during my planning period.
He was packing his things into a cardboard box when I found his office.
I tapped on his open door. “I haven’t driven you away, have I?”
I heard his laugh for the first time.
I thought he had called me in to tell me I had ruined the school record for time required for students to exit the building during a fire drill. Instead he began to explain that he was being transferred to another high school to replace a principal who had suffered a serious stroke.
I was disappointed he wouldn’t be outside my classroom door again. The thought of him had been making me smile, which seemed a miracle to me.
I couldn’t have been more shocked when he said he was glad for the unexpected change in his plans. “That will allow me to call you sometime, if you don’t mind.”
A week later he did. That Christmas he asked me to marry him, and in July he became my husband.
Today I looked at more highlighted verses in John 4. Jesus heals an official’s son simply by speaking the words, “Your son will live.”
How I wish he would have said such a thing to me. “Your husband will live.”
I’ve always believed Jesus did such things so that people would realize he was sent from God, who is near and able, but I imagine many reading this account are like the official: It is not the joy of knowing God and belonging to him they want, but his miracle. Except for a very few, the fleeting physical is far more significant than the spiritual, even though it is eternal.
I have to admit that transcending the physical is not easy for me either. Look no further than yesterday morning and my version of a Psycho shower scene.
August 23
A dream awoke me in the early morning. The digital clock said 3:45. It’s not the first time I’ve dreamed of Tom. In one dream I walked out of the high school building just in time to see a school bus pulling away from the curb. Tom, who to my knowledge never drove a school bus, was sitting in the driver’s seat. He had told me nothing about a trip. I tried to catch the bus to ask where he was going and when he’d be back, but he didn’t see me. I stood in the middle of the street watching until it was a yellow dot in the distance.
In another dream he was walking on a long, narrow beam high in the rafters of a barn, his arms extended for balance. I stood below, begging him to come down, but he laughed and said he was fine, that I shouldn’t worry.
In last night’s dream, he was where he was supposed to be, asleep in his recliner. When I came into the living room, I walked over to him and put my hand on his face. When he opened his eyes and smiled, relief flooded me. I told him to get up and come to bed. He put the remote on the round table beside his chair and said okay, but when I got to the bedroom door and turned around, he wasn’t there.
That’s when I woke up. I lay there a long time staring into the darkness before I got up and walked into the bathroom to find something to help me sleep. I stood in the glare of the bathroom light looking at the little blue pill in the palm of my hand and decided I would try to sleep without it. I would give myself a half hour.
As I waited for the thirty minutes to transpire, I grabbed the Bible I had put on the bedside table and turned to some verses in the fifth chapter, where Jesus comes across a man who has been an invalid for thirty-eight years. What struck me as I read this at four in the morning was what Jesus asked the man before he healed him: “Do you want to get well?”
What a strange question.
I really do wonder why he asked him that. Surely the man wanted to get well. But after I turned out the light and closed my eyes, the same question came to me: Audrey, do you want to get well?
I thought the question was rhetorical, but lying there staring into the dark, I realized it really wasn’t, and I lay there for several minutes before I had my answer. Rolling over and pulling the sheet over my shoulder, I finally
He was packing his things into a cardboard box when I found his office.
I tapped on his open door. “I haven’t driven you away, have I?”
I heard his laugh for the first time.
I thought he had called me in to tell me I had ruined the school record for time required for students to exit the building during a fire drill. Instead he began to explain that he was being transferred to another high school to replace a principal who had suffered a serious stroke.
I was disappointed he wouldn’t be outside my classroom door again. The thought of him had been making me smile, which seemed a miracle to me.
I couldn’t have been more shocked when he said he was glad for the unexpected change in his plans. “That will allow me to call you sometime, if you don’t mind.”
A week later he did. That Christmas he asked me to marry him, and in July he became my husband.
Today I looked at more highlighted verses in John 4. Jesus heals an official’s son simply by speaking the words, “Your son will live.”
How I wish he would have said such a thing to me. “Your husband will live.”
I’ve always believed Jesus did such things so that people would realize he was sent from God, who is near and able, but I imagine many reading this account are like the official: It is not the joy of knowing God and belonging to him they want, but his miracle. Except for a very few, the fleeting physical is far more significant than the spiritual, even though it is eternal.
I have to admit that transcending the physical is not easy for me either. Look no further than yesterday morning and my version of a Psycho shower scene.
August 23
A dream awoke me in the early morning. The digital clock said 3:45. It’s not the first time I’ve dreamed of Tom. In one dream I walked out of the high school building just in time to see a school bus pulling away from the curb. Tom, who to my knowledge never drove a school bus, was sitting in the driver’s seat. He had told me nothing about a trip. I tried to catch the bus to ask where he was going and when he’d be back, but he didn’t see me. I stood in the middle of the street watching until it was a yellow dot in the distance.
In another dream he was walking on a long, narrow beam high in the rafters of a barn, his arms extended for balance. I stood below, begging him to come down, but he laughed and said he was fine, that I shouldn’t worry.
In last night’s dream, he was where he was supposed to be, asleep in his recliner. When I came into the living room, I walked over to him and put my hand on his face. When he opened his eyes and smiled, relief flooded me. I told him to get up and come to bed. He put the remote on the round table beside his chair and said okay, but when I got to the bedroom door and turned around, he wasn’t there.
That’s when I woke up. I lay there a long time staring into the darkness before I got up and walked into the bathroom to find something to help me sleep. I stood in the glare of the bathroom light looking at the little blue pill in the palm of my hand and decided I would try to sleep without it. I would give myself a half hour.
As I waited for the thirty minutes to transpire, I grabbed the Bible I had put on the bedside table and turned to some verses in the fifth chapter, where Jesus comes across a man who has been an invalid for thirty-eight years. What struck me as I read this at four in the morning was what Jesus asked the man before he healed him: “Do you want to get well?”
What a strange question.
I really do wonder why he asked him that. Surely the man wanted to get well. But after I turned out the light and closed my eyes, the same question came to me: Audrey, do you want to get well?
I thought the question was rhetorical, but lying there staring into the dark, I realized it really wasn’t, and I lay there for several minutes before I had my answer. Rolling over and pulling the sheet over my shoulder, I finally
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