. What I saw now was the Rachel I used to be before my life went into the toilet. The woman in the mirror had bright, clear eyes, some pink on her cheeks and the hint of a smile, even though nothing at the time was funny.

Apparently, without my knowledge or assistance, the old Rachel had returned. I could swear I'd even lost weight, but then realized that going most of the day without so much as eating a grape was bound to help me shed a few pounds here and there.

I turned from one side to the other, admiring both my figure and face, which is not something I had done in a long time. Lately, when passing a mirror, I'd distract myself by looking at my feet so that my reflection would not come into play. But this morning, I liked what I saw. It wasn't perfect but I didn't expect or need perfect. I'd settle for average any day.

I ate a slice of toast, drank some juice and hit the sidewalk almost at a trot. After a few blocks I slowed down. I didn't want to draw unwanted attention. I prefer to blend in rather than stand out.

As I passed Rainy Day Books, I noticed sitting in the display case next to the latest Charlie Winston novel, another book entitled _The God Hoax_ subtitled, _The Search for a God Who Wasn't There._

The author was well-known atheist Christopher Hardwick. I'd not read the book but I had seen him on TV once, on a day-time Talk Show, hosted by three women, two of whom were former actresses and the third I think was a Miss America at one time. Oddly enough all three women looked the same, even though one was black and the other two white. The other guests on the show included a rabbi, a priest and a woman named Giselle. I think Giselle was a witch. I'm not saying that to be mean. She really was a witch, or as she preferred to be called: a Wiccan.

Each guest represented different views on religion. The priest stated that faith was not a matter of knowing but _experiencing_ God. He said that one had to believe the truth of his existence before the truth was revealed. In essence, believing is seeing. The rabbi argued that keeping the Law of Moses was the key to a relationship with God. The witch talked at length about her many beliefs but, for the life of me, I have no idea what she said. Whatever it was, it had little to do with God or even religion for that matter. She seemed more interested in advertising an upcoming Wiccan seminar she was conducting at a nearby hotel, for the "insanely" low price of two-hundred dollars, which included a booklet, lunch and a little gold pin in the shape of a pentagram.

Hardwick was less metaphysical. He said that anyone who believed in God was living in a fool's paradise, and that the only proof for the existence of a divine being was lodged in the pea-sized brains of people who were either too dense to comprehend the truth or too emotionally damaged to accept it.

Hardwick struck me as very bright, articulate and angry. He kept using words like _insipid_ and _pathetic_ and _moronic,_ plus phrases with biological characteristics like _theological flatulence_ or _constipated logic_ and _breath-taking hypocrisy_. No matter what the priest said, Hardwick shot him down with scientific data that was part physics, part quantum mechanics and part in-your-face sarcasm. He was just as tough on the rabbi, whose face seemed to get redder by the minute. The only one who got off easy was the witch. It could have just been me, but it seemed that whenever she and Hardwick exchanged glances, there was something going on outside the realm of religion.

It was just a matter of time before their amiable chatter digressed into a shouting match as each guest struggled to be heard over the other. Before long the rabbi got mad and started yelling, as did the priest, followed by the witch. Pretty soon the whole thing sort of blew up. No punches or spells were thrown but it was touch-and-go for a few minutes.

The rabbi came off almost as angry as Hardwick. The priest was even madder. He had a vein on his forehead that looked like it was going to pop at any moment. The best thing the witch had going for her was her cleavage. And sitting right in the middle of them all, brimming over with smug confidence, was the atheist who started it all.

After a few minutes of chaos, the three look-alike hostesses cut to a commercial break. When they returned, the stage was bare, except for the priest who was kind of old and was being helped off the set.

Of course, the main thing that stood out now about all of Hardwick's brilliant rhetoric and no-nonsense logic was this: he was wrong. There _was_ a God. And I was getting ready to spend the day with him. Again. How someone as smart as him could be so self-assured and inaccurate at the same time amazed me. The fact that his book was on the Best Seller List was even more amazing. But that only goes to prove that a bad idea is still a bad idea, even if a lot of people buy into it.

I also couldn't help but think, _Boy, is Christopher Hardwick going to be in for a surprise some_ _day_. But instead of finding that thought delightful, like I would have just a week earlier, today I found it sad. Sad that one day Christopher Hardwick was going to wake up and, instead of telling people what fools they were for believing in a Higher Power, he was going to come face-to-face with that Higher Power. What would he say then? Would it matter? Probably not. The sad fact of the matter was this: for most of his adult life, Christopher Hardwick had simply backed the wrong horse. And when the end comes, I'm pretty sure two things are going to happen: one, he will know it, and two, he will regret it.

I took out my notebook and wrote down one word: _Christopher Hardwick_. Which I guess is really two words, but one atheist. Given the chance, I wanted to ask God what he thought of him.

Finally I reached St. Michael's and went in. I took my seat in the last row and waited for God to finish his or her prayers, as the case may be. Within a few moments, he rose, turned and I could see that sure enough he had changed gender again.

Today she was a heavy-set Samoan woman, dressed in what I guessed was a brightly-colored Mumu, although I'm not sure that's what she would have called it. As she approached I could see that she had the sweetest smile on her face, but it wasn't like she was getting ready to laugh. It was just a sweet expression. Somehow her eyes seemed to be smiling, also. Even if I hadn't known who she was, I would have liked her instantly.

"Good morning, Rachel," she said. "You're here early."

I asked if that was OK.

"I like starting early," she said as she took a seat to me.

As we had for the past several days, we sat in silence for a moment. It had become one of my favorite parts of the day. Simply sitting and thinking and staring at the concrete Jesus on the far wall. Finally I spoke.

"I ran into someone here yesterday afternoon," I said.

God looked straight ahead.

"You mean Bernard?"

I wasn't sure who Bernard was, then realized it was Buddy Timmons's real name.

"Yes," I replied. "Do you know him?"

"I do. But then I know everyone."

I wasn't sure this was any of my business but I asked anyway.

"He looked like he was in pretty rough shape," I said. "In fact, I think he might have been crying."

God's great Samoan face flickered with a hint of sorrow.

"Buddy's dying," she said wistfully. "Of cancer. When you saw him here yesterday, he had just come from the doctor."

I almost said _Oh, my God_ , but managed to shorten it to just "Oh, my, Guh..."

The last thing I wanted to do was take the Lord's name in vain.

"How long does he have?" I asked.

"I'm afraid that's between Buddy and me," God answered.

"Will it be painful?"

"Yes," she replied. "I'm afraid so. At the end anyway. But the physical pain is secondary right now to the emotional battle he's fighting."

I was getting sadder by the moment.

"How's his family doing?" I wondered aloud.

"Bernard doesn't have a family," God replied.

I was surprised to hear that, but then I didn't really know anything about Buddy, other than he had a fake eye and a bad comb-over.

"No wife?" I asked. "Family, kids, friends?"

"No," God said. "Bernard never married. Both his parents are gone. There are no brothers or sisters, and no real friends to speak of."

"After I left the church," I confessed, "I felt the strangest sensation, like I should talk to him or try and help him out, but ended up not doing it."

God nodded. "I know. You realize that strange feeling you had was me, right?"

I was puzzled. "You?"

She continued without looking at me.

"More often than not," she said, "the voice of your conscience is me speaking to you."

Which was an unsettling thought. I couldn't count the number of times that that little voice had tried to get me to do something nice and I didn't do it. Of course I had a dozen good excuses for _not_ doing it, but in the end what mattered most was my convenience. I was much more likely to do a kind thing if it didn't require too much time or effort.

"But what could I do or say to Buddy that would have made a difference?" I asked.

"Sometimes," God answered, "you don't have to say or do anything. Just listening is enough."

"Sort of like with my mom?"

"Exactly like with your mom."

I detected a dilemma.

"But how can I tell the difference between you talking to me and me talking to me?" I asked.

"For one," God answered, "I will never tell you to do anything that is mean-spirited, unethical or immoral; and two, if that little voice tries to convince you of something in very complicated terms, it's not me."

"But aren't life's questions complicated?" I asked.

"Yes," God said. "But the answers seldom are."

I was glad to hear that. Sometimes I think I think too much. I tend to turn little problems into big problems through analysis. It was nice to hear that not only is simple better, but it's also more accurate.

I told God the next time my conscience told me to help Buddy, or anyone for that matter who looked like they needed a hand-up, that I was going to do it.

She smiled and patted my leg.

"I know you will," she said. "Now, are you ready for work?"

I told her I was and away we went.

# THIRTY-ONE

Entry #45

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Martin Luther

**When we arrived at the worksite, the first thing I noticed** were dozens of miniature trees, each no more than two feet tall, still wrapped in their little burlap bags. On the ground in front of us were two shovels.

"Landscaping today, huh," I said.

God picked up one of the shovels.

"There's nothing like planting a few trees to make you feel alive," she said. "Don't worry though, the ground is soft. We won't have to work too hard."

I grabbed the other shovel and we began digging and planting and feeling alive. After the second tree, I started the conversation.

"I read in the Bible last night something about prayer. It said that anything we ask for, you would give to us. Does that mean if I ask for a million dollars, I'll get it?"

I could see the hint of a smile on God's face.

"Do you think that's what it means?" she asked.

I returned the smile.

"No, not really," I said. "I was kind of hoping though."

She chuckled. "There's nothing wrong with money, Rachel. It's the _love_ of money that gets people into trouble."

"So, do you answer every prayer?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "It may not be the answer you expect. In fact, you might not even recognize my answer. But I hear every prayer and respond in time."

I thought about some of my prayers. Lately most of them were asking God to help me out with something that was bothering me, like death and depression. It was only recently that I began praying to say thank-you.

"Do you ever get tired of people asking you for help?" I said.

God shook her head.

"Not at all," she replied. "That's why I invented prayer. So you'd have a way to talk to me. A way to ask for help."

This was good to know. For future reference anyway. It might be smooth sailing for me right now, but I was pretty sure the sea would get bumpy again. I did make a mental note, however, to always mix in a couple thank-you prayers with my help-me prayers. I didn't want God to think I was a cry-baby all the time.

I consulted my notebook of questions.

"You're omniscient, right?" I said.

"Yes," God answered.

"Which means, for better or worse, you know how everything is going to turn out."

"That's correct."

"Then why should we pray for, say, the outcome of an operation or the recovery of an illness, if the outcome has already been decided?"

God stopped and looked at me.

"Rachel, that's an excellent question," she said. "One I don't hear that often."

She took her shovel and drew a straight line in the dirt then placed three tic marks on the line an equal distance from one another.

"This line represents time," she said. "These three marks represent events in a linear timeline. We'll call them A, B and C. In your world this is how you view time. One event follows the other in this order."

So far so good, I thought to myself. And I continued thinking that right up until the moment the straight line magically moved to form a circle.

"But this is how time appears to me," God continued, as if what had just happened was the most natural thing in the world.

I started to interrupt but was afraid I might miss another geometric miracle.

"For me," God continued, "time is not linear but circular. So in my world all events occur simultaneously."

She looked at me closely.

"Does that make sense?" she asked.

I thought for a moment.

"No," I said. "Not really."

"Don't worry," she laughed. "I lose a lot of people when I do that."

She paused a moment then took this approach.

"Let's say the operation you asked about is point A and occurs at nine a.m., and your prayer is point B, which occurs at noon."

She pointed to A and B, but nothing happened. They stayed right where they were.

"For me," she said, "both events occurred at the same moment in time. So, as startling as it sounds, the prayer you offer at noon can partially affect the outcome of an event three hours earlier."

I had to stew on that a moment. While I'm actually quite good at understanding literature (with the exception of Shakespeare) I'm at a total loss when it comes to physics. But I gave it a shot nevertheless.

"So, there's no past or future for you," I offered. "There's only _now_."

"That's it exactly," she said. "Time, as you know it, does not exist for me."

As I pondered that thought, this thought gradually took shape.

"Since the cause and the effect occur simultaneously," I said, "that must mean there are no predetermined results. In fact, circular time does away with predestination all together."

The look on God's face was of obvious joy. I was onto something. I knew it and so did she.

"Does that mean we can influence your decisions through prayer?" I asked.

"Absolutely," God replied. "In fact, I wish there was more of that going on, but that's not the primary function of prayer."

Which really didn't surprise me.

"Then what is?" I asked.

"The function of prayer," God answered, "is to change the nature of the one who prays. You see, Rachel, most people think that prayer is asking me for something they want, but true prayer is listening to what I tell them is best."

"But you will help us, right?" I asked. "If what we're asking for is good for us and good for others?"

"Of course I will," she replied. "But I seldom just _give_ things to you without cause. Whatever you ask for must fall in line with my Will, and there must be an effort on your part. In fact, if more people prayed as though everything depended on me, but worked as though everything depended on them, the results would be nothing short of miraculous."

I wrote that one down, too. It was Journal-worthy for sure.

"The main thing to remember about prayer is this," God offered as a final note. "Whatever you ask for, whatever you need, want or desire, ask with a sincere heart, and trust that I will hear you. Then wait for my answer. It will come in due time. I promise you."

If I had a nickel for every time someone said, "I promise you," then failed to follow-through, I'd have enough money to buy, well, I'm not sure what I could buy, but it would probably be something really nice.

Promises are easy to make and tough to keep.

Unless you're God of course. I don't think God makes promises. Not as we think of them anyway. She makes statements of fact. She says what she's going to do then does it. Me, I say what I'm going to do then hope it gets done. There's a pretty big difference.

Hers is better.

I guess that's what makes her God.

# THIRTY-TWO

Entry #163

The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.

Dante Rossetti

**We went back to planting trees then** , each of which were labeled _Cedar, Maple, Elm_ or _Oak._ We spaced them thirty to forty feet apart across the entire field, one at a time. At times we talked as we worked, at other times we didn't. I soon discovered that for every tree we planted, two more magically appeared in different locations. I asked God about that.

"I like working," she said with a wink. "But I didn't say we had to do _all_ the work."

I considered asking if I would ever return to this lake once we were finished, but decided not to; it was enough for now just to help build it.

Which made me realize something: I was learning to live in the moment. That may have been where God spent all her time but for me it was totally new. The only place I'd lived lately was in the past. And the past was so full of tears and death and general lousiness that it would be OK with me if I never saw it again.

Between trees I pulled out my notebook. I went down my list of unasked questions.

"On the way to St. Michael's this morning," I said, "I noticed a book in the bookstore. It was entitled _The God Hoax_."

"Oh, I know that book," God said. "It was written by Christopher Hardwick."

This should be interesting, I thought.

"So what do you think of him?" I said.

"Christopher's a very good writer," she replied. "But not very original. Most of the ideas he claims as his own were 'borrowed' from another source: the writer Friedrich Nietzsche. He wrote long before Christopher."

I knew a little of Nietzsche's stuff. I'd read some of it in a college philosophy class.

"Was he the one who said, 'I like your Christ. I just don't like your Christians?'" I said.

God rolled her eyes and laughed.

"Yes, that was Friedrich, all right. He wrote a lot of things about me. None of which were very flattering, by the way."

"Does that surprise you?" I said. "I mean, after all he was an atheist."

"Friedrich was more than an atheist," God replied sadly. "He was an _embittered_ atheist. It wasn't so much that he disbelieved in me as much as he just didn't like me personally."

God finished digging a hole and I plopped a tree into it. A maple.

"It doesn't sound like you thought very much of him either," I said.

"On the contrary," God replied. "I loved him. To this day, when I think about Friedrich, I feel a great sense of loss, the world's and mine. Such wasted potential, such misspent talent."

She shoveled dirt in around the maple.

"He was very bright," she said. "Inquisitive. Funny. Played a marvelous game of chess. He had wonderful insight into people's minds, and could express it very well in writing."

It didn't surprise me that God might forgive a guy like Nietzsche but I didn't expect her to have such a high opinion of him, considering his opinion of her couldn't have been lower.

"Of course when it came to theology," she continued, "he got ninety-eight percent of everything wrong. Still, it broke my heart to see him squander that beautiful mind of his trying to prove that either I didn't exist or, if I did, I wasn't fit to be God."

We walked to the next spot. It was my turn to dig.

"Nietzsche," she continued, "felt that all Christians have a psychological need to believe, which is true. What he failed to realize is that all atheists have a psychological need _not_ to believe."

"A psychological need?" I asked.

God nodded. "Atheists may hide behind their intellect but they don't reject me based on intellectual reasoning or lack of evidence. Atheists reject me because of a moral resistance to admit their _need_ for me."

I filed that tidbit away for the next time I talked to Goldberg. I might not bring it up when we spoke but at least it helped me understand why he felt the way he did.

Our conversation meandered for a while after that. We wandered in and out of different topics.

She explained rainbows, gravity and why people hiccup. We also talked about time-travel, black holes and the best board game of all time (Monopoly). I found out her favorite color is blue. And that she likes all kinds of music, including the Beatles. Bach was her favorite.

She was a captivating conversationalist, but what she was really good at was listening. She heard every word I said, and understood everything I meant, even if I wasn't sure myself. I knew that beneath that brightly-colored Mumu beat the heart of the most sacred person in the universe, but you would never have guessed it by her demeanor. In short, God had become my best friend, which I think is all that she really wanted in the first place.

Later in the day I realized that the hundred or so trees we started with were all in the ground. I looked across the field. It was newly mowed and filled with the tiny trunks of various trees, none of which were over two or three feet tall, but all of which I knew someday would tower over the entire area.

"What do you think?" God asked, looking over our day's work.

I started out telling her I thought the trees looked great, but what I ended up saying was this.

"Thank you so much for allowing me do this," I said. "To help plant these trees, to let me talk to you, ask you questions, spend time with you. These have been the nicest days of my life. I don't want them to end."

"They don't have to," God said. "I'll always be with you."

My pulse quickened.

"When you say _with me,_ do you mean in spirit or in person?"

She smiled. "A little of both."

I told her I would like that.

Hand in hand we walked back toward the lake. It was growing dark. Just as the sun vanished from sight, it appeared to grow in size and deepen in color. What started out as a pale yellow orb the size of a dime was now the size of a quarter and was a lovely shade of orange.

I asked God why that always happened.

"Sunlight," she explained, "is composed of seven separate wave lengths. At sunset, these wave lengths bend and diffuse at varying degrees so that the only color visible is the shortest. This wave length is a variation of red, which accounts for the color change. The diffusion of these wave lengths in the earth's atmosphere produces an optical illusion that makes the sun appear to grow in size."

It was a great explanation. Sadly though I didn't understand a word of it.

She must have realized that.

"Of course" she said, smiling, "that's the _how._ The _why_ is because I thought it was prettier, don't you?"

I couldn't help but smile. I said it was prettier indeed.

Together then we watched the sun gradually sink beneath the western horizon. When it vanished from sight, she leaned over, hugged me and immediately I found myself back in the Confessional at St. Michael's.

My walk home that afternoon was especially nice. Everyone I passed smiled and said hello, friendly as could be. This seldom happened to me. I smiled and said hello in return. After the third or fourth encounter, something occurred to me: before today, when walking, I always looked down at the sidewalk. Today, I looked up at the people. And they looked back, anxious to smile and say hi. Which made me realize it wasn't a matter of them becoming friendlier, it was a matter of me allowing them to become friendly in the first place.

Funny the difference a little eye contact makes.

It doesn't make people nicer. It just allows the niceness to come out.

Kindness, I decided, is certainly within my power.

# THIRTY-THREE

Entry #54

For my part I know nothing with certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

Vincent Van Gogh

**Back in my apartment, I checked my messages.** There were three: one from Aunt Dot, one from Aunt Mertis and the last was evidently a wrong number because they hung up without leaving a message. There was none from my mother, which is the one I was hoping for.

Again I had gone the entire day without eating or drinking, yet still wasn't hungry. Usually when that happens my blood sugar plummets and I feel like I did that time at my Wedding reception, which was drunk. But now I only felt a little lighter on my feet, which was an OK feeling because usually lighter is better. Just in case my light-footedness might lead to something else, however, like passing out, I fixed myself some tomato soup and half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. What I really wanted was spaghetti and meatballs, which is my favorite canned-food, but I was out. In fact, I was out of almost everything. A couple weeks of manic depression plus spending time with God each day had thrown me off my grocery shopping routine.

After dinner, I poured myself a half-glass of chocolate milk and sat in my reading chair to sort through the day. Here's what I came up with.

That little voice you sometimes hear in the back of your head may not be you at all. It may be God disguised as you. The way to tell the difference is that God always gives you advice that is above-board and easy to understand. Hence, if your conscience tells you to do something sort of shady or complicated – watch out.

Also, I discovered that God didn't have it in for atheists. In fact, she loves them. And on top of that, she doesn't give up on them while they're alive, and speaks kindly of them when they're gone. A guy like Hardwick has no idea how lucky he is.

The thing we discussed today that I still wasn't clear about was time, and how God was outside it. I pulled out a piece of paper, drew a circle and put a little stick figure of God in the middle. I placed points A, B and C around the edges, then stared at it, trying to figure out how everything could happen at the same time. For a minute I almost had it but it slipped away. That happens to me a lot. I'm on the verge of a big "Aha moment" then go blank. I tried again to recapture the concept but it was no use – it was gone. I put the diagram aside, deciding I'd come back to it in the morning.

The final thought I had before going to bed had to do with prayer. I'd heard of this church somewhere that said God wants to give you anything you ask for, and if you ask long enough and hard enough, he'll just cave in and do it. He's like this big Cosmic Vending Machine; if you stick in the right amount of tokens, out comes whatever your heart desires.

Well, God made it fairly clear today that that's not how she works. She hears prayer all right, and answers them, but not the way we think, want or even know. She responds according to need, not want.

A puzzling thought however was this: _how_ does God hear every prayer every minute every hour of every day when she's spending time with me, digging holes, planting trees and explaining sunsets? Do all our prayers come at her all at once? If so, how does she keep them separate from one another? Is it possible that an occasional request of ours might get by her in all the confusion?

That possibility bothered me until I realized something. If God was smart enough to create an entire universe with who knows how many billion trillion stars, planets and whatnot, then a little thing like attending to what we have to say should be a piece of cake.

The bottom line was this: just because I didn't understand how she did it, didn't mean it couldn't be done. God had her ways. I just needed to accept that she knew what she was doing, and quit worrying about it.

I finished up my milk and went to bed. The last thing I did before I turned off the light was pull out my Bible and open it again at random. This is what I read in the fourth chapter of a book called Philippians:

I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need.

The secret of living.

I read those words again, just to make sure I got them right the first time _. The secret of living...with plenty or little...I can do everything...._

Was this the key I'd been searching for? The key to becoming the person I couldn't imagine myself becoming? Could changing my life be so simple?

When I was in high school, I had the feeling there was a manual out there somewhere that explained not only _how_ you should live but how you should live _happily._ There had to be one because, well, because everyone I knew was happier than me. They had the manual. They had inside information.

Now, perhaps I did also.

I have learned the secret of living.

What a great concept. And to think, this information was right under my nose all these years. I made a pact right then and there with myself: that when this whole episode with God was over, I was going to read the Bible from start to finish, and not skip ahead to the end like I normally do. If something as big as the secret of living was in there, who knows what else might be.

I turned off the light and found myself gazing at the moon outside my window. I couldn't recall it ever looking so big and round and white, even when I was a kid and everything looked bigger than I found it to be in later life. As I stared at it, I couldn't help but wonder if its appearance, like the sun, was subject to light rays being bent out of shape in marvelous ways I would never understand. That question led to this observation: how sad it is that an atheist like Christopher Hardwick could watch the sun set or moon rise and never feel a sense of wonder at the mystery behind it.

Which is probably why God took it so easy on guys like him and Nietzsche. God knew what they were missing, even if they didn't.

Then, just as sleep was knitting up my tattered sleeve of care (which is the only phrase of Shakespeare I think I ever memorized) off in the distance, perhaps as far away as the moon itself, I heard an angel singing that French song again in her sad, melancholy voice. I listened to it as long as I could, wishing I could speak its language, dreaming it was a love song being sung to me, about me and for me.

I went to sleep that night, completely unaware that in three days time, I would hear the song again. Only the next time I heard it, I'd discover it was not a love song at all. It was something else entirely.

# THIRTY-FOUR

Entry #67

Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.

Samuel Johnson

FRIDAY

**When I woke up the next morning** , I was having the most marvelous dream. In it I was having a conversation with Goldberg. He was prattling on about how religion was an opiate and how dangerous it was if it became the _only_ thing in my life. Then right in the middle of this long dissertation about how silly I was to believe everything about Christianity – _in walks God_. Only he's not in disguise or dressed in a way to make you comfortable when talking to him. God walked in looking like God. He was twice the size of Goldberg and had long, flowing white hair and beard, with a majestic face that looked like it was carved from granite. In one hand he carried a stone tablet, which at first I thought was the Ten Commandments, but then realized no, that was Moses. Anyway, the tablet God was carrying had one word written on it. And that word was "Believe." God winked at me as he walked to Goldberg's desk and plopped the tablet down. Goldberg took one look at it and threw up his hands. "Yahweh!" he shouted then sort of collapsed in a heap on the floor.

That's when I woke up. And I woke up with the strangest physical sensation – I woke up smiling. I don't think that has ever happened to me before, but it's not often that I'd had this type of dream before. One that was so satisfying.

I showered, grabbed a slice of toast and practically sprinted to the church, without so much as glancing at whatever book was now on display at Rainy Day Books or who might be protesting outside it. When I walked into St. Michael's, I saw God kneeling at the altar. Instead of taking my normal place in the back row, however, I walked to the altar and stood beside him.

I say _him_ because God looked up as I approached. He was a young Hispanic man, in his mid-twenties.

"Buenos dias, Rachel," he said.

I asked if it was OK if I joined him.

He moved slightly to one side.

"I'd like that," he answered.

I kneeled at the altar and bowed my head like I was praying, but nothing came out. Rather than faking it, I looked at the Crucifix instead. Usually when I look at the image of Christ on the cross, I don't see anything but the cross. This time I saw the man. I know that sounds silly, but I'd never thought of Christ as a man like my husband or father or anyone else. I'd always thought of him as this generic Savior, a divine being who was grand and noble and holy without being real. Not this time. This time, he looked more real than I could ever remember. Then I saw more than the man, I saw the man's face. I thought about the pain he must have felt in the last hours leading up to and including his crucifixion. What did Christ say as they whipped and kicked and spit on him? How did it feel to have that crown of thorns jammed down on his head? What went though his mind when they pounded those huge metal spikes through his hands and feet?

One time I accidentally slammed a car door on my thumb. The pain was so awful that I passed out for a few seconds. It was unlike anything I'd ever felt in my life. Trouble was when I regained consciousness I couldn't get the car door open. Somehow it locked as it was shutting, and I was left standing there with my thumb wedged in tight. Then the blood started pouring out. With each heartbeat, a burning shard of pain raced up my arm and across my chest, and I thought for sure my heart was going to explode. And if my heart didn't blow up, I was pretty sure my head would. Joe finally got the door open. The whole ordeal lasted maybe sixty seconds, but it was the longest sixty seconds of my life.

So, I wondered, what would it feel like to have that pain multiplied ten times over, hour after hour after hour? How much agony was Christ in when the tendons in his wrists began to tear beneath the weight of his body; as the nails in his feet ripped through the ligaments and cartilage and muscle? How could he bear pain so great that they created a special word for it: _excruciating_ , which they taught in Catechism means pain that comes "out of the cross."

You know the pain must have been horrific when they had to make up a word to describe it.

Plus, as I stared at his beautiful face, I noticed for the first time that he was dead. Not unconscious but dead. As in not alive. His mind, body and brain had ceased to function. Blood might ooze from the wound in his side, but his heart no longer pumped it.

Strange but not once in all the years of looking at the Crucifix had I ever thought about the one thing it was designed to make me think about: pain and death. It was almost more than I could bear, but I couldn't take my eyes off him. I was riveted.

"Looking at him is overwhelming at times, isn't it?" God said.

I told him that it was. Very overwhelming in fact.

"It's not a bad thing to feel sorrow when you look at the cross," God continued. "But don't allow your sorrow to become a substitute for joy."

"A substitute for joy?" I asked.

God pointed to the cross with his chin.

"Rachel," he said, "the Crucifixion is a symbol of life, not death. That's why I sent him in the first place. To save the world, not condemn it."

A symbol of life, not death.

Again we went back to kneeling in silence. This time however when I bowed my head, the words did come out.

"Thank you," was all I said.

It was only two words but I meant both of them.

God patted my hand gently.

"Let's go to work?" he said. "We're almost finished, you know."

And off we went.

# THIRTY-FIVE

Entry #27

A poem begins as a lump in the throat.

Robert Frost

**When we arrived at the worksite** , dozens of small shrubs and flowers sat on the ground before us, still in their pots, ready for planting.

God handed me a shovel.

"How green is your thumb?" he asked.

"This is actually something I'm pretty good at," I said proudly.

And it was. In fact, one time in grade school I entered a pumpkin-growing contest and won third prize. The trick with growing pumpkins in Georgia is that they didn't grow all that naturally where we lived, not like peaches, so it was a challenge just to get a seed started. But that didn't matter to our teacher Mrs. Wyatt. She was determined to celebrate Thanksgiving much the same as the Pilgrims did, and that meant pumpkins, even if the soil wasn't going to cooperate.

The secret to my success was fertilizer. As it turns out, fertilizer is the secret to growing almost anything. I piled so much manure on mine you could smell it from down the block. Old Man Martin threw a fit. Just about the time Mom got ready to pull the plug on the whole project, it started growing...and growing... and growing. By the time it was done, I had a gourd the size of a Volkswagen.

We took it to school in the back of Dad's pick-up. On the way into the classroom, however, disaster struck: we dropped it! My wonderful pumpkin split right down the middle. I was heartbroken, until Mrs. Wyatt handed me the yellow ribbon.

"Rachel, sweetheart," she said. "Yours may not be the biggest today, but I bet it will taste the best."

Which was such a nice thing to say that I never forgot it, especially the sweetheart part.

And she was right. We actually got eight pies out of it, which was some kind of record.

I asked God if he remembered my pumpkin story.

"Of course I do," he laughed. "I'm so glad you got that ribbon, too. It ended up being worth the smell."

Boy, I thought to myself, nothing gets past God. Not only did he know about the pumpkin, he recalled the manure as well.

"What kinds of flowers do we have?" I asked, as I admired all the different colors.

"Just about everything," God answered. "Geraniums, daffodils, lilies, roses."

"Do you have a favorite?" I asked.

"I like them all," he replied. "Although I suppose I'm partial to Lilies of the Valley. They have such lovely faces."

I'd never thought of flowers as having faces, but of course the father of those flowers would think that.

"What about you?" God asked. "Do you have a preference?"

"Daffodils," I said without thinking twice. "I like daffodils. Dad used to grow them by the boatload in our back yard."

"They're favorites of mine also," God said.

Then without being asked to, he recited a poem so simple yet lovely that it took my breath away.

I wandered lonely as a cloud  
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,  
When all at once I saw a crowd,  
A host, of golden daffodils;  
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,  
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.  
Continuous as the stars that shine  
And twinkle on the milky way,  
They stretched in never-ending line  
Along the margin of a bay:  
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,  
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they  
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;  
A poet could not be but gay,  
In such a jocund company!  
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought  
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie  
In vacant or in pensive mood,  
They flash upon that inward eye  
Which is the bliss of solitude;  
And then my heart with pleasure fills,  
And dances with the daffodils.

When he was finished, all I could say was this:

"Wordsworth."

God nodded. "He had such a nice way with words, didn't he? A touch light as a feather yet filled with pathos."

I wasn't sure what pathos meant, but whatever it was, if God said Wordsworth had it, I'm sure he did. Plus I'm sure it was something worth having.

Then, for the first time since we met, we didn't talk a lot. We worked side by side for several hours. Occasionally God would whistle some tune of Bach's or I'd hum a few bars from a Beatles song, but other than that we simply enjoyed the sun and wind and each other's company.

Yesterday we planted over a hundred trees. Today we placed twice that many flowers and shrubs in the ground between them, equally spaced to give a sense of balance without looking staged. Again, it seemed for every flower or shrub we placed in the ground, three magically appeared. By noon we had a beautiful landscape, mowed to perfection, and populated with a variety of trees, shrubs and flowers. It looked like the back yard of some rich and famous person's house that you see in magazines. It was gorgeous.

We stopped to admire our handiwork when God surprised me with a question.

"Are you hungry?" he said.

This was the first time we'd talk about food, and of course as soon as we did, I felt starved.

I told him I was.

"Then I have the perfect place for lunch," he said.

He pointed toward the lake, where, at the water's edge, sat a huge white umbrella, shading a white table and chairs, on which sat a number of covered dishes, silverware and glasses.

As we strolled the short distance to lunch, I couldn't help but marvel at how blue the sky and water appeared, and how the grass was soft, green and plush, and how the reds and yellows and pinks of the flowers were so vibrant they practically glowed. It was like hiking through Disneyworld, only without all the cartoon characters. I pinched myself just to make sure it was real. It hurt like the dickens, so I knew I wasn't dreaming.

We sat down at the table. I removed the cover from my plate, expecting maybe an exotic dish of caviar, smoked salmon or maybe even a dish that didn't exist on earth – I mean, considering who the chef was, anything was possible. When I saw what my Divine Host had prepared, I laughed out loud.

"Spaghettios!" I said.

God's smile was filled with mischief.

"You were expecting maybe enchiladas?" he said.

I picked up my fork and dug in.

"I love Spaghettios."

And I really did. I wasn't just saying that to be polite. I know loving something out of the can sounds sad, and it probably is, but Spaghettios is cheap, easy to make and tastes surprisingly like the real thing. What's not to love?

Next to my plate was a glass of water and another that looked like red wine.

God lifted his wine glass as a toast.

"Here's to a long life, a happy life and a productive life," he said.

"Are we celebrating something?" I asked.

"Yes," God replied. "The end of our project."

I was shocked. "You mean we're done?"

He motioned toward the lake then back across the expanse of manicured lawn.

"Don't you think we've done a marvelous job?" he said.

I told him I did.

"Actually," he added, "there's one small thing we have to do today before we leave today."

God looked up at the sky. Clouds rolled in and it started to rain. All in a matter of minutes.

"We're not the only ones who get thirsty," he said with a chuckle.

We watched the rain fall for a while. It was dry under the umbrella. The spaghetti was excellent. So was the wine.

"If we're through with our project," I said, "what do we do tomorrow?"

"We'll come back here," God replied. "Not to work though. I have something else in mind."

"Such as?"

He paused a moment then answered with a smile.

"Such as something you've never done before."

I started to point out, also with a smile, that I'd never done any of this before, but didn't. God knew it. I didn't have to elaborate on the obvious.

Instead we just sat there for the rest of the afternoon.

Me and God.

Beneath a white umbrella at the water's edge, drinking wine, watching the seagulls and talking. We didn't talk theology. We talked about everyday stuff.

Why the sky is blue and grass green; why cats purr and dogs don't; how geese manage to fly all the way from Canada to Mexico every winter and always land in the same lake. I asked him why cows sleep standing up, why men have nipples, and why bears hibernate. All the stuff you know without knowing _why_. Of course he had answers. All of which made sense, except the one about men's nipples; that one surprised me a little.

Finally the rain let up, and wouldn't you know it, a rainbow appeared on the far horizon, stretching from one side of the lake to the other. It was a beautiful way to end a beautiful afternoon.

"Well," God said. "That about does it."

He hugged me then, holding me especially close.

"I want you to go home now, Rachel," he said. "Get a good night's sleep. Because tomorrow we're going to talk about your family."

Even though my face was pressed to his chest, my jaw suddenly dropped, just like in the cartoons.

"You mean..."

He nodded.

"Yes," he said. "We're going to talk about why your husband and daughter died."

I was beyond words but not beyond tears. My eyes suddenly went moist.

"You're ready now," he said softly. "So am I."

# THIRTY-SIX

Entry #80

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

**Without another word, I left God and arrived back at** **St.** Michael's. As soon as I exited the Confessional I saw Buddy Timmons, sitting almost exactly where he had been a couple nights before. I quietly took a seat in the back row.

Seeing Buddy this time was different than the first time. The first time I saw him, I wanted to avoid him. This time, I knew there was something growing inside of him that one day would take his life, and my heart began to break.

Kindness is within your power, even when fondness is not.

Again, it wasn't as if I heard someone say those words, but someone spoke them nonetheless. It was my conscience. Except now I knew who my conscience really was, and I knew my conscience was telling me to show kindness to someone I didn't like all that much. I sat there, maybe a total of three long minutes, knowing I was going to say something to Buddy but wondering how to go about it. How do you nonchalantly start a conversation with someone you bump into on a Friday evening alone in church? Especially if the last time you saw that person they had delivered devastating news without so much as a hint of remorse or regret? I don't think Buddy enjoyed dismissing me the way he did, but I was pretty sure it wasn't keeping him up at night either.

I sat there, trying to devise a clever plan to approach him, when all of a sudden I didn't have to – Buddy devised one for me.

"Rachel?" he asked. "Is that you?"

It was impossible to ignore him and too late to deny it or run, so I confessed that yes I was Rachel and it was in fact me.

Buddy got up, walked over and plopped down next to me. He didn't ask what I was doing there. I guess he figured I came to church every Friday evening and sat alone in the back row in the dark. He did ask how I was doing in general, however, which was nice. I told him I'd never been better, which was absolutely true, but I didn't tell him why. Fortunately he didn't ask.

We continued with our small talk for a couple minutes then without warning or invitation, he opened up on me.

"Rachel," he said, his voice trembling ever so slightly. "I have cancer."

No one said anything for a moment, especially me. We just sat there in the silence with that awful word ringing in both our ears. Then instead of racking my brain for what I should say, I said exactly what I felt.

"Oh, Buddy, I can't tell you how sorry I am to hear that."

Buddy's shoulders slumped a little, but he didn't start bawling, which was a huge relief.

"The doctors give me a 50/50 chance to beat it," he said. "But I don't know, somehow I think those odds are high."

Oh, dear, I thought to myself. I didn't have to wonder if the odds were high. I knew it for a fact. I knew Buddy was going to die. And knowing what he didn't know was terrible.

He was very open about the treatment he was facing, and how he hoped he didn't lose his hair as a result of the chemo.

"This is probably no great secret," he said, "but I'm balding a little on top."

I told him I hadn't noticed.

"I guess, if worse comes to worse," he said. "I could get a toupee."

I told him I thought he'd look good with or without hair. He smiled and seemed to genuinely appreciate the compliment. I don't think he received them very often.

Suddenly I felt good. Or maybe a better word is useful. Or maybe both. I felt _good_ because when Buddy told me how awful he felt, I actually felt awful right along with him. I didn't have to fake it, like I had done so often in my life. And _useful_ because somehow, in the sanctuary darkness of St. Michael's that evening, I was able to bring a small measure of comfort to someone who was going through a tough time.

Kindness is within your power, even when fondness is not.

Buddy and I talked for maybe thirty minutes, and not once did I stray from one eye to the other or so much as glance at his hair. I stayed focused on him. His pain. His grief. His story. Which was actually sadder than I thought it might be, and in a way, made me think that my tragic circumstances were not so tragic after all.

Also it was OK that we talk about his life because I found that I was more interested in him than me.

Toward the end of our conversation, Buddy admitted the one thing most people today have a tough time admitting.

"Rachel," he said, "I don't have many friends. Close friends, that is, and well, tonight you treated me like one. Thank you."

While talking to Buddy, I half-expected him to get teary-eyed on me, but when he told me he didn't have any friends, I was the one who broke down. He whipped out a handkerchief, which normally I don't use if it's someone else's, but this time I did. It was a very kind gesture. When I was finished with it, I stuck it in my back pocket, assuring him that I would launder and return it.

Then I told Buddy something that surprised me more than him.

"Call me," I said. "If you ever need to, you know, talk."

He said he would.

Before we parted company, Buddy hugged me. He didn't say anything. He just wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me tight. Almost as tight as I had squeezed God earlier in the day.

Of course hugging a guy like Buddy was not the same as hugging a guy like God. But it was surprisingly close. Closer than I thought it would be.

Suddenly I felt better. Better about Buddy. Better about me.

Funny how kindness works both ways.

# THIRTY-SEVEN

Entry #33

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Oscar Wilde

**I checked my messages when I got home.** There were none. I rummaged through my kitchen cabinets and came up with dinner: soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. As I pulled my sandwich off the griddle, I thought for a moment I saw a man's image on one slice – Jesus perhaps? – but it was a false alarm. Turns out it was a cheese bubble that soon popped. Briefly catching the glimpse of God in a dairy product, however, made me wonder why anyone would spend $1,000 for one that was sold recently on e-Bay. An article in the paper said it was a sign of how desperate people are when it comes to miracles. I think it's more a sign of how gullible people are when it comes to cheese sandwiches. I saw a photograph of the infamous piece of bread. To my untrained eye it looked less like Jesus and more like a clay sculpture I once made of my Uncle Remy, complete with misshapen eyes and a longer-than-normal chin. Why anyone would call a hunk of bread and some Velveeta a miracle was beyond me. Then again, I didn't have to go out in search of a miracle; one had found me instead.

After dinner, I poured myself some chocolate milk and climbed into my chair to think. A lot of interesting things had happened today, but all I could think about was what was going to happen tomorrow.

Tomorrow God and I were going to talk about the one thing I could hardly bring myself to talk about: _why my husband and_ _daughter died_. At long last, I was going to hear the truth. But now that the time was near, I wondered if I could handle the truth. On the outside I convinced myself I wanted the facts, but on the inside I think I wanted something else: I think I wanted comfort more than truth. Comfort in knowing that when terrible things happen to fairly decent people, there's a reason for it. But what if the truth hurt more than death itself? What if there was no reason? Or what if the reason my loved ones were getting picked off one at a time was because of something I did? Or didn't do? Then what?

Strange how much you think you want something until you almost get it, then getting it is suddenly the last thing you want.

It's like that time I stood in line for a couple hours when I was a kid, waiting to sit on Santa Claus' lap. I was so excited I couldn't stand still. But when my turn finally came and the jolly old elf beckoned me to his chair, I panicked. I turned and ran like the wind. I just couldn't do it.

I told myself that tomorrow was going to be different. It had to be.

It was almost eleven p.m. when I finally called it a night. I'm not big on tradition, but it had become something of a tradition for me to open my Bible at random and see what turned up. What turned up were these words spoken by Jesus from a book called John:

For you are truly my disciples if you keep obeying my teachings. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

The _truth_ will set you free.

So, there it was; the answer to my question about handling the truth. Although I wasn't sure what I'd be free of, I had to assume it was better than _not_ being free. Maybe it meant that tomorrow God's truth would deliver both the facts _and_ comfort, rolled up in one.

Now, wouldn't that be a neat trick?

I turned out the lights and just before I drifted off, the soothing music of my French lullaby wafted through the window and into my head. It was my Faraway Angel, lulling me to sleep with her sweet voice and infinitely sad, sad melody. My last conscious thoughts were that of the cross, daffodils, and a man named Buddy, who was now my friend.

# THIRTY-EIGHT

Entry #88

I believe Satan exists for two reasons: one, the Bible says so; and two, I have done business with him.

D.L Moody

SATURDAY

**Saturday mornings have always been special for me.** It's probably a leftover memory from when I was in grade school, and you knew when you woke up all you had to do was watch cartoons, play with friends and talk on the phone. No school. No homework. Just free time. I had no aches or pains then, and life was fun.

When I woke up Saturday morning, I felt that same sense of freedom and anticipation that comes with the weekend. I showered, got dressed and grabbed a Pop-Tart on the way out the door. Twenty minutes later, I walked into the sanctuary at St. Michael's.

God was not in his regular place up front at the altar, so I poked my head in the Confessional.

"Hello?" I said.

No answer.

It then occurred to me that I didn't know what to call God. Should I call him God or Father or Yahweh, like Goldberg did in my dream? Father seemed right, even though for a Catholic, Father meant someone else entirely, but in this case, seemed appropriate.

"Hello, Father? Anybody home?"

Nothing.

I'd never thought to ask God what he did during his time off. Or for that matter, if he took any time off. Maybe he got tied up at another meeting, and was running a little late. I decided whatever the reason, it was probably a good one. I took a seat in the back row and waited.

A couple minutes passed when a door at the back of church opened. A priest entered the sanctuary. He walked toward the altar, laid a Bible on it then headed back the way he'd entered.

For the past five days I'd come to St. Michael's without seeing anyone but God and Timmons. It never occurred to me to come up with a plan on what to say if I did bump into somebody. Luckily, the priest didn't see me sitting in the shadows, so I didn't panic.

Until he stopped, turned and looked in my general direction.

"Hello?" he said. "Is someone there?"

Oh, my goodness, I thought, what do I do? If I say nothing, that will arouse suspicion. If I say anything, that will invite conversation. It was lose-lose situation.

"Hello?" he said again, this time stepping toward me.

I opted for conversation.

"Good morning," I said. "I hope I'm not intruding."

Now that he located my voice, he located me.

"Not at all," he said as he walked in my direction. "You're always welcome in God's house."

As he soon as he said it, I recognized the phrase. A moment later, I recognized the man. It was the priest I'd met the time I came in looking for a bathroom.

He stopped in front of me, wearing that same deep tan and wonderful smile.

"Welcome back to St. Michael's," he said. "I wondered if I might see you again."

"Father," I said, "you have a very good memory."

He laughed. "Apparently you didn't hear me deliver last week's sermon. I misread my notes and told the congregation not to let worry kill them – let the church help. It got quite a laugh."

I couldn't help but laugh, also.

He shrugged with a smile. "The perils of public speaking, I guess. Are you here to light another candle for your father?"

I had no clue what he meant then realized that was the reason I used for being in the church the first time I saw him.

"No," I said. "I just dropped in for a few minutes, you know, to genuflect."

Why in the world I would use a word like genuflect was beyond me. I wasn't even sure what it meant. But the priest seemed to know. He nodded with understanding.

We looked at one another a moment, and even though I didn't know him, I liked him. He seemed somehow genuine, someone I could learn to trust. I decided that maybe when all this business with God was over that I'd come back to St. Michael's. Perhaps make it my church home.

"Well, I'll leave you to your thoughts," he said as he turned to leave. "Good to see you again."

After taking a half-dozen steps however he turned back.

"May I ask you a question?" he said.

"Certainly."

"Is there anything St. Michael's can do for you?"

This was not the question I was expecting.

"I'm not sure what you mean." I said.

He came back and sat in the pew in front of me.

"Well, I've noticed that you've come in each morning for quite a while now, and, well, I just wondered if there was anything that I, or St. Michael's, can do for you?"

I was startled. "You've seen me at St. Michael's?"

"Yes."

"This week?"

"Almost every morning."

I tried to calm myself.

I said, "I don't recall seeing you."

Again that smile. "The church is a place of solitude for prayer and reflection. As a priest I try not to intrude."

Which made sense, so I relaxed a little.

"Thank you for asking," I said. "But, no, there's nothing you can do for me. I'll just genuflect a while longer then be on my way."

He nodded but didn't get up to leave as I hoped he would.

"May I ask another question then?" he said.

The muscles in my neck tightened.

"Are you in need of assistance?" he asked. "A warm meal? Or a room for the night perhaps?

Now I was both startled and puzzled.

"Father," I said. "Why would you ask such a thing?"

His brown furrowed. His smile faded. He was having a hard time answering. Finally he did.

"Because each morning when you come in," he said. "You sit here for a short while and then, well, then you fall asleep."

He pointed to the pew I was sitting in.

"You fall asleep right here in fact. I've considered waking you, but something told me you might need the rest."

My stomach suddenly dropped.

"I've been sleeping in this pew?" I asked, my voice betraying the black sense of dread rising inside me. "Every morning?"

He nodded. "Yes. Please, I don't mean to meddle in your affairs, but if you need assistance, food or clothing or, as I mentioned, a room for the night, we have an excellent shelter in the area. I'd be glad to drive you there."

Suddenly I could no longer hear a word being said. I know the handsome priest with the great smile was still talking because I could see his lips moving, but the sound of the ocean roaring inside my head drowned out everything else.

I've been sleeping...every morning, of everyday, for the entire week! Sleeping...in this very pew...alone...all day. Oh no...no, no, no – it was a dream! Ohdearlord –my week with God was all just a dream!

# THIRTY-NINE

Entry #29

No one loses Faith except by throwing it away.

Augustine

**I'm not sure how long the priest sat there or when he fi** nally gave up and left. All I know is that the sounds of the ocean finally subsided and I was all alone. Alone and more miserable than I've ever been in my entire life.

I tried to stand but my legs wouldn't hold me. They were made of rubber. _I_ was made of rubber. My head began to spin. Little black dots floated everywhere. I looked toward the altar and saw three Crucifixes where there should only be one, and knew I was a goner. I was passing out. Just before I keeled over though, someone sat down next to me.

"Good morning, Rachel," God said. "Did you sleep well?"

It's not very often that I experience three emotions simultaneously. I was stunned, thrilled and perplexed, all that the same time, with a double emphasis on perplexed.

"Is that you?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "It's me."

And it _was_ God. Only this time she was blond-haired, blue-eyed and around the age of thirty. She looked very Norwegian.

Eventually the little black dots vanished and I regained my bearings. I told God what had happened. Everything. All the way down to the priest telling me the funny story about having the church help kill you.

God placed her hand on mine.

"Rachel," she said. "I know all about the priest."

"You do?"

"Yes. I knew what he was doing," she said. "I also knew how you would react. But I allowed him to talk to you so that you could experience his power first-hand."

"But why would a priest – "

A chill suddenly raced down my spine.

I looked at God in shock.

"He wasn't a priest, was he?" I said.

God shook her head. "No. But you were never in any danger. I keep a close eye on him."

I couldn't believe it.

"So that was him?" I said, my voice trembling. "That was Satan?"

"Yes."

"And everything he told me was a lie?"

"It's what he does," she said. "He is the Father of all Lies. Lies that create doubt, and doubt is a powerful weapon."

"But he was so charming," I said.

"I know."

"And believable."

God nodded.

"That's what makes him dangerous. Two minutes with him made you doubt everything you learned in five days with me. That is power in its purest form, and he knows how to use it effectively."

God hugged me.

"I'm sorry you had to go through that, Rachel. But now you know what he's like, and you know how he behaves. The next time he appears, you'll recognize him."

The same chill went down my spine as before.

"You mean I'll see him again?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"When you least expect it."

We sat in silence for a moment as my legs and body returned to normal.

Finally God asked if I was ready to go.

I told her yes and closed my eyes. I was never more ready to go anywhere in my entire life.

# FORTY

Entry #83

Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.

Thomas More

**When I opened my eyes God and I were at the worksite,** sitting together under a large white canopy in an old-fashioned wooden swing. We were facing the lake. Lemonade and cookies sat on the table next to us.

"I've always liked swings," God said. "I seem to think better when I'm in one."

I told God we had a swing on the back porch of my parent's house. In the summer, Dad, Steve and I would sit there for hours on end, listening to the Atlanta Braves play baseball on the radio. It was wonderful.

God smiled. "Your mother still goes out there some nights and sits in that swing. She feels closest to your father when she's back there, with his flowers and that birdhouse he enjoyed so much."

I was surprised by that.

"Mom misses Dad?" I said.

"Very much," God replied. "She thinks about him daily."

I would never have guess that in a million years.

"I called her," I said.

God nodded. "I know. She wanted to pick up the phone but didn't have the strength. Give her time. And keep calling."

I sipped the lemonade. It was good. Not too sour or too sweet.

Then, slowly, quietly, without fanfare or applause, God started the conversation that would change my life forever.

"I was with your husband the day of the accident," she said.

A lump formed in my throat.

"He was in very high spirits," she continued. "In fact, he was whistling a Bruce Springsteen song."

If I hadn't been so close to crying, I would have laughed.

"He loved Bruce," I said. "I think he knew every song by heart."

"The driver of the other vehicle lost consciousness," God said. "He crossed the center-line and hit your husband's car head-on. It happened very quickly. There was nothing he could do."

I tried hard _not_ to see the events God was describing, but it was no use – in my mind's eye, I saw them with perfect clarity.

"They said Joe died instantly," I said. "Is that true?"

She nodded slowly. "Yes. He was never in any pain. The very second of the collision, however, his last thought was of you. He knew you were making chili. He was anxious to get home for dinner."

The lump in my throat grew smaller.

"I was there at your brother's accident," God said. "As he fell, he realized it was his fault. He never should have grabbed your wrist."

The lump continued to shrink.

"And I was with you in the hospital when Teresa died. There was never any discomfort or pain for her, either. She went peacefully."

I thought the moment God mentioned Teresa's name, I'd lose it. But I didn't. Oddly, I became even calmer.

The lump disappeared all together.

"Will I get to see them again?" I asked. "In Heaven?"

"Yes."

"What will it be like?"

"What's the fondest memory you have of your husband?" God asked.

I didn't have to think long. It wasn't our wedding, honeymoon or something big and dramatic. It was something small.

"Lying in a hammock," I said. "In my parent's backyard. We were reading. It was, I don't know, just sweet and comfortable, resting my head on his chest."

"You were happy then?" God asked. "Content?"

"Very much so."

"Then you will re-live that moment with him."

"Really? How often?"

"As often as you like."

"And my brother?"

"You will sit with him in that swing as often as you like."

"And Teresa?"

God smiled gently. "You will be with her again...as often as you like."

I didn't know if I was ready for the answer but I knew I had to ask the question.

"So why did it happen?" I said. "Why did they have to die?"

It was a good long while before God spoke. We both knew this was the reason she chose to spend time with me. This was the moment of truth.

"They didn't _have_ to die," she said quietly. "In fact, their deaths were not according to my Will."

It was slow in coming but the impact of those words hit me with the force of a two-by-four.

I said with surprise, "You mean there's a Will in the universe that's greater than yours?"

God shook her head. "No, my Will is supreme."

"But if your Will is supreme," I said, "And their deaths were against your Will, then, I guess I'm back to my original question. Why did they have to die? I mean, isn't there a plan of some sort?"

"Yes," God replied. "There's a plan. But my plans differ from yours. The plan you're referring to is presumptive. You _presume_ I orchestrate every word you speak, every thought you think, every action you take, and that I do so with a specific purpose in mind."

"Are you saying there's no purpose to life?"

God shook her head.

"No," she said. "I'm not saying that at all. Life has an enormous purpose. I just don't _force_ you to fulfill it, that's all. My Will is permissive, not dictatorial."

The look on my face was, I'm sure, one of confusion.

"Rachel," she said. "Love has no real value unless it is given freely. When I created you, I could have required that you love me, but that wouldn't be love, that would be coercion. Likewise, when I created you, I could have arranged it so that every decision you make, every action you take, every thought you think, would have been done in a loving manner. But that wouldn't be love either. That would be servitude."

The confusion was beginning to clear up a little. But just a little.

"That's why I gave you freedom of choice," God continued. "Freedom to love me or not to love me. Freedom to choose to do right or to do wrong. The man who caused your husband's death simply chose to do wrong. It was not my Will that he do it, but it was my Will that made it possible."

I thought about that a couple moments but didn't speak immediately. I wanted to make sure I had it straight.

Finally, I said, "So, Joe's accident was the result of free will. The free will of a man who chose to drink and drive."

God nodded yes.

I thought carefully for a moment.

"But what about Teresa?" I asked. "How was her death an act of free will?"

"It's wasn't," God replied. "What happened to your daughter happened for a different reason."

My stomach dropped a little. It does that when I think bad news is on the way.

"I didn't create a perfect world," God said. "I created the earth. Otherwise it would just be another Heaven. Likewise, I didn't create perfect creatures, I created human beings. Otherwise you would be angels."

"I have no idea what that means," I said.

God paused, placed her fingers against her lips and tapped lightly, thinking. After a moment she spoke.

"Angels have perfect bodies, Rachel. Humans do not. Humans have imperfections. Some of those imperfections, like Teresa's, are biological flaws that result in death before birth. These flaws, however, are what make you human. These flaws separate you from the angels. And it is these same flaws that allow me to love you as my created children."

My head was spinning from all the cosmic logic being thrown at me. I got most of it, but some of it was a little gray. Trouble was I was tired of gray. I wanted black and white.

"So what does all this mean?" I asked.

God took my hand in hers.

"What all this means," she said, "is that the deaths of your loved ones were not the result of a plan. Nor an act of punishment or retribution. Their deaths were the consequence of living a life on earth. A life that breaks my heart sometimes, the same as it breaks yours."

So there it was.

The reason bad things happen to good people.

They happen as a result of either free will or luck-of-the-draw. God wasn't punishing anyone. She wasn't trying to get our attention or teach us a lesson or get us to straighten up and fly right. She was simply allowing an imperfect world with its imperfect people to go about its imperfect way.

And it was all done out of love.

A divine love for less-than-divine creatures.

We sat in the gathering silence for a while after that. God held my hand gently, not tightly. It was almost like we were girlfriends rather than Creature and Creator. After a couple minutes she made an odd request.

"May I borrow your notebook?" she said.

I handed it over. She wrote something down and handed it back. I looked at what she'd written. It was a Bible verse.

"Now," God said. "I'd like to take you someplace. Someplace that will help you understand everything I've told you today."

I closed my eyes without asking our destination. When I opened them, I knew immediately where we were. It was my parent's back yard. There was the same fence Echo dug a hole under and Dad's birdhouse and a boatload of daffodils and the spot where a giant pumpkin once grew. Seeing all these familiar things made me suddenly homesick. But it was _who_ I saw at the far side of the yard that made my knees buckle.

I saw my husband.

# FORTY-ONE

Entry #61

Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

" **Is that...?" I asked.**

God nodded. "Yes, that's Joe."

I couldn't breathe. I clutched my stomach and leaned forward to force the blood back into my head.

"But, for now," God said, "he can neither see nor hear you. I'm sorry."

Finally, I straightened up.

"Can I get closer?"

"Certainly," she answered. "Walk as close as you like."

I slowly crossed the yard, afraid if I approached my husband too quickly he might disappear or turn into somebody else. But he didn't. He remained as familiar and handsome as ever. He was reading a book, just like I remembered. My heart pounded louder with each step. I so wanted to reach out and touch him, to place my hand on his cheek, my head on his chest, just to feel the warmth of his body, the caress of his hand. Just one more time.

"Is this Heaven?" I whispered.

"Yes," God replied. "A very small portion of it."

"You mean there's more?"

She motioned toward the house.

There, on the back porch, sitting in a wooden swing, sipping a soda, was my brother. Echo lay at his feet. A baseball game played on the radio next to him.

God took my hand in hers.

"I thought it important that you see them," she said. "I wanted you to know beyond any doubt that you will be with them again someday, here, just like this."

"When?" I asked.

She smiled, almost with a hint of sadness, but not quite.

"When the time comes," she said softly.

I turned back to my husband. He was smiling as he read. I glanced at the title. It was a book by Kurt Vonnegut. The one with Montana Wildhack in it. I watched him silently for a few minutes, wondering if he wondered about me. If he wished I was in the swing with him.

"Does he ever think about me?" I asked.

"Yes," God said. "In fact, he's thinking of you right now."

I turned to my brother.

"And Steve?"

"Yes, he misses you, too," God said. "Love is not diminished by death, Rachel. Love is eternal."

We stood together a moment, God and I. Neither of us spoke. There was so much to say but no way to say it. Finally she asked if I was ready to go.

"No," I said. "But I will anyway."

And with that, we left Heaven, arriving once again back at the worksite.

"Tomorrow is Sunday," God said. "It will be our last day together."

I nodded but didn't say anything. My mind was still in the back yard of the house I grew up in, which had now become something far, far better.

"I don't know if anything I've told or shown you today have helped," she said. "I hope so. I hope that life will become easier for you now."

I told her it was easier already.

Her Norwegian eyes brightened.

"Tomorrow," she said, "is going to be special. A day unlike any you've ever experienced."

We hugged, and instantly I returned to St. Michael's. The church was dark and cool and silent, a place of absolute peace. I sat in the sacred stillness for a long while, lost in the experience of the last half-hour.

The walk home was without sight or sound. I'm sure there was the usual traffic and people and general hustle bustle of an Oak Park afternoon, but I neither saw nor heard any of it. I was still far away in a place called Heaven, or better yet, a little bit of Heaven was now inside of me.

# FORTY-TWO

Entry #49

My mind is not like a bed that has to be made and remade; there are some things of which I am absolutely certain.

James Agate

**I checked my messages when I got home. There were** none. I picked up the phone and dialed my mom. I got her voice-mail.

"Hi, Mom," I said. "Just checking in. Give me a call when you get a chance. Oh, and Mom, I love you."

Even if she couldn't bring herself to answer the phone, I wanted her to know I loved her. And I did love her. So much so that it surprised me.

After dinner, I poured a half-glass of chocolate milk and slid into my chair to think.

Of all the marvelous things God had shown me and told me and did with me over the past six days, they all paled by comparison to the eight minutes I spent in heaven. To see my husband, brother and father again, well, that was beyond words.

Until today I feared death. I'm told most people do, or at least that's what Goldberg claimed. He said it's a fear of the great unknown, which for me is partly true and partly false. True in the sense that I'm not crazy about going somewhere I haven't been before and doing unfamiliar things with people I don't know. That much is not at all attractive. What is attractive about death, however, is knowing that it is not the end of anything, it's really the beginning.

But I think there's another reason people fear death. A reason few of us admit to ourselves much less share with people like therapists, priests or even our own families. I think we fear death because we figure no matter where we end up going, it can't be better than what we have now here on earth. All the talk about harps and singing and sharing time with God sounds fine on the surface, but when it really comes down to crunch time and the Grim Reaper is standing in the door, that's when people start clawing at the furniture, trying to grab onto something so they won't have to go. It's not so much the fear of doing things we don't know as it is fear of losing the things we do.

As of today, however, I was past all that. The thought of an afterlife didn't just merely appeal to me, it beckoned to me in the strongest sense. I can't speak for anyone else, but I know how I'm going to spend eternity, and I got to tell you, I'm happy as a clam. I don't just accept my fate, I embrace it.

Suddenly I remembered my notebook. I opened it up and flipped to the last page. Written there in bold black script was this: _1 Corinthians 15: 51-55._

I grabbed my Bible. It took me a couple minutes to land on the right page, but when I did, this is what I read:

Behold, I will tell you a secret! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet. And the dead will be raised imperishable, and this mortal body will put on immortality. Then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: Where, O death is your victory? Where, O Death is your sting?

Indeed, I asked myself. Where is his sting?

Thanks to what I'd seen today, I no longer thought of death as a tall, black-hooded, stoop-shoulder guy with a scythe and lantern. I now thought of him as a friendly conductor on a train, taking my ticket when I boarded and making sure I was comfortable for the ride to my parent's house. When you think of dying that way, all the fear and mystery is removed.

So, in answer to my question: _why did my loved ones have to die_? I now know they didn't have to. It was tough getting that concept straight in my mind, but what it boiled down to was this: God doesn't orchestrate events; she sets them in motion and they orchestrate themselves. Some turn out OK the first time around and some don't. But the ones that turn out bad are either our fault through an act of free will or no one's fault through an instance of misfortune. God doesn't create tragedies to make a point. She allows them to happen because, in a world worth loving, tragic things happen.

I turned out the lights then. Before I went to sleep though, I said a prayer. I thanked God for three things: one, being there for me when I needed her; two, for _not_ forcing me to obey her without first understanding her. And most of all, three, for explaining that when our hearts are broken, so is hers.

There's comfort in a shared grief.

Comfort indeed.

# FORTY-THREE

Entry #50

Don't be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. Aim above morality. Don't just be good; be good for something.

Henry David Thoreau

SUNDAY

**I was up early the next morning,** ate breakfast and was out the door within the hour. When I reached St. Michael's I noticed a sign outside announcing the upcoming sermon: "A Step of Faith." When I walked into the sanctuary, I was shocked. It was full of people. I took a seat in the back row, wondering if this was a regular church service or if maybe God planned on taking us all to the lake this morning. A moment later a priest appeared at the altar.

"Welcome to the eight a.m. Mass at St. Michael's," he said.

I looked at him long and hard, just to make sure he was the genuine article, and not you-know-who in disguise. He said his name was Father Hamilton, but I wasn't going to be suckered in by a fake name.

It wasn't until I saw God sitting in the back row that I relaxed. I knew it was God because he looked just like my uncle again. Plus he motioned for me to sit next to him. And so I did.

After a couple songs and a prayer, Father Hamilton launched into his sermon.

"Throughout the Bible," he said, "there is one important truth illustrated time and again: _the Holy Spirit releases_ _his power the moment we take a step of faith._ "

Father Hamilton had a great voice. Warm and sincere. The kind of voice you could listen to a long time without getting bored or distracted.

"A great example of this truth," he continued, "is contained in the book of Joshua. When Joshua was preparing to lead the Hebrews into the Promised Land, he was met by the floodwaters of the Jordan River." Father Hamilton read directly from the Bible. "And this is what God told him: _When you reach the banks of the river, take a few steps into the water and stop."_

Father Hamilton's eyes swept the entire congregation, but every so often it seemed like he lingered on me a little longer than the others. I wrote it off as my imagination. I oftentimes think people are staring at me when they're probably not.

"And," Father Hamilton continued, his voice rising with emotion, "when Joshua took that _first step_ _of faith_ , the floodwaters of the Jordan River receded, and the Hebrews went on to claim the land that has today become the nation of Israel."

I thought this an interesting story. Usually I'm either bored or distracted during a sermon, but not this time. This time I was clued in to what was being said, in part because I was interested, and in part because I couldn't get over the feeling that what was being preached was being done for my benefit.

"There are people in this world," Father Hamilton said, "whose mission it seems is to tell others what cannot be done. They are the critics. You'll notice they are typically vocal in their criticism yet exempt from action. But, my friends, as a great leader of this nation once said, 'It is not the critic who counts. Not the one who points out how the strong person stumbles, or how the doer of deeds might have done it better. The credit belongs to the man or woman who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and tears. Who strives valiantly. Who errs and comes up short again and again and again. Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends themselves in a worthy cause. Who, if they fail, at least they fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."'

Father Hamilton had my complete attention, even though

doing great deeds had very little to do with me as I had my hands full just keeping up with my laundry.

A few minutes later, the church service ended and everyone

politely filed out, shaking hands with one another, chatting happily about the latest baseball scores and what their kids were up to these days.

I sat there quietly, hoping no one would say anything to me, and it worked because no one did. When the sanctuary was empty, God spoke quietly.

"That was a nice sermon," he said. "Don't you think?"

I told him I thought it was very nice.

He glanced at me, his blue eyes twinkling in the dim sanctuary light.

"Especially the part about spending yourself in a worthy cause," he said. "I liked that quite a bit. Very appropriate these days."

I got the feeling God was up to something, but I was afraid to ask because I was pretty sure that something involved me.

"Are we returning to the lake today?" I asked.

"Yes," God replied. "But there's someplace else I'd like to visit before we do. If that's all right?"

"Heaven again?" I asked hopefully.

He shook his head.

"No, someplace else. But someplace special."

I closed my eyes, and, as before, felt a slight breeze against my cheek. Before I actually saw our destination, however, I smelled it: the pungent aroma of smoke and diesel fuel and burning rubber.

I opened my eyes. Instead of the manicured lawn we'd left the day before, God and I were standing on the side of a busy highway. Except right in the middle of the highway, where cars should be zipping along, was an ambulance and a fire truck and a couple cop cars, all with their lights flashing, red, white and blue. Next to the fire truck was a twisted heap of metal, which I finally figured out was half of a car, the front half. About twenty yards away, lying upside down in a ditch, was the other half. It had been completely severed just behind the driver's seat. Fifty yards down the road was a mangled eighteen-wheeler which had done the severing.

A number of men and women in uniform milled around the broken glass and hunks of smoldering metal, talking in hushed, serious tones. They were not in a hurry. Apparently all the damage that could be done had been done.

"Don't' worry," God said. "No one can see us."

I wasn't worried about being seen; I was more worried about what I might see. It was obvious we were at the scene of a horrific accident, and I was fairly sure that where there's wreckage, there's carnage.

Suddenly a young woman, about my age, came sprinting up the side of the road, a look of disbelief mixed with terror on her face. She yelled a man's name over and over and over. A female cop stepped in her path and stopped her. They talked briefly before the woman abruptly dropped to her knees and started crying almost as hard as I had the day my Teresa died.

"She knew someone in the accident, didn't she?" I said.

God nodded. "Her husband."

"Is he..." I couldn't bring myself to finish the question.

Again the nod.

As I stood there, transfixed by the utter horror of what lay before me, the smoke and wreckage and sobbing widow simply melted away, like watercolors left out in the rain.

Now I was standing in a graveyard, surrounded by tombstones and umbrellas and people dressed all in black. It was raining. In front of us was a small gray tent, under which sat a dozen or so people, all facing a casket that was slowly being lowered into the ground.

A man and woman about my parent's age sat in the front row of chairs. They leaned on each other for support. Next to them was a young girl, with red and swollen eyes. She was crying. They were all crying.

"Whose funeral is this?" I asked.

"No one you know," God replied. "He was, however, someone's brother, someone's son and someone's friend."

Then, just as before, the graveyard slowly dissolved, and I was standing in a small nursery whose walls were painted yellow and blue. Stuffed animals lined the window sill. An empty crib sat in one corner. A young woman stood in the doorway, arms crossed, a faraway look in her eye, staring at the crib without moving. I recognized the expression on her face. It was the look of someone whose heart has been crushed.

"She lost her child, didn't she?" I asked.

"Yes," God said. "A son."

An immense sadness welled up in me. I felt sorrow for the woman in the doorway who lost her child and the girl at the cemetery who lost her brother and the woman on the highway who lost her husband. I knew exactly how they felt. I knew exactly how the slow, dull ache would start in the stomach, work its way up to the throat, then scratch and claw its way into the brain. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing they could do or say or think that would bring back the ones they'd lost. It was a nightmare from which they were never going to awaken. It was inconsolable. It was horrible. And I hated that they had to go through what I'd gone through. I absolutely hated it.

"Why did you bring me here?" I asked God.

He took my hand in his. "Let's discuss that back at the lake, shall we?"

I closed my eyes, and together we left

# FORTY-FOUR

Entry #14

A person often meets their destiny on the road they took to avoid it.

Jean de La Fonatine

**We arrived back at the worksite, but it was not the same** place we'd left on Saturday. I mean, it _was_ the same place, but instead of an open field with miniature trees and shrubs and flowers, it was now a full-blown park, with trees tall as telephone poles and magnificent green shrubs and flowers of every color in the rainbow. The grass was smooth and rolled like a carpet down to the edge of the most beautiful lake I'd ever seen, which now was about ten times larger than it had been yesterday.

"Oh, my," was the first thing I said. "This is...this is...."

"Beautiful?" God asked.

All I could do was nod.

"It is nice, isn't it," he said. "We do good work together, you and me."

As I looked around, I felt there was something familiar about this place. Not because I'd spent the last week here, however; it was something else. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but it felt as if I'd seen it in a movie or a poster or a....

Then it hit me.

"This is that painting!" I exclaimed. "The one hanging in Goldberg's office. The one on my refrigerator! _Sunday in the Park with George."_

God smiled. "I've always admired that painting," he said. "Except now you might say it's _Sunday in the Park with God."_

As much as I loved how the park had changed, my mind was still cluttered with the images of cars split in half and women dressed in black and a baby crib that held no baby.

So again I asked.

"Why did you take me to those places? Why did you show me those people?"

God motioned toward a blanket that was spread on the ground.

"Please," he said. "Sit with me for a few minutes."

We both sat down.

"Before I explain," God said. "I want you to tell me something. When we first met, there was a question you wrote in your notebook but never asked. I believe it had to do with the Vatican."

I repeated the story.

"When I was ten years old," I said. "Our family was on vacation in Rome, and we bumped into this priest at St. Peter's, who singled me out. He said, 'Rachel, God is with you.' And well, I don't know. I was just...well, I kind of wondered..." My voice trailed off.

God smiled. "Yes, go on."

"Well, I've always wondered if that particular priest picked kids out of the crowd all the time, or did he see something in me that was special?"

God looked at me a good long while, then said the one thing I wasn't expecting him to.

"He saw something in you, Rachel. In fact, it's the same thing I see in you."

I wasn't expecting God to say that because I'd never really thought there was anything in me except what you saw on the surface.

"The priest wasn't sure what it was," God continued. "But he was certain of this: he was looking at a Child of Destiny."

I thought the words _Child of Destiny_ was such a lovely phrase until I realized I was the child in question, and it was my destiny we were talking about.

I asked God if somehow my destiny was connected to those people we'd just seen.

He nodded.

"There are two great days in a person's life," he said. "The day you are born and the day you discover why. What I'd like to share with you now is why I created _you_. I want to share with you _your_ purpose in life."

Until I met God, my purpose in life was simply to make it through another day.

But that was then and this was now.

"The most important thing in life is love," God continued. "To love your neighbor as yourself. And because of that love, each person on earth is meant to perform certain tasks of charity. Some are very small tasks, and might only involve one person. Others, however, are meant to influence a much larger group. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands."

My pulse jumped a couple notches.

"Which one am I?" I asked.

I expected God to say 'Well, that depends,' then give me an easy way out.

I was wrong.

"Thousands," he said. "Perhaps tens of thousands."

To say I was stunned would be an understatement. In fact, it is an understatement. I was _flummoxed._ Which is a much stronger and better word.

How, in heavens name, could I influence _thousands_ of people when the only person I had influence over was me; and sometimes even that wasn't a sure bet.

"Are you sure it's me you're talking about?" I said.

God laughed. "I'm positive. I'm a pretty good judge of character."

It wasn't my character I doubted, it was my ability

"Rachel," God said, "I'm going to tell you something that I want you to put into your journal."

I braced myself.

He looked at me with his kind, sweet, pale blue eyes.

"People may admire a great mind," he said, "but they love a great heart. You have a great heart. And I assure you, people everywhere will love you for it."

We both fell into silence then. Me, out of shock. God, probably out of courtesy. I tried to imagine me as someone else. Someone important. Someone whom other people would sit up and listen to. But it was no use. No matter how hard I tried, all I could ever see me becoming was a couple years older; and I hardly thought aging was a sign of greatness, much less potential for becoming a child of destiny.

On the other hand, God didn't strike me as the kind of person to say or do stuff just for the effect it might have on people. He was a lot of things but a Showboat was not one of them.

"Rachel," God said, "what would you say if I told you that it is within your power to help those women you saw this morning?"

"Me?" I asked. "How?"

"Do you trust me?" God asked.

I told him I did.

"Do you have Faith in me?" God asked.

I told him I did.

"Enough Faith to do the seemingly impossible?"

I told him I hoped so.

He smiled. "Then leave the details up to me. The only thing you need to know is that I'll be with you every step of the way."

Of all the questions I had, this is the only one I thought important.

"Are you sure I won't let you down?"

God laced his arm inside mine.

"I'm positive," he said. "I'm not asking you to succeed; I'm only asking you to try."

We both stood.

"We'll begin our journey together in forty days," he said.

"Why forty?" I asked.

God smiled. "I'll explain everything then. But there's one thing left to do before we leave."

He looked over my shoulder, behind me.

"There's someone here I thought you'd like to see," he said.

I turned, and there, not ten feet away, sitting on the grass, was a little girl about the age of seven, wearing a white hat and dress. Her hair was fizzy and her face covered in freckles...my freckles. I looked to God for an explanation.

God nodded.

"This is where she is now," he said.

I couldn't speak immediately. I turned back to my daughter.

"This too is Heaven," he said.

My knees began to shake.

"Can she see me?" I asked.

"No," God said. "It's the same here as before."

I stared at her in wordless amazement.

"She's older," I said finally. "And she's beautiful."

I walked closer. Close enough to hear her softly humming a tune. One that made me smile. It was _Here Comes the Sun_.

God stood next to me.

"The first Heaven you visited," he said. "was only a portion of the whole. This is another portion."

"Is Joe here?" I asked.

"No. For now, it's just you and Teresa. When the time is right, all of you will be together again."

I watched my daughter for a good half-hour. She busied herself by weaving clover into a lovely green necklace, the same as I did when I was her age. When it was done, she draped it around her neck and began weaving a matching bracelet. She seemed content. Perfectly at peace.

"Will I come back _here_ when I die?" I asked. "To this park?"

God touched my arm.

"My dear, Rachel," he said. "We built this for you."

And with those words, I found myself back at St. Michael's.

On my way out of the sanctuary, I stole a glance at my concrete Savior, hanging not in death but in glorious life on the wall beyond the altar. I said a silent prayer, made the sign of the cross and started my twenty minute walk home on what felt like a blanket of air. I don't think my feet touched the ground once.

# FORTY-FIVE

Entry #96

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

**When I arrived back home, I was so happy with life in** general that I almost forgot to check my messages. I had one. It was my mother.

"Hi, dear," she said. "It's Me. I'm sorry not to have returned your phone calls, but I've been so busy these past few days and..."

But instead of telling me all the busy stuff she'd been doing, she didn't say anything. For a really long time. When she finally said something, she went off in a direction I hadn't counted on.

"Rachel, dear" she said, "I'd like for you to come visit me, if that's OK? I'd enjoy just talking to you. I haven't done that in a while, and, well, I'd like to spend some time with you, that's all."

Again there was a long pause.

"I miss you, sweetheart."

That did it. I started crying.

After I got through bawling, I called her back. We talked for maybe ten minutes, which is eight minutes longer than our normal phone conversations. Not exactly an auspicious beginning, but here's the thing: _my mother asked me to come stay with her_. Me. Her daughter, whom she called "dear" and "sweetheart," and not just once but several times, each time sounding as though she meant it.

I told her I'd love to come spend some time with her, and maybe sit in the swing one evening and listen to a Braves game and talk about well, talk about...things. Anything.

She said she'd like that. She didn't say we'd talk about me or Steve or how sorry she was that she chased Dad off, but somehow I knew those heartaches would rise to the surface on their own. I was in no hurry. The difference was that I now knew how to deal with them, and better yet, I had a feeling I could help her deal with them as well. Plus I had a feeling she could help me with Joe and Teresa.

That evening, after dinner, as I sat in my reading chair with my half-glass of milk, this thought kept bouncing around in my head: _You, Rachel Louise Walker, are the luckiest woman on the face of the earth. Don't blow it!_

When I went to bed that night, I went to bed happy. I said a prayer, turned out the light, and lay in the darkness, thinking back through the magnificent week I'd just experienced and thinking through what lie ahead.

And then I slept.

In my dream that night, I was in Seurat's painting again, an umbrella in one hand and my daughter in the other, surrounded by all the sights and sounds and smells of a perfect day in a perfect place in a perfect world. That part of Heaven God told me existed outside my back yard. I knew that someday I would come here as often as I liked, and be with my Teresa in her little white dress as often as I liked, and we would walk and talk and laugh together, as often as I liked. It would be marvelous. It would be everything God said it would be, and more.

Then, in my dream, I heard my angel singing that melancholy French love song again, except this time it wasn't in French, it was in English, and I understood every word. This is what my angel sang.

To the one who has lost a someone,  
without a reason why;  
Who finds themselves alone and lonely,  
denied a last good-by.  
When the night is dark and breathless,  
when the sun refuses to rise.  
When the day is filled with heartache,  
when tears rain from the sky.  
There is hope for the hopeless,  
rest for the weary,  
joy the angels to tell.  
There is One who will listen,  
He knows how you suffer.  
For His heart is broken as well.

I'd come to love this song long before I knew what it meant, but now that I knew, it was so different from what I'd expected. It wasn't a love song for me after all. It was much bigger than that. It was a love song to the world in which I lived. The world in which many, many women, like myself, knew loss and pain and grief. The world in which, beginning tomorrow, I was going to do my best to help become a slightly better place.

# AFTERWORD

ONE WEEK LATER

**Well, that's how it happened**. In one sense I'm sure that I have not done this story justice. To be in the presence of God and to describe what it's like to be in the presence of God are two different things. It's easy to understand The Almighty as long as you don't have to explain him.

I've tried to faithfully relate to you all he told me and how I felt at the time and which part of it made sense and which part didn't. I'm still trying to figure out the deeper, more complicated stuff, but I'm getting better. And he's helping.

As for the plan God has for me? I'm still thirty days away from finding out what that's all about, but I'm pretty excited to hear what he has to tell me. Who knows, maybe I'll write a book about it someday.

Despite everything that's happened to me though, I'm still not the most confident person in the world. I'm getting better, or I should say I'm getting more comfortable with the idea that I might just amount to something someday. Stranger things have happened.

I should be going now. I have a lot of packing to do. I leave for Savannah in two days to start living with my mom.

Wish me luck.

Oh, there is one last thing: Over the past few days I've tried to determine the most important lesson I've learned from this whole experience. That's hard to do because there are so many to choose from. But if I could pick _three_ instead of one _,_ the first would be that suffering is in the mind, not the heart, and I have control over what it does in my life. I now have the key to unlock the door to you-know-where. The second would be that in my frantic scramble to make my life make sense, I finally figured out it's not about me. It's about God and learning to love those around me. Including those who took my job and killed my dog. And three, I realize now that I was asking the wrong question. Instead of wasting all my time wondering, _Why is all this rotten_ _stuff happening to me?_ I should have been thinking, _Now that all this_ _rotten stuff has happened to me, what can I do with it?_

Well, now I know.

THE END

# ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert lives in Kansas City with his wife Molly and three children. He is a Christian by religion, a Methodist by denomination and a Seeker by nature.

He wrote the trilogy RACHEL'S CONFESSION in response to a question his daughter asked, "What kind of God allows people to suffer?" The answer Robert tried to provide led him down various paths of his own Faith, ultimately guiding him to write not one novel in response to his daughter's question, but three. THE CONFESSION is the first book.

He is currently at work completing the second installment of this trilogy entitled THE JOURNEY, which will be available in the winter of 2011 from Sun Literary; followed by THE PROMISE in 2012.

You'll find the Foreword and first two chapters of THE JOURNEY on the next page. I hope you liked this book enough to read a little bit more about the second one. If not, that's OK, I know you're busy.

Regardless, take care and God Bless!

# "RACHEL'S CONFESSION"  
Part Two  
THE JOURNEY

A novel by  
ROBERT LADD

 _  
_Sun Literary  
Kansas City

# ~FOREWORD~

**My name is Rachel Walker.** I'm still in my twenties, so I'm not really old enough for life to have taught me much. But if there's one thing I've learned for sure, it's this: _there is no such_ _thing as the foreseeable future_. Take me, for example: about a year ago, I had a pretty bad run of luck. In an eight month span, I lost my husband, my daughter, and my job, not to mention my sanity and most of my self-esteem. It got so bad I actually tried to commit suicide. Fortunately it didn't work. I took 62 sleeping pills and drank half a bottle of Chianti but before they took effect, I threw up.

Well, one thing led to another and instead of dying, I went to Confession instead. Which is where I met God. OK, when I say I met God, I'm not talking about a divine vision or dream or even a mystical image of the Almighty.

I actually met _God._ Face to face.

It was quite a shock at first, but it didn't take long to get used to it. For one, he was so normal-looking. In fact, he was the spitting image of my Uncle Gordon.

Gordon owned a small funeral home in southern Georgia, and was my favorite uncle because he never treated me like a kid even though I was a kid. He treated me like a miniature adult.

God was the same way. He treated me like I was someone special and not like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

We talked for seven straight days, God and I. Not 24 hours at a time but somewhere around seven or eight hours each day. It was remarkable. And boy did things turn around after that. I won't bore you with all the details, but if you're interested in what we talked about, you can read all about it in a book I wrote entitled, "The Confession."

That may sound like a ploy to get you to buy my book, but it's not. Go the library and read it for free. A lot of libraries carry it now. This book is a sequel to that one. It's not necessary to read the other one first, but it might help.

Anyway, the last day I was with God, he told me it was my destiny to help others who were going through the same rotten stuff I went through. In fact, he said he would return in forty days so we could get started. That was thirty days ago. I keep a little calendar with me at all times, and have carefully marked off the days.

God said he was going to help me do whatever it is I'm supposed to do so I'm pretty sure I'll be successful, but if I've learned anything about how the Almighty works, it's this: he seldom just _hands_ you anything on a platter. He makes you work for it. But that's OK, because it's a lot easier to work for something when you know what might come from it in the end. It's called Faith. Except in my case, it's called _insider information_. God has already told me what my destiny is; what he hasn't told me is how long it's going to take and what to expect along the way.

As yet, I haven't shared the fact that I met God with my parents, or anyone else for that matter. There's just no easy way to tell someone you've encountered the Creator of the Universe without them looking at you funny. To be honest, if someone told me they'd met God, I wouldn't have believed them. What I would have done was smile, tell them how interesting that was then turned and run like the wind. It's just not in anyone's nature to believe in miracles anymore. Actually we do seem to believe in miracles as long as they don't involve apparitions. Seeing God in nature and seeing God in person are different things all together. It's easy to believe God helps people out of jams, like when a car turns over on some kid and the mother lifts it without so much as a pulled muscle. That happens fairly often, and so it's easy to chalk it up to divine intervention. But when people claim to have actually _seen_ the Blessed Virgin at that place in France, well, we tend to be skeptics. Or at least I did. Of course that changed when I met God. First hand experience takes the guesswork out of believing.

At this moment, I'm sitting in a freshly-painted sun room in my Grandmother's house in Savannah, Georgia. It's been a bizarre yet exciting week. So much has happened that I thought I'd better stop and write it all down. Not that I was in danger of forgetting any of it; I just want to make sure I have my facts straight when telling this story.

The reason I'm at my grandmother's house is because that's where I live now. With her and my mom. My mom moved in right after her and dad divorced. I decided to move in with them for two reasons: one, I didn't have a job. And two, something inside me told me to do it. I'm not sure if was God telling me or me telling me. Regardless, it's what made sense at the moment. We'll see how long the moment lasts now that I'm here.

Also, considering Mom and I never got along all that well when I was kid, it will be interesting to see if we can get along now as adults. A lot of what I'm about to tell you is about her, so I'll let you decide for yourself is we're going to be able to pull it off. Living together, I mean.

In case you're wondering about my dad, he's in the army, stationed someplace overseas. I hardly ever get to see him, which is sad. He and I get along great.

OK, now, I'm ready to start telling you what happened. I hope you enjoy my story. I hope you have fun as you read it. I also hope it turns out half as good as I think it will.

Oh, one last thing. I start each chapter with a little saying or verse from a journal I've kept since college. I do that because the words I chose say something about the entire chapter in a way that is outside the story. But then again, just because it says something to me doesn't mean it's going to say something to you. So if you find the quotes distracting or they don't make sense, just skip them.

Well, that's about it. There's a lot more I could tell you, but you've probably got enough to go on for now.

Are you ready?

Good.

Let's get started.

# ONE

Entry #40

" _The best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open."_

Harper Lee, _To Kill a Mockingbird_

**You never know how much junk you have until you** move. I'd only lived in my little apartment for a couple years but it seemed like when I started loading stuff into boxes, I ran out of boxes long before I ran out of stuff. I kept finding things I didn't even know I had anymore. Pictures of me when I was a kid, magazines from eight years ago, a sweater my Aunt Nina gave me which I never wore. (I like my Aunt Nina, just not the sweater.) I ended up tossing some really old stuff into the trash, only to go out later and retrieve it. I'm a hoarder, I guess. I can't bear to part with anything.

My motto is "Better to have a lot of stuff you don't need than regret having tossed the one thing you'd give anything to have back." I know mottos are supposed to be short and concise and mine is long and convoluted, but there it is.

I thought about sticking it out in Chicago until God returned but as I said I was out of two things: employment, money, and insurance. OK, that's three things but employment and money are kind of the same. Actually I had a little of Joe's life insurance money left over but not a lot, as it was never a lot to begin with.

But the deal-breaker was no insurance. 90 days after I lost my job, I lost all my benefits, too. If I so much as stuck myself with a pin or had to go to the hospital for any reason, I was a goner. I simply couldn't afford to get sick, cut or anything else that involved blood or vomiting.

Out of nowhere another school called and offered me a job. For more money, too. I was very flattered. Maybe I wasn't the total failure I'd originally thought. I seriously considered taking it but finally said no. I told them I had to get home to take care of my mother. I'm not sure why I told them that, except it _felt_ true. I felt I had to move back to Savannah full-time and not just visit. Something was waiting for me there, I just knew it.

My Grandma sent me enough money to tide me over until I could get home, but I was reluctant to take more. It's bad enough to have to move back home after you've been married without being a mooch, too. The one thing I had going for me however was this: because my husband died in an automobile accident, his company paid for grief counseling. I think I got seven or eight sessions. So far I had only been to six of them. Before I left for Savannah, I thought it might be a good idea to visit my therapist one last time. I had a final question for him. His name was Goldberg. Doctor Isaac Goldberg.

"Rachel," Goldberg said as we shook hands. "So good to see you again."

As always, Goldberg shook my one hand with both of his. It was a warm, comforting gesture, kind of like the way a priest or an undertaker might do it.

"It's good to see you, too," I said, and meant it.

He indicated a chair I could sit in. He sat in one opposite me.

Despite the fact that Goldberg once tried to talk me out of Christianity, he genuinely seemed to care for my well-being. He was a Jewish agnostic, so he probably couldn't help himself about his issues with Jesus.

"I have to tell you, Rachel," Goldberg said with a huge smile, "You look terrific. Really. Just terrific."

"Oh, I've been on a little diet," I said modestly. "Plus I changed my hair a little. I started putting a cream rinse on it to make it less frizzy."

Goldberg smiled and nodded, as if he knew all about cream rinses.

"Well," he said enthusiastically. "You look wonderful."

Whenever someone tells me I look wonderful or terrific, but sound surprised by that fact, the compliment itself falls a little flat. What they're really telling me is that I used to look like a wreck but now don't. I understood his surprise, however. The last time Goldberg saw me I _was_ a wreck.

"Tell me what you've been doing," he said.

"Spending time with a good friend," I replied. "We worked outdoors a lot."

I held up my arm so he could see the tan I'd gotten.

Goldberg admired my coloring. "I'm so glad to hear that. It's important to keep the mind _and_ body occupied. Very therapeutic."

I told him I couldn't agree more.

What I didn't tell him was that since we'd last seen each other, I'd attempted suicide, met both God and Satan, visited heaven, seen my husband, brother and daughter – all of whom were deceased – helped build a park that I once saw in a painting in this very office, and discovered my purpose in life. All in about seven days. Which probably accounted for the change in my appearance. I mean, if doing all those things in one week doesn't change how somebody looks, nothing will.

"Now then," Goldberg said. "What should we talk about today?"

Normally I'm not one to jump right into a conversation. I usually hem and a haw a little and try to build up to what I really want to say. This time I didn't do that.

"I'm getting ready to move home to live with my mother," I said.

Goldberg looked surprised but covered it up by taking a sip of water.

"Interesting," he said. "So you and your mother are getting along better?"

"I think so," I relied truthfully. "Of course, we won't know for sure until I'm actually there for a few weeks, but I think we can make it work."

"I'm sure that you can," he said. "All that it takes is open communication and a willingness to adjust."

I was willing to adjust. It was the communication part that worried me. God told me to talk to Mom openly, but didn't provide a lot of detail on _how_ to do talk to her openly. I figured Goldberg could help.

"So, tell me," I said, "how do I go about getting my mother to discuss something she probably doesn't want to discuss?"

I realize that sometimes I don't phrase my questions properly, but Goldberg had spent enough time with me to decipher what I meant.

"That depends," he replied. "Is the subject you'd like to discuss embarrassing or painful?"

I thought for a moment.

"Embarrassing, no," I said. "Painful, yes."

"But you're certain it should be discussed?"

Again I told him yes.

Goldberg templed his fingers. He leaned back in his chair.

"Can you share with me the nature of the issue?" he asked.

I tried to come up with just enough information to convey the issue without giving it away entirely. It's tough being honest and secretive at the same time.

"It's a misunderstanding that occurred between Mom and I a long time ago," I volunteered.

Goldberg remained silent. It was a technique he used to see if I was going to spill any more beans. After a few moments of mutual silence, he continued.

"Then the best thing to do is simply to ask her," he said.

I was confused. "Ask her what?"

"If she's open to the discussion."

"That's it? Just ask her?"

Goldberg nodded and templed his fingers some more.

"Rachel, one of the most common problems I encounter when dealing with communication issues is that typically both parties involved tend to make the dialog far more complicated than it should be. They approach it like they would a game of chess: I move my piece here, you move your piece there, I take your pawn, you take mine, neither party willing to just open up and say what's on their mind for fear of losing the game."

Which is pretty much how I approach everything – like a chess game. Come to think of it though, I don't know how to play chess. I guess you could say my life is more like a game of checkers, which is kind of like chess, only easier.

"But the key to effective dialog is this:" Goldberg leaned forward. He rested both hands on his knees. He smiled. " _Vertitas vincit omnia,_ " he said solemnly, as if the words contained magic.

I knew it was Latin, but that's all I knew. I shrugged and shook my head.

"Truth conquers all," he said with an air of satisfaction.

Before I could shrug again, he continued.

"Rachel, communication is a two-way street. If you want people to be honest with you, you must be honest with them first."

But honesty wasn't the problem. My mother's reaction to the honesty was the problem. Her reaction might be a complete and total meltdown, which made me wonder what the Latin phrase was for _truth may conquer all but it may also cause your mother to pop a blood vessel._

Then again, I couldn't blame Goldberg for offering this advice. He was doing the best with what he had. Trouble was, he really didn't have all that much. For instance, he had no idea how non-communicative my mother was. He probably thought of her as a typical middle-aged, once-divorced, emotionally-stunted woman with the inability to articulate her feelings. Lots of women her age have that problem. Lots of women of _any_ age have that problem. Men too. Goldberg probably figured the only thing she needed to get her to open up was a frank discussion about whatever it was that made her close up to begin with. What Goldberg didn't know was that the reason my mother closed up was because I accidentally pushed my brother Steve (aka her favorite child in the whole world) off a twenty-foot cliff when we were kids. He died in the fall. Also, what Goldberg didn't know – couldn't know – was the day my brother died, I died, too. From that moment forward – Poof! – I vanished from the face of the earth. – _my mother's earth_. I became invisible. Deaf, dumb and mute. The child she never had.

"But what if she refuses to talk?" I said.

"Do you believe the relationship worth having?"

"Yes."

"And is the relationship dependent on discussing this subject, regardless of how delicate it might seem?'

Again I told him yes.

"Then, don't worry, you'll find a way," he tapped the side of his nose with one finger. "In fact, might I say that _love_ will find a way."

Which didn't sound to me like therapeutic counseling; it sounded more like words to a song I used to know. Regardless I still had a problem: if love was the thing that was going to get me through this, I might be in trouble. I loved my mother. I just wasn't sure yet that the feeling was mutual.

"Might there be another way?" I asked.

Goldberg shook his head. "Trust your instincts, Rachel. Convey to your mother how important the subject is to you, and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the results."

But, I thought to myself, what if you have a rotten track record instinct-wise? It was my instinct that made me push my brother to his death. It was my instinct to confess to my mother what I'd done. It was my instinct that told me suicide was a way out of my misery. It was obvious to me my instincts were not to be trusted, but it was all I had at the moment, so I went with it.

"OK," I said. "I'll give love a try."

"And as you do," he said. "Remember all the things you're mother taught you as a child. The lessons for living that you carry with you today."

I thought about that for a moment: what were the lessons for living I learned from her?

Well, she taught me about religion when she said, "You better pray that comes out of the carpet." She taught me about openness when she said, "Because I said so, that's why." And she taught me about logic when she said, "If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."

I know that's not being fair to my mother. I'm sure she taught me lots of important stuff, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't come up with any. After a while I quit trying. I told Goldberg however what a great idea it was, just so he wouldn't pursue it further.

A soft chime sounded from somewhere in the room, which indicated my fifty-minute hour was up. I glanced at my watch. Yep, 2:50 right on the dot.

Goldberg gave me his two-fisted handshake, wished me luck and I left, wondering if I'd ever see him again. Although he had been dead wrong about the existence of God, he was right about lots of other things, including me. I was going to miss him.

Once outside, I walked a couple blocks to the parking garage, hopped behind the wheel of my little yellow Volkswagen Beetle and headed for home one last time. The moving van was arriving tomorrow. By Wednesday I would be Georgia-bound.

As I left downtown Chicago, instead of listening to music, I rolled down my window and listened to the city instead. For me there is always sadness in leaving. A sadness in the stomach, a tightness in the throat. A yearning for things remembered, a long and lonely good-by. I was going to miss Chicago. I was going to miss it a lot. But deep in my heart, where the truth sometimes is found, I knew that where I was going and what I was going _to_ was bigger than Chicago. Somehow it was bigger and more wonderful than I dared imagine. I could feel it. I could feel it in my bones. And although my bones have been known to be wrong occasionally, this time I was certain they were right on the money.

And they were.

# TWO

Entry #184

Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.

D.L. Moody

**The moving company finished loading all my stuff** about ten o'clock the next morning. I checked my map. It was 961 miles to Savannah. According to my calculations, it would take about 15 hours to drive, which would really be closer to 20 when you factor in the number of times I would have to stop to get gas, buy a coke or go pee. I have a bladder the size of a walnut.

On the seat next to me were the three things I needed most for the trip: a roadmap, my phone and an old copy of Reader's Digest. I had the Digest to help me improve my vocabulary on the way down. After spending a week with God, I kept running out of words to describe the experience, so I made a pact with myself to learn two new words each week and _use_ them in conversation. There's a section in each copy of the Digest called "Word Power" that teaches you all kinds of interesting and sometimes useful words.

Today's word was _quintessence_ , which means "the most important part." That seemed like a word that might come in handy.

Quintessence.

It had sort of a French sound to it also, which I liked.

When learning new words, however, you have to be careful. One of the first words I picked was _tripe_ which means "something poor, worthless or offensive." Which I've used on several occasions. But it also means the "edible portion of a cud-chewing animal's stomach." Which I've hardly ever used.

Quintessence however seemed safe, so I began looking for an opportunity to use it without making it obvious it was a word I just learned. I wasn't trying to impress anyone. I just wanted to be more expressive.

Plus, I read somewhere that the average person knows twenty thousand words but only uses five hundred. Which made me wonder what happened to all the others? I figured they either had no use in casual conversation or the average person is just too lazy to use them. To me, that seemed like an enormous waste of memory-power, so I tried to choose words that were practical without sounding haughty.

Like quintessence.

"Knowing God on a personal basis is the very quintessence of life."

I liked that. It was much more satisfying than saying knowing God on a personal basis is an awesome experience. Which it is, but _awesome_ is such an over-used word that's it hardly means anything any more. Even when you want it to mean a lot.

Quintessence.

It's amazing how just one word can convey an entire plethora of feeling.

Oh, yeah, _plethora_ is a new word I learned too. It means "numerous or varied."

My goal of becoming more expressive must be working because I used plethora without thinking about it. Which means I now have five hundred and one words I use regularly.

Progress. I love it.

Anyway, the day was perfect for a long-distance drive: bright and sunny, not a cloud in the sky, and the road stretched out seemingly forever. It reminded me of a family vacation we took when I was a kid. We drove from Savannah to Washington, DC, on what Dad called our "Historical Odyssey." He called it that because we stopped at every Civil War battlefield for almost five hundred miles. It was great. Neither Mom nor Steve thought it was great, but I did. Dad was in the military, so anywhere somebody got shot at or killed in a war was important to him. Sacred almost.

Most of the time there was nothing to mark the battlefield we stopped at except a sign that said who did what on this date in 1864. Occasionally somebody placed a cannon with a stack of cannonballs along the side of the road. Dad would pull the station wagon over, get out his map and trace the advance of Union forces upon the Confederates soldiers. Sometimes he might walk out into an open field and just stand there, hands on his hips, staring. I'd stand alongside him, also staring, trying to imagine the sights and sounds of war.

"Rachel," he said one time. "Brave men gave their lives here." He waved his arm across the field. "They came from both sides in numbers too large to count. They came because they'd found a cause to die for." His voice was soft, almost reverent, and I'll never forget what he said next "The only thing greater than finding a cause to die for is to find one you're willing to _live_ for."

I was only eight years old at the time, so I had no clue what Dad meant. Dying for something was out of the question. I mean, I was just a kid. But _living_ for something? What could that possibly mean? At that age all I was living for were weekends, holidays and the occasional birthday party. My ambitions in life were somewhat limited. Now, however, my ambitions had grown. My sights now were set on living a life in service to others. How I was going to do that was a mystery, but that was OK. Sometimes mysteries produce the best results.
To follow Rachel's Confession in paperback, visit robertladdboooks.com. where you can buy it. It's cheap. Only $10.99 or you can get the e-book for $2.99 at Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com or Smashwords.com.

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