First Chapters: What I've Been Up To (The first chapters of my novel Time and Time Again)

After the amazing success of the free/$2.99 ebook download of Talking to the Dead, I'm left dizzy with happiness to have so many people reading my work for the first time. I never expected such an intense and massive outpouring of love (and downloads) from readers.

Talking to the Dead was published in 2009. A quick check of the calendar reveals it is now 2013. So, where are my other novels? Why aren't they published? What's going on?

Publishing is a tough, tough business. It's hard to break into, and harder to remain. I made some choices and decisions that may have slowed down my publication journey, but they are choices I know were right for me, and I have not a shred of regret.

I've completed three novels since I wrote Talking to the Dead (I'm working on two more at present). My agent is working on finding homes for two of those novels. I have no idea if or when this will happen. The only thing I'm certain of is I'm a writer, too far gone to stop writing, too bull headed stubborn allow the passing years without additional novels published to get me down.

Well, maybe a little bit down some days. But that's when a cute guy named Steve, and two smoochie children hug me and make me feel good again.

In order to prove that I haven't been sitting idly low these many months and (gulp) years, I'd like to offer up this Chapter One (and two) of my novel called Time and Time Again. (Later this month, I'll post Chapter one of another one of my as yet unpublished novels: The Season In Between.)


                                            Time and Time Again by Bonnie Grove

"What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone, I do not know."-St. Augustine

Begin at the End

Gwen

 I imagine him splayed on the cold linoleum like a sacrifice. On his back, arms pushed to the sides, neck arching his head pushing into the floor. So thin I count his ribs, run my fingers over them like an instrument – quick and light over the keyboard of bones. I summon the pain of being ripped away, stitched back again.

This, of course, was before I’d heard his name, before I read his letters, before I loved him. Back then, all I knew was his descriptive, those two words – unbelievable as they were – time traveler.

Chapter 1

Gwen

If you were perched outside the second story window, a bird maybe, or a bit of paper pressed to the glass by a strong wind, there would be little to see; a massive mahogany table surrounded by twenty or more people clad in white lab coats, sitting, a morning meeting, and nothing more. There is an empty chair at the head of the table that no one in the room looks at. We study our cuticles, thumb through papers without reading them. We don’t speak. We are coiled, waiting, our faces arranged in bland expressions of professionalism.

Dr. Brad Johnson, The Center’s CEO and mouthpiece for its mysterious, international Board, strides in, fills the empty chair. Our silence intensifies.   

He gets straight to the heart of the meeting. “Doctors, the rumors you’ve heard are true. We have a time traveler in our custody.” The silence now swirls to furious murmur. I drop my glance, notice my hands are still, not warbling with excitement like my stomach. We knew, I think, but now we know. One of the doctors, Buster from nuclear science, smiles at me and nods he resembles a high school student having just received an A on a test. I look away.

Dr. Johnson makes quick work of the assignments – which doctors will take lead roles in the case. I ease back in my chair. I’m the head of the psychology department, and the only one qualified to work on such a case. Brad Johnson hands out assignment packages to first string doctors. I refuse to glance at Buster’s notes. Brad will give me a package; I’ll read it alone in my office where I can linger over the details. Most of the top medical staff have already examined the time traveler, Brad explains. Standard procedure. But before the meeting began I overheard rumors the time traveler was in bad shape. That he fought the guards once he found out he was being asked to stay. But I doubt those rumors. We’re scientists in this one-of-a-kind facility, studying people with extraordinary abilities and potential – we’re not the brute squad.

I feel a stab of pride as I listen to Brad talk about the time traveler, a miracle of humanity inside the same building where I’m sitting. This is what we are all about. We are scientific puzzlers who strive to understand what other institutions dismiss as unmanageable: a brain injured musical prodigy, a boy with sever autism who sees into the future, a girl with cerebral palsy who moves objects with her mind. We are the only facility in the world studying these people with a goal of unlocking the clues they carry within their bodies and minds - clues to the next leap in human existence. Maybe it’s a bit dramatic, but I view us as radical scientific humanists coming together on behalf of humanity in order to build a better world.

When Brad Johnson is done making assignments, he looks in my general direction and says, “Non-medical doctors will be working with this patient on an as-needed basis.” He has handed out all the assignment packages.

I flip open a notebook, pen poised pretending to write down every word Brad says. “As needed… meaning?”

“Meaning we’ll only call you, Gwen, if the medical team can make room for you. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

I sit higher in my chair. My department regularly runs tag team with medical departments, assessing psychological balance and health in the midst of their intervention and testing. Our work is done over a long term, but early assessment is critical. This is a curve ball. “Which is why I would argue the need for –“
            “I know what you would argue,” he says, scanning the papers in front of him. When he looks up, he addresses the entire room. He is done with our conversation.

Brad’s voice fades to a static buzz, a hum I can’t swat away. The room expands, then falls into itself, becoming so small it might not exist. I don’t move, I’m carved from a single tree, hollowed out – not a twitch, not even a subtle lifted brow. I won’t let them see my mortification. Beside me, Buster buries his head in papers.

Brad’s lips move, he talks on and on, humming and buzzing. Buster nudges me and I turn up the volume switch in my mind, Brad is saying, “We are implementing Extraordinary Person Protocol with the time traveler. Twenty-four hour security. Everyone is checked going in and out of his room. Authorization for patient access comes through me.”

The last time The Center exercised Extraordinary Person Protocol, EPP, was when the former head of my department, and my mentor, Dr. Aatoon Ahmed worked nearly exclusively with the autistic boy able to see the future. The EPP protocol requires round the clock surveillance, as well as alternating sensory regiments, restricted diet, and exercise routines. Every aspect of David, Dr. Ahmed’s patient, was tested, adjusted, examined, and altered over time. It was hard on David who, despite his gift, often didn’t understand what was happening to him. After several meltdowns, Aatoon stopped cooperating with the research team, insisting they needed to work with David, not the other way around. David was removed him from the psychology department and Aatoon pulled from his case. She quit The Center soon afterward. It still bothers me that I haven’t heard from her since she left.

Brad moves on, explaining the details of the case, and there is no further opportunity for me to plead my argument to work with the time traveler. Doctors follow along, reading through the packages Brad handed out. I clench my jaw, the pull in a long breath. Relax, I tell myself. I’ll meet with Brad privately later. He won’t leave me out, I’ll make certain of it. I will work with the time traveler, I know it. I feel the certainty of it in the center of my being.

Chapter 2

Morris the Time Traveler

You might guess burning jet fuel, the fury of disintegration, the heat of displacement— but it doesn’t feel like that, thank God. The sensation is unpleasant, but it’s small enough. The sting of the paper’s edge slid across the palm of your hand. Then it’s over and I’m back. Deposited in the now, but I know there is no such thing as now. At any moment I will be pulled or pushed through the narrow shiver of time again and open my eyes to find I’m inside another fully formed now which is not my now. I have no control, no say in whether I stay or go. If I did, I would never go at all. I would stay, plant my feet in the now I love best, the now I was born into.

That is what I would tell people, if I told people anything, about what it feels like to time travel. I would ask them, Would you like to move ahead in time, see your future? Really? Would you care to travel further into your life, discover the people and things you thought would always be with you were gone? Misplaced in the darkness between then and now? Would you like to revisit the dull moments of the past only to discover you’ve fretted away your best chances because you were frightened, or drunk, or simply blind to the things that make you happy? To replay your life in detail and still not be able to change a single moment. That is time travel – endless circling of my days and nights. Visiting and revisiting the places and people I’ve known. Always the same places.

There are rules, of course. Rules set in action by Providence, that unknowable, unsearchable God we all wonder about sometimes in the middle of the night, or crisis, or bad storm. I’m plucked at random, pulled through time for any reason, for no reason I can discern. But the rules by which I time travel are precise – grounding. The rules keep me sane.

When I’m yanked through time, I know I’ll arrive someplace familiar. The home of my childhood, one of the many dingy restaurants I’ve worked, my hiding place beside the river. Somewhere I already know. And when time is finished showing me whatever it is I’m supposed to see – and I almost never know what that is – I’m returned to the place I left from. As if time itself overflows with little red X’s to mark the spot. Always back to where I left, no matter how much I would like to be dropped off somewhere else – like paradise, or maybe a Broadway show. Not much to cling to, these rules. Most days, though, it’s enough.

But I don’t talk to people about time travel. I don’t ask anyone questions. It’s too impossible. How do you begin to talk about it? Hello. I like your shoes. I’ll have the tuna for lunch – unless I time travel and miss lunch. No. Better to be thought an unreliable jerk, a no-show-dish-dropping-forget-your-last-paycheck-you’re-fired loser.

I get headaches.

The one I have now is from the lights that constantly shine in my room at The Center. Lights they dim at night, but never fully extinguish. I crave darkness. They tell me they can’t turn the lights completely off – safety issues, they say. Whose safety? I’m in the basement near the morgue. Who will bother me? And then there is the lock on my door.  

The doctors tell me they will help me—cure my time traveling—and I want to believe them.  But at three AM, head pounding, stomach churning, from their damnable tests, I think they must hate me. 

 I am absconded by time, but my headache comes with me. I’m no longer in my room at The Center. I’m in the hall of my apartment building, leaning against the door to my apartment. At least I hope it’s my apartment – I don’t know the date yet, so I’m taking a chance. I cup my forehead with my left hand while my right feels for the spare key I keep hidden behind a loose board. I feel the cool metal of the key. This gives me a rough sense of when I am in time. I moved to this apartment five years ago, so I know I’ve traveled somewhere within those five years. I fumble with the lock and hope to find my former self at home.

Sure enough, there I am, me from the past, the very recent past from the look of me. We are wearing the same shirt, though mine is now frayed at the collar and cuffs, and faded, as if the future will be particularly hard on cotton plaid. He is clean-shaven, while I sport a five o’clock shadow. But time travel doesn’t wait for me to change clothes or shave. It is a cosmic come-as-you-are party held just for me.

My former self offers a small smile in greeting, unruffled to see himself standing before him. I often run into myself in my travels, it only make sense, given the rules, the way I pop in and out of my own lifetime. And I seek myself out, too, like I’m doing now. Why wouldn’t I seek out the comfort of my own company? There is safety in numbers, even when the both of us add up to only myself.

He takes me in, sees the look on my face, then switches off the side table lamp. I close the door and the room is in darkness. “A bad one,” he says, referring to my headache.

I feel my way over to the couch and sit down next to him. I am literally beside myself. “Bad enough. We’ll live.” I close my eyes and revel in the darkness. “So when is it?”

He says, “It’s March, 2010.” His voice is hushed, a result of the darkened room more than in deference to my pounding head.

My eyes have adjusted to the darkness and when I open them, I’m able to make out his shape beside me. “I’m in 2010, too. August, I think.” Time, a loose concept for me, has melted into itself. Lab tests at night, sleeping in snatches at odd times, and of course, the letters, have combined to make oatmeal of my memory.

He gets up. I hear him thump around in the tiny kitchen, which consists of a counter, mini fridge and hot plate on the far wall, less than ten paces away.

March. Tiny prickles of hope swim up my spine. “What day?”

He is beside me again on the couch. “Fifteenth.”

The Ides of March. How perfect. A sign from God if ever there was one. My heart picks up speed, adding volume to the throbbing in my head. I’m right on time. I remember this visit. I remember being him, that version of myself. I know what I’m about to do. Why I need to do it. He, on the other hand, has no idea.

He sits down again, hands me something cold—a soda —and I drink deeply. The caffeine rushes aid to my pounding head. Caffeine and carbs – my life bread. Without regular amounts I suffer headaches and depression. “What are you reading lately?” I ask my former self.

“Barth. Some Augustine.” I hear the shrug in his voice. It says, what else would I be reading? Who better for a time traveler to wrestle with than Karl Barth – granddaddy of reformed predestination theology?

I answer his question before he can ask it. “I’m reading the Psalms.”

He is quiet, then says, “The comforting ones, or the vengeful ones?” My answer will tell him plenty about my situation. Not the details, where, when, how. But my mood, my mental state. How I’m coping, and in turn, what he will have to deal with when he becomes me. The Psalms are my emotional reflecting pool. I discovered them at age ten, and though them, I began to believe that I—the time traveler—might be God’s own creation. When I found the Psalms, I found God, and this is the road of faith I have followed, however tentatively, ever since.

The sharp edge of my headache has slouched away. “Psalm fifty eight. And others like it.” I take another long pull of my Coke. My former self lets out a long whistle, but says nothing. He won’t ask why I’m reading imprecatory Psalms. These are the second set of rules, set in place not by Providence, but by me. My own grasp for sanity.

I never reveal the future to myself. I’ve learned the hard way how painful it is to know about something and not be able to change it. I know what it’s like to look at my future self and feel all kinds of disappointment. If you know too much about what is to come, you stop hoping for things. You stop making choices about your life. For a time traveler, continually confronted with what I will be like in the future, I have a ridiculous belief in choice. Free will is the greatest, most menacing gift of God. And it’s the reason I don’t tell myself about the future. I want to believe, and let myself believe, that my choices sculpt the future. That I participate in my fate.

Sitting beside myself in my darkened living room in March 2010, I am beyond tempted to toss my rule - and maybe free will - to the wind and tell my past self everything. Especially about her. I want to say her name out loud, roll the sound of her around in my mouth. When I am alone in my room at The Center, I lie on my bed and repeat her name like a prayer in some forgotten language.

But I’m here for another reason then to talk about her. Instead, I get up and turn on the light. I’m amazed to regard myself as I was before her. In the dim light, the former me is placid, unaware of what’s to come. A blank slate. A flash of near hatred for him stabs my mind. A version of self-loathing not found in psychology books. He is the me that is not yet a part of her. For the first time in my life I’m beginning to see the purpose of my time travels. Perhaps purpose is too strong a word. Use, maybe. They are of use to me now, as they have never been before. I’m growing confident that I can, by free will, bend time in my hands. “Get up,” I say.

He stands and, without needing to ask my meaning, he helps me push the couch to the far wall, clearing the center of the room so we can practice. My head still aches, but at least the pulsing is gone. Sweat and effort will hopefully drive it fully away. I pull off my shoes- a risk, as I might time travel before I can get them back on again. Even though I remember this visit from when I was him, I know I can’t trust even my memory. Time is impatient, fickle. We face off from opposite sides of the frayed rug, comfortable with our familiar routine. We make good fighting partners. Why not when there are two of us present?

He stands in his too-short jeans, white tube socks showing beneath the seam. I think: He looks like a dweeb.

 “Go,” he says.

I step back and raise my arms to shoulder level, pushing energy into my palms.

He grins. “How very Kung fu.”

I return the smile, but I intend to beat him. I’ve been practicing martial arts enough these days that I know I can bring him to submission, and make him do the thing I did not do when I was him. I will show him the strong parts of himself, hidden in the mirror of me. He needs to believe he is not the shrunken, hapless man he believes himself to be. Maybe then he can escape my fate. That is why I’m here. To open a fissure inside of time and help myself escape myself.

We advance to the middle of the rug, and he swings a fist at my face which I easily side step. I push a fist into his kidney. His eyes flash equal parts anger and confusion. In response to his question—how did I get so strong?—I come at him with a one-two side punch to his ribs and ear, knocking him off balance.

He retreats, shaking it off. “Take it easy. Start again,” he says, but I’m right beside him, throwing my fist at his temple.

He responds with a simple punch and I block it with my left arm. For a moment we push against each other’s weight. “I could break your arm.” I say, my face inches from his. “It’s my choice.”

He stares at our intersecting arms. “You can only break it if you’ve already broken it.” He pushes against me, and I feel myself weakening. I’m still not fully recovered, this burst of strength is temporary, and waning. I hide my rapid fatigue by grabbing his right wrist and twisting it. “I can choose right now. It doesn’t matter if it happened before or not. I choose in the moment.”

He slaps me across the face with his left hand. “All roads lead to Rome,” he says, twisting against my thumb and breaking my grip. “What’s with the Bruce Lee act anyway? We’re just sparring a little.”

I lunge at him and he leaps back, but catches his leg on the side table and summersaults backwards.

I step back, sweating heavily. I can’t keep this up much longer. I say, “Not all roads. We choose.”

He’s on his feet. “I’m here. You’re there – in October-ish.”  He‘s sweating, which makes me feel good. He says, “No matter what I do now, I’ll end up where you are.” He shrugs as if he’s made an impenetrable defense. “All my roads lead to your Rome.” It’s the same argument I have in my head nearly every day.

I bounce on the balls of my feet, preparing to finish this fight. “You can’t point to a random moment in time and call it a destination. You can’t say where I am now is an ending.”

“You’re being a jerk.” He attempts a roundhouse kick, aiming for my head, but he’s slow and I grab his ankle and pull his leg until his toes are level with the top of my head.

“I’m being a jerk because you need to pay attention. Change your mind, change your life.”

He is nearly doing the splits along the length of my body, but manages to punch me in the gut. I bend at the waist and drop his leg. I let out a cough. “Knowledge is the key to repentance.”

His body goes still. “Knowledge of what?” He squints, a habit of concentration I picked up at age ten when I began reading my mother’s family Bible. “What are you trying to say? Is there something I need to know?” Finally, he’s starting to get it. 

I point to the couch and we put the room back the way it was without speaking. There is no such thing as awkward silence when you are alone with yourself.

He grabs two more Cokes from the fridge. He tosses me one, and I think about where to begin. I’m suddenly afraid. What if I’m wrong? If I tell him about his future, it will change my past. If the past changes, what happens to me in my time? A sharp knock on the door interrupts my thoughts. My hand shoots out and grabs Morris’s arm. I put my finger to my lips.

He whispers, “It’s only Greg.” Greg is a fellow dishwasher at the latest in a string of low paying restaurant jobs.

I say, “I know who it is. He can’t find two of us in here. And Greg isn’t a friend.”

Greg knocks again, this time he calls, “Morris? You there buddy?” The walls are paper-thin, he probably knows Morris is home – maybe even heard us thumping around if he had been lurking before he knocked. I wouldn’t be surprised.

I grab my shoes and we move to the far corner of the room, our heads close together.  “He isn’t who you think he is,” I breathe. “He isn’t a dishwasher and he isn’t spending time with you because he likes you.”

“What do you mean?” He holds up a hand. “No. Don’t tell me.” But there’s no conviction in his tone.

I don’t want to throw his future at him all at once, but there’s no time to explain. I guess it’s now or never. “It’s his job to get close to people like you.”

“Who? – I don’t get it.”

“Has he told you about The Center yet?”

He nods. “He says it’s a research facility—the doctors are the best in the world and can help me.” He points to the door. “That’s where we are going now. I told him to meet me here.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange that a dishwasher at a greasy spoon knows so much about a high-tech research facility?” I know my former self had found it strange, but having a friend had been a good enough reason to feign blindness.

He says, “So, in your time these doctors don’t find a cure? They can’t help you?”

I hesitate, then say, “No. They say they are close, but-”

More knocking, louder. “Hey Greg. Hang on,” I holler at the door. “I’m in the can.” To Morris I say, “There’s no time. Just avoid him, okay? Quit the restaurant if you have to.”

He holds up a hand. “Wait. You’re saying Greg is some kind of – what? Bounty hunter on the look out for –“

“That’s a good way to put it.” I put my shoes on, balancing on one foot, then the other.

He shakes his head. “How would he know how to find me? I don’t exactly advertise what I am.”

“I don’t know how he found you. But it doesn’t matter – everything is about to change.” I push my former self into the shadow and walk to the door before he can ask another question. I open the door, “Hey man,” I say to Greg.

The look of annoyance slips from his face and he gives me a blubbery grin. He is grimly overweight for a bounty hunter. It’s probably what makes him so effective. No one would suspect him of a more sinister motive than wanting to eat your potato chips and drink all your beer. He says, “Dude.” The cool man shtick comes off lame to me now. But the me hiding in the shadowed corner is thankful for Greg. Largely because in his time he is otherwise friendless, deeply lonely, and verging on bitter. Not all that different from me now.

I slap a hand on Greg’s meaty shoulder, partly in greeting, partly to keep him from coming into the apartment. “Ready?”

Greg’s colorless eyes brighten. “Dude, I’m the one who’s waiting for you to get the lead out.”

My heart hammers and I fight to keep my face casual. “Let’s go.”

I close the door firmly behind me and fall in step with Greg. I’m on the way to her – I’m a free man. I’ll find her, and we can be together, the way we’ve planned. That’s if I don’t travel before we get there. Please God, I pray.

All rights reserved
copyright Bonnie Grove 2013

I Wish I Wrote Poetry

The first poem I read and 'got' was Keats' Autumn. I was young enough to be startled by my ability to grasp its meaning within meaning. I wondered, fleetingly, harrowingly, if I might possess something of the rhapsodist.

I tore off a few poems that I kept hidden at the back of a binder, which I carried with me always (in the loosest sense these could be called poems. In that they were short and had, if not rhyme or meter, at least emotional intent). I hugged them to my person, believing that they were made of my own dark matter. But when I went back and reread them, they were gibberish. Soggy and wrought.

I've shied away from writing poetry since. I doubt, with no measure of false humility, that I am clever enough for it.

Still, I have days I wish hard that I could write the stuff. That the thoughts bonking around my head could find their best exit inside a poem if only I could provide one. Not the thoughts so much as the feelings. That's the bit that clicked for me with Autumn. How the image of swirling leaves could make you press a hand to your throat, how the idea of approaching cold catches you short and makes you nod to yourself even though you've always told yourself that normal people don't stand around nodding to themselves about death.

I should be able to write poetry, don't you think? I'm a writer. I love sassy nouns, the back talking adjective, verbs that break off in the middle. Jukebox words that slide over one another, make you think there will be a crack up, a crash of meaning that veers off course just in time. Playing chicken on a too careful road. Those are the kinds of words I would use in any poem I might write. I think so. I'd make a bed for them, pick out their clothes for the next day, kiss them goodnight, and turn out the light. I'd let them hide out there in the darkness so like the unlit corner of a high school binder. And I'd wait a spell before checking on them again. To see what time might bend them into.

I bid you good writing.

The Time in Between

Vacation is a grand thing. A break from it all.

In the weeks since I handed my completed manuscript to my agent, I've had a bit of a relax (pronounced RE-lax). Taken time to unwind, let the story I have written seep from my veins (a difficult thing, really, since I lived in that world for two years and saying goodbye is slow and reluctant), and rest my poor brain.

I've been reading.

Heavens above there are wonderful books out there. So many great books. Anyone who tells you that all the novels being published these days are trash are either 1) reading the wrong books, or 2) a new writer at work on his/her first novel (the one that will 'show 'em all how it's done').

It's been a grand time.

But.

Another story seeps into my veins. I can't hold it back, I don't even try.

So, in the time in between the finishing and the (dear God please) publishing, there is writing. Another story. Another storyworld that forms in the peripheral urging toward creation.

The time in between is the time to pick up the pen.

Testimony of the Life of Refining Fire.

I usually stick to talking about writing on this blog - but the writing life is more than writing. It's actually about story. Everyone has one. Recently, I was asked to tell a part of my story to a local group of women. It was a daunting exercise for me to write my "mini-memoir". I'd like to share it with you.

~

I’m not very good at testimonies. Testimonies make me nervous. Especially my own. I’m not sure I’ll get it right. Seeing the forest for the trees, and all that. And where to begin? Worse – where to end? I’m not at the end yet, far as I can tell.

But I was asked to give a testimony recently, and in preparing for that evening, it dawned on me that my testimony has little to do with me. It has everything to do with God’s grace. That’s my story – wrestling with grace.

I don’t remember coming to Christ. When I was six I overheard my mother explaining the concept of hell to my older sisters (maybe they had done something terrible? The detail why is lost). When she was done, I went to my room and prayed for Jesus to come into my heart. My prayer went like this, “Please come into my heart, Jesus. I don’t want to go to hell. I don’t want to be anywhere you’re not.” And the Lord spoke to me, “I’m here.” A lovely beginning, don’t you think? It’s the sort of beginning that makes you think, everything’s going to be fine over here. She’s going to have a good life, stable, purposeful, focused, abundant.

Funny thing about abundant life. Jesus tells us He came that we might have abundant life – but it’s never the sort of life you think it should be – rather the abundance that Jesus brings turns out to be a very different kind of life than we think ought to be. And the sufficient grace that sustains that life He brings, turns out to be a very different sort of grace than we hoped it might be.

In his excellent book, When God Interrupts, M. Craig Barnes writes: “We tend to think of grace as the concession of a polite God who says, “Well, that’s alright Sweetheart; please try not to do that again.” Grace is whatever it takes for God to come and get us. It can be confrontational, frightening, disruptive, and demanding, but in the end it saves our life.”

This well describes my encounters with God’s grace. Confrontational. Frightening. Disruptive. Demanding. And I might add – wounding.

And that brings me back to my nervousness about my testimony – you see I don’t have the sort of testimony that tracks the healing salvation brings. From pagan to Pentecost. Rather, I have a testimony that tracks the refining fires of faith. And it isn’t the reassuring testimony that most of us like to hear. Certainly that I like to hear.

Let me preface my story with an excerpt from the story of the bible character I most identify with. Peter. Peter, the big-hearted, big-mouthed screw up of a disciple who talked first and thought second. The guy who, in the course of one afternoon Jesus bestowed the honor of being called The rock on which I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it – and, a few minutes later Jesus says to this same disciple: “Get behind me Satan. You are a stumbling block to me . . . ”
I get this guy – So let me share a passage of Luke that details a conversation between Jesus and Peter has lodged itself in my spine. Let me read you the version of this conversation that plays in my head when I read it.

Luke 22:31-32 We’re in the middle of the Passover supper. Jesus is saying and doing all kinds of confusing things. And he turns to this disciple and says, “Simon, (uh, don’t you mean Peter? The rock?) Simon, (He keeps calling me Simon. Why not Peter? I thought I was Peter now.) Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. (What? Why? Satan? Why are you even listening to Satan? Who cares what he wants?) But I have prayed for you, (Whew. Dodged that bullet. Jesus prayed. I’m home free.) Simon, (Oh uh. Still not calling me Peter) that your faith may not fail. (What kind of a prayer is that? Wouldn’t a better prayer be that Satan isn’t allowed to touch me at all? That his request to sift me like wheat be denied? Wouldn’t that be better than praying for my faith?) And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” (Turned back? Oh Lord, where am I going?)

In the spring of 1998 my husband left me for another woman. He came back to me, then promptly left me for yet another woman. It was a bad year. A bad year that had capped off a bad decade. I was in the middle of losing my marriage. Before that, I had lost my brother to mental illness and suicide. Before that, my son Justin to an irreparable heart condition. I’d lost three babies to miscarriages, and at age 29 my doctors had told me I had lost my ability to have children.

In the spring of 1998, I was feeling very much sifted like wheat.

My life had been stripped to the bone. By the summer of 1998, I would discover my lifesavings had been pilfered by the man who had promised to love me forever. I was broke and homeless. If I were asked to describe myself at that time in one word, the word would be: wounded.

One thing that more than a decade of loss had taught me was that asking why is never a good idea. It’s not a good question – because knowing why never solves the real problem. So when I prayed, I didn’t ask why, I asked where? Oh Lord, where am I going? Where is this terrible grace leading me?

You see, I still had faith. It was banged up, dented, bleeding faith. But faith nonetheless. A gift from this God who gives and takes. I didn’t understand Him, and I didn’t like His ways, but He helped me cling to Him anyway.

The other thing I had, was a small café I owned in an even smaller town. It never made any money – but it forced me to get up everyday and face the world. It forced my damaged faith into encounters with God’s disruptive grace.

I wrote a short story that was published a few years back called The Stuckville Café. I want to read you an excerpt, to give you a flavor of the grace I experienced in the midst of loss. I changed my name to Carol for the sake of the story – so as not to confuse the reader.

*
The town has a real name, but I call it Stuckville. Because boy, oh, boy, I’m stuck here. Plunked down in the middle of nothing-to-write-home-about by a husband who wanted a changed (so we moved here), then wanted a bigger change (so he left me). Now, I’m the soul proprietor of one rinky-dink café right across the street from the train tracks. I sell ice cream, espresso drinks and Mexican food. I know the combination sounds cock-eyed, but most everything about this town is cock-eyed.

Don’t think there aren’t times I think I should cut bait and run. But I suffer from the worst of human maladies – a double whammy of a total lack of a plan and an over-developed sense of responsibility. Like I said: stuck.

Gene’s a regular. When I say ‘regular’ I mean a constant presence. He’s old, like dirt. Or so he says. One day he says, “Carol, I’m old.” Me, diplomatic and tactful like I am, say something like, “Oh Gene, you’re only as old as you feel,” or some such gabber. He looks at me square on and says, “Woman, I’m as old as dirt.” And he pounds his cane on the floor. Now, I’m not old, but I’ve been around long enough to know that when an old man calls you “Woman,” and bangs things on the floor, its best to just smile and nod.

Gene comes in twice a day, after lunch and just before supper. Sure, he likes the coffee, but he’s actually coming to see me for medical treatments. Cancer has chewed away at his ear, and the doctors have taken most of the rest of it. They left a piece though, a ragged, festering gob of flesh that requires a salve to be applied three times a day. Unfortunately, Home Care only comes once a day, and because Gene is half blind, he can’t see to apply it himself. So he walks the block and a half from his house across from the post office to my café twice a day. When the place is devoid of customers, I apply cream to the stump of his ear with a Q-tip and tape new gauze to the wound.

One morning he presents his ear for my inspection and says, “What kind of a God lets an old man get cancer?”

I pull off the blood-encrusted tape and say, “The same one that let you get old as dirt.”

Gene grumbles, but I see a smile pull at the corners of his mouth. He says, “Who says there’s a God? You can’t see him. Can’t know him.”

I squint at the oozing blob of flesh that used to be his ear. It looks bad. Worse than yesterday. “The Bible says you can know God if you are born again in the Spirit. ‘The wind blows wherever it please,’” I quote. “’You hear it’s sound, but you can’t tell where it comes from or where it’s going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.’”

Gene pulls his eyebrows together until they form a V in the middle of his forehead. “Bible says that?”

I dab his ear. It smells terrible. “Yeah, a guy named Jesus said that. Ever heard of him?”

Gene smiles and nods his head like a bobble head.

“Hold still,” I say. “Did the home care nurse say anything about the way your ear looks today?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. When you see her tomorrow, you ask her about it, okay?”

Grumble.
*
There were others besides Gene who came into my café looking for ice cream and a friend. After awhile my café resembled a kind of therapy salon. Ragged people sitting in chairs, sipping coffee and asking questions about life that no one had answers to. In time we became a community of question askers, of puzzlers, of troubleshooters. And after awhile I came to see that my sad little café in the middle of a sad little town had become the center point of grace in my life.

I still see God’s grace this way. Much like my café where the door would open and I would never know what was coming in to face me – an opportunity to offer grace, like I did with Gene. Or an opportunity to receive grace from the hands of another. When I think of God’s grace, I think of the door in my café. An unseen hand on the other side, ready to pull it open, and God standing beside me saying, “Be ready for anything.”

Years have gone by since I owed that café. Good things have happened – I met Steve Grove. I married him. As for those babies I was never supposed to have – Our son celebrated his tenth birthday recently – our daughter turned eight a couple of weeks ago. They fill my life with noise and chaos. Each time they holler so loud it raises the roof, I first tell them to pipe down or else – then I thank God for the cacophony that fills my ears and the children who ruined all my plans for my life.

But within the blessings of the past eleven years, there have been terrible losses – again. Still. Life isn’t perfect. And I’m starting to realize that perfect isn’t the point. That it’s not about arriving “home free” where nothing bad can happen.

I’m beginning to see that the only faith worth having is the faith that stands. Against time, questions, loss, doubt, fear. And the only way I could hope to attain that faith is to have it tested – to be sifted like wheat. And all the while, banking on those prayers of Jesus that my faith will not fail, and when I have turned back, strengthen my brothers and sisters.