The Prayer Closet

continued

When the last child had been inspected, kissed, and waved to the bus stop, Dale sank with a sigh into a chair. It seemed a cruelty to press questions on her now, but... how in the world did she manage a prayer life? Did she have a place apart somewhere - someplace away from pressures?

Yes, she said. "Come on, I'll show you."

She led me outside and around behind the barn. There, out of sight of the busy household, was a jumble of giant boulders honeycombed with hidden nooks. It was the hideaway of my childhood dreams. I could understand, I said a little enviously, how she'd feel close to God in such a setting.

"You'd think so, wouldn't you? But I never did."

I had asked, she reminded me, if she had a place to escape to, not if she used it. "At one time I did. I used to come out here a lot. I had the idea that prayer meant time apart."

But sitting here among the silent rocks, she'd heard only her own spinning thoughts. Why wasn't Linda eating? Was Dodie napping or getting into mischief?

"Then of course, I'd feel guilty because I wasn't praying. God seemed a million miles away, and I knew it was my fault."

Seeking answers, she'd joined a group of women on a three-day silent retreat at an Episcopal convent up in the mountains. In that serene and holy place God did indeed speak to her. And what he said was, Don't look for me here. This is where I am for those I've called to be nuns. For you, I am in the noise and the bedlam and the peas on the floor.

And that's where she'd found him, Dale said, ever since. We went back to the kitchen, where she showed me Scripture cards in a little loaf-shaped box. "My 'daily bread,' " she said. Instead of waiting for that imaginary free hour when she could read the Bible, "I need just a free second. While I wait for the cereal to boil I'll draw out a verse and memorize it."

Prayer had become a constant thing, she went on, woven through the day's busyness - driving the car, waiting for a child at the dentist. "Heaven, I've learned," said Dale, "is not up on that mountaintop or hidden away among the rocks. It's not me getting off to be with God, but God beside me every hour of every day."

Heaven every hour. Even an hour of physical pain?

I think of another car trip, this one in Germany, when I was aware of existing in two seemingly incompatible worlds at once. It was five days before Christmas, 1973. Our college-age kids were flying over to join us for the holidays in Europe where John and I were working. Their flight was due in Luxembourg at 4:00 that afternoon.

And I woke up that morning in Munich, 300 miles away, pain stabbing my chest and arms, and a 104-degree fever. There was no postponing the drive to Luxembourg: the flight's arrival was our only contact point. "We'll stop at the first town we come to after doctors' offices open," John said.

He lowered the passenger seat of our rented Renault to almost flat and half carried me to the car in the predawn dark. Head throbbing, muscles burning, I felt every bump in the pavement, every turn of the wheels as he steered through the streets of the city and onto the highway.

And then the sun came up.

During the night, a freezing fog had settled over Germany. Every tree limb, every bare branch and twig, was wrapped in a sheath of ice. Lying nearly prone, the tops of the trees lining the autobahn were all I could see.

But these were not shapes of wood and bark! They were trees of fire, dazzling diamond bursts of sheer color. Overhead they passed, a never-ending stream of flashing rainbows ... more colors than I knew existed ... more splendor than my mind could grasp.

Hour after hour, mile after mile, the celestial ice show continued. John, eyes on the road and German drivers, could only steal glances at the glory erupting around us. But I lay bathed in it, feasting on light and beauty and joy.

And hurting. That was the mystifying thing about the experience. I was in as severe pain as I could almost ever recall, sick to my stomach, too, in the rocking car, physically miserable. And yet simultaneously, on a totally separate level, entranced, delighted, supremely happy.

We stopped in Augsburg, where a doctor diagnosed pneumonia and put me on medication that by evening had lowered the fever. But all that long day, two realities, misery and bliss, coexisted.