Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  Her breath caught.

  “He is,” insisted Charles. “If he is God, then he must be in control and must want what is best for us . . .”

  Charles stopped in midsentence. On Jocelyn’s face was a look of angry disbelief such as he had never seen.

  “He wants what is best for us!” she exclaimed.

  “Of course. What else could—”

  “Is that why he made me like this?” she interrupted. “Do you have any idea what it is like to live your whole life feeling like a mistake? He’s in control of our lives! Do you know what that means, Charles? How am I to trust a God who intended me to be like this!”

  “Is that your hesitation—whether you can trust him, whether he’s good?”

  “Wouldn’t you be hesitant?” she returned. “He made me so that my own mother was disgusted with the very sight of me, embarrassed to be seen with me. And now you want me to call him loving and kind and good! You want me to give my life to him and think of him as a wonderful and loving Father?”

  Charles listened dumbfounded. He had no easy reply.

  “I can’t possibly think of God like that,” Jocelyn continued. “I will go along with you on all this. I will support you in what you do, just like I learned about politics and science to support you. But don’t ask me to embrace a God who made me like this. How could he possibly love me? How could I possibly love him?”

  Charles had never seen Jocelyn like this. He reached out to put his arm around her, to draw her to him. But she pulled away, then stood like a frightened child, arms crossed, eyes flashing, lips trembling.

  “Jocelyn,” he said softly, “I’m so sorry . . . I didn’t know you felt this way.”

  Charles gazed tenderly into his wife’s face. His eyes saw no stain, no mark, only a woman he loved with all his heart. Therefore, she was truly beautiful in his sight.

  “But I can’t help thinking you really do believe God is good,” he added, “more than you admit, more than you want to. And you’re angry with him. If you didn’t really believe it, you wouldn’t be angry. It’s because you know he is good that you expect God to be good.”

  “I am not angry at him,” she retorted.

  “Then tell him thank you for how he made you.”

  Jocelyn returned his words with a blank stare. “Thank him?”

  “Can you . . . can you thank him?”

  “No I can’t thank him!” she shot back.

  “Why?”

  “I see nothing to thank him for. What do I owe him after what he did to me?”

  “Your life.”

  “Everybody has that. Besides, wouldn’t you be angry if you had to wear this every day of your life?” she said, pointing to her face. “You don’t have any idea what it is like! How could you possibly understand? Look at you. You’re handsome, intelligent . . . everyone likes you. But me!”

  “But, Jocelyn, you’re—” Charles tried to begin. But she interrupted him.

  “This horrid . . . deformity . . . is there every morning when I wake up,” she said. “I look in the mirror and am reminded of it every day. I wake up sometimes and think it’s all been a dream, and that maybe it will be gone. But I don’t even need to look in the mirror. I can see it in everyone’s eyes. The looks of shock, or embarrassment, of revulsion—they all remind me that it is still there. Every day of my existence! How can God love me! The words mean nothing.”

  She stood, stiff and erect, shaking, but fighting the urge to break into uncontrollable sobs.

  Slowly Charles approached. Gently he wrapped his arms around her tight body and drew her toward him. Gradually she relaxed and allowed him to hold her. After a few moments she began to cry softly.

  They stood for some moments; then Charles led her out of the trees toward the overgrown heather garden.

  38

  Individual Marks of a Father’s Love

  Charles led his wife to a small stone bench.

  “Sit down, Jocie,” said Charles. “I have something I want to say.”

  They sat down beside one another. She laid her head on his shoulder. For many minutes neither spoke as they sat quietly together.

  “Oh, Charles,” said Jocelyn at length, “I don’t want our lives to change.”

  “We are living things. We must grow.”

  “But we’re adults. Haven’t we grown enough?”

  “We’re not like one of my machines that can just get completed and that’s that. We’re living, breathing, changing, growing creatures. We can’t be stagnant—we must always strive for the best. I want the best for you. And I want the best for myself. I want us both to know God as a good Father . . . one who does love you.”

  He paused briefly.

  “You aren’t a mistake to him,” he went on. “I can’t explain it, Jocie, but I know he made you as he did, for some reason we cannot see. A good reason, not a bad one.”

  “How can that be?”

  “Just imagine, Jocie—what if that red birthmark on your face is a mark God intended as something special, something wonderful, something to show just how much he loves you, and you alone. If we could only see what was in God’s heart when he made you!”

  It was silent. The thought was too huge to comprehend.

  “Everyone has some kind of mark, Jocie—something about the way they’re made that they don’t like.”

  “Not many people have huge, glaring red birthmarks.”

  “Perhaps not. Yours happens to be more visible than most. Other marks are invisible—hidden twists on the heart or soul that cause people to think God must not love them. But what if all those hidden scars are really God’s special marks of individuality, put there, in some mysterious way we cannot understand, to help us see how much he actually does love us? What if your red birthmark is really a sign of great love?”

  “But how, Charles . . . how could such a thing be?”

  “I don’t know, Jocie. But if God is a good and loving Father—somehow I think it has to be so.”

  “How can you be so sure he is good and loving and trustworthy?”

  “If he wasn’t, he couldn’t be God.”

  Jocelyn stared at her husband blankly.

  “The God who made us, and who created the world, has to be good,” Charles went on. “I can’t explain why, but I see no other possibility.”

  “What does that have to do with how he made us?”

  “However he made us has to be good. Even the things that don’t appear so, things that we might change about ourselves if we could. But that’s only because we don’t see them as God does, don’t see their value. It may be that we will never recognize these marks as loving signs of the Father’s special and individual fingerprint upon us, until we thank him for them, until we recognize them as coming from a hand of love rather than from a hand of cruelty.”

  Jocelyn took a deep breath and struggled to find her voice.

  “That would be so hard to do,” she said as her hand once more came to rest on her face. “To see . . . this . . . as a good thing—that’s more than I can comprehend.”

  “I believe it’s true,” said Charles.

  “It’s different for you,” replied Jocelyn. “You’ve always had confidence, been content with who you are. For you this is more an intellectual decision. I know everything Mr. McFee said about the heart. But still, you can look at Christianity, and decide whether you believe it or not. You said that very thing to me.”

  “I see that,” acknowledged Charles. “I realize it’s different.”

  “It’s not that way for me. I . . . I just can’t think of God without thinking he doesn’t like me, without thinking of him as mean, even cruel, without thinking that he must look at me as my mother used to look at me, with cold disdain. Mr. McFee kept saying that God was good and loving. Those are the last traits I think of when I think about God. Loving? If he loved me, why would he have made me like this? If he loved me, why did he make me look like some kind of monster? Don’t you see, Charles? I don’t know how to
believe that God loves me.”

  She broke down in sobs. Charles said nothing further until after her weeping began to subside.

  “I don’t think you can know that goodness,” he said at length, his voice very gentle, “until you are willing to give him thanks for it. And Jocie, I can give thanks for it with all my heart! I believe God’s fingerprint on your face is partially responsible for making you different from other ladies of your standing . . . and different from your mother. People can be bitter over their marks of individuality. Or they can be thankful and let God use them to deepen compassion and character within them. I believe you are a better and more understanding and compassionate person because of the way God made you, and a better mother as well. Don’t you see, Jocie?—you really can thank God for your birthmark because it has helped form your character inside. Oh, Jocie—I love you so much! How could God not love you infinitely more than I do?”

  Jocelyn nodded in the midst of her tears. She tried to take in his words, although she was beginning to tire physically and emotionally.

  “Jocie, do you love Amanda and Catharine and George?” Charles asked.

  “Of course I do. They’re my children. How can I not love them?”

  “And you are God’s child, Jocelyn. He loves you even more.”

  Again she began to cry softly.

  “Do you remember the other night when Bobby read to us from the Bible about God’s loving us so much that he sent his Son to die on the cross so that we would know of his love?”

  She nodded. “I’ve heard that verse all my life, but I never thought of it quite the way he explained it.”

  “Well, I think Jesus was showing us how to give ourselves. We have to trust him and his goodness so much that we would be willing to go that far. But he doesn’t ask that much of us. All he asks is that we believe that he loves us. Can you believe that he loves you, Jocie?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied softly. “I never really knew love until you loved me.”

  “Where do you think we learned to love? Our love must be from God. He loves you, Jocie.”

  Gently he stroked her hair and let her weep.

  “You’re the only one who has ever loved me,” she said softly.

  Silently Charles prayed for wisdom to say the right thing. After a few moments, he leaned away, then reached over and turned Jocelyn’s face toward his so he could look directly into her eyes.

  “Jocie,” he said, “I’m sorry to keep returning to something so painful for you. But I believe you need to thank God for the way he has made you.”

  She returned his gaze with the bewildered eyes of a wild animal caught in a trap.

  “I think,” Charles went on, “that you need to thank him for being a good and loving Father, and thank him for your red face, recognizing that he intended it for your good, to remind you of him. It is his fingerprint upon your face, Jocie. When he made you, he touched you in a unique way different from everyone else. He left that mark of his touch upon you in red, to remind you every day—not that he doesn’t love you . . . but that he does.”

  Deliberately he reached up and laid his hand over the purplish red mark. She winced at his touch, but he kept it there and held her eyes with his.

  “It’s God’s fingerprint, Jocie!” he said once again. “It’s the fingerprint of love.”

  39

  Silent Witness to High Things

  A solitary figure stood peering through the window of her bedroom into the courtyard below.

  Outside, the gentle late morning’s breeze across the fields and meadows of the Devonshire downs brought with it the sweet aroma of greenery and growth. It was a fragrance which only the sun, working in harmony with the things of the earth, could produce.

  With his back to the great stone house of three stories and sprawling extent, and unaware of the eyes upon him, Charles Rutherford stood gazing out across the countryside. He opened wide his nostrils and drew in a long sigh of pleasure. The earth spoke many things in the due course of its seasons. It was one of many things he had learned late in his life to care about. But after the great change which had taken place within the deep region of his heart, there were few things he loved so much as the smell of meadow grass after a rain.

  Yet today a subtle disquiet accompanied the gentle wind-borne fragrances. Dissatisfaction with himself two years earlier had led him to contentment of soul and peace with his Creator. This morning’s sense of unease, however, was altogether different and was one he did not understand.

  It was time to visit the wood.

  He had felt it ever since arising this morning, though the undefined promptings had not yet been given definite form and substance. No matter. Time in his natural sanctuary was never wasted, whether or not the specific purpose was known.

  He struck out across the path through the semi-cultivated patch of heather not far from the house, then in a wide arc toward the meadow beyond.

  Then he paused, prompted by some intuition to glance back.

  In the third-floor window he saw the face of his daughter Amanda. That she was looking at him too he was sure enough.

  Charles smiled and waved.

  At the same instant, however, she retreated back into the room. Her form was lost to his view, and no answering greeting came in response. Maybe it was for her that today’s urging to prayer had come.

  It could not be denied that Amanda had changed. The changes had begun almost immediately after he and Jocelyn had given their hearts to the Lord. Why, neither father nor mother possessed so much as a clue. George had embraced the change in orientation with them, took his turn praying aloud at meals, and seemed to enjoy services at the village church in Milverscombe. Little Catharine had scarcely noticed that anything was different. But Amanda resisted from the start. The change of priorities seemed to confuse her.

  Now, after two years, it was apparent that the discord had deepened between Amanda and the rest of the family. The once happy and spunky girl had become withdrawn and moody. Her father could not help being concerned.

  Where did it originate? he wondered—this streak of sullenness that had come to define his daughter’s personality in almost equal proportion with laughter? Why did she now find parental influence such an unwelcome burden, when previously she had apparently loved her parents with all her heart? And why did she seemingly resent the new spiritual dimension which had opened new worlds of understanding and peace within him?

  In Charles Rutherford’s mind the changes that had come to him and Jocelyn and their family were all for the better. But from Amanda’s vantage point, did they perhaps represent restrictions she had never encountered until that time?

  They had been such good friends when she was a younger child. He still recalled with fondness their laughter together on the trip to London for the queen’s jubilee. Then had come the call upon his life—to give himself to a new Master. And that was when Amanda started pulling away. Did she somehow feel that God had taken him from her? He shook his head, worried and confused. How could she not see that now he loved her more than ever?

  All these questions passed through his brain in a second, as they did frequently these days. But there were no more answers on this day than on any other. He turned and continued on his way, down a gentle grassy slope, across a level meadow, and toward the uncultivated heathland that lay between himself and his destination.

  ————

  Inside the house, nine-year-old Amanda cautiously approached the window again, peering tentatively around the wide ledge of stone enclosing it to see if her father was still there.

  Why she jumped back when her father looked up, Amanda could not have explained. A sudden feeling of being caught at something she should not have been doing swept through her. So she pulled away, trying to hide from his gaze. She didn’t want him to know she was watching.

  Now, seeing her father striding away in the distance, Amanda brought her face close to the glass again. Silently she followed his retreating form.


  Why does he always go out in that direction? she thought to herself. What does he do out there? If it was just for a leisurely stroll, why did he sometimes stay so long?

  Suddenly an idea came to her.

  She would follow him! She would see with her own eyes where he went . . . and why.

  The next instant Amanda was bounding down the stairs two at a time, though quietly enough so that her mother would not hear, and out through a side door into the morning’s sunshine. She knew well enough in what direction she was likely to find her father. She had seen him disappear across the heath many times. She therefore hurried out in a slightly different tack so she would not be visible should he look back again toward the house.

  Thirty minutes later Amanda had reached her objective.

  Carefully she made her way down toward the edge of the wood, then began walking as softly as she was able through the thin stands of birch and pine, careful not to snap a twig beneath her feet that might betray her approach.

  It was not a thick wood, though it was some moments before she located her father. On she crept until a gradual clearing began to come into sight, a lovely meadow in the midst of which a small stream ran down from the surrounding hills.

  On its bank, Amanda saw her father on his knees in the grass, utterly unaware of any other human presence. His back was turned and no sound came from his lips, but it was obvious he was praying.

  She did not need to know more. Amanda was disgusted.

  She should have suspected as much!

  No sense rose within her that she was witnessing a holy exchange. Nor did it occur to her that she had secretly intruded upon a man’s private closet without making herself known. Her only emotion was a quiet annoyance at the calmness of the activity.

  Why had he changed?

  All Amanda knew was that from the very beginning, she hadn’t liked it.

  As quietly as she had come, Amanda now withdrew from the wood. Then, rather than making her way back to the house, she struck out unseen in the general direction of the village.