I gave her arm a comforting squeeze. I still had no idea what had caused the rift between Noelle and her father. Perhaps I never would know. That was fine. I didn’t need to have the specifics on the cause of her longstanding pain.
But I did love being here, at this moment, under the eaves of this ancient church, protected from the rain and acutely connected to what was happening in Noelle’s heart. She was opening her hands to the Lord and offering back to Him all her pain, just as my mother had admonished me to do so many years ago.
“And?” I softly nudged her to go on. I wanted to hear her say that God had met her in that moment as she sat in the pew. I wanted to know that in a moment of everyday sacredness she had extended forgiveness to her father and all was well in her heart.
“And what?” Noelle asked.
“What happened after you asked God to enable you to forgive your father?”
Noelle looked at me as if I had missed the point of her comments. “That was it. I asked Him to enable me. That was my prayer.”
“And did He?”
“I don’t know.”
Her answer surprised me. I was accustomed to conclusions and happy endings, especially whenever God was involved in the story. Who doesn’t love a testimony with a victorious ending?
Noelle, however, was perhaps more authentic and closer to the truth of the situation because of her willingness to wait on God. Her patience could be weighed on a different scale than the scale of immediacy that dominated my life.
“So, we wait and see,” she said. “This would be a good time for your surprise.”
I tried to switch gears. “The pan-a-kook surprise?”
“Yes.” Noelle held her hand out and checked the raindrops. “It’s all right. Follow me.”
She took off across the square with her quick, long legs. I found it less difficult to keep up with her than on previous hikes. Amazing. In a few short days, Noelle had turned me into a walkin’ woman. I couldn’t help but wonder how different my life would be if I kept up this sort of walking once I returned home.
Then I remembered what else might give me a different life once I returned home. How could I learn to adopt Noelle’s calm sense of patience of waiting on God without needing an immediate answer?
The rain stopped just as Noelle led me to the front of a restaurant that faced the large market square in the center of Delft.
“The pannenkoekenhuis.”
I stared at the photos of the featured plates on the menu. “Pancakes?”
“Yes, pancakes. Pannenkoeken. I’ve been saving this experience for you. It’s a very Dutch thing to have pancakes for lunch or dinner. Try saying it. Pannenkoeken. I thought it was one of the most fun words to pronounce when I first got here. As a matter of fact, my first job in Rotterdam was working at a pannenkoekenhuis.”
“This was my big surprise?”
“Oh, I’m wounded! This is very Dutch. This is what we do. When we can’t explain something or can’t settle an argument, we go eat pancakes. It helps.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll like them. Come.”
Once we were seated at an outside table under the canvas canopy, Noelle added, “These aren’t exactly like pancakes you eat at home. They’re fancy.”
Our table was in a great location because we were both facing the square, and it didn’t feel as if anyone seated around us could hear our conversation. At so many of the other places we had eaten, it seemed we were sharing the meal with all the diners nearby. In a country with sixteen million people, I could see why privacy was rare and how learning to live and let live was useful.
The rain had cleared, and the returning sun caused the many spit-and-polish spots on the town square to glisten. The New Church was within our view at the far end of the square, and the town hall was at the opposite end of the square. Directly in front of us, at the other side of the large open area, was the line of shops we had first explored, including the stinky-cheese shop.
“These pancakes,” Noelle went on to explain, “are more like crepes in thickness, although some of the varieties are nice and dense.” She pointed at a picture on one of the laminated menus the waitress had handed us when we were seated. “They come with almost any kind of topping you can think of. Fruit, meat, cheese, sugar. Whatever you like.”
It helped a lot that the menu included pictures of these celebrated pancakes. The picture of the one with cheese and mushroom topping looked more like a personal-sized pizza than a pancake.
I selected the one with apples and bacon.
“Do you want to order for me, Noelle? I’d like to see if they have a rest room I can use.”
“Sure. If I remember correctly, the rest room is upstairs.”
I entered the darkened restaurant and walked past the bar as if I knew where I was going. The stairs were easy enough to find. Once again the steps were steep and narrow. I bumped my head on the ascent and wondered how old this building was. It had to be several hundred years old if it had survived in its original condition and position on the edge of the market square.
The upstairs made it clear that renovations had been done to the property. I guessed this formerly had been a house, and since a modern, flushing toilet system had been installed on the second floor, it obviously had been adjusted to meet restaurant codes.
In keeping with the décor of the rest of the house, the bathroom was painted a warm yellow, and the edges of the mirror frame and doorframe had been painted black. I figured out all the slightly different systems in the bathroom—the flush system and the water faucet in the sink.
Since I had the bathroom to myself, I took a few minutes to give attention to my chapped lips and my hair. The water at Noelle’s house seemed to make my hair fuller and fluffier. I tried to smooth the flyaway ends while looking in the black-framed mirror.
The mirror was old, with flecks of black in the surface, giving my reflection the same sort of aged and cracked image as many of the paintings we had seen up close yesterday. Those paintings were hundreds of years old. I wasn’t quite half a century old.
I had a thought about the mystery of accepting all things temporal so I might fully welcome all things eternal. It was only half a thought. I wished I had some paper with me to write it down the way Noelle had taken notes for me earlier. I didn’t fully know what the thought meant or if it even was meant for me.
I tilted my head and stared at my image as I fingered the ends of my hair. Would all that was temporal in me soon give way to all that was eternal? I knew the core of my essence, my soul, would go on forever because I had trusted Christ to be my Savior. He had made a way for me to come before my heavenly Father no longer covered in my sin but rather clothed in His righteousness.
When I died, I would be with Him forever in His home.
But before that became true…
I pulled all my hair back, away from my face. What will I look like without any hair?
I pressed aside the thoughts of what I would look like if chemotherapy robbed me of my hair. Stepping out of the restaurant bathroom, I turned my attention to the light that came through the window at the end of the hall. The sunlight through the paned glass was accentuating the reds, golds, and blacks in the intricate pattern of a Persian runner on the floor.
Even though the stairs were to my left, I ventured to the right, curious to capture a closer view of the light streaming from the window.
The window was Vermeer’s window.
Not the exact window that appeared in so many of his paintings, of course. We had learned that his house no longer was standing but that we were very close to the Delft neighborhood where he had lived and painted in his upstairs studio.
This window, with its misshapen glass and thick lead pieces separating the panes, could have been the same sort of window he painted by. The light came in at the same angle that I subconsciously had memorized after looking at the postcard of The Milkmaid for so many years. If I had a pitcher of milk and a pottery bowl and stood jus
t so, I was certain I could duplicate the pose of Vermeer’s subject.
Through the hazy window, I took in the view of the neighboring rooftops. I felt a deep and tender longing in my settling spirit. If I’d had to formulate my thoughts, I would have been hard pressed. The only impression on my heart that I could capture was that I wanted to enter the eternal.
By no means did I think I was ready to die. I wasn’t seeing visions of heaven or in any way welcoming the journey that would transport me from the temporal to the eternal. I wanted to stay here as long as I could, and nothing in me was at peace with the thought of undergoing some sort of treatment or suffering from a malady.
But in an oddly peaceful way, I was stirred by the thought of going to heaven. Just as I was stirred by the way the golden, luminous rays of the morning light broke through this distorted, decrepit window and left bits of fragmented glory all over the rug.
I returned to the table with my spirit in a wonderful tangle. I sipped my glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and told Noelle about the window, the light, and the hallway rug. As I tried to express how spiritual this venture to the Netherlands had been, her eyes never left mine.
“God feels very close right now for some reason.”
Noelle leaned in and looked at me with an unblinking gaze. “I think so too. Now I am going to be Dutch and put a straightforward topic on the table. First I want you to tell me something.”
“Okay.”
“Summer, why did you come here?”
“To see you.” The way my answer instantly rolled off my tongue surprised me.
“Why now?”
“It was a good time. It worked out.”
She wasn’t convinced and demonstrated that by not sitting back in her chair. She leaned forward even farther. “Now tell me the rest. Tell me the real reason.”
I didn’t answer.
“All right. If you won’t tell me the true reason, then I will tell you what I think. I’ve thought about it, and I’ve come to two possible conclusions. Either you are contemplating having an affair—”
“No!”
“Then you won a lottery of some sort, and you’re not telling me that you are now a millionaire.”
“No. That’s definitely not anywhere close to the truth.”
“Then you will have to tell me the true reason, or else I will continue to come up with further guesses that will only embarrass you more.”
“Can’t we just leave things as they are?” I still was feeling a little glowy after my view of the light coming through the thick-paned window upstairs. I didn’t want all the ethereal thoughts to be smashed by the cold harshness I would feel once my denial bubble was burst.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave things unsaid. Not when you’re only going to be in my corner of the world for such a short time. Besides, you forget how well I know you, Summer. I know how much you like things to be nice and orderly. Deciding on a whim to come here is not orderly. Something very large had to motivate you. Something larger than just the impulse that it was at long last time for us to meet face to face.”
“Okay”
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Yes.” With a deep breath for courage, I began. “Here it is. I had an irregular mammogram last week. Actually, the word they used was ‘abnormal.’ I have to go back for a biopsy, and I decided I wanted to come here and meet you face to face before—”
“Oh, Summer.” Noelle was out of her chair. Her arms were around me. She hugged my neck and held me tight.
I didn’t cry. I think I was mad at myself for cracking out of my lovely denial shell. This was exactly the way I didn’t want to be treated.
At the same time, something deep inside me said this was right. Noelle was the friend of my heart. It was right for me to tell her the truth.
Returning to her chair on the other side of the table, Noelle said with a sweet tenderness in her voice, “And you came here. Of all the things you could have done or places you could have gone, you came here to see me.”
“Yes, I wanted to see you. And now you know why I decided so quickly. If things go for me as they did for my mother, I won’t be able to travel much, so—”
“And if things don’t go for you as they did for your mother,”—Noelle gave me a straightforward look—“then what? Have you thought about that?”
“If my case is more advanced, then I guess I make it a priority as soon as I get home to put my affairs in order.” I hadn’t expected Noelle to take such a blunt approach, especially right after hugging me and being so compassionate.
“No.” She wagged her index finger back and forth as I had seen her do once or twice before when trying to make a point. “No. No. What if the diagnosis is not like your mother’s? What if they take the biopsy and find nothing?”
I hadn’t let my mind fully go in that direction.
“What will you do if all is well?”
“Keep living, I guess.”
“Yes. You will. You will keep living as fully as you have been living this week. You will not become one of those women who stop too soon.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, do not pick up a sack of fear and carry it with you everywhere, just waiting until the next test and diagnosis. Even if—especially if—this second test shows nothing. Do you know what I am saying? I have a friend here who has done this. She had one bad reading for her liver nine years ago. Since then all the tests have been fine. Clear. Even so, she decided it is only a matter of time before her liver fails, and she has made herself sick with the fear, even though she doesn’t have a disease.”
Noelle was speaking truth over me. It would be easy for me to do the same thing as her friend had done, to stop living far too soon.
“Summer, how old was your mother when she passed away?”
“Seventy-nine.”
“And how long ago was that? Ten years?”
“No, thirteen.”
Noelle gave me a little rundown of how much the technology had improved in the past thirteen years and how so much could be done in the case of early detection.
I agreed, of course. She was right. I hadn’t taken my thoughts down some of those roads yet, but even if the biopsy showed something serious, many steps could be taken to deal with the cancer.
My mother’s breast cancer wasn’t diagnosed until she was in stage four.
Maybe all would be well, as Noelle was saying.
Maybe.
“Look at Corrie ten Boom,” Noelle said. “At fifty-three years old she thought she would die with her sister in the concentration camp. And for every practical reason, she should have. But God wasn’t finished with her until she was ninety-one. Remember?”
I remembered.
Noelle gave me another wag of her finger. “You don’t know what the results of the biopsy will be, but whatever they are, you can walk through any valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil. The Lord will be with you every step of the way.”
“Yes, He will. I believe that.” Of course it was easy to receive her pep talk on this side of the diagnosis. A week from now I didn’t know how I would feel about her words.
The waitress arrived just then with our two large plates. The pancakes smelled wonderful.
Noelle reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. Together we bowed our heads and gave thanks for the pannenkoeken, for our friendship, and for the future, whatever it held for either of us.
After Noelle prayed, I prayed. I don’t know what my words were, but I know that my feelings were different than they had been when I had tried to formulate prayers earlier that week. I felt humble, grateful, and appreciative of all of God’s gracious provisions.
Cutting into the pancake, I took the first bite, accented by the warm baked apple topping, and chewed slowly.
At that moment God’s blessings over my life seemed like the soft pink blossoms I had watched the morning breeze shake from the trees and toss in celebration over
the two gliding swans in the canal. I can’t say that, deep down, I still wasn’t nervous and frightened about the future. But I felt a hint of longing for home—for heaven—after the events of the past few days.
That longing took the edge off my fears. This seemed to be the mystery I had thought about earlier when I was upstairs. Somehow it coincided with the thoughts I’d had in the cheese shop—the sacredness of the everyday.
I reached in my purse and pulled out the papers that Noelle had written earlier. At the bottom of her writing, I scribbled my incomplete thoughts:
The sacredness of the everyday. The mystery of accepting all things temporal so that I might fully welcome all things eternal. The longing for home is ultimately the longing for heaven.
“What are you writing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, when you do, send me a copy.”
“Always.” I smiled at my pen pal.
“We hold each other’s lifetime of collected thoughts, don’t we?”
“Maybe we should switch sometime. I’ll send you all your letters, and you send me all mine.”
“I like that idea,” Noelle said. “That’s what we can give each other for our birthdays this year. Did I tell you we have a tradition here on birthdays? When it is someone’s birthday, everyone congratulates their family.”
“Yes, the first night I was here Jelle told me about that tradition.”
“That’s right. Well, on my birthday my husband’s family all come by or call him to say congratulations. I always tell Jelle they are congratulating him for finding such a wonderful woman.”
“Then on Jelle’s birthday do they congratulate you?”
“Yes. Of course. I tell them they must be congratulating me for living with such a difficult man for so long. That always makes his family roll their eyes. Jelle is the easiest one in their family to get along with. He’s wonderful, as you might have noticed.”
Sisterchicks in Wooden Shoes! Page 18
