Chapter Two: Three Decades of Begging the Guy Upstairs for Help
[NOTE: Although this sample chapter is self-contained, I suggest you take a few minutes to read the brief Chapter One
abstract at the Excerpts button first. Then come back & start this NOT-brief (but, I've been told, compelling) chapter,
which just happens to be the longest chapter in the whole book. If you lose patience you can always simply go back to
the Excerpts & 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 humbly but confidently addressing the deity. I had known he was real
ever since I had been zapped at a ninth-grade Bible study I had attended primarily to chase girls, when this amazing being had
lifted me up in the palm of his hand and showed me that this world was actually a world within a larger world and that the larger
world was a place of love and benevolence, so that everything was truly going to be all right. But it had never before occurred to
me to ask him seriously to help me with the only problem I had ever had in school, which stemmed from the moderately severe
hearing impairment I was born with. “God,” I entreated, “please don’t let me have any 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 and not say
anything until finally I would realize that everyone was looking at me and waiting for me to answer and I hadn’t even heard the
question in the first place. Now that I was full grown, there was no longer the danger that the whole class was 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 if anything,
the burning silence followed by the awkward interruption of the flow of class discussion was even worse than had been the
grade-school hooting. 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 my hearing deficiency, talking to a counselor or anyone else was out of the
question. So now that I had these ten minutes of privacy in the car just before the new year began, I tried to make use of my
knowledge of God to get some help.
As I locked the car and started walking toward the senior-high building, I recalled some other Bible verses in an effort to
keep my faith from faltering. “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 truly exciting to imagine that I
could simply ask and believe and God would 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 allow any mortification to befall
me. During activity period, I noted that it was working so far, because in the first two periods I had had the two teachers I was
most worried about and, surprisingly enough, had not had any trouble understanding either one of them. In fifth period, God used
a different technique, 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 at the front, in the second row. 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 hard for me to
understand, at least one of them so much so that I was constantly lost as to exactly what was going on in class and therefore in
constant dread of embarrassing incidents. This lack of communication never hurt my grades or anything, because in high school
everything you had to know for tests was not only discussed in class but also written down in books, handouts, and the like, but
it did mean plenty of those slow-burn episodes while someone nearby would try to interpret what the teacher was asking me to
do or say. Anyway, the rest of my senior year I said my prayers every morning on the way to school, then all day long I simply
used my will power and concentration to try to continue to believe in the face of any perceived trouble. And it worked, too, to an
amazing extent. I had my best school year yet, and sent up thanks and praise constantly. All those biblical promises about the
power of faith had proven true.
Fast forward fifteen years, to when I wanted desperately to become a graduate teaching assistant in my master’s program at
Mississippi College even though all the positions had been awarded several months earlier. At first, I approached the problem of
obtaining God’s help with the same method of simple willed belief that had worked for me 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 getting discouraged
and giving up.
As time seemed to be running out, however, I somehow became aware of another Bible verse, this one much less well-
known than the familiar ones on faith that I had used to bolster my efforts when I was younger. This new verse was Mark 11:24:
“All things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they shall be granted you” (emphasis mine). The
intriguing verb tense offered me hope. I started trying to assume the state of mind it dictated, by somehow making myself believe
that I had already received the assistantship. While contemplating this idea of believing that something had already happened even
though I couldn’t yet see it, I suddenly realized that some psychological exercises I had heard of seemed to be built on precisely
this idea—the “Act as If” aphorism from the twelve-step programs 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 repeatedly envisioned myself in the desired TA position, with
classes to teach, papers to grade, and students coming to my office for help. Refusing to give negative thoughts any wiggle
room, I even went to the campus bookstore and examined the texts I would be using in my course.
Then it happened. Two days before classes were to begin, I came home to find a note on the stove 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.
I sent up my next big chunk of petitionary prayers during my doctoral program at Louisiana State University. Again a TA,
but with a larger class in a less well-lit room than I had had at MC, I was less able to depend on my lipreading ability to aid my
deficient hearing, and thus experienced problems right away. Also, I now had more responsibility for my own lesson plans, and
felt desperate for anything that might make the subject, Freshman Composition I, more interesting to the students. For that
reason, several times I ignored the warnings sounding in my brain and used class activities that deep down I knew I couldn’t hear
well enough to supervise properly. Stupidly enough, I did not pray in conjunction with these episodes, I guess because I knew I
was already ignoring the warnings God was trying to send me.
Yet 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. During the practicum sessions, featuring Linda’s crystal-clear voice that I could understand
so well that I never missed even a syllable, 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. She gave us written assignments that I tackled with relish, so
much so that—ironically enough—those assignments became one of the ways I avoided my real duty to teach my students
effectively. Looking back, it’s hard to believe I was so irresponsible. It was only appropriate that I paid for my neglect dearly.
One day, for example, the prescribed class activity I was trying to conduct involved the students coming up with reasons in
support of abortion rights and dictating them to me so I could record them on the board. I did remind them to wait till I was
looking at them before speaking, but that didn’t really help. The first person I called on was a talkative young woman in the front
row whom I thought I would have no trouble understanding. But my hearing problem is such that I can never tell in advance
whether I’m going to be able to catch what any given person says, and for whatever reason, when this student spoke, I wasn’t
at all sure what she said. I feared things were going to go downhill from there, and I was right. From that first one, 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 took the chalk and wrote “private matter,” when actually what she was trying to say (as I learned
after class when I took up the brainstorming lists they had made during the exercise) was “the right to privacy.” Not too far off,
but it got worse.
When I called on a tall fellow in the back of the room, all I could make out from him was “control,” which in desperation I
turned into “self-control,” even though I knew full well it did not make sense as an item on our list. If I hadn’t felt so flustered, I
might have been able to figure out his actual contribution, which was “control over one’s own body.” In any case, at semester’s
end this class quite understandably gave me negative evaluations, and the graduate committee responded by taking away my
assistantship until I could prove I had become more competent in the classroom.
When I received this news, in a terse, impersonal form letter in my box in the mailroom, I was momentarily relieved that I
no longer had to endure the discomfort of doing my job so poorly, but my relief soon began to morph into despair. What the hell
was I going to do with my life now? Since I knew the whole thing was my fault, and that I had been ignoring God’s signals all
semester, I wasn’t ready right away to humble myself and start to petition him for a solution. I went around numbly for several
days, and then only sporadically began to ask him for some kind of direction or help. It was Christmas break, and I had my Ph.
D. prelim exams coming up, and I found it very easy to avoid thinking about what was going to happen regarding my teaching.
But when I did bring myself to pray about it, God seemed 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
received special permission for the two of us to team-teach a double section of British Survey, so we could develop ways to
compensate for my hearing loss in the classroom. “I know you can teach,” she stated confidently, meeting my gaze 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, he had done it to keep me in school at LSU the year before, when I would have likely quit the program had I not
met Karen in the spring and begun taking her Milton seminar the following fall. Before that, I had taken courses from some
excellent professors, but hadn’t really connected with any of them, and I just didn’t care enough about finishing my degree to
keep at it otherwise. The only reason I had started the program to begin with was because I had followed my friend Stephanie
from our master’s program on to LSU, where she had a prestigious doctoral fellowship. Stephanie was committed to her work,
but I was really just along for the ride, not knowing what else to do with my life at the time. So, feeling completely directionless
one spring afternoon during my second semester of coursework, I attended a large, raucous program having something to do
with political correctness in one of the lecture halls on campus. After two or three militant-feminist professors gave not merely
impassioned but downright angry speeches against the continued use of sexist language in some publications describing the
university’s hiring practices, Karen came to the podium and stepped up on a wooden box that she needed in order to reach the
mike. “My name is Karen Eliot,” she said in a commanding but calm voice, “and 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.” She went on to give that
information, and then to thank everyone for their attendance and attention. I don’t remember exactly who spoke after she did, but
the anger of both the speakers and the crowd had clearly dissipated.
Although I wasn’t particularly interested in the topic at hand, I was captivated by Karen. She seemed a beacon of clarity and
hope amid a sea of confusion. After the session ended, 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. There, I was delighted to discover that she was
actually one of the people whose field of specialization encompassed the poet John Donne, whom I was already considering
writing about for my dissertation. I understood all of this as a sign that I should take a course from her as soon as I had the
chance. To the surprise of my friends, when the schedule for fall came out, 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 contriving a way for me to keep on
doing what I was trying to do, to succeed at college-level teaching. Excitedly, I praised God for the 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 tease me away from my futile efforts to try 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, as I merely commuted to LSU for Tuesday through Thursday. Instead of
being thrilled with this invitation like anyone with half an ounce of sense would have been, I was irritated at this intrusion that
threatened my master plan of finishing my degree before worrying about full-time employment. Nevertheless, I didn’t consider
simply declining the interview. I knew it would be inexcusably idiotic to turn down an unsolicited offer to teach so close to home,
especially at Millsaps.
During the initial 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 was able to hear what the department head was saying, since in
the past I had always had a hard time with her particular voice. Since I could hear her even on the phone, I decided there was no
need to worry in advance about being able to understand her at the interview; I thought she must be speaking up for me to hear
her, so I shouldn't have any difficulty in person either. So I figured I would do as I had always done before and simply try to
slide by, rather than putting into place some backup plan (such as asking my sister-in-law to accompany me, to interpret if
necessary). My irritation also figured into this decision not to prepare anything; I surely didn’t want to inconvenience myself any
further than “they” were already inconveniencing me by forcing me to attend the interview in the first place.
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 reception area of the English Department office, I behaved politely, of
course, but every last person I saw got on my nerves in one way or another. This wasn’t unusual; all my life I had been quite the
misanthrope, secretly disdainful of scores of people for no good reason. My foul mood merely magnified this trait. One female
sorority girl annoyed me with her preppiness, while I felt just as put off by a male who sported long hair, grungy jeans, and
sandals even though it was still wintertime. Why were people so endlessly disgusting?
Finally, Diana, the department head, appeared and invited me into her office. A reserved but genuinely warm 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 sat down and began 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 it 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 might be relevant to the job we
were discussing, but of course that strategy didn’t work for more than a minute or two. I departed feeling much worse than
before, and (needless to say) I didn’t get the job.
Besides ruining my teaching prospects at Millsaps forever, this event forced me to tackle my hearing impairment—and my
misanthropy—head on. Although I welcomed Karen’s plan for helping me in the classroom at LSU, before the Interview from
Hell I was not at all sold on the idea that I needed to develop systematic methods of compensating for my disability. Also, and
more significantly, I was now forced to take a serious look at my relationship to the world. For the first time, I saw that my
disdainfulness and lack of interest in others threatened to keep me from getting work in my chosen field. When I entertained the
thought of trying to rid myself of this fundamental flaw, I found myself worrying that there might then be nothing left of me.
Shaken by this realization, I prayed deeply, asking God to help me see the truth about myself, and to show me what response I
ought to make to 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 others was my
way of keeping myself separate from what I deemed the lazy, lackadaisical masses. For this reason, I cringed at the prospect 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, with God’s help 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 got underway, my petitioning was raised to its highest level yet. To put it simply, I
prayed my butt off about every aspect of the experience: that the campus shuttle would be on time each morning, that I would
plan my lectures well and deliver them effectively, and that God would help me every step of the way as I tried to truly
communicate back-and-forth with each of my students, which I decidedly had not tried to do in the past.
The teaching skill I most needed God to help me with was fielding student questions when I was in command of the
classroom. I loved to lecture, but hated the Q & A session that followed because of its unpredictability. Standing in front of the
double-sized classroom in the modern all-purpose building, which I had requested because the better lighting made lipreading
easier than in the older campus buildings, I would perk up my ears expecting pertinent queries 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 the likelihood
that I would be able to understand what they were saying) destroyed my composure and reduced even further my ability to
handle the rest of the day’s interactions. Karen was always around, ready to repeat whatever 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. Along about mid-semester, however, she offered a valuable insight.
“I have an observation about your teaching,” she said as she closed the thick, heavy 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 was surprised that she felt the need to cushion whatever it was she was about to say.
Sitting back down again, and holding a pen in her hand for emphasis, she leaned toward me as if to make sure she would
convey her point 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 as I drew my head back in 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 almost exactly the same feeling.”
“Is it that bad?” Karen asked, wrinkling her brow in concern.
“Well, no, because I’m not embarrassed the way I was as a child, but I still feel like I’m suspended over the classroom on a
rope or something, so high 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 again for telling me. 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 soul-searching as well as Bible-searching for anything that might
help me get God to take away this fear of mine. I read through a lot of the Gospels, sort of skipping around but reading a good
bit at a time, trying to find any tips 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 that how could it help? But somehow I read it anyway, the version in Matthew 6, which Jesus follows by saying
that if we forgive others for their transgressions, then God will forgive us, 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, I had tried a few times in the past to make use of 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 overcoming my defensiveness with student questions?
YES! There were certain students in the class whose voices happened to be the type I had a hard time with, and—wouldn’t
you know it?—it always seemed to be them who asked most of the questions. The handful of others whose voices I could
understand rarely said a word. Understandably but not at all fairly, I often became plenty annoyed with the insistently vocal
students. I knew intellectually that they didn’t deserve any blame, that they were just participating in class, for God’s sake, but
that didn’t lessen my irritation. So I really did need to forgive them, in the sense of overcoming my annoyance.
When I saw how neatly this all fit together, I was pumped with excitement. Since my aggravation itself made matters
worse, the mere act of getting rid of it was going to help the situation regardless, but here was this promise from none less than
Jesus himself that to do so would induce God to forgive me and grant my prayers for help in fielding those questions. Right that
minute I set my mind to this new task of forgiveness. What I did was that every time the annoyance would arise, I would allow
myself to feel it for a minute or two—if I was alone, I would 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 maybe even replace them with compassion.
When class time arrived, I Acted as If I were confident even though I would have been quite nervous if I had allowed
myself to worry about how the session was going to play out. Behaving as though I welcomed questions from everyone, I
nodded and greeted students with eye contact as they trickled into the room, instead of what I had formerly done, which was to
hide up at the podium and pretend to be working so no one would try to engage me in conversation. As soon as someone did ask
me something, I responded with a practiced routine of repeating the question to make sure I had it right, and not allowing myself
to panic if their response was to correct me. A few times I actually had the presence of mind to send up a quick plea to God to
help me out before I spoke again. All of this was not easy, but it worked.
When the course was over, I had gained not only a semester of successful teaching on my record but also a new level of
dialogue with the Creator. In my biggest petitioning effort to date, I had confronted and solved a problem that just a few months
before had seemed insurmountable. What’s more, I had learned that forgiveness was a crucial aspect (along with faith) of getting
prayers answered.
It’s so crucial, in fact, that we need to examine it more closely. This absolute necessity of forgiving others before God will
grant our requests was one of the hardest things for me, the irritable misanthrope, to learn about petitioning. In fact, the only
thing in the world strong enough to make me take it seriously was the prospect of getting my fondest desires fulfilled. For years,
my reaction to Jesus’s admonition was, "Of course I'll forgive everybody, I'm cool with it, everybody who's wronged me is
hereby forgiven, it's fine. Now can we get on with the answer to my prayer?" But when I was struggling with the petition about
the student questions, I grudgingly acknowledged that this was not real forgiveness. And as I thought about what to do, I saw
that real forgiveness was an action of the heart, not merely the mind, and that I couldn’t possibly achieve it without God's help,
especially in cases when it meant letting go of my frequently explosive anger.
As C. S. Lewis notes, we constantly forgive ourselves for all kinds of mistakes, so that adopting a similar attitude toward
others is one way of loving them as we love ourselves. I found I could do this when the person was either someone I liked or
someone I felt neutral about. But when it came to people I disliked, I was neither willing nor able to let go of my feelings. I
preferred to wallow in my ire, clenching my fists and cursing the person endlessly.
The only thing that turned out to work as I tried to change my feelings was to do my level best to let go of the anger and
then ask God to change my heart, putting whatever he wanted in place of the anger. Two moves helped me achieve the letting
go. One was to simply relax my fighting mechanism, by taking a deep breath and then literally and figuratively going limp as I
exhaled. The other was to first take some time to examine my anger in detail, and then use the same relaxation technique. In
cases where I’m really in a rage (and alone!), then I yell and scream and hit the wall with my fist before employing either of the
methods of letting go. These various exercises eventually do the trick to disarm my anger whenever it’s getting in the way of my
petitioning. Then I simply don’t allow my mind to dwell on the anger as I wait for God to replace it with a more acceptable
emotion.
Another technique that I’ve found helpful is to Act as If regarding my forgiveness—that is, to pretend I’ve already forgiven
someone before I really have. Within our culture of politeness, it’s pretty easy to simply play the part of speaking to someone in a
congenial tone, even if you don’t really feel congenially toward that person. And when you do this, you’ll find that often your
feelings will start to gravitate toward the way you’re acting rather than the way you really felt at first. This method probably won’
t take you all the way to complete forgiveness, but it helps.
For me at least, the task of forgiving is a lifelong one; there’s no badge I can earn and sew onto my uniform so that I can
say I’m done with it and don’t have to worry about it anymore.
One other fact I’ve learned about forgiveness before petitioning is that sometimes what I have to do is forgive God for
allowing the undesirable circumstance to begin with. Since the whole purpose of life is that God puts us in situations that lead us
to see ourselves and what we need to work on in order to become holy, then of course God is not doing us a wrong that merits
our “forgiveness.” But that’s the psychic reality sometimes. We find ourselves angry at God even though we know it’s for our
own good. So we do have to forgive him, even though he didn’t do anything forgivable.
What “forgiving God” amounts to is submitting our wills to the will of the universe, so that instead of complaining about
circumstances from the standpoint of our limited vision, we rest assured that the things we don’t like are there for a reason, and
that God will help us out of them in due time. Paradoxically enough, it’s a willed submission that’s called for, not unlike the willed
submission I make when relaxing my fighting mechanism in order to let go of annoyance or anger. Our ongoing challenge is to
learn to relax and have faith that everything is part of the big plan, which will ultimately bring us the most joy imaginable. The
more we can order our lives around that truth, the more peace and power we will enjoy in this unpredictable world.
Acceptance of circumstances, forgiveness, and letting go of anger are all facets of the fundamental task of choosing to
submit our wills to the creative power of the universe. (While forgiving someone for having wronged us may seem like an active,
rather than a submissive, act, think about what happens in our hearts when we forgive: we come to a point where we accept the
fact that the person wronged us and we let go of our resentment regarding it.) Everyone accomplishes the task of submission to
some extent as they mature—we don't generally see adults throwing temper tantrums like three-year-olds—but Peck notes
(RLT3, page 140) that most people don't succeed in letting go of their basic anger until somewhere around age forty, and many
people never do. If it hadn’t been for petitioning, I may never have let go of it myself.
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. Thus I had a lot of new things to petition God about.
This time, unlike two years earlier, while planning my lessons I talked to God quite a bit about my ability to carry out
whatever activities I was thinking of using, to make sure I didn’t try to bite off more than I could chew the way I had before. As
class time neared, though, mundane logistics competed for my attention. Worried more about missing the bus since that would
now mean a classroom full of students with no teacher, I often spent time praying about that instead of about than the content of
my day. Fortunately, after the bus did arrive, the five-minute ride across campus gave me just enough time to look over the entire
lesson plan 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 my
sanctuary, the ladies’ room. Pumped with energy, I would usually go through the motions of grooming just so I could stand there
without calling attention to myself as I silently entreated God to make the session productive and to help me through whatever
communication challenges lay ahead. Pondering my humble position in the universe, I made a conscious effort to put my trust in
the Creator. 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 manifestation of his strength and reliability. I found I could tap
into that 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. I told myself that God had so much more control over the entire
situation than I did. Sometimes merely thinking about God’s power would elicit the physical reaction and the emotional calm
automatically.
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. It was as though
I was able to put up a wall in my brain between myself and my fright. The wall would last just 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. I was able to do this only
because of the strength I had gained from my prayers. Once I got to the room, the sheer force of reality would immediately wash
away all my mental constructs, both prayerful and fearful, replacing them with the hyperactivity of students and lecture notes,
roll books and handouts. But at that point, all I had to do was go with the flow, bolstered by the confidence that my various
mental exercises had given me.
In conjunction with my leap of faith, as I hoisted the strap of my book bag up onto my shoulder and prepared to leave my
restroom sanctuary, if there was no one else around, I’d make the sign of the cross on my chest—the way Catholics do—before
pulling open the big swinging door and heading into the hallway.
As C. S. Lewis pointed out about kneeling, this practice of crossing myself was (and is) a way of making use of the fact
that the body and soul are inextricably joined. Who knows why these activities help our spiritual state, since the body-mind
connection is one of the basic mysteries of life? Such a mystery, in fact, that I've always viewed it as a very good argument for
the existence of God. Try to imagine, if you will, how thought could possibly arise out of something as fundamentally different
from it as matter. How could there not be an intelligent designer behind such an amazing phenomenon? (By the way, I believe in
evolution, but I think God enables it.) In any case, for me the physical action of crossing myself most definitely impacts my mind
and spirit, although I can’t say exactly how. It’s kind of the reverse of the contemplation of God’s power eliciting physical
relaxation; this time, the physical action elicits the emotional reactions needed for effective prayer.
Specifically, when I cross myself it helps me focus my thoughts, serving 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. Decades ago, when I first started doing it, if no
one was looking I usually made three crosses in succession, to represent the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; back then, it
was a purely symbolic act that didn’t have much psychological meaning. But the triple crossing became a habit, and after I
started learning about the petitioning process, I decided that if I was going to do it three times anyway, I might as well make each
one signify something about petitioning. So I designated the first crossing to represent forgiving others, and the second to
represent the act of submitting my will in the face of God’s power (in the Bible’s words, “Be still, and know that I am God”).
Finally, the third crossing would represent my going forth joyfully into the world in faith and thanksgiving because I knew God
was going to respond to my prayer.
From then on, every time I made my triple crossing, I would rapidly think those three thoughts: forgiveness, submission,
and faith. If I was concerned about someone seeing me, I simply tapped my finger three times on whatever surface was
available. Gradually, the crosses or taps themselves began to cause that same physical relaxation as had my ladies’-room
contemplation of God’s power—which itself was first precipitated by deep breaths and falling shoulders. It’s a perpetual divine
cycle of body to soul to body again.
Of course, with any symbolic act there is always a danger that it will lose its meaning, so every now and then I make a point
to slow down and think about the three guidelines anew. But most of the time, I simply use the procedure as a quickie injection of
the peace that can only come from “letting go and letting God.”
This whole idea of relaxing and allowing God to 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. Each day when I got to the classroom, I would practice the deliberate
approachability I had first developed when I taught with Karen. Soon, I found myself losing my nervousness and becoming more
open to the students than ever before. During class, in one of the innovations Karen and I had developed, the university provided
a work-study student to write student questions on an overhead projector for me to glance at if I needed to, and I did learn to use
that regularly. And during the last few minutes of class, 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.
One day, a kind of self-consciously grade-conscious and earnest guy from Lafayette asked in 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 _______.” This time 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 his desk to write and labored for a few seconds, apparently unsure of the spelling. Then he
handed me the card, where I saw in big block letters “PIROGUE,” a word I was not even familiar with, but when I tried to
pronounce it, he said I had said 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 them 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.”
Looking quietly pleased, 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, another guy who had joined the conversation demonstrated by using his pencil to push against the wall as he repeated
“POLE it!”
“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, in another radical departure from the past, I addressed the class without even thinking about it, asking, “Does anybody else
want to ask me about the subject for their process essay?” Before, my accessibility to the students had been largely limited to
their coming to my office in the afternoon, because I hadn’t made them feel comfortable about talking to me the normal way
during the class period. But now that I had proven to myself that the index-card method really worked, and that the students didn’
t seem to mind using it, I had actually opened myself to more or less normal interaction with them. It felt wonderful.
By the end of the semester, this class—as well as the one I taught the following semester—gave me much better end-of-
course evaluations than I had ever before received, which in the eyes of the graduate committee served as tangible proof that I
had successfully remedied 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.
Despite the gratifying victories of my first semester of independent teaching, 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 absolutely dreading the changes that were about to take place. Although I was
very happy with how well my Comp I class had turned out in the fall, now I was going to get 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 the students, but I did.) It seemed that just when I had gotten used to the people
and the daily routine, it had all been pulled out from under 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 of my ability to carry
over my fledgling communication skills to an entirely new group of students.
Another thing Karen had done for me was to serve as my counselor for the lovelorn when, during the previous summer, the
one person I had ever truly wanted to spend my life with had decided to marry a man. I didn’t normally discuss personal
problems with professors, but Karen would ask me about it whenever we got together to talk about my dissertation. Five months
after the blow, I was still in plenty of pain. So now I wasn’t going to have any support in that department either.
In this frame of mind, about an hour into the two-and-a-half-hour drive I started freaking out spiritually. I knew I
desperately needed to petition God about my new challenges, but was completely unable to get anything started. I was too busy
feeling sorry for myself because time had moved on and my surroundings were altered. What a pathetic way for anyone to feel in
this world of change and flux! But I was also scared to death to go to class without praying, so that the closer I drew to Baton
Rouge, the more I felt physically squeezed in the chest by the giant hands of impending doom. Finally, I literally shouted 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 in my bag while awaiting a response. 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 with increasing force for
a half-hour or so, and told myself that if God could do that, then surely he could help little old me. I eased up on the accelerator,
realizing that driving more slowly would give him more time to do something before I got there. I also tried to relax physically,
but really couldn’t. About the only thing I could do that seemed to help was to try to block my doubts by belting out some
particularly fortifying 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 the negative thoughts 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, focusing on pushing my pulsing energy out of my chest and into each word and chord in turn, I was able to
connect in my mind with the old familiar spirit that had comforted me before, as well as with everyone else who had ever sung
those songs in desperation.
Slowly, in fits and starts, my panic subsided and my faith began to improve. By the time the class met, I had a reasonably
good grip on myself, 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.
The afternoon saw further significant developments. 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 the issue of same-sex marriage, and only a few students wrote on that hot-button topic. One guy was against it for
religious-right reasons, and one female was against it because she thought it would threaten the traditional family structure. But
another female student was not only 100% in favor of it, she was also remarkably articulate, even eloquent, in her defense of gay
marriage. 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
as I marveled—at her intelligence, her depth of character, and the amazing fact that she was actually going to be my student for
the entire semester! The whole thing seemed way too perfect to be true, especially the fact that it was Idgie and Ruth she had
chosen to write about. As I commented in the margin of her 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 belonged to this “Belinda Thompson,” but never in my life had I been as
excited about getting to know anyone as I was the author of this paper. I immediately recognized the episode as God's way of
saying, "See? I've got everything under control. You worried yourself sick for nothing!" I leaned back in my chair and silently
offered up amazed thanks toward the ceiling of the office I shared with two other TA’s.
Although the new semester was now off to an infinitely more promising start than had seemed possible just a few hours
earlier, it still required more fervent prayer than ever. Since I had never before even known a comfortably gay woman who
interested me in the least, it was a heady time.
Belinda turned out to be tall, quietly beautiful in the pre-Raphaelite mode, with china-doll skin, big hazel eyes, and silky
auburn tresses that reached to her waist, rather incongruously atop 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. And,
what was more important to me, she lived up to the promise she had shown the first day, repeatedly demonstrating in her essays
both her writing ability and her high moral standards. But everything wasn’t perpetually idyllic. Belinda missed class several times,
which bothered me inordinately. Moreover, 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.
Indeed, 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 wary of having feelings for a student, but it wasn’t like she 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 served me well until the end of the semester. As the final exam neared, I talked to God quite a bit about whether
I should try to pursue a social relationship with Belinda once we were done being teacher and student. One way he responded
was to have her come to my office one afternoon after she had missed class that morning. Officially, she had simply stopped by
to get back a graded essay, but somehow we got on the subject of movies. When she asked me if I had seen Bridges of Madison
County, I nodded, and 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 inspecting the framed
photo that my colleague kept on her desk of herself and her boyfriend on a mountain hike out West.
“Yes, I’ll admit it. I loved it. Meryl Streep has been my very favorite actress for years,” I explained, “and she is so hot with
Clint Eastwood. Also, I’m just a sap for the mushy stuff anyway.” I felt a flutter in my chest as I uttered this, my first personal
statement.
“Me, too. As long as the people are attractive!” Belinda added with a warm smile.
“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, I did, but I don’t like all movies that are violent or exciting or whatever you’d want to call it. I mean it sort of has to
have a purpose for me to like it.” She nodded as though she understood and wanted me to continue, so I did. “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 were ever in
jail then I would rather be in solitary.”
“Me, too! I’d want the privacy!” At this we shared a good laugh at ourselves, but then I purposely picked up the thread of
the conversation.
“Well, didn’t Murder in the First change your mind?”
“Yes!” she affirmed. The conversation kept on for several more minutes at fever pitch, until I said I had 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, as well as for
his answer to my question about pursuing her. By this time, I knew she had a girlfriend named Audra, but I also knew I wouldn’t
be making a complete fool of myself by inviting her to have lunch or something else innocent like that.
That didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous about issuing the invitation; I was terrified. But I knew God could help quell my fears if I
asked him to. Over the next week or so, I had several fruitful petitioning conversations with him regarding this matter in front of
the bathroom mirror, since that was the best place to practice my approach. I found that I could talk to him quite effectively
while looking into the reflection of my own eyes. “God,” I said during one of those conversations, “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 slightly and crossed myself three times, thinking
forgiveness, submission, and faith. Finally, breathing deeply and relaxing into God’s power, I looked again at myself in the mirror
and this time pretended 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 him in advance for what I knew (at least in that faithful moment) he was going to do.
In preparation for exam day, I also thought about what I would do if I didn’t have the opportunity to talk to Belinda privately
in the classroom. This was crucial, because once she was gone, she’d be gone forever, unless I wanted to call her on the phone
at home, which I really didn’t want to do. So I developed a contingency plan, which was simply that I’d follow her through the
doorway as she was leaving the room, so that I could get her attention after she was out in the hall and ask her then.
As it turned out, this was exactly what happened. When Belinda handed in her test paper, there were six or seven students
still working nearby, and they would have heard me, so I casually followed Belinda as she left the room, then called her name
softly as she started to walk away. She turned around and, apparently appreciating the fact that others were still testing, took a
few steps until she was standing right next to me. Then, thanks to my prayers and practice, I uttered a perfectly executed “I’d
like to continue our friendship”—to which her reply was a smile and a vigorous nod. Breathing an excited sigh of relief, I went
on, “We probably shouldn’t go anywhere together until after I’ve turned in the grades, which is next week, so I was thinking
maybe we could go to lunch or something then?”
“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?” It thrilled me for her to take the initiative this way. Plus, now I would get to see her again before next week, which
seemed 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. I was pleased that 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. Since she
would be working full-time once school was out, we decided I would pick her up at her workplace, a huge furniture store called
Schroeder’s, and we would take off for one of the many restaurants nearby. “I think I can get a whole hour off, so we won’t
have to hurry,” she said. She drew me 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 our talk apparently had a will of its own, so that soon we had resumed our
conversation from the previous week about movies. It seemed we both had so much we wanted to say that I just naturally invited
her to sit down for a while, reasoning that I could spare a little time from my grading.
This time, we got off on a few tangents while on the movie topic, although we were both still careful not to get too
personal. Belinda revealed 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 while I watched Andrews sing as Mary Poppins and
especially as Maria in The Sound of Music, I was a bit puzzled at this news that Belinda had needed “escape” at such a young age.
Her parents were well-to-do business executives, Catholics who attended Mass every Sunday, and I had assumed her childhood,
like mine, had been rather sheltered.
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 much more detail than I had meant to. Belinda listened intently, asking questions that
urged me on, but still I didn’t mean to spill my guts before our friendship had even officially begun. When I finally finished my
story, I suggested that we both needed to get back to our work, adding, “I’ve been boring you, but thanks for listening.” She
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 upon hearing those words. 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
resumed our discussion.
My second inkling that nineteen-year-old Belinda was not as innocent and unworldly as her youthful appearance suggested
was her remark 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 coke
addiction. I tried to ask a few careful 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 a peaceful half-smile curled her lips.
I added matter-of-factly, “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,” and she nodded 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 this 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 worked to underscore for me the 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. And even more incredibly, our talk continued 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.
Gathering up our book bags and locking the office door, we walked downstairs, where we stepped outside into a gorgeous
early-May Louisiana evening. As we started down the sidewalk, Belinda took a cigarette out of her bag and lit it up in the casual
but unmistakable hurry of an addict needing her fix. I jumped slightly, simply out of surprise, then explained, “It seems like
smoking would be one of those things that people your age do that you thought was stupid. It doesn’t bother me or anything, but
it just seems that way.” Shrugging her shoulders and muttering something about having started when she was twelve, she put the
cigarette out after just a few drags, and I forgot about it completely. We had more important things to talk about on this magical
night.
Being outside in the fragrant spring air, and actually in the process of doing something a tad forbidden—socializing while still
teacher and student—must have given both of us a touch of spring fever, because we moved promptly from sharing our pain in
my office to cavorting gaily down the street toward the grad-student apartments where I had a single. As we rounded the corner
to my door, I tried to prepare her for the mess, telling her that when I had been her age, my roommate and I had had the neatest
room in the dorm, but that now—“Oh Hamlet, what a falling-off was there!” We giggled like schoolgirls as we opened the door
and spilled into the 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 the implication of her reply 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 launched into an exaggeratedly soulful recitation of Keats’s Ode on a
Grecian Urn, something I had done in the mirror 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, we
discussed briefly my favorite line, and Belinda agreed with me (and Keats) that Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are
sweeter. With that, I 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.
Things took a more serious turn about an hour later. Belinda and I were sitting facing each other in the middle of the orange-
and-brown diamond pattern rug, and she was talking about how her career-oriented parents had inadvertently neglected her when
she was growing up because they were so busy trying to keep track of her troubled sister. She mused that 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.” At that, tears welled up in her eyes.
My instinctive reaction was to reach out and gently take hold of her wrist. My own childhood having been the exact
opposite of this, I found myself squeezing and caressing Belinda’s wrist and 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 were not going well with Audra, and I began to hope
she would break away from that relationship and take up with me.
I didn’t hold onto her arm for long, but over the next hour or two, she talked more about her troubled childhood and
adolescence. She said that when she had fallen in love with Ashley, and had that love returned, it was the first time in her life that
she had felt that anyone cared about her. She had been happy, she said, for the first time ever. But then, after they had been
together for almost a year, Ashley left her at the beginning of their junior year of high school for a classmate of theirs. Belinda
said that the pain was so severe that she reacted by retreating into a strange mute state, where she did not speak—to anyone
about anything!—for a solid year. Her parents took her to various psychiatrists and psychologists, but no one was ever able to
get her to speak, until finally one day she simply “woke up” as if from a dream, and began to speak again.
Belinda said that during the mute 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. She said that she was “somewhere
else” during this time, and that the one time she did “come alive” and speak 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,” which addressed the beloved who had broken her heart. “Black
burning eyes still linger there,” it began (as I learned the next week when she gave me a copy), and continued through five
chilling stanzas, ending with “Farewell to winter, my breath now snow” as the speaker prepares to enter the tundra. The whole
class had been transfixed, Belinda said, and had applauded when she finished. 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 her hand in both of mine and made some kind of
earnest statement about how she didn’t deserve such a loveless lot in life.
Shortly after that, I had some reason to get up and leave the room briefly, and when I started back toward Belinda, my heart
leapt in my chest to see that she was going out of her way to keep her hand in the 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 suddenly I realized that she was saying
nothing in response. Emphatically refusing to speak, she just stared into my eyes even more intently than she already had been,
exerting a magnetic pull for me to do the same back to her.
I doubt she was familiar with Donne’s poem The Extasie, but it was as though she was having us re-enact it ourselves. The
speaker and his beloved spend a whole day in silence with their eyes and hands locked together, but with no other physical
activity, 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 that they do have a point; it
was awkward at first, but it also felt more wonderful than anything else I had ever experienced. So I followed Belinda’s lead,
returning her deep gaze and occasionally shifting my gentle but firm grip on her hand. We did this for about twenty mystical
minutes before returning to more normal interaction.
It was 11:30 that night before 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 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 take a nap, so I put the key under the mat so she could let herself in. I didn’t really think I’d be able to sleep
knowing she was coming over, but I wanted to demonstrate the profound trust I was already feeling for her. And, being just a bit
sleep-deprived, I did doze off before she got there. The sensation of awakening to her standing shyly beside my bed was thrilling.
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 in pleasantly close proximity, and as we talked, I happened to notice 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 with
desire to help this defenseless creature escape the painful elements 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 instantly that she had sort of a complex
about not being deemed a grownup, so I added, “That doesn’t mean you’re young, everybody has it!”
The little half-snort of delight that Belinda made in response truly gladdened my heart. Her acceptance of my TLC made me
feel that she was willing to accept some of the love that I had such a surplus of. I had a deep need to give that love, and I soon
began to see that God had put Belinda and me into each other’s lives because of our complementary needs and temperaments.
It was 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 in a more or less chaste manner, like in our Extasie session forty-eight hours earlier. But
during a lull in the conversation, she withdrew her hand from mine and then grasped it again, this time with our fingers
suggestively interlocked, which she sealed with a squeeze. My heart skipped a beat, I was so unaccustomed to my attraction to a
woman actually being returned. 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 had to reserve for her relationship with Audra, which I understood she was
trying to gradually put an end to, 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 and the admiration and respect that we felt for each other continued to be “off the planet,” to use Belinda’s
expression. So I didn’t feel any jealousy about Audra or any urgency for Belinda to hurry up and break it off with her. 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 Belinda helped me pack and clean the place, or rather
wanted to help me except I wouldn’t let her because I knew I wouldn’t get anything done if she did. But once I finished, I did let
her take me out to dinner at her favorite restaurant, after which we came back to the packed-up place and shared the one very
narrow twin bed for the first time we stayed overnight together.
The next morning, Belinda slept till past nine, which she pronounced super late for her. “I’m just glad to see you slept so
well!” I told her with a smile, secretly hoping that it was because of me that she had felt relaxed and content enough to slumber
for longer than she usually did. A week or two later, during one of our marathon long-distance phone conversations when I was
back home in Jackson, she said as much herself, which I took as confirmation that I was meant to “save” her from Audra and
the other unpleasant aspects of her young life.
One evening a week wasn’t much to see each other, I know, but the rest of the time, 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 weren’t quite as numerous
but were still substantial. Most of the time we talked during the day when she was at work at Schroeder’s, where her mother
was general manager, and soon everybody at the “Big S” knew about this new friend of Belinda’s whom she talked to through
the TDD relay, saying “GO AHEAD” at the end of each utterance. (That practice is necessary because the two people have to
take turns talking so an operator can type out what the hearing person says for the hearing-impaired person to read on a screen
on their special phone.) Belinda told me that everyone who had known her forever commented on how happy she was.
In one of those phone conversations, she had occasion to tell me, “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 responded. “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 isn’t bothersome to 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 petition God for anything at all, primarily because (for once) there was nothing I wanted to
petition him for. Moreover, what was happening was so far beyond my wildest dreams—and my strongest prayers—that I was,
for all intents and purposes, in shock the first two weeks. I remember telling Belinda that she was causing me to lose my
bearings, and that included my relationship with God, although I didn’t exactly realize that at the time. I only knew that it felt as
though my tether to the earth had been cut so that I was floating where I used to walk and run.
This 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 previous beloved; rather, it was the mere fact of the excitement of the budding relationship and how fantastic it felt for my
feelings to be returned so consistently. I had never done this before because everyone else I had ever had feelings for had either
been straight or at least not comfortable with the idea of being gay. Even though I wasn’t in love with Belinda, I felt enough to
where that didn’t matter. Some of the time I did feel intensely attracted to her, and the rest of the time, I didn’t mind that I didn’t,
because she seemed so appropriate for me in so many ways. And I allowed my excitement over that fact to pre-empt my
communication with God. I did remember to thank him a few times, but that was about it.
About three weeks after exam week, Belinda and I even signed a lease for an apartment together in Baton Rouge, which had
been all her idea, part of her plan to let Audra down gently. I would still be there only two nights per week, but I did need a place
to stay since I no longer had the campus pad. She would have the apartment to herself the rest of the week; it would be her first
taste of independence after having shared a place with her sister for her freshman year.
But that week and the next one were not as thoroughly idyllic as the first two had been, not only because of complications
presented by Audra and their relationship but also because Belinda was starting to show flashes of an inner disconnect. Instead of
the high-minded and compassionate manner I had become accustomed to, she would now often be in a cynical mood, which I
supposed was due to her sister’s influence. In this mood, she would spew out statements such as “It’s a crock of shit, Sara” in
response to my having brought up the subject of psychotherapy, or “Payback time!” as an explanation for something she or
Audra had done to one another in their quarrels. She also did some drugs regularly with Audra, as she always had, although I
didn’t know that at the time. (She didn’t lie about it, it just never came up. She had spoken of drugs only in relation to her sister’s
habit.)
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 that she was merely going through the motions with those affectionate actions. It seemed to
me that she was struggling with a classic case of young-adult identity crisis, unable to 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, which I believed would
become a reality one day, and about other fulfilling occupations she might pursue as her day job. And one of her typical phone
sign-offs had been “Be a good human being.” But now it appeared that the radical change of which she had spoken was simply
too much for her; she wasn’t always able to be that good self, the one she had first presented to me that rapturous night when
we bared our souls to each other in the middle of my grad-student-apartment floor.
You’re wondering, why didn’t I pray now? Well, all I can say is that at this point I was in denial that I needed to. I kept
thinking that suddenly things would be magically OK again, as they had been during those unbelievable first two weeks. I guess I
probably did try to pray some, but, as had been the case during the idyllic first weeks, I didn’t focus or concentrate. I don’t think
I really communicated with God about the problems at all. I was simply so blown away by the whole experience that I didn’t
even try to get a grip on myself or regain a vital connection with him. In hindsight, I suppose I could have, but I didn’t. It was a
perfect example of how earthly happiness can blind us to the need for continued prayer.
In any case, just before we were supposed to move into the apartment, Belinda was suddenly unavailable to me for a day or
two over the phone. Then, when I finally did get ahold of her, she was distant and spoke about the apartment arrangement as
though we had never planned to be anything more than roommates. In actuality, we had never discussed the terms of our living
arrangement, and in those last two weeks, during Belinda’s period of occasional cynicism, we had not discussed her supposed
breakup with the demented Audra. I had assumed she was still planning to end that relationship, but that assumption was
becoming less tenable with each passing day. 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, or that we would otherwise find our harmony
again. So I did move my things into the apartment as planned, but after just one anguished and 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 in order to avoid awkwardness or 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 go back to her identity crisis.
So the next day, tired and numb, I loaded my things back into my car before driving back to Jackson. I decided I would
contact Belinda periodically, just in case the old Belinda did return, and also because I couldn’t fathom not having even the
slightest thread to hang onto so soon after the bliss of exam day and the magical time that had followed.
With this abrupt end to what I had wanted my whole life, boy was I in pain. I searched for answers in a way that I hadn't
done since my twenties, talking 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 now
I was finally able to make sense of the opening sentence, “Life is difficult.” Gradually—very gradually—that masterpiece of
psychology and spirituality led me out of my darkness and into a whole new way of looking at the world.
Before I had begun to apply Peck’s teaching to my situation, I prayed plenty about Belinda, but always on my own terms.
All I wanted was for things between us to go back to the way they had been. Intellectually, I knew that change was an essential
ingredient of all life, but I hoped I could somehow stave it off in this and other important areas of my life. However, when I tried
to petition God merely for the resumption of Belinda's affection, I found nothing but a dead-end street. When I tried to ask, “God,
how could she do this? Please bring her back to the way she used to be,” he was completely silent, seemingly dead to my efforts
to reach him.
This wasn’t surprising, since I knew deep down that what I was asking for was not worthy of God's help, at least not in the
form I envisioned. I was miserable. But I still believed in him, and believed he had my best interest in mind, and believed he was
still there to answer my prayers, so I kept on contemplating what might be the meaning of my pain. And on that basis, strongly
guided by Peck, whom I reread again and again, I finally started to get it through my head that the purpose of life is spiritual
growth, and one impetus 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.)
This tremendous piece of wisdom enabled me to accept and even in a sense welcome the loss of Belinda because I knew the
pain would, if I handled it right, eventually result in my own greatest happiness. Since I was now making the fundamental
decision to learn and grow from the pain instead of sitting around complaining about it, and since such growth is the key to the
deepest possible happiness and joy, then it followed that the loss was going to ultimately lead to my experiencing such joy, as
long as I kept my faith.
As I began to understand this overarching truth, I continued to pray for Belinda, but in a radically different manner. “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.” And then I bowed my head, taking deep
breaths and exhaling slowly, imagining myself surrendering 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, and went on sending up these petitions, at least daily, for Belinda’s growth.
Before you go applauding my nobility, however, I have to admit 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.
Sometime during my reading of Peck, I had an important “aha” moment. What I suddenly realized was how the whole idea
of petitioning God for changes in our circumstances fit together with Peck’s thesis of pain-induced spiritual growth. Since God
lets bad things happen to us in order to stimulate us to make the choice for growth, it follows that if we want him 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 him with
faith to change the circumstances, he will be glad to. But if we ask him to change our circumstances without seeking to
transform ourselves accordingly, then he’s 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 answer I was searching for, as well as the last big piece to the puzzle of successful petitioning.
I had known about the forgiveness requirement for years, but now I saw that other types of transformations may also be
necessary. Forgiveness, at least for someone with an irritable and disdainful streak as wide as mine, seems to be a universal
prerequisite for getting prayers answered, but any other changes of heart or habit that happen to be connected to the particular
request are called for too. You identify these by listening to God and your conscience. That’s the main purpose of the petitioning
dialogue.
Armed with this final piece to the puzzle, I went on about my business, while continuing to ask 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, she wrote me a letter saying 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 mark the return of the old Belinda, but it was a
start, and over the next few years, I wrote her pretty regularly and called her sometimes when I happened to be in Baton Rouge,
since she had said she hoped we could get together occasionally, just to catch up. She and Audra were still a tumultuous couple,
living together now, and Audra was jealous of me, so at Belinda’s request, a few times I met her at work and we went to a
nearby restaurant to have a place to visit.
These meetings were OK—not terrible, not great. Mostly, we talked about Belinda’s latest ideas regarding her career choice;
she was thinking she’d like to become either a lawyer or an FBI agent. There was also plenty of small talk, most of it not
particularly enjoyable, although I do recall one time bringing a smile to Belinda’s face by showing her an ad in the paper for a
musical performance by “Angel and the Bad Boys”—“Angel” being none other than the other TA Belinda had had for her other
semester of freshman comp. In any event, I learned little, if anything, about what kind of progress she was making in her
personal development. I just tried to be there for her, while continuing to send up my regular petitions for God to help her.
The two or three times Belinda asked me to come meet her at work 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 having broken up with Audra some months before, 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 and address. 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 copy editor, but I nevertheless took off one Wednesday morning, drove to LSU, used my former status as an
instructor to obtain Belinda’s schedule from the registrar’s office, and stationed myself on a staircase across the hall from the
door of 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, all I could do was lean against the wall opposite Belinda’s classroom and try to get a look at everyone
who entered. When the hall was just as suddenly empty again, I didn’t know whether I had failed to see her, or whether she was
cutting class that day, or whether something had actually happened to her, which was why she hadn’t received my letters. I didn’
t think it very likely that she was merely late, because back when I had taught her, she had always been either ridiculously early
or absent. But since I was already in the middle of stalking her, I sat on the stairs, opened my book bag, and started working on
my linguistics lesson plans. I thought I would sit there the entire hour and ten minutes in hopes that she was in the class and I
could catch 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 somewhat absorbed in my planning when my consciousness was
jolted by a tall, slim figure hurrying past me, practically scraping the opposite wall in a seeming effort to stay as far away from
me as possible. I looked up just in time to recognize those familiar, long ivory-colored legs underneath a barmaid’s black
miniskirt, and the even more familiar auburn tresses falling rather messily down the back of a pleated white blouse. “Belinda,” I
said quietly but urgently. “Belinda.”
She wheeled around, distraught, clutching to her chest some report she was apparently about to turn in. “I have to go to
class; I’m late.”
“OK, I’ll wait,” I replied, and she hurried on into the classroom, looking nothing short of shocked to have run into me in the
middle of what I later learned was one of her coke-fueled, twelve-hour workdays at the bar.
When class was over, I was ready with the clasp envelope of my returned letters, but she walked out of the room
accompanied by a male classmate as though she hoped to slip past me unnoticed. When I rushed and caught up with them, she
tried to rebuff me with, “Sara, I can’t talk, I have to go back to work NOW,” then turned and kept on walking, the guy dutifully
doing the same.
Following 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.”
It was then that she looked me in the eye for the first time. Her eyes, which appeared smaller and darker brown than I
remembered them, were somehow distant even in the moment of eye contact, as if she was really somewhere else, and her body
was 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 move rapidly toward the back door of the building.
The fresh-faced Belinda who just two-and-a-half years before would already be 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 whom 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 started to sort through what I had experienced and tried to decide where to go
from there. 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 more 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 contemplatively, I suddenly realized that there was one thing that I, in my powerlessness, could
do, and that was to pray for her as hard as I ever had. 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 for help. Taking several
deep breaths, as I exhaled I raised my arms above my head and 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!”
Truly, I think this act of choosing the good, loving attitude over the negative, destructive attitude is an existential decision
that we all have to make every hour of every day. And with God’s help, I made it over and over during the months that followed
the discouraging meeting with Belinda in the hall at LSU. Always asking him first to help me maintain my faith, I prayed for her
regularly, probably about 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
"EXCERPTS" FOR THE ENTIRE BOOK IN CONDENSED FORM.