by Alana Terry
“Now, we told you that you must not have deception on your lips, but neither do you need to tell people anything. If you get caught, protect the lives of your teammates and don’t release names, places or missions unless you’re instructed to by Mr. Cooper or me. Be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. Don’t betray your brothers and sisters in Christ because you’re afraid of a momentary affliction. Is there grace and mercy if you falter? Of course there is. But don’t sell your brother or sister to avoid pain. If any of us military folk did that while in service, we’d face court-martial, would we not?”
This first guest speaker, Captain Roper, had been a POW in Afghanistan. Hearing the captain’s gravelly voice and seeing his scarred face etched his words into Hadassah’s memory while he taught about preparing their hearts for torture.
“People will say and do whatever they can to get you to talk. I remember waterboarding one week, and having all of my fingernails removed another week, among the more savory tortures my fellow servicemen and I endured. But I won’t use threats to motivate you the way the army did with me. No, I want you to learn from the words of Christ, who spoke with real power, real authority and real encouragement. He told His disciples that if they identified themselves as His followers, people would beat, torture and kill them. If you say, ‘I do what I do because I love the Lord,’ you will be persecuted. During these days, while you are in training, deal with your fear and tell it to go in the name of Jesus.
“So, am I going to tell you what to say when you’re dragged in for questioning? No. Why not? Because Jesus didn’t. He said the Spirit would give us the right words in that hour.
“I want to put this in context for you now,” Captain Roper continued. “Jesus is telling His disciples this when? During the discourse on the End Times. The Day of the Lord is coming, my friends. Strengthen yourselves, watch, pray, encourage one another, for the days are dark and they are only getting darker.
“Read the trials of Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 11; read what happened to Stephen, to James, to Peter and to John in Acts. While you read these things, ask God to fill you with the same courage and resolve these men had. Read Hebrews, especially chapter 11. And think upon Jesus—He suffered immensely but never faltered once.
“Lastly, grow confident in love. God is love. Grow confident in the fact God loves you and you love Him. How do you do this? Memorize the scripture verses about His love for you, then pray these scriptures to God by the Holy Spirit. And grow in love toward one another. Serve each other in love now, when the days are easy. Serve, serve, serve. Give this amazing chef of yours a break for a day or two, although she raises the bar rather high. Do the dishes for someone else. Mop when it’s not your turn. The least among you will become the greatest.
“What does this have to do with how to handle torture? Everything. If you grow in love, you learn to love even those who hate you. And if you pray for those who persecute you, your trial becomes easier. Trust me. I was a POW seven months before I began to pray for those who tortured me. Those were the worst seven months of my life. The following two years of captivity were some of the most glorious times of my life. Although the torture increased, I had amazing encounters with the Lord during my solitude. It all started when I began to forgive the Talibani who tortured me, and to pray for them, and to genuinely love them.”
Chapter 22: Jumps
AFTER BREAKFAST ON the morning Captain Roper left, Mr. Murray called a meeting to tell them the schedule was changing, and there would be a shuffling of cabin arrangements.
“Hadassah, you’ll move into Hyun and Tameka’s cabin to make space for other guest teachers. You can go ahead, ladies. Meet back here by 1100 hours to hear the new schedule.”
“I’ve been really proud of you,” Hyun said as she helped Hadassah carry her bags, “how you pushed yourself through these last three months.”
“Thanks for saying so, but I’m sure I can’t take credit for the perseverance.”
“I hear you. Can I give some advice, though?”
“Sure.”
Hyun set Hadassah’s belongings down in front of her bed. “You need to be more of an extrovert or this life will eat away at you. I’m not naturally an extrovert. Someone had this talk with me, and I forced myself to be more outgoing.”
“My mom had this talk with me, too. But whatever she says, I’m sure she was born with spy-worthy social skills; she didn’t have too much advice on how to change.” Hadassah paused to stack the rest of her clothes into drawers. “No, I take that back, she did give me advice, and I practiced for a while.”
“You were outgoing in the beginning. Did something happen to discourage you?”
Her frown was so deep she didn’t want to turn and face Hyun. “You could say that. But I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Did you talk to Mrs. Cooper?”
“I did right away, but after a while I decided to deal with it on my own.”
“Tonight, let me teach you some of what I learned.”
WHEN THEY GATHERED again to hear about their new schedule, Mr. Murray and Mr. Cooper told them life would change on Monday. They would wake at 5:00am instead of 4:45—there were hoots and hollers of delight over the extra fifteen minutes of sleep—and there would be classroom teachings after breakfast rather than in the afternoons. Also, they would be leaving in groups of seven to practice jumps for anyone who was interested.
Hadassah raised her hand. “What do you mean by jumps, sir?”
“From an airplane, Ms. Michelman.”
Her face lit up. “Where do we sign up?”
“Consider yourself signed up, Ms. Michelman.”
Mom would definitely understand her excitement. She felt like a kid again for the first time in a long time. Then again, how many kids are allowed to jump out of airplanes?
Mr. Murray’s voice broke her daydream as he continued to explain their schedule. “While some of you are away practicing jumps, the rest of you will be helping to do maintenance work around here. Mr. Cooper will be in the plane, so it’ll be Mrs. Cooper and me who assign detail for those two weeks. We don’t want anyone to miss classes, so we’ll be holding off on them until everyone returns.”
The first night with Hyun and Tameka as her cabin mates, Hadassah stayed up later than she had since Greensboro, but Tameka was fast asleep before 8:30pm.
What Hyun shared that night was something Hadassah had never heard before. “Most women are like a casserole—everything intertwined and mixed together. This is not bad. In fact, it’s great for some aspects of life. Women, on the whole, tend to see interconnectedness better than men because of the way our minds work, and oftentimes this makes us better spies. But sometimes in clandestine work, the casserole thinking can be dangerous. Some of us women have to train ourselves to compartmentalize in order to make it in this line of work. In the field, every aspect of your internal life, except your relationship with God, needs a box so we can focus on the mission.”
“That makes a ton of sense.” Hadassah scraped at her fingertips. “How do I do it?”
“You don’t want to deny your emotions, but you tell them they have a time and a place, and they can only come out at those certain times. If left to run at will, your emotions will distract and control you. And if you have feelings toward—”
“Wait, who told you I have feelings toward Matthew?”
“You just did.” The smile in Hyun’s eyes cooled the flush rising up Hadassah’s cheeks. “So if you have feelings toward someone, or anger at a friend, you tell your emotion it can come out later—at the cell groups or prayer meetings, during your quiet time with God or talking with Mrs. Cooper. The rest of the time you’ve got to jump past it.”
“How can you do that?”
“First, realize everyone gets offended, even when feeling offended runs contrary to wisdom. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been offended at others because they rejected me or even corrected me. Now, I hardly notice. It’s a habit of forgiv
eness.”
There were so many people to forgive, where would she begin? Maybe with herself.
HADASSAH’S HEART AND mind exploded into prayer during the entire van ride to the airfield where she’d practice the jumps. More recruits had signed up; Mr. Cooper separated them into two groups. Hadassah was in the second group, along with Matthew, Pedro, Paul, Hyun, Priscilla and Tameka.
As soon as she arrived at the airfield, Hadassah found her cot quickly in the girls’ dorm, which was in one of two unused hangars, and was the first to return to the main hangar to hear instructions. They would all do five jumps before the week was out: three during the day, two of which would be with gear, and two jumps at night. Their instructor, Will, had been a Navy Seal, but no one would have guessed when they first saw him or heard his soft Boston accent. He had a fatherly manner, a twinkle in his eyes, and, as she could see by his bulging belly, a love for food.
“Make sure you listen to each word I say very carefully,” Will told them directly, hardly pronouncing his ‘r’s. “I don’t need you to be a punctuation mark in the middle of my air field. I haven’t lost anyone yet, and I don’t plan to this week.”
He told them, with unexpected gentleness, what would be required for them to pass the course and what would be considered failure. Then came the five hours of training, and the multiple exercises in body positioning and controlling the parachute. By the end of the day, Hadassah collapsed onto her cot filled with confidence, but devoid of all the initial excitement.
The next morning, her excitement returned. The first thing she did was send a text to Mom, not even knowing where in the world her mother would be, or if she’d be able to reply.
2 more hrs til I jump from an airplane!
The air was warm and clear when Hadassah donned the jumpsuit for the first time. Her heart raced as she suddenly remembered all the horror stories people told about parachutes not opening. She pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind, behind all the recent training, then spun around and skipped out of the girls’ hangar. Her cell phone beeped, and she turned back one last time. Mom.
U’ll do fabulous. Enjoy! Praying 4 u. So proud of u, Haddy. Luv.
Anxiety turned to exhilaration as the C130 plane rose to 2,500 feet.
When she first unhooked herself from the static line and leaped from the plane, the whoosh of the wind and thinness of the air almost took her breath away. She was afraid again for a moment, but the ground seemed surreal racing toward her, as if it was too far away to be a threat. The brief free-fall was amazing—the sense of flying, the heart pounding. She had understood the allure of thrill-seeking beforehand, but never so much as in this moment. Was Pastor Ronny Gibbons right about people flying on the new earth? She hoped so.
When she pulled the ripcord and the parachute opened, it jerked her body less than she expected; the slow float down was even more gratifying than the free-fall, albeit less thrilling.
She spotted the circle below her and steered the parachute to where she was supposed to land, where Tameka just dropped and rolled, and where Priscilla would soon follow. Would she keep proper form? Would her body absorb the impact well? Please don’t let me be the first to break a bone.
Her landing was exactly what had been asked for: a drop to the ground then a roll, all the while remaining within the circle. She couldn’t keep the shout of joy from escaping her lips, or her arms from making an elated V. Gathering up the parachute quickly, she moved out of the way for Priscilla.
The next four jumps were equally exhilarating, especially the night jumps when she could see the Milky Way as she flew through the air, and the ground looked like a black hole beneath her. Her excitement always outweighed the anxiety. On the fifth day, during the fifth jump, she thought of Dad. Would he be angry if she parachuted in to release him from his captors? She pushed the daydream away before it distracted her from observing the other recruits in the air.
ON THE WAY BACK, HADASSAH’S heart leaped when Matthew sat next to her in the van. What was it Hyun had said about compartmentalizing? Somehow that whole conversation became as muddled as a smoothie with Matthew in such close proximity. With shaky hands she took the ear buds out and put her music on pause.
“You did a good job this week, yo. I was impressed watching you.” He stared into her eyes as he spoke.
“You, too.” Don’t smile. Especially not so ingratiatingly. It was just a complement, nothing more.
“When I first met you I didn’t think you’d be the type of girl who’d want to jump out of an airplane. But I guess most of the girls at the Lighthouse are that type of girl.”
“I loved it.” She bit at the side of her lip. “I’d stay another week if I could. Do you think we’ll really parachute into places?”
He winked at her. “It doesn’t hurt to hope, does it?”
Her whole body twitched as she sighed. Sometimes it does hurt to hope. She put the ear buds back in her ears, trying to drown out this hope. There must have been hours of unanswered prayer, begging God to let her either forget about Matthew or not let her heart bother about him anymore. Or, more often than she ever admitted, hoping they could be together and it would be okay.
And then she thought about Dad. All those fleeces she threw out, imploring the Lord for confirmation that Dad would be rescued before the year was out. She glanced around the van again, then prayed more. And Matthew’s dad. And Priscilla’s sister. And Pedro’s uncle. And Hyun’s mom. And Paul’s dad. And Christina’s dad.
Chapter 23: Bridal Paradigm
HADASSAH HUDDLED IN the stifling cardboard box, her bladder screaming, her sweat soaking the flimsy material. Except for crickets and owls, it had been quiet for far too long. The darkness had grown so thick she couldn’t see the edges of the box anymore; her breathing grew shallow and terse. She had never struggled with claustrophobia before this. Two hours must have passed. No wonder Mr. Murray recommended leaving the watch behind—she would have been glancing at it every two seconds by now. And where was that rescue team?
Then it dawned on her. How many thousands around the world suffered much worse? A large contingent of the Lord’s Bride remained in captivity across the globe. At least this was only role-playing tonight. She was still in the nature reserve, and she had a team coming to rescue her. In the pervasive silence, she prayed for her brothers and sisters in Christ around the world, tears mingling with sweat on the floor of the box.
“Lord, please be with them. Please let them encounter your glory so they would find comfort instead of terror, love instead of bitterness and joy instead of hardness of heart.”
Another half hour passed, wherein she fell asleep. The rescue team was intercepted and the operation was a failure, but Mr. Cooper let her out to breathe the fresh air (and relieve her bladder) before she hid once more so they could practice the search and rescue again. Then there would be three more nights of this. After two weeks this had been only the fourth failure—if only Hyun, Matthew and Dave were on her team instead. Then she smiled, because in the end they would be.
May and June would have zoomed by if she hadn’t been counting the seconds before rescues.
THE LAST HALF OF JUNE was by far her favorite part of the training. Mr. Cooper called a ten-day corporate fast; they ate only fruits and vegetables, cut the morning exercise to half and studied the theme of the Bride of Christ intensely.
“Notice what it says at the end of Revelation,” Hyun said at one Wednesday cell group meeting during the fast. “‘The Spirit and the Bride say come.’ The Father wants the Church to rise up as a Bride.”
“But what does that really mean?” Priscilla asked. “What does it look like to be the Bride? Do we sit passively waiting for the Bridegroom?”
“It talks in the book of Esther about the preparation of the bride,” Hadassah added. “She goes through a year of beauty treatments before she can come before the King.”
Priscilla shook her head. “But it’s still rather passive, don’t you think?”
/> “For us, these treatments are figurative rather than literal.”
“But what does the figurative look like?”
Before Hadassah opened her mouth to answer, Hyun began. “The Bridal Paradigm is about the commitment Jesus has for us, and ours to him. The more we have a revelation of His commitment to us and attach our faith to this revelation, the more our commitment to Him grows. As to what this will look like, it’s up to one’s personal walk with Jesus. We need to open our hearts fully to the Holy Spirit’s examination.”
Priscilla’s eyes glistened with tears. “Sometimes I’m afraid of this Bridal Paradigm.”
“Why?” Hyun asked.
“Well, nothing is hidden. Everything is laid open to His scrutiny.”
“It’s the same in every paradigm of the Kingdom.”
“I know, but the Bridal Paradigm deals with our emotions, and sometimes it hurts to have those exposed.” Priscilla began to cry openly.
Hyun reached her hand toward the young woman. “Look at the second half of chapter 3 in the Song. God is our safe Savior. He surrounds us with warriors who fight on our behalf. So we need to run to Him with our broken emotions instead of from Him in fear, because He alone can sanctify us.”
“But what if they don’t change right away?”
Hadassah looked up at her. “You mean the emotions?” she asked, suddenly gripped with the fact that this addressed her own struggle.
“Yeah.”
Hadassah didn’t have the answer either.
Hyun looked back and forth between Hadassah and Priscilla. “Even if your heart doesn’t change right away, it doesn’t mean He won’t change you. Keep bringing everything to the Lord. Also, sometimes the Lord is trying to show us something through these emotions that we wouldn’t understand otherwise.”
