The Man He Never Was Page 20

  “Yes.”

  “With him. In him?” Her voice grew softer.

  “Yes.”

  “Now bring the door into that place, the one you stood before a few minutes past. Do you have it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you feel?”

  “Hesitation.”

  “What do you feel?”

  “I told you, hesitation.”

  “What do you feel, Toren? It is profitable to be honest in this place.”

  “Fear.”

  “Yes.” A laugh almost too soft to hear floated up to him. “Tell me more. Fear of what?”

  “Fear of not being able to open the door. Fear of opening the door and knowing I don’t belong. Fear that I’ve done too much to Sloane to be worthy enough to step over the threshold. Fear that being here will bring nothing and I’ll be trapped with Hyde forever. Fear that I’ll never be rid of him. That I’ll never get control. That he’ll destroy me.”

  “Yes, yes, yes.”

  Her gentle touch became like one of the forty-five-pound plates he used in the gym, and he staggered under the pressure and wanted to open his eyes.

  “No, keep them closed.” Eden’s voice was soft but filled with steel. “Stay with me.”

  “Okay,” Toren sputtered out.

  “Soon the weights will be lifted. Soon you will fly as you have always been able to do. Soon you will be free of the darkness. I promise you.”

  The pressure of her fingers lessened, then an instant later it was completely gone.

  “Is there anything else, Toren?”

  “No.”

  “Anything else? Are you sure? This place is safe. There is no law here, only greater law, the greatest law against which nothing else can stand.”

  “The law of grace.”

  “Yes, that is right. Keep your eyes closed just a little longer. Now, if you would, stop fighting those fears. The lies that batter you. Stop trying to talk yourself out of them, or to overcome them. Stop pummeling yourself for having them. Instead, embrace what you know in that place you are now. That the law of grace is the law that condemnation cannot stand against. That nothing can separate you from Christ. Nothing. For Christ is in you. And you are in him. In his power. In his mercy. In his kindness. All of it. You are in it. And all of it is in you.”

  “Yes.” Toren whispered the word so softly he doubted Eden could hear it.

  “Now, stay in that place deep inside you, and speak truth to your spirit. No shame for feeling the way you did. No shame for believing the lie. No shame for embracing the fear. Condemnation does not exist here. Judgment has no place. There is no atom small enough into which darkness can scurry and try to hide when light streams in, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Speak the words now, words of truth. Right now. Of power. Of grace. Of forgiveness.”

  As he spoke words of forgiveness, as he stopped fighting the fears, as he offered himself tenderness, Eden kept saying, “Yes . . . Good . . . That’s it . . . Yes, good . . . Well done, Toren.” Less than sixty seconds later the fears had faded—not disappeared—but settled so deep in his soul he couldn’t touch them any longer.

  Toren opened his eyes to find Eden smiling at him, her eyes moist.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “You’re my brother. Who wouldn’t get emotional seeing her brother take a step closer to discovering who he truly is? Stepping into the man he’s always been? Stepping away from the man he never was?”

  Toren laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re into that whole calling people in your life ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’”

  “Not really. I’m much more into calling others an extension of myself, but we’ll probably need to explore what I mean by that another time.”

  “Probably?” Toren arched his eyebrows.

  “Definitely.”

  With one hand she motioned back toward the door, and with the other she gave him a light shove. “Now go, go to the door and open it.”

  This time he spied another handle, much smaller than the one on the side of the door, embedded in the center of the panel. It was barely a half inch across and a quarter inch wide and blended in with the wood. But still, how had he missed it?

  He took the bigger handle in his right hand, pressed down on the tiny piece of wood with his left forefinger, and pushed. The door glided open a quarter inch, then stopped. Toren pushed again. Again an inch or two. He didn’t push hard each time. He didn’t need to. The door offered little resistance, but each time it stopped after moving only a sliver. Toren didn’t care. The door was opening.

  CHAPTER 34

  Toren pushed again. Again a few centimeters. As he continued to push, a thought struck him like a hammer. He wanted to know—needed to know—what was behind the door before he stepped inside. Not sweeping feel-good statements from Eden, but clarity. Not generalities, specifics. A fear of not being ready, not being worthy to step inside, rocketed through his mind.

  “What will I find in there, Eden?”

  “I told you already, Toren.”

  “I need more.”

  “You need less. It is a place where your mind will only hinder you. I see it in your eyes—you are letting the lies creep in. Do not. If you allow your mind to freeze you in place, you will never discover what your heart has come to find.”

  “What am I going to find in there?”

  “Is that a question of your mind, or your heart?” Eden asked, turning toward him. “Is that a question of a man, or a child?”

  “It’s the question of anyone who has a brain.”

  “In other words, it is a question of the intellect, from an adult.”

  Toren sighed. “Everyone standing in my shoes would ask the exact same question.”

  “A child would marvel at a room that promised untold adventures and mysteries. A child would want to explore this mystery. A child’s eyes would widen and his pulse would quicken with anticipation of what he would find if he stepped inside the room and began to explore.”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  Eden approached him. “And a child would not be asking a question of the mind—‘How is this possible?’ He would be asking, ‘Can I go in?’” She smiled at him and said, “Put your mind aside. Bid it sleep.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Good, good, I know you are.” Eden patted his arm in the exact way his mom had done when he was little. “When you’re ready, when your mind is at rest, tell me what your heart is asking, Toren.”

  “I already know. It’s exactly what you just said. I want to know if I can go in.”

  Eden narrowed her eyes.

  “But I don’t need to ask that question again, because it’s already been answered, because here, in this place, all things are permissible.”

  Eden dipped her head and motioned toward the door, but not before Toren caught the smile on her face. He started through the door, then hesitated. The place was holy. Too holy for him to step into. It felt like he was invading someone’s home or, at the least, a private museum.

  As if reading his mind, Eden spoke close behind him.

  “Go in.”

  He stepped over the threshold. Whether it was his imagination or something more, a hint of the tingling sensation he’d felt when he drank the tea pervaded his body. Peace. Joy. Love. Toren brought his other foot into the room in slow motion, then took in the room with all his senses.

  He was home. This was a place where God dwelled. As he turned to his left to study the room, he caught motion in his peripheral vision. He turned to find Eden standing a few feet from him.

  “You’re coming with me.”

  “For a bit.”

  “I sense the Spirit’s presence in this room.”

  “Or maybe you have put your mind away in such a manner that you are sensing what has been inside you all along. Christ, living inside you, you living in him.”

  Toren smiled and turned back to survey the room. It was larger than the octagon, at least forty fee
t by sixty. The walls were painted a forest green, and in the center of the far wall a fire burned. The floors were a dark wood, perhaps mahogany.

  Three windows were set into the wall facing the water. Two more windows were placed to the left and right of the fireplace. The glass in the windows was so clear Toren had to focus to be sure there was glass in the frames. The same wood that graced the door to the room framed the windows.

  In front of the ocean view, two wide brown leather chairs were angled slightly toward each other, providing the perfect spot to have an intimate conversation. Two identical wood tables with spiral legs sat next to the chairs, with large round candles in the center, burned about halfway down.

  But what captivated Toren more than anything else was what sat on the shelves built into the wall opposite the ocean. Carvings of wood and stone, more exquisite than he’d ever seen. Small paintings in watercolor and oils. Sketches in pencil that looked almost like photographs. Long and short poems recorded on light-brown parchment paper.

  “The sculptures, the carvings, the paintings . . .”

  “Spectacular, aren’t they?” Eden’s gaze meandered around the room, and she shook her head slowly as if seeing the offerings on the shelves and walls for the first time.

  “Truly,” Toren said.

  “I’m glad you like them.” Eden fixed her gaze on him.

  “You created all these things.”

  “Oh no, Toren. A few, yes, but only a few. My students have created the majority of them.”

  Eden glanced around the room again, satisfaction etched on her face. “I play with the layout, trying to find the perfect place for each creation. They’re all part of a tapestry that fits together when you look at the parts and when you look at the whole. It’s never complete, because a new piece is always coming in. Which I love. It’s a chance to exercise my creativity, even when I’m not creating, you understand?”

  He stared at Eden. The way she’d said “you understand?” wasn’t rhetorical. It was as if she really did want to know if he understood what it meant to use his creativity. As if she could read his thoughts, she followed up with a question that went to the center of Toren’s soul.

  “What kind of creativity fruit are you squeezing the juices out of these days, Toren?”

  “I’ve been working with wood for the past three years. It makes me come alive.”

  “Then my hope is you follow that path.”

  Eden strolled farther into the room and Toren followed. “And then, one day when you’re ready, perhaps you’ll create a piece for this room.”

  Eden spun as she finished the last word, and Toren looked into her eyes, eyes so playful and so full of affection, he couldn’t stop a laugh from spilling out of him. This was indeed a room of peace, joy, and the presence of the Spirit. If Eden told him he could stay here for the rest of his life, Toren would agree instantly.

  Toren wandered deeper into the room and spied another door at the back. How had he missed it? It led into a small room, not more than six by six, with one overstuffed black chair and bookshelves against three of the walls, all filled with books both large and small.

  A gold-framed picture hung on the wall to his left, a portrait of a man with dark eyes and long dark hair parted in the middle. A mustache extended beyond his cheeks. His countenance was at once playful and intense. Familiarity danced in Toren’s mind, but he couldn’t place the man. He slowly eased over to the portrait and studied the man’s face. Again Toren was struck by the mischievous look in his eyes, but also by the sadness behind them.

  He turned to Eden, who had moved to the center of the room, and asked, “Who is it?”

  “It would benefit you to meet him, I think, if it were possible. He shares your pain and your longing. The pain and longing in every son and daughter of God. But he never found the answer, from what I know.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Robert Louis Stevenson.”

  “The author of Jekyll and Hyde.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is his picture here?”

  “A reminder.”

  Toren took in the man’s eyes. “For him, the dark dog won.”

  “I’m not sure if he embraced who he truly was.”

  “But you’re going to show me how to destroy the dark dog forever.”

  Eden only smiled in response and motioned Toren out the door of the small room and to the chairs in front of the window. They settled into them, and he gazed out as the wind churned up whitecaps on the water. Eden steepled her fingers and rubbed her hands back and forth briskly a few times before speaking.

  “There’s a story the second Adam told about a son who asked for his inheritance before his father had died.”

  “The story of the prodigal son.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know the story. Well.”

  “Do you?” Eden put one hand up to her mouth as if to stifle laughter. “That’s encouraging to hear. Because I think that story tells us who your Father truly is, a truth I believe you need to understand. Possibly more than you do now.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good. Good.” Eden turned away from him and seemed to be staring at something far out on the water. “I’d like to ask you, Toren, have you dwelled on the part of the story that says the father saw his son when he was a long ways off?”

  “Maybe not fully.”

  Eden continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I like to think of the father pacing at his window, searching the horizon for the silhouette of his son every moment the sun provided rays to do that. I think of the father standing on the porch in the dead of night when all his household is asleep, straining his ears for the softest footstep on the fine dirt, straining his eyes as he peers into the darkness, wishing, hoping with all he has for his son to come home.

  “I like to mediate on the fact that when the father finally spied his son—which could have been years, for if the father was rich enough to have servants and men working for him, he certainly would have given the son enough to be gone for quite a long time—the father sprinted toward his son, that he fell upon his neck, and rained down kiss after kiss after kiss after kiss upon his son’s face and shoulders and head. I like to imagine the father wrapping up the son in his arms and giving him the fiercest of hugs as tears washed over his cheeks.”

  Eden paused and stared into Toren’s face with such kindness and understanding that a sensation of utter acceptance surged through him. Yes, acceptance. And passion. And love. From a father. A dad! Images of Toren’s father sliced through his mind. The scorn, the disgust, and, maybe worst of all, the indifference his dad had always shown him without a hint of remorse. All he’d wanted was his dad to say, “I’m proud of you.” Just once. He could have built a world around that. Created a belief that deep down his dad loved him.

  But he did have a Father who had given him all those things. He’d been there all along.

  “And then we come to the issue of sin, don’t we, my dear brother Toren? The son is destitute. He’s slogged his way back to his father, hoping, praying his father can find the grace to make him a slave. That is his greatest hope, that he could be a servant in his father’s house. It’s too much to ask, he knows it is, but it is his best and only hope. He’s prepared a speech, memorized it, probably rehearsed it in his mind a thousand times over the days it took him to come home. And as he gives it, dread and hope course through him.

  “How does the father respond, Toren? What does he say about his son’s great sin?”

  Toren stared deep into Eden’s eyes as a realization filled his mind.

  “He doesn’t say anything about the sin.”

  “Nothing? But doesn’t he say, ‘I forgive you, son’?”

  Toren paused even though he knew the answer, a chance for the reality of the story to sink into him. “No, he doesn’t.”

  “You’re right, the father does not. He never addresses it. His response is what? To call for his ring to be put on his son’s finger. His shout is for his
robe to be brought and drawn across his son’s gaunt shoulders. His cry is for the prized calf to be killed, for a feast must begin. The celebration cannot start too soon.”

  Eden dropped her gaze from Toren’s eyes but leaned in till their noses were almost touching. Her voice was now a whisper. “This is who your Father is, Toren. That is how he loves you. That is the way in which he longs to be with you. In celebration. Every day. A feast of delights. Every day. Everything he has is yours. Everything. His affection for you is beyond measure. His love for you is infinite. His mercy and grace are light-years beyond anything you can imagine that would steal away his love. His love for you is greater than the length and breadth and depth of the universe. Now. Always.”

  They sat in silence for an age, maybe two. Finally Eden stirred and said, “It’s time for me to go.”

  “Go?”

  “Yes, for me to allow you the gift of solitude in this place. Be with him. In speech and prayer. In song and silence. In imagination and wonder. In laughter and sorrow.”

  Two emotions immediately battled for supremacy in Toren’s soul. Exhilaration at what would happen if he were in this room alone, and a fear that he could be destroyed.

  “I don’t think I want to be in here alone.”

  “You will not be alone. The father of the story Jesus told is the Father, the Abba, the Daddy who is calling you to join him right now. His arms are open. He is inviting you into the house, to the table, to partake of the feast he has created for you.”

  “I get the story. I do. I get what you’re saying. But . . .” A nervous laugh popped out of Toren’s mouth. “It still feels a bit intimidating.”

  “You understand the story, but you don’t believe it. It seems too good to be true.”

  “Yeah.” Toren peered around the room. “God is that Father, but he’s also a consuming fire. Right?”

  “There is that perspective, yes.”

  “And the fire has always given me pause.”

  “I understand.” Eden nodded knowingly. “But while in one way God is such a consuming fire that no man can stand against it, he is also a place of such radical, unquenchable love that you’ll long to float as a speck in that ocean of love forever.