“And your pastor doesn’t think you’re crazy?”
“No, he certainly seemed pretty convinced it was Jesus, when Jesus had me give him a message about something he needed to think about.”
Gladys listened to a familiar exasperated sigh over the phone. “I knew this would bother you,” she said.
“Yeah, you know, church is not believable for me. But this is even more unbelievable. I’m really worried that your pastor encourages this sort o’ thing.”
“Well, it’s not like he told me to do this, or like he tells the congregation that they can see and hear Jesus just like a regular person. It’s just that it didn’t seem impossible to ‘im, and then I think God sorta made him accept it somehow.”
Jesus nodded and extended his usual smile, when he heard that speculation from Gladys. She noted this bit of revelation that had slipped out of her mouth, only getting approval from Jesus after the fact.
“He told me to give messages to two men at the store the other day too,” she said, remembering those other experiences of being Jesus’s mouthpiece.
Patty muttered. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I mean, maybe you should consider seeing someone about this.”
“I did that already,” Gladys said, her voice squeaking in protest.
“I mean a doctor of some kind, maybe.”
“Well, Father Bob, over at the retreat center, is a doctor of some kind. I noticed it on his desk name plate.”
“But he believes this sort of thing,” Patty said, a protest marching out into the open now.
“Yeah. So you want me to go see someone who doesn’t believe in this sorta thing?”
Patty paused, as if that didn’t quite sound right, but answered honestly. “Ah, yes, I guess that’s what I mean.”
“But, if I go see someone who doesn’t believe in this sorta thing, won’t they just tell me that it can’t be happening?”
“That’s the point,” Patty said.
Gladys tried again. “You want me to go looking for someone who thinks I’m crazy?”
“Well,” Patty was back in diplomatic mode, “maybe not crazy, but just imagining something because you’re lonely.”
Gladys considered pursuing an argument about whether loneliness leads to hallucinations, but she didn’t like debates, so she passed on the offer.
“Tell her that Doctor Taylor wouldn’t actually assume it’s just your imagination,” Jesus said.
Gladys had never heard of “Doctor Taylor” but guessed that he was some TV psychiatrist, that Patty would know.
“Jesus says to tell you that Doctor Taylor wouldn’t think I was just imagining this.”
Patty’s silence fluxed in and out with a growing volume of breathing sounds, surging across the connection into Gladys’s ear.
“How do you know about Doctor Taylor?” Patty finally said, nearly hyperventilating. “Did Derek say something to you about her?”
“Derek? No, Jesus just did. I think he was helping me with the little argument we were getting into.”
Gladys was almost half as confused as Patty, still not putting the pieces all together.
“Seeing Doctor Taylor doesn’t mean I’m crazy,” Patty said.
“You’re seeing Doctor Taylor?” Gladys said, climbing up one step away from bewilderment. “What kind of doctor is he. . . I mean she?”
“What do you mean what kind of doctor is she? She’s a psychiatrist. She gives me meds when I need ‘em, and listens to my problems.”
“Oh,” Gladys said. “I didn’t know.”
“What do you mean you didn’t know? You’re the one that brought her up.”
“Actually, Jesus was the one who brought her up. I guess he knows all about it.”
This time the silence was so pure that Gladys thought the line had been disconnected, like when Patty was driving and passed under a bridge or tunnel.
“Are you still there, Dear?”
“Yes, Mom. I’m still here. I have to talk to Derek about this.”
That sounded like the prelude to “goodbye,” so Gladys asked an obvious question. “But did you get to talk about what you called for? I mean you called me about something.”
Patty’s breathing accelerated again, to somewhere on the spectrum between frustration and hilarity. It might have sounded a little crazy, if Gladys had thought about it.
“I called to check in on you before Katie’s visit.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Gladys said, her innocence intact.
“I have to check something with Derek. I’ll talk to you again before Friday.”
“Okay, Dear. I love you. Have a good day,” Gladys said. She noted that the “I love you” was unusual for her to say on the phone to Patty, but she felt good saying it.
“Oh. I love you too, Mom. Yeah, talk to you later.” Patty sounded like she was fading at the end, or perhaps that her fight had all drained out.
Before supper that evening, Gladys went to the chain drug store on the south side of town. She went in to sign up for renting videos from the box outside the store. When she found out that she didn’t have to sign up at the store, she gave Jesus a disapproving look. He could have spared her the trip, and the embarrassment, she was thinking. Though, if one could measure such things, Gladys’s embarrassment about not knowing how those video rentals worked, was a tiny peep compared to the screaming recriminations younger people might imagine.
Jesus, of course, didn’t seem intimidated by Gladys’s corrective look. Instead, he took the opportunity to enlist Gladys’s services.
“I want you to tell her something for me.” He indicated the sympathetic young woman behind the counter, with an array of holes along one nostril, that witnessed to a store policy against employees wearing nose rings. “Tell her that I love her and her children, and I keep them close to me.”
Gladys looked at the young woman, who barely appeared to be out of her teens. But she was used to people being older than they looked to her, in light of her own aging. The girl was standing there patiently wondering why the old woman hadn’t left yet, concerned that Gladys was confused about more than just video rentals.
“I think Jesus wants me to give you a message,” Gladys said, an introduction with which she was becoming more comfortable. “He said to tell you that he loves you and he loves your children too, and he keeps them close to him.”
Gladys wasn’t prepared for what came next. Being a kindly old lady meant that she didn’t generally have to worry about being hit, or even verbally assaulted by most people. But she also hadn’t prepared for one of Jesus’s messages to slice deep into a person’s heart like that one did.
Upon hearing that message, the clerk’s eyes expanded to maximum size, just before she exploded into violent sobs. She started shouting, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” Then, she disappeared behind the counter, dropping to the floor, and landing on her rear end.
Gladys looked around the store to see who else was hearing this. She was surprised to discover that no one was in sight. That seemed unlikely at that time of day. She glanced at Jesus, wondering if he had something to do with this unexpected privacy. Instead of finding him standing there to answer her question, she discovered him rounding end of the counter, to get in next to the young woman. Gladys followed him.
She found the girl, whose name tag said Brittany, struggling to stand up, still sobbing hysterically. She was speaking, as if to herself, “I just knew it, I knew he would take care of them, I just knew it.”
When Brittany saw Gladys come around behind the counter, she rose from her squatting position with her arms out, like she assumed Gladys was coming to hug her. Though she had nothing like that in mind, Gladys didn’t resist. She leaned down and grabbed hold of Brittany’s sides, her purse sliding down her arm. She let it drop to the floor.
Brittany wrapped her arms around Gladys’s neck and held on tight. Gladys was praying for Jesus to help her breathe. Jesus wrapped his arms around both of them. Just then, a man and hi
s young daughter came in the door. The man hesitated, as if he might turn and leave, but then took his daughter’s shoulder and sped her off toward the back of the store.
With the eyes of a stranger to consider, Gladys and Brittany both started fiddling and double-clutching out of their tight embrace. Gladys went for her purse, and Brittany started pulling tissues from a box behind the counter. She spoke in a low, confidential tone, interrupted by sobbing intakes of desperately needed air.
“I was so sorry that I had the abortion, it was the worst thing I ever did. I know it was. Then I got pregnant again, and my boyfriend said he would marry me, and then I lost that baby too. And I just knew that I had ruined it. I messed up so bad that I wouldn’t be allowed to have children ever. And I don’t sleep nights, thinking about my lost babies.” Tears rained down again.
When Gladys had delivered the message, she assumed it was G-rated. She was trying now to hide her shock at the R-rated material coming back at her. Her honesty leaked, as usual.
“Jesus just told me what to say,” Gladys said. “I didn’t know any of the details. I didn’t know all o’ that.”
Brittany was back to looking sympathetically at the grandmotherly little woman who was backing now out from behind the counter. Brittany surprised Gladys again by stepping toward her quickly and grabbing another hug. This time, Gladys laughed.
Then Jesus spoke up. “Tell her I am healing her so that she can have children when the time is right,” he said, his hand on Brittany’s belly, though only Gladys could see that, of course.
Gladys explained. “I see Jesus right now putting his hand on your belly and saying that you are healed so you can have babies, when the time is right.”
If Gladys had been looking for ways to evoke the maximum number of tears from the poor girl, she would have counted her visit a rousing success. As it was, however, she left the store in a daze, uncertain whether it was okay to leave Brittany alone, even though the young clerk insisted that she was okay and “really, really happy.” Her tears had totally wiped out her eye makeup. The girlish face which that flood revealed was a hard one for Gladys to leave.
By Thursday morning, Gladys had recovered from the shock and awe of that encounter with Brittany. She was thinking about getting ready for women’s Bible study later that morning, when Jim Heskett called.
“I hope I’m not interrupting you, Gladys, but I just wanted to check in and see how you’re doing,” he said.
“Oh, that’s nice of you,” Gladys said, a reflex response, given that she wasn’t sure why he would need to check on her. She turned her eyes in Jesus’s direction, where he sat at the kitchen table, finishing his orange juice. She could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew who was on the line, and knew the real reason for the call.
Jim clarified his motives a bit. “Just wondering how it’s going with your experience with Jesus.” His voice betrayed a bit of discomfort, a tone Gladys had never heard when he was in the pulpit.
“He’s still here. I’m enjoying every minute of it. He had me talk to the girl at the drug store yesterday. That was very emotional,” she said.
“Really? I’d like to hear about that some time,” he said, implying that this was not that time. He cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about what it means that Jesus is where you can see him and hear him. I’ve been thinking about what it would mean to the church, if folks knew about this, and if they knew I was supporting you in it, or maybe supporting isn’t the right word . . .” He fell silent for a moment.
“So, what were you thinking about that?” Gladys wasn’t inclined to let mysteries lay for long, if she had any say in it.
“I’ve been tempted to ask you not to tell anybody else what’s happening, just to protect the peace of the church. But the message you gave me Sunday has me convinced that there’s something real happening for you, so I don’t think I should say anything against it.”
“Well, that’s good. Not sure what I’d do otherwise,” Gladys said.
“I know, maybe you don’t think about these things the way I do, but this is the kind of thing that can divide a church, some believing and some opposed, ya’ know.”
In fact, Gladys had never given a thought to the church-wide implications of her experience. She saw herself as one of the sheep. None of the concerns carried by the shepherd ever crossed her mind. Her struggle about who to tell, had been about her personal relationships, and only how her news would affect those.
“I’m glad you’re thinking about these things,” she said. “I guess that’s why you’re the pastor.”
Then Jesus added something. “Tell him that I am going to bless his family with generations of pastors.”
Jim said, “Sometimes I overthink things, maybe. But I do feel called to it.”
“Well, that’s good,” Gladys said, “Because Jesus just said that he is gonna bless your family with generations of pastors.”
Jim, who had two sons and a daughter, all in their single digits, stayed silent for a few seconds, at least that’s what it sounded like to Gladys. Actually, he was holding his hand over the mic on his phone so she couldn’t hear the burst of sobs that broke from his mouth, before he regained control.
“That means a lot to me, Gladys,” he said in a gaspy voice. “Thanks for telling me.”
“You’re welcome. It was from Jesus, of course.”
She heard an airy snicker over the phone.
“I know,” he said.
Chapter 19
STUDY
The reverberations from her conversation with Jim Heskett slightly weakened Gladys’s resolve to attend women’s Bible study, something she did almost every week. In the end, she didn’t allow the self-conscious awareness of possibly splitting the church to keep her from going.
Gladys had been attending this Bible study, and its antecedents, for over fifteen years. The leader of the group, Betty Koppel, had been in charge for all of those years. When Gladys started attending, Betty was about seventy-five. Standing now in the overflow room, where she also met for Sunday school, Gladys sang along to The Old Rugged Cross, Betty leading and Muriel McKinsey playing the upright piano against the wall. Gladys had no ear for music, but she did think that the aging group sounded more and more like a swarm of mosquitos, following the thin, wiry voice of their leader. Gladys didn’t complain, and she didn’t point out this phenomenon to Jesus.
Jesus didn’t sing along with the song, he just stood smiling, looking like he was showering in the sound of the music. Gladys liked this posture from Jesus, feeling that he could hardly sing along to a line that said, “where the dearest and best, for a world of lost sinners was slain.” Even Jesus would feel awkward singing about himself, she assumed.
Gladys had arrived late, consistently underestimating her driving time to church, influenced by how long it used to take Harry to drive the two-plus miles. This preempted any opportunity to talk to her friends before the singing kicked off the meeting.
When they sat down to watch a DVD presentation of the day’s lesson, Gladys looked around for some of the usual suspects. Marge Kennedy was sitting near the front, a prime seat among this group that tended to be somewhat hearing impaired.
The fifty-inch flat-screen TV blared the theme song, followed by a bespectacled middle-aged man, with artificially golden hair, introducing the topic. Gladys noticed Bonnie Shubert, sitting just a couple of rows in front of her. When Gladys looked at her, a thought popped into her head about Bonnie’s son being in some kind of trouble. Gladys tried to remember if this was a prayer request she had seen in the weekly prayer letter, but wasn’t sure. Trying to locate the source of that uninvited idea distracted her from the contents of the video for several minutes, until Jesus intervened.
“You know about Bonnie’s son, because my spirit told you,” he said, speaking directly into her mind, without moving his mouth.
Gladys turned briefly toward him and thought, “Why is he telling me something like that? And why aren’t you j
ust telling me?”
“That’s my spirit, so I am telling you. But I’m telling you in the way I will normally let you know about things you can pray for, when I’m not visible to you.”
They had talked about this visit from Jesus, as Gladys liked to think of it, being for a limited time, something Gladys always assumed anyway. But she hadn’t paid much attention to comments he made about how things would change for her after she could no longer see and hear him so clearly.
“So, you’re telling me this so I can pray for Alex and for his parents?” she said in her head.
“Yes,” Jesus said, “I want you to go and lay hands on Bonnie and give her my peace, and to tell her how I’m going to take care of things.”
“That sounds like a lot more than just praying,” Gladys said, in her muted protest voice, even without speaking aloud.
Jesus pointed toward the screen, to get Gladys’s attention back on the lesson. The speaker was talking about “bearing one another’s burdens.” Gladys tried to tune in, drifted toward thinking about what Jesus had been explaining, and then drifted back to the video. The speaker was making a point about God leading people to pray for each other, putting a concern on their heart, that they would not know by natural means.
Gladys resisted saying aloud, “hey, I get it now.” But she did look at Jesus and nod her recognition of what he had been telling her. At least, she assumed she recognized what he was telling her.
When the meeting finally closed, with another classic old hymn, Gladys was anxious to get to Bonnie, to unload this thing Jesus had told her. She was ready to give it a try, planning to use the language from the video.
After blocking Bonnie’s exit, followed by a vanilla greeting between the two old friends, Gladys said, “You know, Bonnie, I’ve been burdened for you and Alex, just like the video was talking about. I get the feeling that he’s in some kind of trouble . . .”
Hearing Jesus (Seeing Jesus Book 2) Page 18
