Sacrifices of Joy Read online

  The fact that he seemed to be observing and interpreting small details of my life did not comfort me.

  “Sounds like you have some thoughts about what I do, an opinion about my approach.”

  It was too easy of a bait, I knew. I did not expect him to take up my unhidden offer for him to further divulge his personal philosophies surrounding psychology and faith.

  But I needed to try something. I needed to have some kind of understanding of this man.

  It was an easy bait, and he knew it, but he took it anyway.

  “Your confusion simply proves my point.” He smiled, but nothing in me was warmed.

  “My . . . confusion. Can you explain what you mean?” I knew that I would be annoyed by whatever answer he gave, but the trained social worker in me knew that I had to explore, explore, explore.

  “Why did you become a therapist?”

  I nearly did a double take. Was he in the room when Laz asked me pretty much the same question on Sunday? Of course not. Right? Get it together, Sienna, I chided myself. I could not let my paranoia dictate this session. I was certain that’s what he wanted on some level.

  The upper hand.

  Why?

  All the questions I’d had I’d forgotten, except one: What is his motive for coming to see me? That was what I had to focus on. That was how I would not get derailed and end up in a land of insanity along with him.

  “I find it interesting that you would want to know about my personal choices, but are not willing to disclose any basic or public information about yourself.”

  “Basic or public information about me?” His eyes narrowed. I had touched a nerve.

  Did I press it or let it go? Think fast! “A name is a pretty basic fact to know about someone.”

  “A name.” He shook his head as if he pitied me. “We’re back at that frivolity again. Is that what your textbooks state? That a name is basic and necessary?”

  “To get treatment, you give your name, your contact information, and you sign a form consenting to services.”

  “Treatment. Services,” he echoed. I noticed then that he had a small balled-up sheet of paper rolled up in between his fingers. He spun it around while he spoke. “We’re having a conversation. Not a therapy session.”

  “Why is it important to you that a difference between the two be made? Can’t a conversation be therapeutic? Can you help me understand?”

  “All these books on your shelf, and your Bible, too, and you ask me for understanding?”

  “I am asking if you can share your thoughts about therapy.”

  The man raised an eyebrow, smiled again, crossed one leg over a knee. “Well, for one, I find it interesting that even with all your textbooks, your theories, your Bible, and all the capital letters you so proudly wear in the title behind your name, you are having trouble understanding therapy.”

  I swallowed down the immediate defensiveness that wanted to take over me because I was a professional, and, yes, trained to deal with people like him.

  Or so I believed.

  “So, there is a part of you that feels insulted when someone like me, who has degrees and textbooks purporting to understand the human mind, tries to diagnose you and claims to understand your inner psyche. Does it come off as superiority to you?” I stared at him straight in the eyes.

  “I have a PhD. You have a master’s degree. I am not threatened by the idea of your so-called superiority over me, or your uninformed view of therapy.”

  “Then what do you have against therapy?” I asked, choosing to ignore most of his statement and focus on what would move the “conversation” forward.

  “Therapy by its definition implies that there is something wrong that needs to be fixed. Your Bible implies the same thing. ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it.’ These are both verses in your Bible.”

  “So you don’t like to hear that you can be wrong.”

  “Your textbooks say that the answer to everything is in changing your thoughts. Your Bible says that the answer to everything is having a change in your spirit. Which one is it? Which do you believe? On one hand, you have the power to change all that is wrong with you, which makes you all-powerful. On the other hand, only God has the power to change what is wrong with you, making Him the All-Powerful. In whose power do you believe?”

  “You simplify a very complex topic,” my answer. “You are comparing the tools you can use to get to an end result. An artist who creates masterpieces has different tools at his or her disposal. Pens, paper, crayons, oils, canvas, brushes. Tools are needed to get the end result, but the vision and the skill, and the capability to create, comes from a deeper place. Having both tools and the power to use them are equally important.” Huh? What was I trying to say?

  The man raised an eyebrow. “Why do you avoid talking about the Bible?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I understand that as a secular clinician, the proper protocol is to avoid talking about specific religious beliefs unless and until the client opens the door. I have opened the door and you still avoid going in? Why is that, Ms. St. James? Are you at odds with what you believe about psychology and what you believe about God?”

  “You are very interested in my thoughts.”

  “Only because you are interested in mine.”

  We paused in the “conversation,” as if we had reached the halftime of an intense quarterfinal game. I picked the ball back up. “The concept of faith is important to you, although you claim to be an atheist.” I absolutely refused to make the conversation about me.

  “I never said I was an atheist.” His voice was soft and slow, as if I needed extra time to process his words. “I said I don’t believe in belief. I don’t exist. Theories exist. Philosophies exist. Confusion exists. This is the nature of humans. I am outside of that capacity.”

  “Do you think you are God?”

  “I am not anything. I do not exist.”

  “So then you’re saying that you believe God exists?”

  Silence again. Then me again:

  “Why are you coming every day to talk to me, Mr. Bennett?”

  His smile returned. He leaned forward in his chair. “I will tell you a secret, Ms. St. James, LCSW-C, Founder and CEO of The Whole Soul Center. I have not talked to anyone in years. I talk to you because you intrigue me. Your confusion. Your theories. Your philosophies. Your difficulty understanding and living out your own faith.

  “I asked you earlier why you became a therapist, and though you chose not to answer, I think it’s because you didn’t have an answer. I know, you would probably answer with something that you’re supposed to say, such as you became a social worker to help people. But are you really helping if you don’t have the answers to your own questions, or are you just placating the part of you that wants to understand, but doesn’t know how?”

  It took all I had to keep my face from dropping. Who did this man think I was? I clenched my teeth to keep from saying something unprofessional as he continued.

  “Like me, you are seeking to understand the truth of it all, coming to terms with what your existence, or nonexistence, means. You don’t have your own answers. But that is okay, because a flawed hero is always a loved one.” His hands became animated as he talked. “If you have no flaws, you’ll be despised. Jesus was perfect, yet He was hated to the point of being murdered. It is human nature to embrace wrongdoers as long as they have a cause. And it is human nature to kill perfection if its actions go against what you believe. Look at the coverage of the terrorist attack.”

  Everything in me came to attention, chilled as he uttered those words. The itty bitty hairs on my arm even seemed to rise. He didn’t seem to notice as he continued unabated.

  “Every TV station has story after story about Jamal Abdul, but what do we really know about the victims, the so-called innocents? Nobody is interested in celebrating them, just focused on showcasing the susp
ect. I told you yesterday, Sienna, that you are a hero. You should never be a martyr, and yet there are people in the world who would make you out to be one if you died supporting a cause that the other half of the world was disgusted by. Mankind is a hypocrisy. If there truly is a God, and maybe there is one, He alone is the only one who can save us from ourselves. Otherwise we are simply evolving into despicable creatures who are slowly sinking into a mire pit of decay.”

  When he stopped talking, a hollow, a coldness, an emptiness filled the room that had not been there before.

  “So.” I thought through each word I said. “It is easier for you to say that you don’t exist, than to decide whether you believe that mankind is a random, flawed accident that came into existence by evolutionary chance with no hope for redemption, or we are the purposed creation of a perfect God who is grieved by our sins and our constant rejection of him. In your eyes, both options have pain and it is easier for you not to exist than to live and feel and decide who you are. Your name is meaningless because who you are as a man, your identity, the core essence of who you are is unknown even to you.”

  We were at the end of the game, but there were no cheers, maybe even no winners. I was tired, and I needed him out of my office because my brain hurt, maybe even my soul, which struggled to make sense of his senselessness. He talked like he knew me, like he knew a part of me that had indeed been wrestling with my faith.

  I needed him out of my office so I could quiet my own thoughts and fears and questions. I knew what I believed. I just didn’t always know how to make it work for me. Or how to let God make it work for us all.

  I needed the Creator’s tools to make a masterpiece out of my life. Without His palette, without His initial sketch, my life would look just like it felt right now: a mess.

  Jesus, fix me. Fix the picture of my life. Fix it so that when people look at me, they see an illustration of you, and not a messy, abstract, self-directed finger painting. I’m tired of feeling a mess because of my feelings, my pain, my running away from you. I need you to pick up my paintbrush again and fix this picture of me. You are the potter, I am the clay.

  I needed this man out of my office. In my extended silence, I knew that he knew that he had gotten to me in a way that nobody ever had. I knew this because he was smiling, and it was a smile I had never seen on his face before.

  I had no more comeback lines, only the broken picture of me and the self-assured darkness of him. Get him out of my office, Lord!

  “Well.” The man broke the silence, still smiling. “You understand now. We’ve officially finished our conversation. I will not be back. I’ll mail your payment as promised.” He stood up and started walking toward the door.

  “Wait.” I followed, as I even wondered what I was going to say. I needed my upper hand back. “Do you really want me to believe that you haven’t shared a word to anybody in years?”

  He turned around abruptly, slight irritation lining his face. “I said I haven’t talked to anyone. I never said I didn’t share a word.”

  Huh?

  And then he was gone.

  From the closed blinds that lined the front windows of my office suite, I watched as he bounded down the stairs of the building and headed toward the parking lot. Once there he got into a rusty green pickup truck with tags from Pennsylvania. A nasty dent was on the passenger-side front fender and a large streak of peeling blue paint ran the entire length of the driver’s side. That struck me. Yesterday he’d gotten into a yellow Jeep from West Virginia. I’d written down the license plate number, I recalled, that fact giving me an idea.

  I watched as he pulled away, wishing I could make out the tags on this truck, but I couldn’t. He stopped at the parking lot entrance to throw a balled-up sheet of paper into the gutter and then his car disappeared down the winding road.

  I exhaled.

  “What just happened?” I felt sick as I sat down in one of my own waiting room chairs.

  You just recommitted your life to me.

  Was that God speaking? I chuckled to myself, wondering why I thought I’d heard the Lord after dealing with such a confused, obviously delusional man who was teetering on, if not already falling from, the brink of insanity.

  Well, in the Old Testament book of Numbers, God did use a donkey to talk to a man too stuck and hardheaded in his own way. I shook my head as I gathered my things once again.

  Yes, I did use a donkey and I can use a man who’d have no guilt about killing many to justify his own theories about evil and good, mankind and me.

  I froze in my steps.

  Of course I had not heard an audible voice. Years ago, during the time of my life when I’d spent my early mornings and late nights meditating on the Word of God, during the time of my life when I was not afraid to ask Him hard questions and hand him my pain, I would hear what felt like His voice in my consciousness. A clarity. An understanding that spoke so plainly to my soul, to the inner reaches of my spirit that it was impossible to deny that it was Christ Himself living, speaking, directing me from the inside out.

  Making my life His public masterpiece to display.

  It had been years since I’d felt and heard and knew that God was speaking to me. So long had it been that I’d questioned if it had even happened, or if I was just plumb crazy.

  And yet, there was no mistaking the clear statement that had just resounded deep in me, pure and clear as a tolling bell, unmistakable as a long-lost lover’s voice.

  That man was a terrorist in our understanding of the word. I felt it, knew it, though I had no firm physical proof. He was a terrorist, someone who would kill to keep the masses living in fear with a purpose that made sense only to his twisted justifications. All terrorists acted out of a place of deep, dark, twisted belief.

  He was a terrorist and he had a role in the attack at the airport, everything in me was convinced. His goal was to make a villain out of a hero: Jamal Abdul, a good man who the world now agreed was flawed. The media, the authorities, the masses, my father, were trying to understand why a man with commendable character would decide to kill the innocent, young, and old.

  Bennett was right. The news focused not on the victims, but on the suspect. We already knew and understood death. It was part of life.

  But a hero who would be a villain, and a villain of the vilest kind, was not grasped or explainable.

  It destroyed the humanist belief that man could ultimately save himself. And, if we let it, it destroyed the person of faith’s trust in God as we wondered how such an evil thing could permissibly happen.

  When the foundations of all our beliefs are shaken, there is nothing else to do but stop having joy, to lose our peace, to settle blankly in front of our television sets, shaking and trembling in horror.

  That was the aim of terror. To strip away our beliefs, to drain away the meanings we held of life, to reconfigure the wires of our inward thermostats that gave us our sense of comfort and safety. To cease to exist.

  His words had unnerved me, and he had been pleased. But he had not realized that what he had meant to unsettle me had actually settled me stronger in my faith.

  But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.

  It was a verse from Romans and I understood it as I never had before. Terrorists had it wrong. What they meant for destruction could actually lead to greater, more powerful acts of love, mercy, and grace as that is the essence of a perfect God from whom we can draw our response. Darkness can never overtake light.

  That man was a terrorist. It was no longer a nagging feeling or a question. I was certain of it. He’d even brought the attack up himself as the epitome of explaining his point. I had no proof, wasn’t sure what to do, but I was certain that he was involved.

  And I was also convinced that he was not done.

  Chapter 24

  He’d thrown a balled-up sheet of paper into the gutter, I recalled. He’d been playing with the crumpled sheet during our talk, the small wad rolling around his fingertips the entire ti
me of our discussion.

  He hadn’t meant for anyone to see what was on that paper.

  With all my belongings in hand, I ran out, dropped my things in my car and then began jogging toward the entrance of the parking lot. As I neared the gutter, I slowed down. What if he was still nearby? What if he was watching me? If he hadn’t wanted that paper to be found, and I got it, what would happen?

  My paranoia was trying to return.

  Was I just being ridiculous?

  No!

  I studied the surrounding streets and did not see any green pickup trucks. Still walking slowly to the gutter, my eyes zeroed in on the metal grate for any sign of the paper wad that he had intended to be washed down through the pipes that eventually led into the Chesapeake Bay.

  It was there, stuck next to a crumpled soda can. I looked around me again, then casually picked up the can and paper. As I tossed the soda can into a nearby receptacle, I pushed the wad into my pocket then strolled back to my car, hoping that I looked like a concerned citizen obsessed with keeping the bay clean, and not a rejuvenated therapist determined to prove that I had somehow identified a suspect the best in Washington had overlooked.

  Okay, now that I thought about it, I sounded crazy.

  “God, did I really hear You? Did You really just tell me that man’s a terrorist?” I threw my head back and sighed as I sat down in my car. The excitement I’d felt about having a piece of trash in my pocket began to feel like foolishness. I started the engine before I finally fished the paper back out.

  It has his fingerprints. I probably should handle it with a tissue.

  Way too much CSI. I shook my head at myself, and way too little spending time with God. I wished like never before that I had spent more time in His Word so that I wouldn’t have any doubts that I’d truly recognized His voice. My sheep know my voice. There was a verse something like that in the Bible.