Jason stared hard at Jesus, just inches away. He was filtering this experience through his soon-to-be-completed graduate education. After fumbling with piles of polysyllabic terms for a second, he decided he preferred the experience whole, as it had arrived in his life, as He had arrived in his life, unfiltered.
“We will still hear you, like we did in the drug store, right?” Though he was reminding himself and Kayla, it sounded a lot like Jason was reminding Jesus of a promise he had made.
Jesus didn’t hesitate. Reaching up to pat Jason’s cheek a couple of times, Jesus smiled through his tears. “Count on it.”
Chapter 23
Dinner Invitation
With all of the emotional turmoil of seeing Jesus, and then watching him disappear that Thursday morning, Jason and Kayla had almost forgotten about the little family whose lives they had deeply impacted, through a meeting at the drug store. That night, after Jesus had gone invisible, and left two tear-soaked young people in their rain-pattered apartment, Jason received a phone call. It was Eduardo. He was following up on his promise to invite Kayla and Jason to dinner.
“My wife is so anxious to meet you,” he said over the phone. “She thinks you must be saints, with halos over your heads.”
Jason laughed. “Well, we’ll show her the truth.”
“Can you come this weekend?”
Jason checked with Kayla, who was making dinner in the kitchen. She perked up at the prospect, the first spark of joy he had seen from her since the morning goodbyes.
“We can do Saturday, if that’s okay with you,” Jason said to Eduardo.
“Fantastic! Come by around six or six-thirty. We will have a Mexican feast for you.”
Jason smiled. He loved Mexican food, and relished the prospect of some authentic cooking, even if he didn’t feel particularly worthy of a feast in his honor.
“That sounds great. We’ll look forward to it,” he said. Then, in response to gestures by Kayla, he added, “Can we bring something? Maybe dessert or something to drink?”
“No, no, that’s not necessary. You are our honored guests. Just come to our home, that will be enough.”
Jason got the address, and the conversation ended with more nervous chuckles. He stood next to Kayla at the stove, a hand on her opposite hip.
“Hmmm. I hope they don’t expect any more miracles or anything,” he said.
Kayla grinned briefly, but her serious eyes reminded Jason of their loss that morning, and also raised a question about what they should be expecting, now that Jesus was just inside them, and not visibly giving pointers on healing and such.
On Friday, Kayla received a partial answer to how seeing and hearing Jesus would change the days after he went invisible. She was riding home from work on her bike, the skies partly cloudy and the temperature near sixty. Without consciously thinking about him, she suddenly had an idea about her brother, Peter. Somehow, Kayla knew that he had lost something, and was desperate to find it. Furthermore, she knew where it was.
Kayla was so confident, and so surprised by her confidence, that she texted her brother immediately, even though he hadn’t responded to any of her texts for months. Her bike standing at the bottom of somebody’s driveway, she swung her backpack free from one shoulder and pulled her phone out. She sent this message: “Peter, I have this strange feeling that you lost something important and are desperate to find it. Somehow I know that it is behind the couch in your living room. Hope that helps. Love, Little Sis.”
She hit send and then reversed the process, putting her phone in her bag and reaching her free arm back to situate her backpack for the seven remaining blocks to her apartment. But, as soon as she pulled back out onto the street, she heard the little “bling” sound that indicated an incoming text. Kayla quickly pulled into another driveway and fished her phone out again.
Peter answered this way: “Wow, that’s amazing. Thank you soooo much. That was really helpful. Love you!!!!!”
When Kayla arrived home, she danced around the room with barely restrained excitement, as Jason finished up a computer support call. Finally, free to listen to her story, Jason’s eyes grew and grew as she filled in the details. He was amazed at what she had experienced, but even more amazed at the way it confirmed something he had been hearing in the back of his mind.
“Maybe we are supposed to keep doing that stuff we did when Jesus was here…I mean when he was visible,” Jason said. “I had this idea, out of nowhere, that Eduardo had an ailment that he hasn’t told his wife about, so not to worry her while she was in the hospital. And we’re supposed to pray for him to get well.”
“You mean heal him?” Kayla said, her sassy self returned in full force. She was pretty sure that’s what Jesus would say.
To be fair, Kayla was as dubious as Jason about the healings continuing after Jesus’s departure from their living room. But the miraculous text to her brother had her feeling optimistic.
That night, Kayla accompanied Jason to the Friday night worship service at church. It was attended by a few hundred people, mostly the under-thirty crowd, as usual. Kayla looked around and thought, “These are my people.”
She liked watching Jason on stage, intent on his music, seldom any sign of self-consciousness. Kayla didn’t let him know how much she focused on him, knowing it would make him more nervous, also knowing that he wasn’t what she was supposed to be focusing on in worship. In fact, that Friday night service was one of the best worship experiences Kayla could remember, a persistent feeling of Jesus’s presence with her, winning her heart and captivating her mind.
In this elevated state, Kayla didn’t notice how Jason dove deep into the music two or three times during the set of songs. Most people wouldn’t have noticed, but Kayla, the expert student of Jason’s playing style, would have seen the change, if she had been looking.
During the second to last song, Jason sensed Jesus so close to him that he furtively searched the stage, expecting to see that smiling face. But what he was feeling was invisible to the natural eye, apparently. And Jason told himself that this was how it was supposed to be. That rationalization, while true, started his slide toward lower expectations, and reduced him to a mere musician, hitting his chords and notes with practiced quality, but not the passion that had nearly knocked him to the floor during an earlier song.
Though they both listened to the sermon, and thought it good and helpful at the time, the most lasting impression from that night was a feeling of the nearness of Jesus, mixed with the lack of fulfillment of the hope that feeling stirred, for both Kayla and Jason. They went home that night more tired than usual after a Friday night service.
In bed, just before they each fell asleep, Kayla spoke into the blue-gray darkness. “I miss him, but I feel like he’s with me at the same time. Like he’s actually helping me deal with missing him.” She sighed. “I suppose that doesn’t make any sense.”
Jason chuckled sedately. “Makes perfect sense to me. Couldn’t have said it any better.”
They both smiled in the dark and slept soundly through the night.
That Saturday was ordinary from the start, no surprise visitors for breakfast, no miracles all day, and then the time to go to Eduardo and Isabella’s house arrived. They didn’t remember the name of Eduardo’s wife, Isabella’s mother, so they thought of it as the house where Eduardo and Isabella lived. Kayla looked forward to seeing Isabella the most.
The address Eduardo gave them led to a small bungalow wedged next to a sixteen-unit apartment building, just a block off the main highway through town. A few houses in the other direction, scrunched a small elementary school that Isabella might have attended. It took some patience, and careful parallel parking, to find a spot for the car, but they finally arrived at the front door at six-fifteen. Kayla carried a bottle of sparkling grape juice, ignoring Eduardo’s insistence that they bring nothing.
The door opened with a flourish and Isabella stood on the threshold literally jumping for joy, waving her little h
ands as if doing her daily calisthenics. “Hola!” she said, shouting enthusiastically. Eduardo, standing behind his daughter, put a hand on her shoulder, as if to hold her on the ground.
“English,” Eduardo instructed her.
Kayla answered Isabella in her moderately good Spanish, but switched quickly to English, to honor Eduardo’s admonition to his daughter.
Handshakes were bypassed for hugs, as a slender woman with olive skin and jet black hair, joined them, holding a chubby toddler in her arms.
Eduardo took charge. “This is my wife, Lucy.” His voice cracked, and he stopped suddenly.
Lucy filled in for him. “And this is Sergio, our youngest. I am so pleased to meet you both.”
While Eduardo swiped tears out of the corners of his eyes, Jason and Kayla each gave Lucy a tentative hug that included Sergio. The two-year-old’s hands grasped some of Kayla’s hair for a second, enjoying the softness of it. He seemed overwhelmed by the company, and turned shyly toward his mother’s neck, where he hid one eye.
Sergio’s peeking eye was the only dry one by this time, as each of the adults, and even Isabella, considered the occasion that brought them together. Lucy was obviously healthy and strong, a reality that had changed less than a week ago. It seemed a very long and momentous week to everyone standing there in the entryway of the little bungalow.
Awkward self-consciousness broke them all out of the solemn pause by the door, and they turned to distracting pursuits. Isabell showed Kayla her room, something she had clearly been waiting to do all day. Eduardo took Sergio from Lucy, so she could get back to the kitchen, which was emanating some mouth-watering odors. Sergio protested his mother’s departure, but Jason distracted him by doing an imitation of Donald Duck. This impressed, fascinated, and terrified Sergio, by the look on his face. It certainly made him momentarily forget Lucy’s exit. This was, in fact, the first time Kayla had heard that voice coming from her husband. She was impressed when she and Isabella returned to the living room and found Sergio reaching out to grab Jason’s mouth, which made such a silly noise.
Jason smiled at his wife, glad to impress her with something, even his Donald Duck imitation. He guessed that he had triggered something with that playful sound, catching a faint sound of Kayla’s biological clock ticking somewhere deep inside.
They talked about the house, the neighborhood and their history of living in that town, all topics distant enough from what compelled all of them. And that light and comfortable conversation filled in until dinner was served.
Eduardo had not been exaggerating about the feast awaiting Jason and Kayla. There was a fresh, brightly-colored salad, beans and rice, empanadas, enchiladas of two kinds, and two kinds of tamales. Isabella started to tell them about dessert, but her mother shushed her, to keep it a surprise.
Lucy seemed almost as shy as Sergio, with their guests, thanking them repeatedly for their compliments on the wonderfully prepared food, and perhaps thanking them for much more. What do you say, after all, to someone who healed you of a terminal illness? There are, perhaps, more words to express gratitude in Spanish than English, but those are still not enough.
Nearly an hour later, Jason was leaning back, gingerly touching his stomach, when Eduardo and Lucy let him stop eating.
“We can wait a bit for dessert,” Lucy offered, seeing the pleasant pain on her guests’ faces.
Eduardo led the way to the living room, pausing to stretch his lower back, which appeared to be in more distress than Jason’s strained stomach. This reminded Jason of that inkling he had the previous day.
“You have a bad back?” Jason said, sneaking up on the subject.
The noise of Isabella trying to talk Kayla into playing a game, made it uncertain that Eduardo had heard Jason clearly, but their host could see that his effort to relieve his back had given him away.
“Uh, yeah, it hurts when I’m not careful how I sit. The food was so good I forgot about my posture at the table,” he said apologetically.
“Does Lucy know about this?” Jason asked this odd question, to confirm the feeling he had that Eduardo had been hiding his ailment, to keep Lucy from worrying, while she fought for her life.
But Eduardo burst that bubble. “Oh, sure. She’s known about it for years. We don’t even talk about it anymore, it’s such old news.”
This inconsistency with what Jason thought Jesus was telling him, cast a shade of doubt over what should come next, and Jason chickened out, letting the topic drop.
Kayla had succeeded in convincing Isabella to join her in the kitchen, to help Lucy, instead of starting a game, so she had missed this exchange between the men. Later, when they gathered around the table for dessert, she nudged Jason to remind him of his intuition about Eduardo needing healing.
As the rich, nutty aroma of coffee joined in with chocolate and sugar, the family was preoccupied with cutting the beautiful cake that Lucy had made.
Jason whispered to Kayla. “I got it wrong, it’s not something he was keeping from Lucy.” He didn’t have time to say more, Lucy wanted to say a word about the cake.
“For me, this is like a birthday cake, celebrating new life,” she said. And Jason and Kayla could tell that she had prepared those words and was glad to finally get them out.
“That’s something worth celebrating,” Kayla said, with a maximum smile.
“We can all thank Jesus for that,” Jason said, and all the voices around the table joined in agreement.
When Lucy realized she had forgotten the coffee, Eduardo volunteered to go and get it, but his sudden rise from the table locked his back up briefly, and he moaned.
“Oh, no,” said Isabella. “Not your back again, Poppi.”
“You sit back down,” Lucy said, rising from her seat with ease. “I’ll get the coffee.”
“So you have a sore back,” Kayla said to Eduardo, before looking significantly at Jason.
Jason shook his head slightly and gave his eyes half a roll.
“Yeah, it’s pretty bad. Now that Lucy is better, I can see the doctor about it.”
“Maybe we could pray for Jesus to heal it,” Kayla said, ignoring Jason this time.
“Yes, Poppi, they could heal you like they healed Mama.” Isabella had chimed in before Eduardo could answer. He clearly didn’t know what to say.
Lucy helped him out when she returned to the table. “Why hesitate. At least they can try.” She looked a question toward Jason and Kayla, in case she had said something wrong.
Jason just shrugged and nodded. Kayla answered more enthusiastically. “Yes, let’s try.”
Though it was Kayla volunteering them, it was Jason who had done more healing with Jesus, and he felt that he should apply some of that experience in this situation. Only he wasn’t sure how. He gave Kayla a brief hint of his uncertainty.
She pushed on. “Well, we can ask Jesus how to do this and go from there.”
Jason grinned a bit sheepishly. Why hadn’t he thought of that?
At Kayla’s prompting, Jason led a brief prayer for wisdom and direction. When he finished, all eyes were on him, in spite of the scrumptious cake all cut up and dished.
Jason looked at Eduardo and saw a mental picture of Isabella putting her hand on her father’s back. It seemed crazy enough to be something Jesus would want, and as good a plan as any other, so he suggested that Isabella give a helping hand.
She clapped and bubbled her response, affirming the idea with a fountain of words jumbled together by her excitement.
Thinking about the faith of a child, Jason showed her where to put her hand, mimicking the image he had seen in his mind’s eye. Kayla followed by placing her hand on Isabella, as if the slender girl would be the conduit, transmitting the healing into Eduardo’s back.
Jason instructed Isabella the way Jesus, and George, had instructed him. “Say, ‘in the name of Jesus, be healed.’”
Lucy put her hand over her mouth when she heard Isabella pronounce that healing command, as if she was seei
ng the miracle before Eduardo even had a chance to respond. The whole room seemed to be full of faith, with much less of it resting on Jason and Kayla, than on the blessed little family.
Jason checked with Eduardo. “So how does it feel?”
Eduardo seemed surprised that the job was done already, but started to twist in his seat a little, and then he tried standing up slowly. He tipped his head a little and then nodded, puckering his lips. “It does feel better.” He sat down and stood up more quickly. Then he smiled. “Very nice. That didn’t hurt at all.”
Isabella led the cheering, jumping up and down the way she did when Kayla and Jason arrived. But no one calmed her this time, and all added their own claps and praise. The two guests exchanged a look that said, “Hey, this stuff really works.” But they didn’t let the Contreras family see their surprise.
They all turned to the cake, another reason to celebrate having been added to the table.
In the end, that evening of celebrations was a fitting tribute to the wonderful miracle that had brought them together, and that would always connect the two families.
Chapter 24
Giving Directions
While Jason finished his computer support work online, the last week in May, and turned to furiously typing on his novel, Kayla took a midday walk through campus, to deliver something for her boss, Ella. Jason’s intense focus on his writing, and not just on the dream of writing, warmed Kayla more than she would have imagined. As she walked, Kayla thought about that, and of their plans to move to an apartment in Cleveland, in two weeks.
She was deep into these grownup concerns, when she began to make up ground on a pair of teenage girls, who repeatedly looked around and then looked at their smart phones, apparently lost. Speeding up her steps a bit, Kayla overtook them next to the old science building, which was undergoing a major overhaul that summer, modernizing the facilities.
Sharing Jesus (Seeing Jesus Book 3) Page 24
