What Dreams May Come

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 4

Scott appreciated the extra afternoon service at St. Margaret’s Church. For starters, the parking lot after the other two services was too crowded for a pedestrian who didn’t want to get hit. Secondly, now Sundays were the closest thing to a true day off he’d experienced in years. Earlier that morning, after going through a few emails he knew he couldn’t put off, he’d popped in his earbuds and gone on a jog, with nothing but his thoughts and his Christian rock music to keep him company.

Sometimes he felt guilty. As if a missionary who ministered to nearly a thousand believers around the world should probably lead a more disciplined prayer life. He’d gone through spurts of praying off a list, but after a few weeks of asking God the exact same things for the exact same people, he found it impossible to keep sludging through the monotony. Besides, somewhere in the back of his head was the idea that the most effective prayers were spontaneous anyway. Whenever he went for his morning run, he set off with the best of intentions of spending that time with the Lord but inevitably wasted his mental energy daydreaming.

Usually about Susannah.

The music was his pitiful attempt to tune out her memory, but that was never as effective as he hoped it would be. No matter how high he turned up the volume, her voice was stuck in his head.

It was there this morning when his feet pounded the pavement, sending shock waves up his shins and radiating through his knees.

It was there now when the worship band at St. Margaret’s fired up their electric guitars and keyboard, when the music was so loud it surrounded him 360 degrees.

“Jesus, healer of my soul, comfort in my sadness.”

He heard the words, but all he could think about was that voice he’d listened to during those countless phone conversations.

Phone conversations long enough, intense enough that the sound of her voice would be forever trapped in his head. Playing and repeating like one of his grandfather’s broken records.

Telling him about that day when she was twelve — just a few years ago, really — when she’d received the call to become a missionary.

She was one of the lucky ones. Scott’s own path to the mission field was far more mundane. He was about to graduate Bible college with his two-year certificate and didn’t know what to do, so his professor suggested he attend the Urbana World Missions Conference, an event bringing together tens of thousands of missions-minded college students and young adults trying to hear God’s call on their lives.

Scott loved the Lord. Had loved him ever since he was a little boy sitting on his grandfather’s knee, listening to stories about Jesus feeding the five thousand with only a couple loaves of bread and a few fish. The stories were so real and his grandfather’s faith so strong that every time Scott caught a whiff of a certain brand of aftershave, part of his spirit was transported back to that day when he knelt by his grandfather’s bed and asked Jesus to forgive his sins and become the Lord of his life.

“Son, God’s going to do amazing work through you.” His grandfather’s voice was scratchy, strained after decades of preaching in churches and at old-fashioned tent-revival meetings. So gruff for a man that soft and lovable. “God’s going to do amazing work through you.”

Maybe it was a proclamation. Maybe it was just the kind of thing adults say to kids after they ask Jesus into their hearts. Either way, Scott wished sometimes his grandfather could see him now. Childish as it might sound, he wanted to make him proud.

“Calm the raging storms in me. Open my eyes and help me see.”

The words were simplistic. Scott had never heard the song before, but he could join in with perfect accuracy. He wanted something deeper, something to engage his mind.

Distract him from those omnipresent thoughts of her.

Sometimes he wondered if Susannah Peters existed at all. Was she a living, breathing person or simply an idea?

A phantom?

Sometimes when the disappointment grew too raw, too painful to endure, he told himself he’d made her up completely.

There is no Susannah Peters. She isn’t real.

After all, how well can you really know somebody who lives three thousand miles away? No matter how many hours you may spend every evening talking about missions, about theology, about the work of the Holy Spirit in your day-to-day lives, when you say good-night and hang up that phone, you haven’t been talking to flesh and blood at all.

You’ve been fellowshipping with a figment of your imagination. Because Susannah Peters as you think of her isn’t real.

So why is her voice in your head when you pray or read your Bible or schedule meetings at work if she doesn’t exist?

How can you miss her so much so that it becomes a physical ache? How can you mourn over losing someone you never knew?

How can you fall in love with a woman you’ve never even met?