by Amy Peterson
I can’t wait until I can see all of you again!
Veronica:
I will tell them that if they ask me to ignore my teacher, or if they change my exam results, they are bringing shame on themselves and our people.
Veronica:
Everything true is tested. As time goes by, the bible will be the truth of my people too
Amy:
You are right
Amy:
What do you think about Sarah?
Veronica:
Nothing. I can’t be friendly to her as before, but I don’t hate her. She acts innocent. I don’t know.
Veronica:
I need time to recover. And Cecilia can’t stand her.
Amy:
I chatted with her this week, and it seems that she wants to talk to you . . .
Amy:
she apologized to me
Veronica:
I met her too. She just said that Amy says we should believe in God from heart, not because we want her to be happy
Amy:
Well, that is true
Veronica:
I don’t trust her anymore. She didn’t read the Bible, and I think she doesn’t understand.
Veronica:
Nowadays, I’m too afraid to talk to people about God anymore.
Veronica:
I am afraid one of them will be a spy of the police
Amy:
I know
Amy:
and I think it is ok to be very careful.
Veronica:
Do you understand me? I can’t trust anybody around me, and I hate feeling this way.
Amy:
I understand. and I hope that in time that doubt will grow smaller and your faith will grow larger. But, I also think that it is good to be careful. There is a time to speak and a time to be silent (ecclesiastes)
Veronica:
Yeah
Veronica:
Josh also encouraged me so much
Veronica:
He thinks I’m lucky cause I could understand what is the true passion that Jesus took
Veronica:
But I was a coward
Amy:
I think you have been very brave
Amy:
You have such great big faith
Amy:
When you read Acts, you can see that they faced many trials. But after those trials, always many more people believed in the message
Veronica:
When they asked me “Do you follow religion?” I said “I don’t know what you mean ‘follow religion,’ but the Bible is a great book.”
Amy:
Good
Veronica:
They asked me that question so many times
Amy:
I am so sorry that you have had to face this trial and all of their questions and threats
Veronica:
If they ask me once again, I will say “I’m not a christian cause I’m not worthy. Christians are so good, they are never cowards about money like me.” They won’t know what to think.
Amy:
silly girl
Veronica:
It’s a long time since I last heard your voice, I miss you so much
Amy:
I know. I wish that I had a webcam or a mic here so that I could talk to you
Amy:
What about Nicole? have you talked to her?
Veronica:
I met her but I didn’t mention anything, and she showed nothing
Amy:
It is so difficult to know who you can trust!
Amy:
She seemed very sincere before this happened
Veronica:
Yes. I don’t know who to trust, but I don’t feel hate toward anyone.
Veronica:
if i were “old me,” I might beat Sarah, really
Amy:
I am glad that you are the “new” you then!
Amy:
I will continue to ask Father to show you and Cecilia the right time to speak to others, and who to speak to.
Amy:
What about you and Cecilia meeting to discuss the Bible?
Amy:
Are you going to try to do that?
Veronica:
Of course
Veronica:
i connected with Philip
Veronica:
And asked him to give me two Bibles again
Amy:
You did?!
Veronica:
yeah. My friend will get them from him and bring them to me.
Amy:
Good
Amy:
I hope there is no problem
Veronica:
I plan to get the old Bibles back from the police, too.
Amy:
How?
Veronica:
When everything ends, I will call the police and say, “Can you give me the books now? They were special presents, I don’t want to lose them.”
Amy:
I don’t know if that is a good idea
Veronica:
Maybe I will
Veronica:
What about you?
Amy:
What about me?
Veronica:
Are you worried? When you come back, if there is any trouble, I will do anything to stand for you
Amy:
I am not worried
Amy:
I will always be safe.
Amy:
Sometimes I worry about you, but not about me.
Veronica:
Yeah, I feel confident
Amy:
and I think that the problem is quiet now. Maybe it will come again and we will face more tria
ls, but we will be strong and we will have the protection of the spirit
Veronica:
The police said they just want to “educate” us, but there is not any education in threats!
Amy:
True!
[Veronica asked me to bring her the newest Backstreet Boys CD. She asked about my brothers and Charley. We talked about dating customs in her country and mine, and her plans to learn to play guitar.]
Veronica:
Afterward, when I graduate, I will wait for Father’s plan for me about my mission
Veronica:
that if I can be a missionary . . .
Amy:
I know
Amy:
he will make a way for you
Veronica:
I think I will preach gospel more truly than some in my country do
Veronica:
they never tell others about his passion and death and resurrection
. . .
Veronica:
it’s 10.10 pm, do you feel sleepy?
Amy:
I didn’t know it was so late!
Amy:
when do you want to meet again?
. . .
19
Saying Thank You in the Dark
Surely what we want now is more fire. I do not see much sign of it, the fire that comes from tribulation and persecution, I mean.
D. M. Thornton: A Study in Missionary Ideals and Methodsby W. H. T. Gairdner
Weeks passed and things seemed to have quieted down for the girls. I drove to the suburbs of Chicago and unpacked my suitcase into the plywood dresser of a dorm room, slipping sheets onto a twin bed. I took long walks with Rebekah around the small town, talking about what had happened to Veronica.
Everything was so beautiful that it felt unreal. Or something was unreal: I couldn’t decide which it was, the persecuted teenagers in an impoverished town across the ocean, or this movie set that was life in the Chicago suburbs. Rebekah and I walked to a candy shop, famous for being the narrowest store in America, little more than a hallway in a row of downtown boutiques. We went to Borders and bought books: buy three, get the fourth free. When we drove through neighborhoods to her aunt’s house, all the families were playing in their yards. Moms pushed strollers, dads played catch with tousled little girls, whole families pedaled bikes through wide streets.
The mornings were chilly and grey, and everything was clean and open and smelled like fresh cut grass. Suddenly I understood why America was the promised land: the air smelled green.
I stopped journaling while I was at grad school. I couldn’t find my words. I’d open the notebook and make a dot, then another, connect them with a line, shade in patterns of grey and white. I’d close the notebook and go for a run, hoping the intense physicality would clear my mind, help me to pray, find some words to say. I wished for a Catholic church, a daily mass that would provide the words in liturgy for me when I couldn’t find them for myself. Instead, I ran to try to reconcile the emotions I felt: anger, confusion, sadness, worry, and over it all, the deepest gratitude.
The words of a poem by W. S. Merwin marched through my mind as I walked from classroom from cafeteria, as I rode the train into the city. Listen, he commanded: we are saying thank you in the midst of it all, in the midst of muggings and funerals, corruption and decay, we are saying thank you.
My classmates were people who understood how to say thank you even in the darkness. Adam, Rebekah, Joanna, and the others understood the experiences I’d had. I didn’t have to try to explain. I relished their presence, tried to soak up their faith all I could.
* * *
Jack e-mailed me:
I wanted to tell you that I’ve started seeing someone. We’re taking it really slowly, but she’s a top-notch girl, he wrote. My heart plummeted into my stomach, or it would have, if it hadn’t already taken up residence there for the summer. I was surprised; hurt, even. We’d been e-mailing every week or so, flirtatiously, I thought. The previous week, at lunch, Adam had asked if Jack knew that Charley and I had broken up. “I don’t know,” I’d answered, wondering: did Adam see the connection that I thought was there? Joanna had laughed at me when I’d mentioned him. I had hoped it all meant something.
Could it be that Jack still didn’t know Charley and I had broken up? I wrote back, slipping this line into a friendly, chatty e-mail:
The girl sounds great. It seems your love life has blossomed as mine has fallen to pieces—Charley and I broke up in January.
He e-mailed me twice in the space of twenty-four hours, but I didn’t respond again. I tried to flip the switch in my heart from crush to friendship, wondering what exactly that coy impulse—the one that had stopped me from telling him about the breakup earlier—had cost me.
* * *
I tried to feel my feelings, for once, instead of denying them any space. Not just my feelings about Jack, but my feelings about everything that was happening in Southeast Asia while I relaxed in the comfort of a Chicago summer. I prayed that God would help me to be more emotionally open, less prone to trying to keep myself under control by stuffing negative emotions.
Throughout my life, my relationship with God had been largely intellectual, not emotional; when feelings emerged, I had often shut them down. Emotions could not be trusted. Only the Bible could be trusted. Emotions had to be justified.
Now I realized that I couldn’t feel God’s presence at all. Did I love God? I was devoted to God, determined to serve God. “Love isn’t how you feel. It’s what you do,” Madeleine L’Engle had written, and my actions showed that I loved God. But did I really? I felt no love—no warm, affectionate personal feelings, no longing for God’s presence.
Did God love me? I believed so. I assented to that truth, but I didn’t feel a thing.
Help me to feel that you love me, I prayed.
* * *
I was sitting behind the dorm one day, reading for class, when the sound of an explosion shattered the stillness of our apple-pie neighborhood. Across the street, screams. A garage opened. I ran in the opposite direction.
Inside the dorm, I banged on doors. “I think there was an explosion across the street—can you call 911?” I asked. Greg got on the phone and Bethany hurried next door to get Ginger, a trained nurse. I waited, afraid to cross the street alone.
A girl about my age sat on the driveway, her skin singed black and purple, crying in broken English, “Oh, my God, I am burning alive. . . .”
Her father, shirtless, torso burned red, was crying, mumbling words in some Eastern European language, and her sister, unharmed, couldn’t find words in English to explain what had happened.
Ginger told us to pour cold water on the burn victims, and to cut their clothes off. I tried to help, but was so glad when the ambulance arrived. That raw pain, like wordless cries of wounded animals, frightened me. The ambulance took the father and daughter to the hospital; they would live. They would live with scars.
Later that night, I couldn’t get the unharmed sister out of my mind. Doubtless she knew some English, like her father and sister did, but in the crisis she could only speak her first language.
I too felt words had been stripped from me that summer. I had thought that I spoke faith as my first language, but as I encountered my first spiritual crisis, I found that I had no words at all. Instead of prayer, or even tears or keening cries, my first language seemed to be silence.
20
Due to Curriculum Changes
Thus hindered, I could not but realize the hand of God in closing the door I had so much desired to enter.
Hudson Taylor, writing about his experience of being kept from Shantou, and writing many years after the fact
We could not give up—it never came into our minds to do so—but we were sometimes sorely tempted to discouragement.
Amy Carmichael, Gold Cord
You are emotionally distressed,” Anna observed as I walked into her apartment near the med school in Little Rock. I’d finished my grad classes and been back in Arkansas for ten days when I got the e-mail from the university overseas.
Due to curriculum changes, it said, we will not be able to renew your teaching contract for the upcoming year.
Sixteen days before I planned to board a plane for Southeast Asia, they told me that I couldn’t come back. I forwarded the e-mail to Camille and my teammate Lisa. Camille responded quickly; it was unlikely, she said, that I would be able to teach at any other university in the country, either.
I wasn’t ready to tell Veronica yet. First I needed to fall apart and put myself back together.
