Hearing Jesus (Seeing Jesus Book 2)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  After thirty seconds, she could hear someone talking to a more distant person, whose voice reached Gladys only in dots and dashes of sound. That one-sided conversation took about another half minute. Each passing second elevated Gladys’s heart rate. That same desperate voice that told her to go home and change clothes, now advocated abandoning the whole enterprise, and getting out of there before anyone actually saw her. But the woman talking in the room behind the welcome desk excused herself from that conversation and stepped through the door, into Gladys’s view. It was too late for an escape now.

  “Hello, how can I help you?” said the young woman, a petite girl no more than twenty years old, whose big eyes and perfect eyebrows reminded Gladys of a doll she had as a child.

  Surprised not to be greeted by a nun, most of whom she had seen only on TV, Gladys hesitated. Then she recovered and said, “Oh, I’m here to see Father Bob.” She did just manage to keep those audible quote marks off his title/name, hoping her pastor knew the best way to address the priest.

  “Good. I’ll let him know you’re here. Your name is?”

  “I’m Gladys Hight. I’m a little early for my appointment,” she said, with a sway to her voice that bespoke penance, even if not proper Catholic penance.

  The girl granted absolution, with a casual wave of her hand and a smile, and lifted the phone on the desk, hitting a single button and then addressing the man on the other end of the line. After a few words, she hung up and invited Gladys to follow her.

  As she walked behind the girl, who wore a tight, short dress and high heels, Gladys tried to slow her breathing and wipe her hands dry on her coat, without being noticed. Shown a comfortable waiting room, Gladys took a seat in a golden-green chair covered with a coarse linen-like fabric. She said, “no thank you,” to the girl’s offer of water.

  When the office next to that waiting area opened and a thin man in gray slacks and blue button-down shirt came out the door, Gladys was surprised again. His lack of a clerical collar was almost as surprising to her as was the slightly saucy dress on the receptionist. She instantly attributed all of this to modernization, the same innovative force that produced guitars at Bible church meetings.

  “Hello, Gladys,” said the fiftyish man with large glasses and somewhat long gray hair, long for modern times, but perfect for about 1976. Apparently, the building’s architect and the father’s hairstylist were contemporaries.

  “Hello,” said Gladys, still stressing about how to address the priest.

  “You can just call me ‘Bob.’” He seemed to intuit her difficulty.

  “Oh, okay,” she said, as he stepped aside so she could lead the way into his office.

  “Sit anywhere you like,” he said, waiting for Gladys to choose. An irreverent thought about what he would say if she chose the leather chair behind the desk had its moment and then moved on. Instead, she opted for a comfy, wingback chair in the corner of the room, which was lined on two sides with books.

  Before she sat down, Gladys commented. “What a lot of books.”

  “My greatest temptation,” Bob replied, picking a legal pad off the desk and sitting across from her. “And you can see that I haven’t always resisted.” He laughed gently, no real guilt evident on his face.

  Not a booklover, Gladys couldn’t sympathize, but she was expending most of her emotional calories just trying to get herself to relax. Again, Bob seemed to sense her need.

  As she tried to settle into the chair, setting her purse on the floor next to her, he made a suggestion. “Why don’t we just take a moment to relax and take a deep breath?” he said, his voice already carrying the soothing timbre of a hypnotist.

  “Oh,” said Gladys. “Sure, okay.” And she took one deep breath that sounded like the one you take when your spouse starts telling that same old story that you wish he hadn’t told the first ten times. After a pause, she tried again. She stretched past her tension, past her exasperation at how nervous she was, and attempted a purging breath. Much to her surprise, that second deep breath seemed to unchain her from the yippy little dog in her head that had been pulling at its leash and putting up an unholy racket.

  When she opened her eyes, which she didn’t remember closing, Gladys looked at Bob and smiled. Her lips curled at the relief from so much tension, and curled a little more as she realized the little trick the priest had played on her. At least, it seemed like a trick to her.

  “Better?” Bob said.

  “Was it that obvious?” Gladys said, her smile trading places with tight lips and plaintively raised eyebrows.

  “I find that most people could benefit from a deep breath and a moment to relax when they first come in,” he said, still putting her at ease, whether consciously or not.

  Gladys nodded, and Bob began the interview.

  “So, what brings you to us today, Gladys?” Here he tilted his head a bit. “Or is it something else that you like to be called.”

  Of course, Gladys immediately thought of what Harry, and Jesus, liked to call her. No one else ever called her that, so she broke new ground with her answer. “I do like to be called ‘Gladdy.’”

  “Okay. I thought there might be something,” he said. Once more, he seemed prompted by an added thought. “Who is it that calls you that?” His mellow and nurturing voice erased any possibility of Gladys even hesitating to answer.

  “Well, right now, no one calls me that. But it’s what my husband, Harry, used to call me, ever since we were kids in school together.” Here she did hesitate just a half beat. “And then Jesus started calling me that a few days ago.”

  Bob smiled, as if he had found what he was looking for. “Tell me about that, if you don’t mind. Tell me about Jesus calling you ‘Gladdy.’”

  Gladys scrunched up her lips, the lines around them tightening and then relaxing again. “I don’t mind. It’s really why I come to see you.” She stopped there, hoping for some idea of how to tell a stranger about her unusual encounter with Jesus. Even as her mind turned in that direction, she felt an inner correction, as if Bob wasn’t really a stranger, an odd thought.

  In that moment, she remembered Mrs. Leineger, her first grade teacher. Everyone loved Mrs. Leineger, especially the girls in the class, who all hugged her goodbye each afternoon as they left for home. And then she was back with Father Bob and his walls of books.

  Nodding, Bob wrote something brief on his pad. He then laid his hands at the ends of the wooden arms of the chair in which he sat.

  “I had a strange thing happen to me just this week,” Gladys said. “For a couple o’ days I could actually see and hear Jesus with me in my house and wherever I went.” She stopped there, waiting for the impact on her listener.

  “Is this the first time this happened?”

  “Uh, yes. I never even heard of anything like that, except about some people in a Muslim country that a missionary told us about at church. But I never thought it was something that would happen with me, or anyone like me.” Gladys rattled on without self-consciousness. In truth, this was more normal for her communication style, better than the defensive inhibition she had felt at the doctor’s office, when questions arose related to Jesus’s visit.

  “And I’m very curious,” Bob said, as if the question might be about something she saw on a school field trip. “How did you know it was Jesus you were seeing?”

  This stopped Gladys for a few seconds. In her mind, there had been no question about who it was, only about whether she was really seeing him. She shook her head. “I guess I just knew. I mean, he wasn’t wearing a name tag or anything. As soon as I saw him, I knew it wasn’t a burglar, and it had to be Jesus. I mean, he looked just like what I always pictured Jesus to look like, with the clothes and the beard and all. But, I guess I just knew.”

  “No doubt at any point about who it was,” Bob said, not asking another question but affirming her answer to the previous one.

  “I did wonder whether I was really seein’ him, ‘cause I was hearing things around th
e house for a couple o’ days, and . . .” Here she slowed to introduce a crucial point for her. “And, well, I was kinda worried that I was losin’ my mind, or something, seeing him there like that. ‘Cause I did talk to Harry once in a while before that, even though I knew he wasn’t there, at least when I stopped to remember it, I knew. But I still talked to Harry like he was there.”

  Looking into Bob’s large gray-blue eyes, magnified by his thick glasses, Gladys wondered what he was thinking behind that smile. He answered her question.

  “I’m so happy for you, Gladys,” he said, as if congratulating a six year old on a wonderful birthday present. “This seems like a very precious blessing from God, meant to draw you closer to him. What a privilege.”

  Gladys expected a “but” to follow. However, there was no counter claim following Bob’s warm acceptance of her story.

  When he saw her hesitation, Bob looked down for a moment, then back up at her as if he had something important to say. He held back for a few seconds more, as if listening to some instructions that Gladys couldn’t hear, and then spoke in deeper, more solemn tones.

  “You’re feeling badly, though, aren’t you, that you didn’t welcome Jesus’s visit the way you think you should have?”

  Very briefly, it occurred to Gladys that the reason Bob didn’t question her claim, was that he was actually seeing and hearing Jesus next to him. The way he seemed to wait for instructions before saying something to her, something that he couldn’t know by any natural means, popped this thought into her head. Then her mind went blank, forgetting that he had asked her a question.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  Gladys returned to that breathing exercise. She needed it again. Her brain seemed to have split into about three pieces, each running off at full speed, with no sense of destination.

  “Hmmm.” She stalled. She suddenly felt that she didn’t want to admit what she had done. The value of what she had experienced had just appreciated tremendously under the gaze of the faithful priest. Now Gladys hated to admit that she had thrown that treasure away. Tightness in her throat warned her that she dare not try to speak, for fear of an outburst. She wasn’t sure she had enough tissues in her purse if she were to unleash that billowing ache in her chest.

  “Gladdy,” Bob said. He looked at her with the air of a proud father who just wants to see his girl.

  Gladys heard a protest, presumably from some part of herself, demanding what right this Catholic priest had to look at her like that.

  Bob continued. “I am quite certain that Jesus is not mad at you. He loved being in your presence in a way that you could hear and see. And he would be glad to come back into view again. But, right now, he really wants you to know that he is not angry with you for what you did.”

  “I didn’t even tell you,” Gladys said, not intending for that thought to become words, words loose in the bookish air.

  Bob nodded again, blinking slowly, unacquainted with anxiety, it seemed. But he did seem to be acquainted with someone that Gladys had just met recently in a very real way.

  Gladys let Bob’s reassurance sink to the bottom of her tank of fears and anxieties. And it seemed to explode down there, reverberating throughout her soul. Those dammed up tears rose, and the pain in her throat popped into sobs—messy, moaning sobs—of intense despair and overwhelming relief at the same time.

  Bob reached for a box of tissues without even looking away. He leaned forward and set the box on Gladys’s knee. She captured the box before her tremors knocked it to the floor. With fast, frantic grabs she seized four tissues from the box and held them over her face, as the flood overran its banks.

  There are never enough sandbags when it really floods.

  Chapter 12

  SISTER

  By the time Gladys sat in her car again, she could hardly believe that only one hour had elapsed since she had dragged herself into the retreat center. On the passenger seat, next to her, lay a sheet of paper with the name of a spiritual director and an appointment time for Gladys to meet with her. Never mind that Gladys had not even heard of a spiritual director before, nor that she felt no ambition to add her first meeting with a nun to her list of things she needed to accomplish before she died.

  I survived the meeting with the priest, she thought. How hard could a meeting with Sister Alison be? Hopefully, it would require fewer tissues.

  Though a sign welcoming donations sat next to the greeting from the little bell on the reception desk, Gladys had received her one-hour deep-soul purge for free. Soaking so many of Bob’s tissues added a little bit more incrimination to her catalog. But he hadn’t seemed upset. Rather his look was always some version of gracious, whether gracious sympathy or gracious acceptance. Part of her sensed that sitting with Father Bob was a lot like seeing and hearing Jesus.

  The veteran priest, knew it would be best for Gladys to meet with another woman, to pursue what Jesus had begun by showing up at her address. She had to agree that it would make being so emotionally naked a bit less uncomfortable, assuming Sister Alison had a favorite aunt sort of smile, to match Father Bob’s avuncular openness.

  It took so long to get the key into the ignition, Gladys decided to sit still and do that deep breathing thing again, before attempting to drive home. In fact, twice more that evening she stopped herself to take in some air and let out some anxiety, an odd talent to discover after seventy-eight years of using that anxiety like the chains they used to put on tires in the snow, when she was young. A good wrapping of angst helped her dig in and get things done most days.

  Just before bedtime, having shut off the TV at a crude commercial, Gladys exhaled one of those purging breaths and said to herself. I sure hope I get through this.

  As clearly as when Jesus was visible next to her, she thought she heard a voice say to her, “You will.”

  She looked around, half-expecting Jesus to come out of the hallway again. But he didn’t. And she wondered why she only half-expected it. The instant answer that came to mind was that she didn’t deserve it.

  Gladys was grateful that she had scheduled her appointment with Sister Alison for the next afternoon, benefitting from another cancellation. She didn’t stop to wonder at the coincidence of two strategic appointment cancellations at the retreat center. Instead, she simply got up on her painless legs and sauntered off to bed.

  That night, deep through the tunnel of several hours sleep, Gladys had a dream. She couldn’t remember how it started but remembered clearly the feeling at the center of the dream. She was standing in a tight crowd, people all around her, pressed tight on all sides. For a while, she fumed at the weight of people so close, but then she heard a familiar voice at her side. She turned to her right, where she saw that the person jostling her most in that close crowd was Jesus, just as he had appeared in her house earlier that week. He smiled at her like someone sharing the wonder of the first day of vacation in some beautiful, exotic place. Yet he, too, was wedged into that crowd. Gladys wanted to ask him how he could be so happy in such an uncomfortable spot, but she wasn’t able to speak. Out of that mute frustration she awoke, discovering then that she had slept through the night again.

  She lay in bed, noticing how light it was for six thirty in the morning. Closing her eyes for a minute, she wished she could go back into that dream, as much as the all those people bothered and frustrated her. She still wanted to ask Jesus why he was so happy.

  Between the daily tasks of exercising, dressing, eating, and cleaning—all the while preoccupied by the feeling residue from that dream—Gladys lost track of the time passing toward lunch. When she finished her little salad of romaine lettuce, grape tomatoes, cucumber slices and croutons, she started to feel the nerves again, over the impending meeting back at the retreat center.

  When the phone rang, she jumped, standing next to the sink, where she washed her few lunch dishes. “Oh, my,” she said at the startling jangle.

  My nerves are completely raw, she thought, as she shuf
fled over to the phone, assuming her former gait out of habit, instead of necessity. When she picked up the phone and said, “Ye-es,” she received a happy shock.

  “Grandma?” said the voice on the other end.

  “Katie?” Gladys said. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school today?”

  Katie laughed. “Yeah, but I’m on my way to a soccer match with the team. I made Mom promise to let me be the one to tell you that we’re gonna be staying around for Easter break, and to see if Mom can drop me off at your place on Good Friday.”

  “Oh, yes! That would be wonderful! Oh, what a nice surprise! Yes, of course, you can come for the weekend.”

  “We get Friday off at my school, and there’s no soccer matches ‘cause of the holiday this year. They didn’t do it that way last year,” Katie chattered. Behind her clear chirpy voice, Gladys could hear a mix of young feminine voices rising and falling amidst a hum of motors or wind or both.

  “It must be that your mom has the day off too, then, since she can drive you up here, huh?” Gladys said, getting herself oriented to the prospect of company in two weeks.

  “Uhuh,” Katie said, then added some elaboration that got lost in a cell tower gap.

  Gladys didn’t pursue the missing words, she was too excited about Katie’s visit to quibble over a gappy cell phone signal. When she could tell that Katie was done talking, Gladys took the initiative.

  “Well, this is the best news I’ve had in ages,” she said. “I’ll get the guest room ready for you and make some fun plans. I don’t think we can just make cookies every day.” She laughed at the joy of her news more than her joke about their favorite shared activity.

  “Sounds great, Grandma. I’ll see you then. I love you,” Katie said.