Chapter Two: Three Decades of Begging the Guy Upstairs for Help
[NOTE: Although this sample chapter makes sense by itself even if you don't read
anything else, I suggest you read Chapter One (which has its own button on the web
page) first. It's only a fraction of the length of this chapter, so it shouldn't take too
much more time.
Alternatively, you can read the even briefer Chapter One abstract (at the Abstracts
button), & then come back here & start this NOT-brief (but, I've been told,
compelling) chapter. If you lose patience you can always just go back to Abstracts &
read the Chapter Two abstract instead of this, but you'll miss some of the best parts of
the story that way.]
My senior year of high school, Mama usually let me take her car to school. The very first
day, as I cruised eastward on Lakeland Drive, I found myself looking up at the sky and
addressing whoever was up there, asking for help with the problems I knew I was probably
about to run into as the new school year began. I had known God was real since he (or she or
it) had zapped me at a Bible study three years before, but this was the first time it had ever
really occurred to me to ask him to help me out. “God,” I said, “please no hearing
embarrassment today! It says in the Bible, ‘Ask and it shall be given unto you,’ And that you’ll
do anything for us if we have faith. Well, I have faith so please no hearing embarrassment. I
really believe you can do it, so DO it!”
By “hearing embarrassment” I meant the incidents when teachers would call on me in
class and I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about, or, worse, wouldn’t
even be sure they had called on me, so that I would sit there not saying anything until finally
I'd realize everybody was looking at me and waiting for me to answer and I hadn’t even heard
the question in the first place. At least now that my classmates and I were full grown, they
weren’t going to roar with laughter when I responded with a non sequitur, or when the teacher
repeated herself for the fourth or fifth time, but the awkward interruption of the flow of class
discussion was even more embarrassing than the grade-school hooting had been. And I knew
there was nothing I could do on my own to keep these incidents from occurring. Since my
whole problem was that I was embarrassed about being hard of hearing, talking to a counselor
or anyone else was out of the question. So that’s why these ten minutes of privacy in the car
just before the new year began seemed the perfect time to try to get some divine help.
As I locked the car and started walking toward the senior-high building, I thought of
some other lines from the Bible. “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to
this mountain, ‘Throw yourself into the sea’ and it will obey you.” “Anything you ask me
to do for you in my name, I will do.” It was exciting to imagine that all I had to do was ask
and believe, and God would then do what I wanted.
Since I understood (even back then) that faith was the most important element for getting
prayers answered, all day long I just tried my hardest to believe that God was in fact going to
keep up his end of the deal and not let anything embarrassing happen to me. During activity
period, I realized it was working so far; in the first two periods I had had the two teachers I
was most worried about and, surprisingly, hadn’t had any trouble understanding either one of
them. In fifth period, God used a different technique to do what I had asked, because I did
have trouble understanding the U.S. Government teacher, but, joy of joys, she used an
overhead projector with that day’s questions for discussion written on it, and pointed to them
as she talked. She also seated us alphabetically, which put me right up front. With these aids, I
was able to follow everything well enough to avoid any awkwardness whatsoever.
What a spectacular start to the school year! Every year before this, I had had at least two
teachers who were pretty much impossible for me to understand. It hadn’t hurt my grades or
anything, since everything important was written down somewhere, but it had meant plenty of
those slow-burn episodes while someone nearby would try to explain to me what the teacher
wanted me to do or say.
The rest of senior year, I said my prayers every morning on the way to school, and then
all day long I simply used my will power and concentration to try to continue to believe in the
face of any trouble I sensed on the horizon. It worked! I had my best school year yet, and sent
up thanks and praise constantly. All those biblical promises about faith had proven true.
Fast forward fifteen years, to when I desperately wanted to become a graduate teaching
assistant in my master’s program at Mississippi College, even though all the positions had long
since been filled. At first, I used the same method of simple willed belief that had worked in
high school. I prayed hard all summer and felt good about it. But as August wore on with no
assistantship in sight, I came very close to giving up.
As time seemed to be running out, though, I somehow became aware of another Bible
verse, one less well-known than the familiar ones on faith that I had relied on in the past. The
new verse, Mark 11:24, read, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received
it, and it will be yours.”
While contemplating this interesting idea of believing I had already received something
even though I couldn’t yet see it, I realized that some psychological exercises I had heard of
were built on precisely this idea: the “Act as If” saying from Alcoholics Anonymous and the
practice of visualization from sports psychology. I didn’t know anything about either of these
strategies beyond what their titles suggested, but I was thrilled to have some concrete
techniques on hand. Putting them into practice as best I could, I pretended I already had the
TA spot, and imagined myself having classes to teach, papers to grade, and students coming to
my office for help. I refused to let my mind dwell on negative thoughts even for a minute. I
also went to the bookstore and looked at the texts I’d be teaching from, although I didn’t buy
them because didn’t want anybody to think I was crazy.
Then it happened. Two days before classes were to begin, I came home to find a note
from my mother. “Dr. Taylor called—,” it said on the first line. Underneath were the words,
“Wants to know if you’re still interested in being a TA.” Although at this point I was still
ignorant of most of the truths I would later learn about the petitioning process, God had
nonetheless responded to my efforts to strengthen my faith at this very basic level.
The next big petitioning project I tried was during my doctoral program at Louisiana State
University. I was again a TA, and this time ran into trouble in the classroom. The larger class
size and the less-well-lit room meant I couldn’t lipread well at all, which I had really depended
on in the past. Also, I now had more responsibility for my own lesson plans, and was
desperate for anything that might make the course, Freshman Comp I, more interesting to the
students. Thus the time was ripe for me to do stupid things like try to use class activities that I
knew deep down I couldn’t hear well enough to supervise. And I didn’t pray at all, I guess
because I knew I was already ignoring the warnings God was trying to send me (in the form
of my misgivings if nothing else).
Another complication was that I had a crush on the professor who taught the TA
practicum (a class that teaches people how to teach) and immaturely wanted to use the lesson
plans she gave us the same way everyone else did, instead of going to the trouble to tailor them
to my disability. Plus, the practicum sessions were extra enjoyable because I could understand
Linda’s crystal-clear voice so well that I never missed a syllable. So, pretty much all semester
long, I simply blocked out the fact that I was having trouble understanding my own students
and wallowed in the pleasure of being a student myself. I tackled with the written assignments
Linda gave us so enthusiastically that they became one of the ways I avoided my duty to do a
decent job teaching my own students. Looking back, I can’t believe I was so irresponsible.
One day, for example, I was trying to use an activity where the students came up with
reasons in support of abortion rights, which I then recorded in a list on the board. I reminded
them to wait till I was looking at them before speaking, but that didn’t really help. When I
called on a talkative young woman in the front row whom I thought I wouldn’t have trouble
understanding, I wasn’t at all sure what she said. I was positive I had heard some form of the
word “private,” but after asking her to repeat herself and racking my brain for some phrase
that might contain that word, I picked up the chalk and wrote “private matter,” when actually
what she was trying to say (as I learned after class from their brainstorming lists) was “the
right to privacy.”
Not too far off, but it got worse. When I called on a tall guy in the back row, all I could
make out was “control,” which in desperation I turned into “self-control,” even though I knew
full well that made no sense as an item on our list. In my flustered state there was no way I
was going to figure out what he had actually said, which was “control over one’s own body.”
When the semester was over, this class quite understandably gave me low scores on their
student evaluations. That caused the graduate committee to take away my assistantship until I
became more competent in the classroom.
I received that news by means of a terse form letter in my box in the mailroom. When I
first read it, I was like, WHEW, I’m so glad I no longer have the responsibility of those pain-in-
the-butt students and that impossible task of trying to make them care about their writing. In a
minute or two, though, that relief began to morph into fear and confusion. What the hell was I
going to do with my life now?
Back at home the next day, I wasn’t at all ready to humble myself and listen to God to
find a solution to this super-serious problem. I had my Ph.D. prelim exams coming up in the
spring, and I found it very easy to avoid thinking about what was going to happen with my
teaching. I went around numbly for several days, and then started asking him for help, but
only infrequently, without concentrating or following through at all. When I did finally bring
myself to pray seriously, God was—thank goodness!—readier to respond than I had been to
ask, as I discovered when school resumed in January.
At that time, I was rescued from the abyss of failure by a pint-sized dynamo of a guardian
angel, Professor Karen Eliot, who went beyond her call of duty as my dissertation director and
devised a plan to save my tail. The first week I was back, she called me into her office and
told me that in hopes of eventually swaying the graduate committee to restore my
assistantship, she had gotten special permission for the two of us to team-teach a double
section of British Survey. One of our objectives would be to develop ways to compensate for
my hearing loss in the classroom. “I know you can teach,” Karen told me confidently from
behind her familiar large-rimmed glasses. “And I want to help make that happen.” Talk about
the weight of the world off my shoulders! But it was par for the course for Karen, whom I
had always perceived God had put into my life for a reason.
At first, God had done that to keep me in school at LSU, when I would probably have quit
the program during my second year if I hadn’t met Karen in the spring and started taking her
Milton seminar that fall. The only reason I had started the whole thing to begin with was
because I had followed my friend Anne from my master’s program on to LSU, where she had
a prestigious doctoral fellowship. I had been at one of those crossroads where you’re not sure
what to do next with your life, you know. Once at LSU, I had had some very good profs, but
no one I really connected with. So, feeling completely directionless that spring afternoon, I
went to a large, rowdy meeting having something to do with political correctness. After two
or three militant-feminist professors gave downright angry speeches, Karen came to the
podium and stepped up on a wooden box to help her reach the mike. “My name is Karen
Eliot,” she said in a commanding but calm voice. “I’m not going to talk about political
correctness because I don’t know what it is. Instead, my job as chair of the rules committee is
to make sure everyone understands the procedure for making a formal complaint to the
university if they think their rights have been violated.” At that moment, the anger of both the
speakers and the crowd began to dissipate.
Although I wasn’t especially interested in the topic at hand, I was fascinated by Karen. I
guess as a metaphor for the situation my life was in at the time, she seemed a beacon of clarity
and hope amid a sea of confusion. When the meeting was over, I sought her out and
complimented her on her talk. She was gracious and kind, and as soon as I got back to my
apartment I looked her up in the bulletin. Cool, she was actually one of the people who worked
on the poet John Donne, whom I was already considering writing about for my dissertation!
There was no question this was a sign that I should take a course from her as soon as
possible. So when the schedule for fall came out, to the surprise of my friends I registered for
Karen’s Milton seminar instead of the only Donne course for grad students, which was taught
by someone else during the same time period. From day one, Karen and I hit it off so well that
I knew I had done the right thing—even though it meant trudging through the entire text of
Paradise Lost! By the end of that semester, she had enthusiastically agreed to be my
dissertation director.
Now, here she was again, saving me from myself by coming up with a way for me to
keep doing what I was trying to do, namely to succeed at college-level teaching. I praised God
for this amazing opportunity and asked for his help in carrying out the plan.
Before the team-teaching project was to begin, though, there was the Interview from Hell.
On God’s part, this event was a custom-tailored masterpiece designed to make me see that I
needed to stop trying to make life conform to my wishes. Indeed, that’s the supreme lesson
we have to learn if we want to enjoy either happiness or power during this life.
God’s trick was to have the one school in my hometown that I thought I would someday
like to teach at call and say they had an emergency opening and would I possibly be interested
in filling it? Millsaps was a very good little private college in Jackson, Mississippi, not ten
minutes from where I already lived five nights a week anyway. Instead of being thrilled with
this invitation like anyone with half an ounce of sense would have been, I actually felt irritated
at this threat to my master plan of finishing my degree before worrying about full-time
employment. Even so, I didn’t consider simply telling them I wasn’t interested. Even I knew
that would be inexcusably idiotic.
During the phone call, which took place on a regular phone rather than the operator-
assisted miracle known as a Telephone Device for the Deaf, I was surprised to discover that I
could understand what the department head was saying, since I knew her and in the past I had
always had trouble with her voice. So, as part of my effort to minimize the whole inconvenient
thing, I decided there was no need to worry about being able to understand her at the
interview. She must have been speaking up for me, so I shouldn't have any problem in person
either. I’d just do as I had always done and simply try to slide by, rather than coming up with
some backup plan, such as asking my sister-in-law to go with me, to interpret if necessary.
When the appointed day arrived, I grumbled to myself from the minute I got out of my
car in the parking garage and took the elevator to the building above. As I waited in the English
Department’s reception area, I was polite, of course, but every last person I saw got on my
nerves. This wasn’t unusual; all my life I had secretly despised millions of people for no good
reason. My foul mood just magnified the trait. One sorority girl annoyed me with her
preppiness, while I felt just as put off by a guy with long hair, grungy jeans, and sandals even
though it was still wintertime. Why were people so endlessly disgusting?
Finally, the department head appeared and invited me into her office. A reserved but
genuinely kind person a few years older than I, with strawberry-blonde hair, sparkling eyes,
and a ready smile, Diana didn’t get on my nerves, but as soon as we started talking, I realized I
was in deep trouble. I could barely even tell when the subject changed, much less make out
any individual words. Diana was glad to repeat herself whenever I asked her to, but that was a
losing proposition because even on second and third tries, I still couldn't understand much of
anything she said. I stumbled through the half hour, trying to pick up bits of what she was
saying and use them as a basis to make statements about myself that seemed relevant to the job
we were discussing, but of course that didn’t work. I left the interview feeling much worse
than I had before, and—needless to say—I didn’t get the job.
Besides ruining my teaching prospects at Millsaps forever, though, the Interview from
Hell did me a huge favor, because it forced me to tackle both my hearing impairment and my
misanthropy head on. Although I welcomed Karen’s plan for helping me in the classroom at
LSU, before now I had not been at all sold on the idea that I needed to develop systematic
methods of compensating for my disability. And, much more significantly, I now realized I
needed to take a very serious look at my relationship to the world. For the first time ever, I
saw that my scornfulness threatened to keep me from getting work in my chosen field.
When I thought about trying to rid myself of this fundamental flaw, though, I found
myself worrying that then there would be nothing left of me. Shaken by this prospect, I prayed
deeply. I asked God to help me see the truth about myself, and to show me what I ought to do
with that truth when I found it.
As it turned out, I concluded that my identity was largely bound up in my misanthropy. I
had always viewed myself as hard-working and competitive and looked down on those who
weren’t. The teeth-gritting contempt I felt for so many people was my way of keeping myself
separate from what I considered the lazy, careless masses. I cringed at the thought of
changing into some kind of bland, benevolent bundle of “niceness.”
But anything was better than being cut off from my vocation and from the few people I
did like. On that basis, and with much help from God, I finally overcame my fear of losing my
edge—and committed myself to learning from guardian angel Karen not only how to teach
with my disability but also how to treat and appreciate others.
When the team-teaching project finally began, my petitioning was raised to its highest
level yet. Simply put, I prayed my butt off about every aspect of the experience: that the
campus shuttle would be on time to pick me up, that I would plan my lectures well and deliver
them clearly, and that God would help me every step of the way as I tried to truly
communicate back-and-forth with every one of my students.
The teaching skill I most needed God’s help with was fielding student questions when I
was in command of the classroom. I loved to lecture, but hated the accompanying Q & A
session because it was so unpredictable. Standing in front of the double-sized room in the
modern all-purpose building, which Karen and I had requested because the lighting aided my
lipreading, I would perk up my ears for pertinent questions like, “Could you explain again what
‘humanism’ was?,” only to be bombarded with such unforgettable Teaching Moments as,
“Can Web sites count as sources for our research paper?” This utter failure of my efforts to
predict what the kids were going to ask (and thus improve my chances of understanding them)
destroyed my composure and made it even harder for me to handle the rest of the day’s
interactions.
Karen was always around, ready to repeat what the students had said if I looked her way
questioningly, but that pretty much defeated the purpose, since the whole point was for me to
develop my own ways of communicating in the classroom. But along about mid-semester, she
offered a valuable insight.
“I have an observation about your teaching,” she said as she closed the thick Norton
Anthology of English Literature and stood up in order to move it to the far corner of her desk.
“I’m just going to throw it out there and let you do what you want with it. OK?”
“Sure, go ahead!” I thought it was strange that she needed to cushion whatever it was she
was about to say.
Sitting back down again, she picked up her pen and leaned toward me as if to make sure
she’d get her point across accurately. Her tone was gentle but not at all tentative. “Well, when
the students are asking questions after you’ve lectured, you view the questions as challenges,
as though you’re having to defend your ground—and they’re not!”
“I do?” I said with surprise. I had been expecting a criticism of my teaching style, not a
comment on my interior mental state. “Well, maybe I do—because I do wish they just
wouldn't ask anything, or would only ask things I could understand instantly. Hmmmm. I
guess maybe I even associate it with my childhood fear of being called on in class and not
knowing what the question was. You know, unconsciously. Because it’s the same feeling.”
“Is it that bad?” Karen asked, wrinkling her brow.
“Well, no, because I’m not embarrassed the way I was when I was little, but I still feel
like I’m suspended over the classroom on a rope or something, so that I can’t get down to the
level with everyone else and therefore understand what they’re saying.” I paused. “Thanks for
pointing this out. How can you tell, anyway?”
“It’s not really anything you do or say, but I can just tell by watching you that you feel
defensive.”
“Thanks! Is there anything else? You can tell me anything, I want to know! I’m going to
work on this starting the next time I lecture, so tell me if there’s anything else and I’ll work on
that too.”
“Nothing else I can think of. Good luck working on it. I’ll let you know how you
do!”
The stakes seemed so high here that I did some serious Bible-searching for anything that
might help me get God to solve this problem for me. I sort of skipped around a lot in the
Gospels, stopping to read anything that might be a tip for getting prayers answered, anything in
addition to that very obvious requirement of faith that I had made use of for so long. I
remember coming to the Lord’s Prayer and almost not even reading it because I figured it was
so familiar then how could it possibly help? But somehow I read it anyway, the version in
Matthew 6, which Jesus follows by saying that if we forgive others for trespassing against us,
then God will forgive us our trespasses, but if we don’t, he won’t. And, by implication, he
won’t answer our prayers. Wow. This all made sense, didn’t it?
In fact, a few times long ago I had tried this technique of forgiveness before petitioning,
but hadn’t really thought about it in recent years. So I asked myself, was there anybody I
needed to forgive regarding this matter of my defensiveness with student questions?
YES! There were a few people in the class whom I just happened to have a hard time
understanding, and—wouldn’t you know it?—it seemed like they were always the ones who
asked the questions. The handful of others whom I could understand rarely said a word. And I
used to get very annoyed at the talkers. I knew intellectually that they didn’t deserve any blame
—they were just participating in class, for God’s sake—but that didn’t lessen my irritation. So
I really did need to forgive these folks, in the sense of getting past my annoyance.
When I saw how neatly this all fit together, I was pumped with excitement. The very act
of losing my aggravation was itself going to improve the situation regardless, plus here was
this promise from Jesus himself that losing it would lead God to forgive me and grant my
prayers for help.
Right that minute I set my mind to this new task. Every time the annoyance would arise, I’
d let myself feel it for a minute or two; if I was alone, I’d grit my teeth, roll my eyes, and do
whatever else I felt like doing to express myself. But then I would force myself to take a deep
breath, relax, and turn my feelings over to God, asking him to take them away. And replace
them with whatever he wanted—maybe even compassion. (Imagine that!)
When it was time for class, I Acted as If I were confident even though I would have been
very nervous if I had let myself start worrying about how it was going to play out. In the few
minutes that the students were coming into the room, I greeted as many of them as possible
with eye contact, and acted like I welcomed questions from everyone. (This was quite a bit
better than what I had done before, which was to hide up at the podium and pretend to be
working so no one would try to talk to me.) If someone did ask me something, I had my
routine down pat: I would repeat the question to make sure I had it right, and would not panic
if they responded by correcting me. A few times I actually had the presence of mind to send
up a quick plea to God for help before I spoke again. None of this was easy, but it worked.
When the course was over, I had gained not only a semester of successful teaching under
my belt, but also a new level of dialogue with the Creator. In my biggest petitioning effort to
date, I had solved a problem that just a few months before had seemed insurmountable. Even
more significantly, I had learned that forgiving others was a major tactic for getting prayers
answered.
The only thing is, those kids were really pretty easy to forgive, because they weren’t
people for whom I felt deep anger or dislike. It makes sense, though, that God let me start
with them and progress on up to more challenging cases of forgiving others. We’ll get to some
of those soon enough.
After the team-teaching project was over, I was reinstated as a regular TA and taught two
semesters of comp on my own before finishing my degree. This new period of independent
teaching brought different challenges. For starters, Karen was no longer in the room to save
me when I got into tight spots. So I had a lot of new things to pray about.
This time, unlike two years earlier, I talked and listened to God quite a bit as I planned my
lessons, to make sure I didn’t try to bite off more than I could chew the way I had before. But
the closer it got to class time, the more I’d start to worry about things like the bus being on
time, since if I missed it now, that would mean a classroom full of students with no teacher.
So I also spent a lot of that time praying for the bus instead of the lesson plans. Luckily,
though, once the bus did pick me up, the five-minute ride was just enough time for me to look
over the whole plan for the day and ask God to help with each part in turn.
Once inside the cool, sterile silence of the same modern building that Karen and I had
taught in, I went straight to the ladies’ room, my sanctuary of sorts. I’d be pumped with
energy, but would pretend to be combing my hair in front of the mirror so I could stand there
and silently pray my tail off for God to help with the session that was about to start.
The key to making these prayers work was that I had to practice an attitude of total
humbleness in the face of the power of the universe, but this was easy to do since I felt so
humble in this situation where I knew I was not in control of what happened! With that
attitude in place, all I then had to do was make a conscious effort to believe that the Creator
(the God of love) was going to help me out. Sometimes when I did this I could actually sense
God’s presence behind me there in the restroom, as though the sturdy metal fixtures and the
thick concrete walls were a direct expression of his strength and reliability. In any case, I
found I could tap into the strength by relaxing physically, breathing deeply, and then letting my
shoulders fall downward as I exhaled, as if to relieve their burden of trying to be in charge of
everything. God had so much more control over the entire situation than I did!
When I finished my prayers, I would make what I called my leap of faith, a sort of close-
your-eyes-and-dive-in action of the mind, in which I could pretend I had everything under
control when really I felt partly numb and partly terrified. The best I can describe it is to say
that because of the strength my prayers had given me, I was able to put up a wall in my brain
between myself and my fright. The wall would last long enough to carry me through the few
minutes in which I actually had to put one foot in front of the other and get to the classroom.
Once I got to the room, the rushing current of reality would instantly replace both my
prayers and my fears with students and lecture notes, roll books and handouts. But at that
point, all I had to do was go with the flow.
One other technique I also used was that just before I walked out of my restroom
sanctuary, if no one was around, I’d make the sign of the cross on my chest—you know, the
way Catholics do. Both this activity and my deep breathing and relaxation as I pondered God’s
power were ways of making use of the fact that our bodies and souls are deeply connected.
Which, by the way, seems to me a very good argument for the existence of a supernatural
creator—I mean, how else could thought arise out of something so fundamentally different
from it as matter?
In any case, for me, crossing myself serves as a shorthand reminder of the main lessons I
always need to work on whenever I’m trying to ask God to do things for me. When I first
started doing it—decades ago—if no one was looking I usually made three crosses in
succession, to stand for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but that was just a symbolic
act that didn’t really have much psychological meaning. But after I started learning about the
petitioning process, I decided to make each crossing stand for something about petitioning.
Thus the first stands for forgiving others, the second for submitting my will to the will of the
universe (in the Bible’s words, “Be still, and know that I am God”), and the third, going forth
joyfully in faith and thanksgiving because I know God is in the process of answering my
prayer.
Whenever I make my triple crossing, I rapidly think those thoughts: forgiveness,
submission, and faith. If I don’t want anyone to see me, I simply tap my finger three times, as
quietly as the situation calls for. The wonderful thing is that the crosses or taps themselves
cause that same physical relaxation as had my ladies’-room contemplation of God’s power,
which had itself been aided by breathing deeply and relaxing my shoulders.
At the time of my leap of faith, crossing myself helped calm me as I pulled open the big
swinging door and started down the hall for my classroom.
The whole idea of relaxing and letting God do his thing is another big piece of the
petitioning puzzle. It ranks right up there with cultivating your faith and forgiving others so that
God will grant your requests.
In any event, my ladies’-room strategies worked.
When I got to the classroom each day, I deliberately made myself as available as I could,
as I had first learned when teaching with Karen. As time went on, I found myself losing my
nervousness and becoming more open to my students than ever before.
While class was actually going on, I learned to make regular use of one of the innovations
Karen and I had developed, which was that a work-study person wrote student questions on
an overhead projector for me to glance at if I needed to. And during the last few minutes,
when the Q & A session had degenerated into the usual informal free-for-all, another of Karen’
s and my inventions sometimes came in handy. Let me just illustrate.
One day, a kind of grade-conscious and earnest guy from Lafayette asked with his
unmistakable Cajun accent, “Ms. Anderson, could I write my process essay about a ____
[unintelligible]_____ ? About the process of ____[unintelligible]____?”
“About what?” I questioned as I walked toward his desk, silently sending up a quick
prayer for God to make this go smoothly. But I still couldn’t understand the fellow’s answer:
“A _______. Like a _______.” It sounded like he had said, “A Baroque. Like a cocoon,” except
neither of those words made sense, so it was time for me to utilize plan B.
I pulled out a blank index card from my pocket and handed it to him. “Just write what it
is that you want to write about because I still can’t get what you’re saying.” He bent over the
card on his desk and labored for a few seconds, apparently unsure of the spelling. When he
handed the card back to me, I saw in big block letters “PIROGUE”—a word I had never even
heard of, but when I tried to pronounce it, he said I had it right.
Then he took the card back from me and drew a picture of a small boat or slip and,
repeating what he had tried to tell me previously, said, “It’s like a canoe—except it’s flatter and
easier to carry. I’ve used ’em all my life to fish and stuff.”
“Oh, a canoe. How interesting!” I answered. “Yes, I think you could write a process
essay about paddling a pirogue, or maybe about the whole process of putting it into the water
and paddling and maybe looking for fish and how you catch the fish and bring them home.
Yes, I think that could make a great process essay if you put enough effort into it.”
The fellow warmed to the discussion. “Well, what you do depends on how deep the
water is. When it’s too shallow you have to ___[unintelligible]__ because you can’t paddle. I
can write about either one of ‘em.”
In the past, I would have simply said “Fine” and let the exchange end, but instead, in the
spirit of that true two-way communication I was aiming for, I handed him the card again as I
asked, “What’s the other thing besides paddling?” But before he could write anything, the guy
sitting next to him demonstrated by using his pencil to push against the wall as he repeated
“POLE it!”
I laughed. “That’ll be fine either way. Write about the one you know the most about, or
the one that you have the most to say about. Or maybe both. Just be sure it’s a colorful and
detailed essay, and I think it’ll be very good.”
Next, without even thinking about it, I did something else I had never done. I spoke to the
whole class, asking, “Does anybody else want to ask me about the subject for their process
essay?” That was the first time I had ever tried to make the students feel comfortable about
talking to me the normal way during the class period. It felt great!
By the end of the semester, this class—as well as the one I taught the following
semester—gave me much better evaluations than I had ever before received, which in the eyes
of the graduate committee proved I had corrected my previous failure to teach effectively.
With my prayerful preparation for my classes and my relaxation into God’s power when
it was time to execute the plans, I had reached another level of success at getting my prayers
answered. Praise be!
Despite those awesome victories, I wasn’t feeling confident or even the least bit right
with God during my drive down from Jackson to LSU the morning of the first day of the next
semester (spring 1996), which was to be my last as a TA. Instead, I was totally dreading the
changes that were about to take place: a new set of students and a new course, Comp II,
which with its research-based writing seemed an even harder sell than the personal essays of
Comp I. (Don’t ask me why I considered it my job to entertain them.) Just when I had gotten
used to the people and the daily routine, it had all been pulled out from under me—or so it
seemed to me. And to make matters worse, Karen was now on sabbatical. If I wasn’t going to
be able to stick my head into her office whenever I needed a boost, I wasn’t at all sure I’d be
able to carry over my still-developing communication skills to a completely new group of
students.
Another thing Karen had done for me was be my counselor for the lovelorn when the one
person I had ever wanted to spend my life with had decided to marry a man. I didn’t normally
talk to professors about such things, but Karen had asked me about it whenever we met to talk
about my dissertation. As it stood now, I was still in plenty of pain, but Karen wasn’t going to
be there for me in this regard either.
In this frame of mind, about an hour into the drive I started freaking out. I knew the only
thing that could possibly help would be to petition God about my new challenges, but I was
totally unable to get anything started. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself because time had
marched on and my surroundings had changed. What a pathetic way for anyone to feel in this
world of flux! But I was also scared to death to go to class without praying, so that the closer
I got to Baton Rouge, the more I felt squeezed in the chest by the giant hands of impending
doom. Finally, I yelled out to God. “Please help me, NOW! I know I’m blocking you by my
attitude, but I can’t help it, so you please help me!”
I then tried every keep-the-faith trick I could think of while waiting for God to respond.
Acting as If was out of the question, since that was precisely what I was unable to do in this
miserable mood. But I looked out at the rain that had been pelting down hard for a quarter-hour
or so, and told myself that if God could do that, then surely he could help me. I also had the
bright idea to slow down a little so as to give him more time to do something before I got
there. I also tried to relax physically, but I really couldn’t. But the one thing that finally did
work was to belt out some faith-building hymns I knew by heart—such as O God Our Help in
Ages Past, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, and Go Forward, Christian Soldier. I had to chain-
sing them one after another in order to keep my fears and doubts at bay.
Who knows why music has the power to affect us so deeply? Still more evidence that
God exists, in my opinion. In any case, as I sang, I focused on pushing my pulsing energy out
of my chest and into each word and chord in turn. When I did this, I felt connected in my
mind with the old familiar spirit that had comforted me in the past, as well as with everyone
else who had ever sung those songs in desperation.
Slowly, in fits and starts, my panic went away. By the time class met, I had a reasonably
good grip on myself and my faith, although I knew I still had plenty of work to do on my
attitude toward the new situation. I was grateful to have made it through the crisis intact.
As it turned out, God wasn’t done for the day. During class the students had written
paragraphs agreeing or disagreeing with some controversial statements from the textbook, and
I read them in my office afterwards. One of the choices had been about gay marriage, and
only a few people wrote on that one. One guy was against it for religious-right reasons, and
one girl was against it because she thought it would threaten the traditional family structure.
But another girl was not only 100% in favor of same-sex marriage, she was also remarkably
articulate, even eloquent, in her defense. Using Idgie and Ruth from Fannie Flagg’s novel Fried
Green Tomatoes as an example of true love, she argued that when a relationship was as deep
and spiritual as theirs was, there was simply no way it could be wrong. My jaw dropped a
mile. Such intelligence! Such depth! And—most amazing of all—she was actually going to be
my student for the whole semester!
The whole thing seemed way too perfect to be true, especially the fact that it was Idgie
and Ruth this “Belinda Thompson” had chosen to write about. As I commented in the margin
of the paper, I had been so taken with the mischievous but noble Idgie myself that I had named
my cat for her.
I wasn’t completely sure which face from roll call was Belinda’s, but never in my life had
I been half this excited about getting to know someone. As I leaned back in my swivel chair,
looking up at the ceiling and shaking my head in disbelief, I could practically hear God saying,
"See? I've got everything under control. You worried yourself sick for nothing!" Silently but
also at the top of my lungs, I thanked him many times over.
So the new semester was off to an infinitely more promising start than had seemed
possible just a few hours earlier. But it turned out to require more, rather than less, prayer than
before. Since I had never before even known a comfortably gay woman who interested me in
the least, it was an exhilarating time.
Belinda turned out to be tall and very attractive if a tad cold in manner. She had china-doll
skin, big hazel eyes, and beautiful silky auburn hair that reached to her waist—and she could
have stepped out of a previous century if it hadn’t been for her heavy-metal T-shirts and
faded, ripped jeans. A proud nineteen-year-old dyke, she was not only pleasing to the eye but
also seemingly much cooler than I had ever been in my life. But what was infinitely more
important to me was that she lived up to the promise she had shown the first day,
demonstrating over and over both her writing ability and her deep sense of morality and
goodness.
Everything wasn’t perfect, though. Belinda missed class several times, which bothered
me a great deal. Also, I wasn’t even sure whether she liked me or not; some days she’d be
friendly, other days she’d scamper nervously out of the room the minute I dismissed the class.
The only way I made it through the semester was by begging God, almost constantly, to
guide my actions and make them fruitful. Fortunately, with practice I learned to channel the
hyperactive excitement I felt over Belinda’s very existence into humble and faithful petitions
for help with every aspect of my teaching.
Perhaps I should have been worried about having feelings for a student, but it wasn’t like
Belinda was young enough for a relationship between us to be illegal, and I decided that as long
as I was careful not to show favoritism or to interact with her in anything other than a
professional manner while I was her teacher, then it was my business if I let myself become
obsessed with her within the safety of my own mind.
That stance worked till the end of the semester. As the final exam neared, I talked to God
a lot about whether I should ask Belinda to lunch or something once we were done being
teacher and student.
Folks are always wondering—and it’s a great question—how they can determine what
God's answer is to questions they ask him. My experience has been that God uses a wide
variety of ways to let us know these things. And many times, it’s as simple as God’s letting
events develop in such a way that it’s clear whether his or her answer is either Yes or No. We
just have to be open to getting the message.
That’s how God did it this time. One afternoon about a week before classes ended,
Belinda came by my office to get back a graded essay since she had missed class that
morning. That in itself surprised me a little, but not as much as the conversation, which
seemed to happen all by itself. Somehow I suddenly realized we were talking about movies,
and Belinda was asking me if I had seen Bridges of Madison County.
“Yeah, I have,” I replied. Then I added, “A lot of people think it’s too mushy—my next-
door neighbor said it was as bad as Love Story—but I like Love Story!”
“Me, too—so did you like Bridges?” Belinda asked, swiveling around in my office mate’s
chair after examining the framed snapshot my office mate kept on her desk of her and hcer
boyfriend on a hike out West.
“Yes, I admit it. I loved it. Meryl Streep has been my very favorite actress for years. And
she’s so hot with Clint Eastwood. Also, I’m just a sap for the mushy stuff anyway.” As I
made that statement, I felt a flutter in my chest. (Not sure why.)
Belinda smiled warmly. “Me, too—as long as the people are attractive!”
“But I like other kinds of movies too,” I went on. “Have you ever seen Murder in the
First, with Kevin Bacon?”
“Yes,” she swiveled again. “Did you like it?” she asked, tentatively.
“Yes, but I don’t like all movies that are violent or exciting or whatever you want to call
it. It sort of has to have a purpose for me to like it.” She nodded as though she wanted me to
continue. “Murder in the First was the first time I ever realized what was so bad about
‘solitary confinement.’ I used to always think that if I was ever in jail then I’d rather be in
solitary.”
“Me, too! I’d want the privacy!” We both laughed. I wasn’t surprised she felt this way,
but it was neat for her to agree with me on something so personal.
This time, I made a point to pick back up the thread of the conversation. “Well, didn’t
Murder in the First change your mind?”
“Yes!” The talk kept on for several more minutes at fever pitch, until I said I’d better get
back to work, while silently praising the Lord for giving me the sense to stop while we still had
so much left to talk about. It seemed clear that even though Belinda had said she had a
girlfriend named Audra, God was giving me the green light to ask her to lunch.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous about issuing the invitation; I was terrified. But I knew
God would help if I asked him to.
What I discovered at this time was that I could talk to God very effectively while looking
into my own eyes in the bathroom mirror, which was also the best place to practice my
approach. “God,” I said, “please at least make her not be bothered that I’m asking. And please
let me say it smoothly. And please, if you can fit it into the big plan, let her say yes. But if not,
just don’t let me do anything stupid. Thanks!” Then I bowed my head and crossed myself
three times, thinking forgiveness, submission, and faith.
Finally, breathing deeply and relaxing into God’s power, I looked at myself again in the
mirror, pretending I was talking to Belinda. “I’d like to continue our friendship,” I said. Not
satisfied with the way it came out, I tried several more versions till I got it right. Then I prayed
some more, repeating my requests for help, trying to relax in faith, and thanking God in
advance for what I knew (at least in that faithful moment) he was going to do.
I also thought about what I would do if I didn’t have a chance to talk to Belinda privately
in the classroom. Having a contingency plan was very important, because once she was gone,
she was gone. Unless I wanted to call her on the phone at home, which I really didn’t want to
do. So I decided that if I needed to, I could simply follow her through the doorway as she was
leaving the room, and then get her attention after we were both out in the hall, and ask her
then.
As it turned out, that was exactly what happened. Thanks to my prayers and practice, I
casually followed Belinda as she left the room, then uttered a perfectly executed “I’d like to
continue our friendship.” She replied silently with a smile and a vigorous nod.
I breathed an excited sigh of relief. “We probably shouldn’t go anywhere together until
after I’ve turned in the grades, so I was thinking maybe we could go to lunch or something
next week?”
“Are you going to be in your office this afternoon? Why don’t I come by and we can
make our plans for next week? Will that be OK?” I loved it when she took the initiative like
this. Plus, this way I’d get to see her again before next week. What an incredible luxury!
“Sure, I’ll be there. See you then!” I was glad I remembered to stop smiling before I
turned back into the classroom. Silently, I was shouting THANKS, GOD! at the top of my
lungs. Thank goodness, though, none of the remaining students seemed even to have noticed I
had stepped out.
When Belinda did come to my office as planned, we went straight to the business of
making our lunch plans. She worked full time, so we decided I’d pick her up there—a huge
furniture store called Schroeder’s. “I think I can get a whole hour off, so we won’t have to
hurry,” she said. She drew a little map on a scrap of notebook paper, and I was holding it as
we stood there in the doorway. She was presumably leaving, but the conversation seemed to
have a will of its own. We had picked back up on the movie topic from the previous week, and
since we both had so much we wanted to say, I sort of automatically invited her to sit down. I
could spare a little time from my grading.
This time, we got off on a few non-movie tangents, but we were both still careful not to
get too personal. Belinda did say, though, that watching Julie Andrews movies had been a
comfort to her when she had needed escape as a youngster. While I too recalled my heart
nearly jumping out of my chest when watching Andrews sing as Mary Poppins and especially
as Maria in The Sound of Music, I was slightly puzzled at this news that Belinda had needed
“escape” at such a young age. Both her parents were business executives, Catholics who went
to Mass every Sunday, and I had assumed her childhood had been pretty sheltered, like
mine.
A few minutes later, I happened to mention that I had spent eleven years waiting for the
great love of my life only to lose out to a man, and I found myself getting into way more detail
than I meant to. Belinda had listened intently, asking questions that urged me on, but still I
hadn’t intended to spill my guts before our friendship had even officially begun. When I finally
got to the end of the story, I was a little embarrassed. “I guess we probably both need to get
back to our work,” I said. “I’ve been boring you, but thanks for listening.”
Belinda shook her head forcefully. “No, you haven’t been boring me! I’ll leave if you need
to work, but you haven’t been boring me!”
A rush of happiness surged through my heart. It was so strong that I revised my decision
that we shouldn’t go anywhere together until after the grades were in. We decided we’d go
somewhere safe for supper later, and quickly got back to our discussion.
My second inkling that Belinda was not as innocent and inexperienced as her youthful
appearance suggested was when she mentioned that her only sibling, an older sister, was a
drug addict. Belinda had seemed to me too studious and too serious to have had any more
experience with drugs than I had had, which was just a little pot in high school and college.
But now she was saying that right there in the bedroom next to hers, her own sister had been
embroiled in the never-ending struggle of cocaine addiction.
I tried to ask a few questions about it, but instead, Belinda started telling me about her
own experience of losing a beloved—Ashley—to a man.
At some point, I interjected, “I believe in God—I mean I really think it’s true, most people
don’t really believe it, they just say they do—“
Before I could continue, Belinda spoke: “I know, I really believe, too. They just say they
do but I really believe!” Her hazel eyes were large and earnest, and her lips curled into a
peaceful half-smile.
I added, “I also think he has a plan for everything, and everything happens for a reason,
even though we can’t always tell what the reason is when bad things are happening.” She
nodded in agreement. “So when Ashley left you, I think there was a reason, even though it
hurt you so much.”
“I know! Everything happens for a reason. When God closes a door, he opens a
window!”
Belinda had to tell me later that that was a line from The Sound of Music, since in the days
before captioning, I hadn’t been able to understand but about half the dialogue. But at the
moment, the quote perfectly underscored the absolute wondrousness of Belinda’s and my
conversation. For the first time in years, my deep craving for emotional communion with a
good woman was being satisfied.
Even more incredibly, our talk kept on with the same intensity as the afternoon turned into
dusk and the building gradually emptied. At that point, we decided it was time to walk over to
my apartment and think about where to go for dinner.
When we stepped outside into the gorgeous early-May Louisiana evening, the first thing
Belinda did was take a cigarette out of her bag and light it, in the casual but unmistakable hurry
of an addict needing her fix. I jumped a little, then explained, “It seems like smoking would be
one of those things people your age do that you thought was stupid. It doesn’t bother me or
anything, but it just seems like that.” She shrugged her shoulders and said something about
having started when she was twelve, then put the cigarette out after just a few drags. I forgot
about it completely. We had more important things to talk about on this magical night.
Being outside in the fragrant spring air must have given us a touch of spring fever,
because just a few minutes after we had been sharing our pain in my office, we were
cavorting gaily down the street toward the grad-student apartments where I lived. As we
approached my door, I tried to prepare Belinda for the mess, saying that when I had been her
age, my roommate and I had had the neatest room in our dorm, but that now—“Oh Hamlet,
what a falling-off was there!” We giggled like schoolgirls as we spilled into my living room.
“Really, Shakespeare wasn’t being funny; it was like a—um—a—um—,” I fumbled for
the words to explain.
“The ghost of the dead guy!” Belinda shrieked, which sent us into more gales of laughter.
It took about a minute for it to register with me: she knew this stuff!
I guess we were still on the subject of British poetry a few minutes later, when I found
myself reciting—with exaggerated soulfulness—Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn, something I
had done in the mirror for fun hundreds of times but never ever to a real person, especially not
a beautiful woman. All the way through the five stanzas, I remember thinking, THIS CANNOT
BE HAPPENING. When I got to the end, Belinda and I discussed briefly my favorite line:
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter. Then, I silently sent up a quick
Thank you to God—and a quick prayer that for him to somehow make this association as
everlasting as that of the lovers on the urn.
About an hour later, Belinda and I were sitting facing each other in the middle of my
orange-and-brown diamond pattern discount-store rug, and she was talking about how her
parents had unintentionally neglected her when she was growing up because they were so
busy worrying about her sister and the drug problem. She said maybe the reason she was so
shy was because she hadn’t been allowed to talk much. Then she added, “A lot of times I got
sent to my room, just to get me out of the way.” Tears welled up in her eyes.
I instinctively reached out and took hold of her wrist. My own childhood had been pretty
much the opposite of this, and I found myself squeezing and stroking Belinda’s forearm in an
effort to tell her, without words, that I wanted to give her some of the love she had missed.
She had said things weren’t going well with Audra; maybe she’d even break away from that
relationship and take up with me.
I didn’t hold onto Belinda’s arm for long, but over the next hour or two, she talked a lot
more about her troubled childhood and teenage years. She said that when she had fallen in love
with Ashley, and had that love returned, that had been the first time in her life that she had felt
like anybody cared about her. But then when Ashley had left Belinda for a classmate of theirs,
the pain caused Belinda to fall into a strange mute state, where she did not speak—to anyone
about anything!—for a whole year. None of the shrinks her parents took her to were able to
get a peep out of her, until one day she simply “woke up” as if from being asleep, and began
speaking again.
Belinda said that during that year, she lost what few friends she had had, and ate lunch by
herself in the back hallway of the school where the only people who even saw her were a few
of the maintenance staff. The one time she “came alive” was when they had to write a poem
for their English class. When the teacher called for volunteers to read their poems, Belinda
volunteered and went to the front of the room—“fearlessly,” she said—and read aloud
“Greeting the Tundra.” What a poem for an eleventh grader to write, as I learned the next
week when she gave me a copy.
Addressing the beloved who had broken her heart, it began, “Black burning eyes still
linger there,” and continued through five chilling stanzas, ending with “Farewell to winter, my
breath now snow” as the speaker prepares to enter the tundra. Belinda said the whole class had
been transfixed, and had applauded when she finished reading. She then returned to her desk
and retreated back into her silent state for several more months.
When Belinda had finished sharing this incredibly deep pain with me, I took one of her
hands in both of mine and made some kind of earnest statement about how she didn’t deserve
such a life.
A few minutes later, I had some reason to get up and leave the room for a few seconds,
and when I started back toward Belinda, my heart leapt in my chest when I saw she was
holding her hand in that same position, letting me know very clearly that she wanted me to take
hold of it again. So I did, and started to talk some more, but then I suddenly realized that she
was saying nothing in response. I mean not just any silence, but a pointed silence, where she
just kept on staring into my eyes as deeply as she could. This made for a magnetic pull for me
to do the same back to her.
I doubt Belinda was familiar with Donne’s poem The Extasie, but she seemed to be
directing the two of us to re-enact it ourselves. The Extasie’s speaker and his beloved spend a
whole day in silence with their eyes and hands locked together, the premise being that their
souls have gone out of their bodies to meet in the sacred space between them, a connection
that transcends sex and “interinanimates” them forever. Some critics have found the idea of
two people actually staring deeply into each other’s eyes for more than a minute or two too
implausible to be believed, and I can tell you, it was awkward at first, but it also felt more
wonderful than anything else I had ever experienced. So I followed Belinda’s lead, and we
stayed like that for about twenty mystical minutes before going back to more normal
interaction.
It was 11:30 at night when we finally stopped talking and—completely forgetting to
worry about whether we were going to run into anyone from comp class—hit an all-night
diner adjacent to campus for a much-needed hot meal of omelettes and hash browns.
Two days later, Belinda wanted to come see me in the afternoon before I had to leave to
drive back to Jackson that night. I had planned to be napping, so I put the key under the mat
for her to let herself in. I didn’t really think I’d be able to sleep, but I wanted to demonstrate
the deep trust I already felt for her.
It turned out that I did doze off before she got there. What a thrill to open my eyes to her
standing shyly beside my bed!
When I sleepily invited her to make herself comfortable, she climbed over me and
arranged her long frame crossways on the twin bed. This put our heads pleasantly close
together, and as we talked, I noticed the wisps of baby hair at the edges of her scalp. Those
impossibly diaphanous auburn curls against that impossibly porcelain skin—how my heart
ached to help this defenseless creature escape the pain of her world and soar to the heights I
knew she was capable of!
I kept those thoughts to myself, but remarked lightly on the baby hair—only to recall
immediately that she had a complex about not being thought of as a grownup. So I added,
“That doesn’t mean you’re young, everybody has it!”
How wonderful it was to hear the little half-snort of delight Belinda made in response. To
me, it confirmed that she was willing to accept some of that love I had such a surplus of.
Surely God had put us into each other’s lives because of this fit.
It was also during that second afternoon that things first took a romantic turn. While we
were lying there on the bed, I was holding Belinda’s right hand in my left pretty chastely, like I
had during the Extasie session forty-eight hours earlier. But then during a break in the
conversation, she took her hand out of mine and then took hold of my hand again, this time
with our fingers suggestively interlocked, which she sealed with a squeeze. I was so not used
to my attraction to a woman actually being returned that my heart literally skipped a beat. Thus
began what I came to call the passionate month.
For that month, mid-May to mid-June ‘96, Belinda and I spent the evening together at
least one of the two nights I was in town each week. The other of the two nights she was
usually with Audra, but I wasn’t the least bit jealous because I understood that Belinda needed
to end the relationship gradually, since Audra was unstable and had threatened to kill herself if
Belinda left her. As Belinda and I discussed many times, what she had with Audra and what
she had with me were two totally different things—and the quality of our time together had
continued to be “off the planet,” to use Belinda’s expression. I knew Belinda meant it when she
said things like “In spirit I’m always with you.”
The week after exams, I had to get out of my campus apartment, and after I finished
packing up and cleaning the place, Belinda took me out to dinner at her favorite restaurant, a
charming little authentic Italian place called Pinetta’s. That night, even though the two of us
were crowded into my tiny bed, Belinda slept what she said the next day was super long and
soundly for her. I hoped it was because of me that she felt so relaxed and safe. Over the phone
the next week, she said as much herself. I took this as another bit of confirmation that I was
meant to “save” her from Audra and the other unpleasant aspects of her young life.
When I was back at home in Jackson, Belinda and I burned up the AT & T lines to the
tune of $300 for the month on my bill alone, not to mention the times she called me, which
were also quite a few. She said everyone at Schroeder’s who had known her forever had
commented on how happy she was.
In one of those phone calls, Belinda said, “You make me feel really comfortable about
saying what’s on my mind, which nobody else has ever done, including Audra.”
“Well, sometimes I worry that I’m too open myself,” I replied. “I mean I say everything
that’s on my mind, immediately, and it might be too much for someone like you who’s not
used to it.”
“Your openness doesn’t bother me. It’s thrilling,” she insisted. “But this is a new situation
for me, so I’m gonna need your wisdom and your tutoring, you know. I’ve never ever in my
life experienced anything like this before.”
During this time, I really didn’t pray about anything at all, because (for once) there was
nothing I felt the need to pray for. But that wasn’t necessarily a good way to be! I remember
telling Belinda that she was causing me to lose my bearings, and even though I said it
affectionately, I knew it wasn’t an altogether desirable feeling. It felt like my tether to the earth
had been cut so that I was floating where I had formerly walked and run. My relationship with
God seemed something I couldn’t quite take hold of the way I had in the past. I hadn’t felt like
that at all with my previous beloved.
All this excitement wasn’t really due to how I felt about Belinda herself, whom I was
never deeply in love with the way I had been with my beloved. It was just that I was so
unused to my feelings being returned so consistently. Everyone else I had ever had feelings for
had either been straight or at least not comfortable with the idea of being gay. And Belinda
seemed so right for me in so many ways—mainly her brains and her faith—that I didn’t mind
that I wasn’t in love with her. I had waited so long, and I might not get another chance!
This thinking ran counter to a solemn vow I had made years before to myself, to God,
and to my beloved (in my mind, not in person) that I would never be with another woman
unless I loved her as deeply as I had loved my beloved. No wonder I didn’t feel right about it!
But most of the time during these few weeks that I was flying high with Belinda, I did like
it, and thought I was happy. About three weeks after exam week, Belinda and I even signed a
lease for an apartment together in Baton Rouge. She wanted to move out from her sister,
whom she had been living with all year, but she didn’t want to get a place with Audra, so . . . .
I’d be there only two nights a week, but I did need a place to stay since I no longer had
the campus pad. In a way, it was a sensible rooming decision, but in another way, it was—for
me at least—something I’d never done before in my life. Belinda and I didn’t really discuss the
terms of our living arrangement, but how could it be anything but passionate?
But the week we signed the lease and the next one were not totally fantastic the way the
first two had been. There were some complications related to Audra, and—what was much
worse—Belinda started showing flashes of a weird inner disconnect. Instead of the high-
minded and compassionate way she had acted at first, now she would often be in a cynical
mood, which I figured was due to her sister’s influence. In this mood, she would say things
like “It’s a crock of shit, Sara” when I brought up the subject of getting therapy, or “Payback
time!” as an explanation for something she or Audra had done to each other in their quarrels.
She also did a few drugs regularly with Audra, as she always had, although I didn’t know it at
the time. (She didn’t lie about it, it just never came up.)
When we went to look at the apartment, Belinda linked her arm through mine and glanced
down at me as she asked, “Is it OK?,” but I got the distinct feeling she was just going through
the motions, you know? It seemed she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to be anti-
everything (the way her sister) was or enthusiastic and optimistic—the way I was and the way
she had been in our hours and hours of off-the-planet conversations. We had talked so many
times about her fiction-writing career, and about what other fulfilling occupation she might
have for her day job. And one of her typical phone sign-offs had been “Be a good human
being.” But now it looked like that radical change she had talked about was simply too much
for her; she wasn’t always able to be that good self, the one she had presented to me that
rapturous night when we had bared our souls to each other in the middle of my grad-student-
apartment floor.
You’re wondering, didn’t I pray now? Well, NO! I guess I was in denial that I needed to.
The whole thing—the good and the bad—was still such a shock that I just kept thinking things
would suddenly be magically OK again.
I guess I probably did try to pray a little, but nothing with any real focus or concentration,
which are absolutely necessary if we want our prayers to work. In hindsight, I guess I could’
ve tried harder to get a grip on myself and to reconnect with God, but I didn’t. It was a
perfect example of how letting our happiness come completely from earthly things can make
us forget our true position as creatures whom the Creator will help, but only if we ask him to.
In any case, just before we were supposed to move into the apartment, for some reason I
wasn’t able to reach Belinda on the phone for a day or two. Then when I finally did get ahold
of her, she was distant and the way she spoke about the apartment arrangement sounded as
though we had never planned to be anything but roommates. I still assumed she was planning
to end her relationship with the demented Audra, but that assumption was becoming less
tenable the more time marched on.
It seems dumb of me now, but my first reaction to the change in Belinda was to try to roll
with the tide and hang onto what we had in hopes that she would soon revert back to her good
self. So I moved my things into the apartment as planned. But after just one absolutely
agonizing two-night stay—during which Belinda and Audra actually came over to our
apartment when they were supposed to be spending the night at Audra’s precisely to avoid
conflict with me—it was clear that the only thing for me to do was to get the hell out of there
and let Belinda get back to her identity crisis.
The next day, tired and numb, I loaded my things back into my car and drove back to
Jackson. I decided I’d contact Belinda periodically, just in case the old Belinda did return, and
also because I couldn’t wrap my mind around not having even the slightest thread to hang onto
so soon after the bliss of exam day and the off-the-planet time that had followed.
With this sudden end to what I had wanted my whole life, boy was I in pain. I talked the
ear off my fellow dissertation student Teresa, another theologically minded armchair
psychologist like me, who (bless her heart) always acted interested in listening. I also reread
The Road Less Traveled, since I was finally able to make sense of the opening sentence, “Life
is difficult.” Gradually—very gradually—this masterpiece led me out of my darkness and into a
whole new way of looking at the world.
Before I had started to internalize Peck and apply him to my life, I prayed plenty about
Belinda, but always on my own shortsighted terms. All I wanted was for things with her to go
back to the way they had been. I knew intellectually that change was an essential ingredient of
all life, but I hoped I could somehow stave it off anyway. But when I tried to ask, “God, how
could she do this? Please bring her back to the way she used to be,” God was completely
silent. No sale.
I wasn’t surprised. I knew what I was asking wasn’t worthy of God's help, at least not in
the form I wanted. I was miserable. But I still believed there was a God, and believed he or she
had my best interests in mind, so I kept on contemplating what might be the meaning of my
pain. On that basis, I finally started to get through my head Peck’s thesis that the purpose of
life is spiritual growth, and one stimulus for spiritual growth is pain, and that's why God lets
bad things happen to us. (The idea is for us to progressively become more godlike ourselves.)
WOW! With this amazing piece of wisdom in mind, I was able to accept and even
welcome the loss of Belinda because I knew that if I kept my faith in God (the God who is
love, you know, which was what Jesus came to tell us!), then the end result of the whole
thing would be my greatest good. That’s because I was now making the fundamental decision
to learn and grow from the pain instead of sitting around complaining about it, as I had been
before. Such growth is the key to the deepest possible happiness and joy (as we become holier
and closer to God). I didn’t realize it at the time, but this type of attitude toward life and this
type of conscious connection to one’s Maker also happens to be the only way humans can be
truly happy and at peace while on earth.
As I began to understand this overarching truth about change and growth, I kept on
praying for Belinda, but in a totally different way. “God,” I said one morning as I looked at the
sky through my front window, “I know I can’t just ask you to give her back to me, but I see
that I can ask you to help her grow, and to lead her to what she’s supposed to do with her life,
so please do that, and PLEASE make her feel the joy of doing good again, as I know she felt
for a while with me.” Then I bowed my head, taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly,
surrendering myself to that great big wave of goodness that had swept me up so long before in
that ninth-grade Bible study. Surely it could do this if I would just trust it.
I felt truly comforted for the first time in months, so I went on sending up these petitions
for Belinda’s growth at least once a day.
Before you go applauding my nobility, it’s very important that you realize that this was an
entirely self-interested effort on my part. Since Belinda’s and my relationship had been based
so strongly on the good rather than the bad, the creative rather than the destructive, I knew
that this growth of hers would make her more likely to come back to me.
The reason it’s important for you to understand this is because the whole petitioning
program is based on self-interest! In writing all this, I’m not preaching to you that it would be
more “virtuous” for you to get into this mode yourself with respect to your own problems;
instead, I’m saying that it’s going to make YOU happier to do it this way, to make the choice
for growth. It’s a win-win situation all the way around. You WILL eventually get your prayers
answered, and you will also be happy and at peace during the process, instead of continually
complaining and whining about life! As Peck said many times, once we really get it that life is
difficult, then that fact is no longer a problem for us, because we accept it and rise above it by
focusing on how we can improve ourselves.
Sometime during my rereading of Peck, I had one more important “aha” moment. What I
suddenly realized was how the whole idea of praying for changes in our circumstances fit
together with Peck’s theory of pain-induced spiritual growth. Since God lets bad things happen
in order to stimulate us to make the choice for growth, it follows that if we want God to
remove the bad things, we must first undertake whatever bit of growth they were meant to
bring about. If we do that, and then ask God with faith to change the circumstances, God will
be glad to. But if we pray for changes in our circumstances without seeking to transform
ourselves accordingly, then God is most likely not going to deliver, since that would defeat the
purpose of having the unwanted stuff there in the first place.
This insight proved to be the last big piece (at least for now) to the petitioning puzzle. I
had known about the forgiveness requirement for years, but now I saw that other types of
transformations may also be necessary. Forgiving others, in our hearts and minds as well as
with actions and words, seems to be a universal requirement for getting prayers answered,
which makes perfect sense since all it is is a way of our becoming more like the God who is
love. But other changes of heart or habit may be called for too. (You identify these by listening
to God and your conscience, as I demonstrate repeatedly throughout this book.)
Armed with the answers I had been searching for—and VERY thankful for these
wonderful truths!—I went on about my business, but also kept on asking God regularly to help
Belinda choose the good as she decided what kind of adult she was going to become.
About three months after the apartment debacle, Belinda wrote and said she was sorry for
the way things had ended, and that she had never intended to drive me out of her life
completely. This didn’t mean the old Belinda was back, but it was a start, and she said she
wanted to keep in touch. So over the next two or three years, I wrote her pretty regularly and
called her sometimes when I was in Baton Rouge. For about another year, Belinda and Audra
continued to be a tumultuous couple, and Audra was jealous of me (or so Belinda said), so if
Belinda and I decided to get together, she always wanted me to meet her either at work or
some nearby restaurant, where there was no Audra.
The few times Belinda and I did this—maybe three or four—were OK. Not terrible, but
not great either. Mostly, we talked about her latest ideas regarding her career choice; she was
thinking she’d like to become either a lawyer or an FBI agent or profiler. We also made plenty
of small talk, which I had never much cared for with anybody, including Belinda. All this time,
what I really wanted to know was what kind of progress she was making in her personal
development, but that’s not exactly something you can ask people about, especially not given
Belinda’s and my recent history. So, I just tried to be there for her, while continuing to send up
my regular petitions for God to help her.
These three or four meetings were the high points of our relationship during these years.
There were also plenty of low points, the lowest of which was probably the fall of ‘98.
Belinda, on the rebound from Audra, was living with and working for Nita, a
thirtysomething bar owner, while still taking courses at LSU. When some letters I had written
her came back undelivered, I put them all in a big envelope and mailed it to her at the bar. But
that package also came back undelivered, with “NO SUCH PERSON” block-printed rudely
over Belinda’s name. Woo, boy, was I pissed! I tried to calm myself and pray for wisdom, but
all I could think about was getting those damned letters into Belinda’s hands.
I was teaching a linguistics course on Monday nights at a branch of Mississippi State, and
working hard the rest of the week as a freelance editor, but I nevertheless took off on a
Wednesday morning, drove to LSU, pretended I was still an instructor in order to get Belinda’s
schedule from the registrar’s office, and stationed myself on a staircase across the hall from
the classroom where she was supposed to be the next period. When the previous classes
began to let out and the hallway was suddenly jam-packed, I leaned against the wall opposite
Belinda’s classroom and tried to get a look at everyone who entered. Suddenly the hallway was
empty again. Had I not been able to see her in the crowd, or was she cutting class that day, or
had something actually happened to her, which was why she hadn’t gotten the letters? I didn’t
think she was merely late, because back when I had taught her, she had always been either
ridiculously early or absent. Since I was already in the middle of stalking her, I sat on the
stairs, opened my book bag, and started working on my lesson plans. I could easily sit there
the whole hour and ten minutes, in hopes of catching her on the way out. I begged God to
calm me and help me.
Fifteen minutes or so after the class had started, I was absorbed in my planning when my
consciousness was jolted by a tall, slim figure hurrying past me, practically scraping the
opposite wall in an apparent effort to stay as far away from me as possible. I looked up just in
time to recognize those familiar long ivory legs underneath a barmaid’s black miniskirt, and the
even more familiar auburn hair falling rather messily down the back of a pleated white blouse.
“Belinda,” I said quietly but urgently. “Belinda.”
She stopped and looked at me nervously, clutching to her chest some report she must
have been about to turn in. “I have to go to class; I’m late.”
“OK, I’ll wait,” I replied. She hurried on into the classroom, shocked, no doubt, to have
run into me in the middle of what I later learned was one of her cocaine-fueled twelve-hour
workdays at the bar.
When class was over, I was ready with the clasp envelope of returned letters, but Belinda
walked out of the room with a male classmate, apparently trying to slip past me unnoticed. But
I hurried to catch up with them. At first she tried to put me off. “Sara, I can’t talk, I have to
go back to work NOW,” she said firmly, then turned and kept on walking toward the staircase
at the opposite end of the hall. The guy followed dutifully.
Trailing them down the stairs, I went on the offensive. “Just five minutes, please? I drove
all the way down here to give you these letters, so if I could have your attention for five
minutes, PLEASE?”
At that, she told her classmate to go ahead, and turned to me impatiently, but with the
slightest perceptible air of apology. I said, “These letters keep being returned to me, and I want
you to have them, they’re important.”
Without even looking at the envelope with the NO SUCH PERSON notation over her own
name, she protested, “That’s not Nita’s writing. I don’t know how it happened, but that’s not
Nita’s writing.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I replied. “What does matter is that you keep these and, I hope,
read them, for the sake of the long-term future of our relationship. I think you care about that,
even if right now someone doesn’t want you communicating with me. Please. For the long-
term future of our relationship.”
At that point, she looked me in the eye for the first time. Her eyes seemed smaller and
darker brown than I remembered them, and distant even in the moment of contact, as though
Belinda was really somewhere else, her body merely a shell of the Belinda of my memory. And
she didn’t allow me in any closer, answering simply, “OK, but I really have to go now. I’m
late for work.” I said OK, and she took the envelope and placed it carefully in the back of a
three-ring binder before hurrying away down the hall.
What a load to digest, I thought as I stood there, stunned, watching her walk rapidly
toward the back door of the building. The fresh-faced Belinda who was always already in the
classroom when I walked in, sitting peacefully in the second row reading a novel! The
youthful Belinda with whom I had shared my love of poetry and God and writing at the end of
that glorious semester! That Belinda was nowhere to be found in the hyperactive, overworked,
unkempt Belinda I had just encountered. She seemed to be staying in school by only the
thinnest of threads.
Back at home that night, I talked to God as I tried to sort through my experience and
decide what to do now. I think my biggest fear was that Nita, whom I knew nothing about,
would steer Belinda away from a real career and possibly even away from her writing. I
worried about the drugs, too, but not as much as about the work situation. “God,” I said, “I
know there’s nothing I can do to get Belinda out of this job or this relationship, but please
show me the best attitude for me to try to have about it.”
And as I sat there, praying hard, I suddenly realized there was one thing I could do, and
that was to pray for her as hard as I ever had, to ask God to help her choose the good, at least
in the future if not right away. I also saw that choosing to do this rather than to despair was
the decision I had to make between the good and creative versus the evil and destructive.
So I got down on my knees, feeling very small and humble, and thought about God up
there in charge of it all, just waiting for us humans to turn to him or her for help. Taking deep
breaths as I raised my arms above my head, as I exhaled I opened them like a flower opening
to the sky to receive its light and life. I said aloud, “God, I choose to be faithful and to keep
praying about everything, but I need your help with that, too. So please help me stay positive
and faithful, and then help Belinda choose the good!”
I think this act of choosing the good, loving attitude over the negative, destructive attitude
is an existential decision we all have to make every day, even many times a day. And that’s
exactly what I did, with God’s help, over and over again in the months that followed my
discouraging meeting with Belinda in the hall at LSU. Always asking him first to help me
maintain my faith, I prayed for her at least once a day, or whenever I found myself thinking
about her. I didn’t try to write her anymore, but I kept on praying.
[If you want to know the rest of the story, including what happened to Belinda, click on
the Abstracts button, which will take you to the whole story in condensed form. I
suggest reading the Chapter One abstract if you haven't already read Chapter One
(which has its own button), then skip the Chapter Two abstract since you just read that
whole chapter here, then pick back up with the Chapter Three abstract. Thanks for
reading!]