“Suppose you could just Google it these days,” Annetta said, probably joking.
Guests for the party began to arrive, and that drew Annetta away from the reminiscence. But, whether she intended it or not, she left Willow still wandering around in that memory. She was thinking about Jamie.
The last she had heard of him was a report from a mission team to Thailand. He was with a church in Texas and had led a group that saw some pretty remarkable miracles on their trip. He had moved to Texas at least five years ago. Willow was wondering if he was still single, at the same time shaking her head at herself for the thought.
Willow did return her attention to the party. And Annetta did manage to enjoy herself, wrapping herself up in the people she knew and cared about. She just kept the knowledge that she wouldn’t be working there anymore off in the corner, near the old microfiche reader and the fire extinguisher.
The Grateful One
Whether it was a lingering fragment of autumn or a premature glimpse of spring, January began with a rapid melt, the temperature flirting, but ultimately unfulfilled in its courtship with fifty degrees one afternoon. Flood warnings along creeks and rivers affected many, and puddles trapped between piles of snow and ice affected everyone.
Willow swung her arms to assist a leaping stride over a four-inch-deep puddle between her car at the curb and the front walk of one of the older houses in Palos Heights. Her winter boots might have kept her feet warm and dry, but she had no time for product testing. She was a bit late to meet someone.
After ringing the doorbell, she stood on the concrete block of a porch that leaned slightly toward the house, as if to dump its occupant into the front door as soon as it opened. Willow could hear voices and running inside the house as she waited patiently. She had grown up in a house that would never be ready, even after the guests had arrived late. Willow smiled and waited a bit longer.
A boy, about seven years old, pulled open the plain, painted white front door, peering through the storm door at the expected guest, the much-anticipated guest. He was so enamored with her arrival that he forgot what to do next. Willow waved at him through the glass. He started to wave back but heard some forceful instructions from behind him and reached for the little handle to unlatch the storm door.
Willow assisted, grabbing the round knob on her side and twisting, feeling the lesser force of the boy’s hand on the other side of that once-shiny bit of hardware.
“Hello,” she said as the door made way for her entry. “Who are you?”
The boy released the door handle and stepped back. “Roger,” he said.
“I’m Willow. Pleased to meet you,” she said, one foot on the threshold and a hand extended for a handshake.
A woman about Willow’s age, perhaps only in appearance, arrived to loom over the little boy. Except that his hair was the brown of a beaver and the woman wore her hair a pale golden color, the two looked nearly identical across the face. The woman waited while Roger executed his side of the greeting handshake. When he finished, he vanished in a rumble of sock feet on the worn wooden floor.
Just like her son, the woman at the door stared for a few seconds before recovering her wits. Willow could see internally that the mother was distracted by at least a half dozen worries and unanswered questions. Without adding redundant words, Willow just reached out and held the woman’s hand. Instantly, tears rose to all four of the eyes observing that much-anticipated connection. Now neither of them could speak. Willow let go of that hand and wrapped her arms around the shoulders of the shorter woman. They both sobbed openly, making spasmodic attempts at words and giving up quickly.
Willow’s weeping ceased when a girl stepped from the hallway into the living room. She had seen that girl before, but not in person, not in the flesh. Willow loosened her grip on the mother, who sensed the change and guessed the reason. She too turned a tear-soaked smile toward the girl, who took her turn at standing and staring at Willow.
“Heather,” Willow said, no question in her voice, but rather relief. Even though she had sensed it at the time, and certainly believed the reports of the police and social workers, she needed to see Heather Tomlinson safe. She had looked into those eyes only when they were filled with fear. She had received no vision of the rescue or of the freedom that followed.
“Willow?” Heather said, stepping cautiously, as if not to scare away a rare and shy animal. Willow could tell Heather was good at approaching such creatures in the wild, or perhaps her back yard.
Stepping free from the mother’s embrace, Willow approached at a similar pace, mirroring the thirteen-year-old. In numerous ways, this was a mirror for Willow, in the look of the wounded maiden who was not ready for womanhood, but forced to contemplate things that most women never have to face. Before her stood a girl who had seen real fear, in contrast to the phantom fears that dominate the lives of others living in that quiet suburb. And Willow knew this meeting would bring healing for both of them.
Heather did not find a point on the floor where she could throw caution aside and leap into the arms of the woman who had saved her life. Her rescue from her abductor was not finished yet.
Willow extended her hand, as she did to Heather’s little brother. “I’m so happy to see you,” she said, and the open relief that propelled her words landed deep in Heather’s chest.
Now, the traumatized girl broke through her invisible constraints, the precaution against total hope, against celebrating too openly, too freely. Heather stepped past that extended hand and wrapped her arms around Willow’s neck, hanging on desperately. The tears flowed. Even Roger, watching from his seat on the stairs, peering between the spindles on the railing, could not resist crying with joy and relief.
No carefully constructed words cleared anyone’s lips for more than a minute during that catharsis. But what Heather said first shocked Willow.
Sniffling hard, as if determined to overcome her emotions, Heather said, “I hated them so much for putting you in jail.” She released her clinging grip and looked at Willow, as if to gain assistance from her eyes in convincing her fellow victim that she had never doubted her innocence.
Willow shook her head as forcefully as she could, “No hate. Let’s have none of that.” The harshness of her delivery might have shocked her hearers in any other context, but the air in that room was saturated with emotions so thick that the moment had its own personality and will. When Willow spoke, some of the invisible ones present there turned and left the little house.
Releasing an exclamation, part sob and part gasp, Heather’s mother laughed. Willow looked over her shoulder and reached again for the mother’s hand, but this time they did it as two girls would hold hands on their way to visit grandmother or to attend a party. None of them did anything self-consciously in that rarefied time.
Heather was still connected to Willow’s suffering. “Are you alright? Did they hurt you?”
Willow reached her free hand to Heather’s chin. “I am perfectly fine. No one can hurt me.”
To the people living in that house, this was, of course, an extraordinary statement, which they would have simply discounted, had anyone else said it. But they were ready to believe that Willow was different from anyone they had ever met before. And why shouldn’t she be fearless like no one else they knew?
The effect of this confidence as it struck Heather was transformative. Her shoulders relaxed and she reached this time for Willow’s waist and held her tight without tears, without hatred for anyone. She rested her head on Willow’s chest, where her coat lay open. Willow had not given a single thought to taking off her coat and boots yet.
When the city social worker called Willow to schedule this visit, Willow had no idea how long she was expected to stay. When she first found the emotional space to return to that question, standing there in the living room, it seemed fully possible that she would turn now and leave, satisfied to her bones that she had seen what she needed to see. It also seemed possible that she would never leave,
but would move into that house and become a parent of these two children and, perhaps, even of their crumpled and beleaguered mother. The reality lay in between, of course.
She did finally apologize about her wet boots on the living room throw rug, and she did allow Heather’s mother, Deanne, to take her coat and scarf. And Willow made the most of her welcome into that home. She graciously accepted the offer of hot chocolate and cookies, generously patted and stroked each member of the family who drew within easy reach, and talked of weather and brief biographical histories. In this way, she survived past the awkwardness, as well as the catharsis.
After all that, Willow finally found what she needed most, time alone with Heather. They took their coats and boots, and stepped out the back of the kitchen into a screened porch that was collecting the last rays of the afternoon sun. Heather conscientiously swept dust and cobwebs from the patio chairs before allowing Willow to sit down. Such was the royal treatment in the Tomlinson home.
When they had settled down together on slightly stiff vinyl cushions, both facing the yard, with its cluster of cedars in one corner and lilac copse in the opposite, Willow felt like a relative getting reacquainted. Though they had only met less than two hours before, they had already traversed a varied and vast emotional landscape together.
Heather spoke first. “I’m glad you said what you did about hate.” She checked with Willow’s facial response and then turned back to watching the yard, a single female cardinal adding something interesting to the view.
Willow nodded. “I know how it is. You feel like you must hate someone who has done something so very wrong, in order to make it clear to everyone, especially yourself, that it really was wrong. We all want it to be perfectly clear which side we’re on.”
Heather thought about this for a while. “You’re not just talking about the government putting you in jail. You’re taking about that man,” she hesitated, measuring the cost of actually saying his name. “Percy,” she said, ending her thought with only his last name, the less personal label.
Willow sensed that she was supposed to bring more to Heather. She prayed silently for direction.
“How have you been, since getting home?”
Heather didn’t look at Willow this time. “I have to take medicine to get to sleep at night. I just don’t feel safe.”
Willow looked at Heather’s profile. The girl was much older looking than in her photo, though maybe not so much older than in the vision. That comparison blurred as time passed, and Willow’s clarity about what she saw faded, like a muscle no longer needed, relaxing into disuse.
“I want to help you with that,” Willow said.
Heather turned, locking eyes with Willow. She seemed to be assessing this unusual woman who had swept into her life, as if to find out if there were any limits to what she could do. Willow sensed some of this, but felt no obligation to purge Heather of any unrealistic expectations. Right then, she was hoping for elevated expectations, the kind that make healing come more readily.
“The social worker lady says it’s natural, and not to worry,” said Heather, seeking to reassure Willow.
But Willow lacked no surety in this territory, a land in which she had not only traveled, but had become a veteran guide. Though the social workers were striving only for Heather’s survival, Willow had much more in mind. It was for this that she was the one chosen to see Heather in captivity, not just to inform the police, but to be here afterward, for the lifelong liberation that should follow that night of escape and rescue.
Willow locked into Heather’s eyes, eyes that looked for help now, no longer assessing the extraordinary woman seated in her screen porch. Heather seemed to catch sight of hope slipping in close and grabbed hold, ready for more.
“I need to speak to something that has gotten into your mind, something that Percy infected you with,” Willow said. “I must speak harshly to it, because it only understands that kind of speaking. But I need you to just settle back inside your own mind. I think you know how to do that.”
Heather nodded at Willow’s intuition, one from experience as much as divine revelation in the moment. Heather had survived in mind as well as body, even if she was still understandably haunted. She had survived, which meant that she had learned how to find safety within herself, when external safety proved impossible.
Willow reached a hand to take Heather’s near hand, an unusual move in this sort of ministry, but she obeyed no rules, no creature of habit, not bound to being predictable. Then she fairly barked at something that was hiding behind Heather’s eyes.
“Fear!” she said. “You come out now!”
The tone, in spite of Willow’s warning, startled Heather. That was intentional. Willow had learned over the years that a spirit of fear can be frightened into compliance. Its character, revealed in its descriptive name, was not just what it inflicted on the mind of its host. It brought fear because it was fear. It was fear because it was deeply afraid. It had become particularly so when it sensed Willow and her accompanying angels entering the house that day. The spirit of fear had selected silent hiding as its best hope of surviving in this lively young host. It had failed. Willow had guessed its presence even before she saw Heather, as if the whole purpose of Ronald Percy’s crime against Heather was to infect the rest of her life with fear, a life that he had intended to be very short.
At the command to leave, the fearful spirit grabbed forcefully onto Heather’s emotions, fueled by her fear even as it had been fueled by the authority and intentional evil of the man who had sent it. What this looked like externally, was Heather becoming nearly catatonic with fright. Willow saw through that and spoke again to Heather’s resilient soul.
“You stay safe, now, Heather. This one cannot hurt you. All it can do is try to share its fear with you. Stay hidden, stay safe. Look for Jesus. He has come to take care of you.”
At no time had Willow spoken with Heather, or her mother, or the social worker, about any kind of faith. This sense of Jesus’s presence came purely from a revelation in the moment. And, of course, Willow was true in her assessment, and Heather found her real savior just seconds after she was urged to do so.
Nevertheless, a howling that raised the hair on the necks of everyone within a block, arose from Heather, as a sort of division within her allowed her inner spirit to dive into cover with Jesus, while some part near the exit of her soul released that animalistic noise. Willow sat unfazed. She did, however, want to protect the rest of the family, and even the neighbors, from the ministry of the fearful spirit.
She barked again, “Be quiet!”
The spirit obeyed. It had just been signaling its exit.
Willow instructed it to leave, and the manner in which it was to leave. Her voice was commanding and the spirit made no further resistance.
Heather began to blow through half-puckered lips, the way a child blows out birthday candles. And this wind, which smelled slightly of sulfur and body odor, would have snuffed a hundred candles on Gretchen’s birthday cake, for it went on uninterrupted for at least ten seconds.
Willow was about to cut off this final bit of theatrics when the spirit left. For Willow, the leaving was a clear as if Heather herself had stood up and run out of the room. Willow knew that enemy was gone. She would even recognize it if she saw it again. But she put no thought or appreciation into those facts. Instead, she slipped from her chair, onto her knees on the hard, thinly carpeted floor. Willow wrapped her arms around Heather and held on.
This time there were no tears. Instead, Heather drifted off into a sort of ecstasy, as she encountered a living Jesus. That was all that she could feel now, inside and out. Willow had become his arms externally, even as Jesus wrapped his arms around Heather’s violated heart. And a balm of healing penetrated clothes, skin, muscles, bones, and into her very soul.
Willow sensed the completion of Heather’s rescue from Ronald Percy, rescue that had only started when she managed to run out the door of his house.
&nbs
p; Three Wise Men
~GOLD~
Willow’s single life thrived on adding branches to an extra-extended family. The open invitation to return any time to the Tomlinson home was part of that experience. She had received a promise many years ago that she would never be alone in the world, even as she was never alone in the spirit. But something had shifted now, and she began to think differently about her relationships with men—two men in particular.
The Friday after the New Year, Andrew Ferguson led the band for the worship service at the Oak Tree Church. Willow served that night as the meeting leader, setting up the worship time with insights about what God might be saying to people gathered there that night, closing the music time with more ministry of one kind or another, healing perhaps, or prophetic words, or a mini-sermon to encourage or drive home a point. Willow was not so inclined toward this latter option as some of the other meeting leaders.
During the pensive and emotion-laden conclusion to the music set, Willow felt an easy coordination between Andrew and herself. She could sense his willingness to yield to her, even as she showed her willingness to do the same. The smooth transition in the service, from music to message, demonstrated the beauty of such a relationship.
One handicap, perhaps, of a prophetic mindset is the tendency to see signs in everyday events, which sometimes might just be everyday events. Willow wondered at that feeling of compatibility with Andrew, wondering whether it might indicate something more for them.
With that echoing dimly in her head after the ultimate close of the service, near eleven p.m., Willow agreed to go out for something to eat with a few of the musicians and ministry leaders who remained at the very end. Andrew was, of course, among them.
Seven of them, seated around two tables shoved together in a restaurant near the church building, chatted and joked as they idly perused the menu. It was one of those restaurants with tiffany lamps hanging from the ceiling, dark wood on the walls and TV’s running only by the bar, intruding little into the dimmer corners of the place.
The Words I Speak (Anyone Who Believes Book 2) Page 17
