Author: Natalie Hart

You are the hero of your own life

~ Natalie Hart ~ 6 Comments

Given the title of this post, you may be expecting a rah-rah go you, you’re awesome, you’re the star, so get out there and do it! kind of post. Not from me. Those words terrify me. I’m the hero?

Hear these encouraging words by Lisa Cron about the hero from Wired For Story (substituting hero for protagonist):

…as much as you love your [hero], your goal is to craft a plot that forces her to confront head-on just about everything she’s spent her entire life avoiding. You have to make sure the harder she tries, the harder it gets. Her good deeds will rarely go unpunished. Sure, every now and then it’ll seem like everything’s okay, but that’s only because you’re setting her up for an even bigger fall. You want her to relax and let her guard down a little, the better to wallop her when she least expects it (p.169).

Constantly upping the ante gets the [hero] in shape, which is crucial, since the final hurdle he’ll have to sail over will be impossibly high. The more you put him through before he gets there, the better (p.174).

…it’s your job to dismantle all the places where your [hero] seeks sanctuary and to actively force him out into the cold…a hero only becomes a hero by doing something heroic, which translates to rising to the occasion, against all odds, and confronting one’s own inner demons in the process (p.183).

Leaving aside the issue of whether you believe there is an Author of your life, and whether that idea pisses you off or comforts you, the above sounds like life to me.

Heroes are always in the middle of the action. Bad things happen to them and to people they love. Things feel out of control. Heroes are forced to confront their fears, their deepest assumptions about themselves or others; sometimes these are confirmed, often they’re challenged. Some challenges may be exhilarating, others painful and sad.

In the middle of the situation, heroes are always thinking, “things can’t get any worse,” or “this has got to be the bottom,” and “after this, things will get better,” and that’s rarely the case. In fact, it’s usually the sign that things are about to get way worse. (Kind of like when another character says, “trust me” — always a bad sign.)

Heroes are not alone. There are plenty of people in heroes’ lives who are ready to help and to hinder. But which is which? Is the advice from the hero’s dearest friend good, or is he a gatekeeper, who, out of love (or his own fears), wants the hero to stay the same/safe/like him? Does the comment from someone the hero don’t like contain the truth of her situation, a truth she needs in order to move ahead?

Moreover, heroes don’t correctly interpret their trials. They follow the wrong leads or make bad assumptions or miss the red flags (and the green flags!) in front of them, or they listen to bad advice or keep getting in their own way. No matter what kind of villain heroes are fighting, heroes are often their own worst enemy.

Clarification: heroes don’t correctly interpret their trials when they’re in the middle of them. A particular struggle may take days to resolve, or months, or years. The struggle may even be chronic, and heroes can only change their thoughts and feelings about it. Heroes can only draw the proper connections by looking back over time, sometimes in the middle, but often not until a situation has been resolved.

Isn’t this just like life?

For example

Let’s say you’re an out-of-work hero, and all you want to do is find a job and make a living. In fact, you need to find a job so you and your family have food and shelter. You start out with a plan, and it’s a good one, so you execute that plan. Some heroes will be hired at this point, but if your plan doesn’t land you a job, you cast your net farther afield, maybe you take what you think of as bad jobs, maybe you stop talking about your search, maybe you talk about nothing but your search, maybe you get even more disciplined, maybe you give up and get depressed. Maybe you lose your house and have to live on friends’ couches for as long as they’ll have you. Maybe you have a few close calls, when you’re in the top two or three for a job that you’re sure you’re perfectly suited to, but you don’t get it. Maybe you don’t even get a call-back for jobs you should at least get an interview for. Maybe some job-related, one-time mistake keeps coming back to bite you. Maybe it’s all a series of bad breaks, but maybe there is something wrong with your skill set or your self-presentation. Maybe you need to change careers, or give up on the current dream and exchange it for another. You don’t know and probably can’t recognize the series of events, conversations, connections that land you that job — until you land that right job that allows you to shine.

Looking back, you can trace your story and see how it made sense, how one lesson lead to another which lead to another which lead you to take one action that seemed so tiny at the time, but it was the thing that led to another thing that finally tipped the scales. In the middle, it’s a horrible, confusing, frustrating mess that makes you doubt your value to the world.

Let’s see:

* Places where you seek sanctuary dismantled … check — you have no job in a society that highly values paid work. Perhaps you had to swallow your pride and accept help from family, friends, the government, charitable organizations. Perhaps all the above turned their backs on you.
* Actively forced out into the cold … check — you kept looking, kept putting yourself out there, kept trying to figure out what all this might be telling you.
* Rising to the occasion, against all odds … check — you followed every possible lead and personal insight you could.
* Confronting your inner demons in the process … check — your skills, dreams, sense of value and purpose were all in question. You probably had to overcome some assumptions about yourself or others, or how easy things should be “when they’re right,” and work through deep-seated fears.

In other words, you’re the hero of your own life. It may look like a horrible mess, and you might follow some red herrings, but some of those red herrings may give you precisely what you need to resolve your situation. You might hit your “dark moment when all seems to be lost” many times.

But you’re the hero. Your change drives the action. So keep at it.

That’s what I’m saying to myself these days about my writing and publishing struggle. Things were pretty dark last fall and early winter. I put my best work in years out there, a project I was deeply passionate about, and I got nothing. Not one request for a full manuscript. And you know why? Because it wasn’t good enough. My recent reading of Wired For Story reminded me of an off-hand comment my mother made to me about the main hero of my story: David didn’t change. His situation did; his life was very dramatic. But he, himself, remained static. That’s not good.

Lisa Cron states, in no uncertain terms: “Story is about change, which results only from unavoidable conflict” (p.124). And, “the why carries more weight than the what. Think of it as a pecking order: the why comes first, because it drives the what” (p.152).

So I need to tease out David’s character arc. It won’t be hard; I already have it all planned out. The seeds were in the story the whole time. But I needed that dark period to make me keep seeking answers. Will this revision be the one that tips the scales towards publication? I have no idea.

But I’m the hero. My change drives the action. So I’m keeping at it.

You keep at your struggle, too, whatever it is. We’ll form a hero support society. We need all the encouragement we can get.

 

 

 

Ask the tough questions and then get to work

~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

Last month, I was singleminded about getting my physical house in order, and only seven of the original 50some bulleted tasks remain. I did it. But I didn’t do it for its own sake. I took the month off from all my other obligations so I’d be set free to throw myself into my writing as I haven’t in several months.

So yesterday, I was terrified.

I’d had the build-up. Now it was time for the pay-off. And I choked. I retreated for the entire day in laundry (9 loads, no joke), groceries, bill paying, household filing, and kid wrangling. My heart thumped hard and I was as jittery as if I were about to go on stage to dance. All day. Because I had to return to normal life after my big task was over. No more complete focus on one thing; now I have to negotiate all the needs and schedules and emotions and move ahead.

I have a number of friends going through something like this, but on a far deeper level. They are past the intense period of caring for a dying loved one, which has such a purity of purpose that normal life can’t hope to compete. They’re past the all-consuming period of public grief, when family and friends gather around and cry and laugh and hold each other up. They are at normal life. Without the woman they love. They’ve got to go back to negotiating a variety of needs and schedules and emotions, all while being constantly reminded of who is missing, because she was part of normal life, too, once.

That’s hard. Way harder than my task.

But none of us can avoid it. Oh, we can. There are all kinds of ways to avoid how hard it is. Let’s use the 7 deadly sins as an organizing factor:

Lust, gluttony, and greed: throwing yourself into an other (whether person, food, drink, or thing) to distract you from what you’re feeling.
Sloth: this one can be either checking out and retreating, or becoming so busy that you flit on the surface of everthying.
Wrath: it’s easy to let everything feed your sense that the world has wronged you, especially when you have been horribly wronged; anger at yourself fits here, too.
Envy: after all, it’s so easy for all those other people (is it?).
Pride: the temptation to act as if everything is fine, that you’re handling it all, that it isn’t hard so everyone will look at you in awe and wonder.

I can check the “done it” box in each of those categories. The flitting busy-ness version of sloth, oh, just yesterday. I’ve even consciously embraced some of them as a temporary coping or reward strategy, and encouraged others to do the same — temporary being the key. They don’t work as long-term strategies.

All of which keeps bringing me back to the homily given at my friend’s funeral last week, in which we were encouraged to ask the tough questions, and then roll up our sleeves and get to work.

In my anxious state, what are the tough questions?

What am I so anxious about?
Am I afraid that the work will be hard? That what I produce will suck beyond my ability to fix it? That I’ll never be published? That I’ll never validate all these years of working at my writing? That my husband’s stress as the sole breadwinner will have been in vain?
That if I decide to self-publish, nobody will buy it?
That my discipline won’t be enough?
That I’ll drop right back into the spiral of discouragement and frustration and self-recrimination I wallowed in this fall?
That I can’t untangle the lack of concrete success from my sense of self-worth?

Now I’m getting somewhere. That last one brought tears burning at the back of my eyes. What makes me worthy? Is it publishing success? Number of page views on this blog? Acclaim as a school volunteer? A clear sidewalk and driveway, even though I shovel by hand? A well-run household? Thriving children? Financial stability? Following through on my intentions? All of the above? None?

I’m a religious lady, and I know the “right answer”: I’m a child of God. That is enough. Should be enough. Also, I’m not worthy. I cannot earn what is most important: it’s all grace.

But how to get to a point where the above answers feel inspiring and freeing? The only strategy I have is to not shy away or distract myself from asking those questions. Repeatedly. And then to roll up my sleeves and get to work. To do Barbara O’Neal’s 20-minute win. To keep the momentum going. To look for places to go deeper with my characters and my writing. And myself. To trust my vision. To keep up my spiritual practices. To talk over these things with friends, family, fellow writers.

And, right now, to make dinner so we won’t have to eat at Wendy’s after my daughter’s volleyball game this afternoon (a too-regular occurrence during my son’s soccer season). I’ll do a 20-minute win while I wait in the school pick-up line later this afternoon. I hope to get back to work this evening. That’s my negotiation today. Tomorrow’s will be different. That’s normal life.

Feng It Up …

~ Natalie Hart ~ 2 Comments

So we’ve reached the last day of January, the month I’ve given myself to take care of as many nagging jobs and deferred decisions in my house as I could. I started the month with a list of 52 items. As of this morning, only 18 remain undone.  And at least 8 of those will be taken care of by the end of today.

For me, that’s nothing short of miraculous.

I actually did what I set out to do. I didn’t give up halfway through. I’ve written before about how emotional all this getting rid of stuff has been, but there has been another emotional aspect. Any time I go through a process of fixing up the house, I think of my friend Natasha, who loved fussing with her house. This was more intense than usual this month, because she was very ill, and then dying, and then she died.

She once described the process of purging her attic as, “Feng-ing it up and shui-ing it out.” Feng shui (pronounced fung shway), in case you don’t know, is the ancient Chinese art of managing the flow of energy in a space (home, office, wherever), a major tenet of which is getting rid of clutter. It is not normally used as a verb, neither is it generally spoken of so flippantly, which made it memorable, even for my husband, who is not as allergic to feng-ing things up and shui-ing them out as some other husbands I know, but he doesn’t delight in it like I do. Even so, the phrase has a permanent spot in our family vocabulary.

There’s a flipside to all this weepiness over getting rid of things and reveals the best purpose behind clearing the clutter: Which emotional items to keep? Which objects can now shine?

I’ve gotten rid of some of my kids’ baby clothes, but I’m still keeping others. I discovered that I’ve kept fewer of my son’s baby things than my daughter’s, which makes me feel like a bad mommy. In my defense, he did have baby boy cousins who I passed a lot of clothes down to, and the quilt I made him became damaged, so I threw it away in my last giant purge session. But I do have the little grey and red sweater and booties my cousin Esther (who died several years ago) knitted for him, so that counts extra. And I have vowed to store what I decided to keep properly so nothing else will get irreparably damaged.

I took photos of all my kids’ school projects — the giant tri-folds, the dioramas, etc. — but said good-bye to the originals.

I framed a few beloved T-shirts, just for fun.

Then came the big one: wedding paraphernalia. I still had everything except my borrowed item, a beautiful pearl necklace that went back to my mother-in-law. My headpiece and bouquet rested in a lovely basket … shoved in a far corner of a shelf in the storage room. They were dry. Dry. I tried hard not to even sneeze near them in case they’d fall apart. They were still lovely — my friend Rose did a great job with them 18 years ago (see the original to the left).But it was time to say good-bye.

So I put on my wedding dress and had one last photo session.

     

You may have noticed that not everything in the bouquet has faded with time. There was a red fabric rose in there. I’ve had it since I was sixteen, when my father gave it to me along with this poem (reprinted with permission, also note that Vader is Dutch for father, not a Star Wars reference, and I am my father’s only daughter):

I know you did not know it,
But your Dad can be a poet;
All it takes
Is someone who makes
My heart rejoice
At the sound of a voice
With such joie de vivre.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I love you true;
And until there is a Fred,
This could be the last chance when I may
As a Vader
On this sweet sixteenth birthday
Give the single red rose
to the girl I chose
to be my favourite daughter.

And as you’ll notice
Unlike some roses
Which fade,
This rose is made
to be a lasting reminder,
though lovers may be fickle
And make you feel like a pickle,
You will always be
Your Vader’s
Favourite daughter.

I’m keeping the red rose. And the poem. Nothing could persuade me to part with them. They’re why the fenging up and shui-ing out is good: now the important stuff can shine.

What sentimental items repeatedly survive in your house? 

 

 

Deep and Silly

~ Natalie Hart ~ 5 Comments

It was at one of those sunny Fuller Park play dates. We were gathered at the upper part of the park, since our normal meeting time often coincided with the mowing schedule. Tash came striding up the hill with her daughter, the sun bouncing off her pretty-well-grown-in, spiky blond hair, and then slowed down when she saw me. She sauntered towards me on those long legs, her smile both beatific and mischievous, and said something about reading such a [great] book. (In an ideal world, I’d remember the exact adjective she used, but I didn’t know yet that I needed to hoard memories of her.) Clueless, I asked what book. And then she began to describe my manuscript, even quoting some of my own words back to me.

Validation. Encouragement. Relief.

She was the first non-family person to read my earliest noveling attempt. It was the summer of 2004 and Book Club had a weekly play date at Fuller Park. I’d written a romance novel during my son’s year of preschool. I can’t remember now whether Tash offered or I asked her, but she wound up as the person I trusted to read it and tell me whether it was good enough for anyone else to see. I truly believed that she would tell me, kindly, if it sucked, but looking back now, she was such a big-hearted friend, I’m not sure.

But it meant the world to me at the time.

My friend Natasha died last week. She fought cancer for 9 years, had “mets” (as she referred to metastatic cancer) for 6, so it wasn’t a surprise, but it was a horrible shock. You can prepare your head, but you can never prepare your heart for such a loss.

I’ve been hitting Facebook hard for the last several days, soaking in all the tributes to her, rereading her great obituary, as well as this amazing post  on a friend’s blog. She was a bright light of a person, fierce in her love and support of her friends and family, but also, because of the cancer, forced to be able to accept love and support. We were in a book club together for 12 years, the kind that always chooses a book, but doesn’t always read it, although we always met, because, after years of dealing with kid-rearing, divorce, miscarriage, and cancer, we were more about us than about the books.

The moments I keep going back to are not the deep moments, although there are plenty of those. They’re the silly ones, the ones that made me smile. Her imitations of her mother. The poem she wrote and recited for us once, at Fuller Park, about how to make her husband happy (yes, it was a funny and sly, yet classy, poem about what we shall call here, marital relations). Her smile that almost always held a hint of mischief managed. The family stories she told. I have a vague memory of an attempted kitchen table exorcism story that I’m kicking myself for not writing down.

One of my favorite stories is one she wrote down in her blog.

This fall Dad made and installed 30 custom storm windows (mostly interior) for our leaky old house. Dad is well acquainted with storm windows having hauled them around his own house every year. When Dad was painting his own windows with his perfectionist eye, I was only 4. He would pay me a nickel to tell him stories while he worked. One day, Mom snapped this picture:
dad-and-me.jpg

Back when I was still trying to write romance, I stole that little story. Who wouldn’t fall in love with both the man who paid his daughter to tell him stories and the irrepressible little girl who needed an outlet?

I sure loved that little girl when she grew up. My world is a little dimmer right now.

Discarding Old Daydreams

~ Natalie Hart ~ 1 Comment

My plan was simple: take the Christmas vacation and the month of January to go through my house and do the nagging maintenance and reorganization tasks that had been weighing on me for a few years. The theory was that I’d take care of them and not have anxiety about it dog me like a bad smell.

I’m less than two weeks away from my self-imposed deadline and, unless I do something insane like decide to coast on my momentum and repaint the kitchen floor and cupboards (highly unlikely), I’ll finish with all my organizing and cleaning tasks completed, plus a few not strictly necessary but nice jobs, including getting rid of the way cool rug that shed like a hairy pet even after a year.

I went through the kids old toys, threw away bags and bagsful of broken and crappy stuff. I sold a few things on Craigslist. But then I’ve also been giving things away. One little 3-year-old came to my door on his birthday in his pirate costume (because they were on a treasure hunt) and took a few little Toy Story items we still had. Once he got the toys in his fists, he was gone, wrapped up in his Toy Story world, so much like my son at that age. Several bags of stuffed animals (and some funky ones, like marmosets and bald eagles) went to a nurse at a children’s hospital for them to use as examples of how they’re going to put an IV in for kids. I’ve been delivering bags all over town.

And not only toys: nice Pottery Barn throw pillowcases, clothes, musical instruments. All sorts of items I’d been keeping “just in case,” I needed them again: gone. Unopened hardware items, including those giant caulk guns that I never use because they’re too unwieldy: gone. Two floor lamps, two hanging lamps, two wall sconces, three standing lamps, all gone. Pillow forms I’d bought but never used and didn’t return in time: gone. Clothes I loved once but hadn’t worn in three or more seasons: gone. High heeled party shoes and other clothes bought for an alternate vision of a future potential me: gone.

A friend posted a call for old wool sweaters so his girlfriend could craft with them, and off went a gorgeous green wool sweater from Ireland that I hadn’t worn in 15 years that I was saving for me to felt and craft with. I hadn’t done it in all that time, so off it went.

In that same vein, off went the tired upholstered chair in our living room that I was planning to reupholster. I spent a lot of time bookmarking sites that explained how to slipcover and how to do your own upholstery. But then, nothing. I have come to the conclusion that I am not only not going to do it, but if I were to do it, I wouldn’t be happy with the result because I’m just not a fussy enough sewer. So off it went. New chair already purchased (thank you January furniture sales!).

So I’m not just breaking free from stuff, but also old daydreams of myself. I’m not a hardcore DIYer or constant crafter. I occasionally do both those things (and may I saw that I totally rocked what I built for a new coat and backpack system in our back hallway out of scrap lumber from my garage).

              
back hallway before                          back hallway after

But mostly not. So a lot of stuff that I’d bought at a time when I though that might be me, left the house, and more will leave in the next 10 days. That’s made this process very emotional. There’s more self-reflection going on than I’d anticipated.

At first, I’d feel my shoulders unclench a little with each bag that left the house, but I’ve been getting teary as I drive around to donate stuff. This process is going deeper than the mere satisfaction of a clean, organized home. Maybe I really will be set free when this is all done.


the beast I’m in the belly of right now

Gratitude and Momentum

~ Natalie Hart ~ 11 Comments

These are my two guiding principle words for 2013, for writing, for life, for anything I can think of to apply it to.

Gratitude for what I have

It’s been many years since a friend asked the question, “What seeds are you planting in your life?” and I stopped holding onto catalogues and reading them over and over, daydreaming about what I’d love to buy, thereby planting seeds of dissatisfaction with what I did have. And I’ve kept that one up. If a company is so foolish as to send me a catalog, I might flip through it once before sending it immediately to the recycling bin. That one simple habit made a huge difference in my satisfaction in my home.

All is not rosy, of course. There are areas that drive me nuts. For example, I’ve let my organization go to pieces, and the stress that induces is getting in the way of my creativity, so I’m taking time this month to get my house in order. There is a chair that bugs me and I have dropped the daydream that I will reupholster it. It’s a lovely dream, but if I attempted it, I’d come close, but it would never make me happy. So I’m trolling sales. Also, I hate my cool, modern living room rug that sheds worse than an animal without giving me the affection a pet would. I’ve given it a year and no change; the rug’s days are numbered. I’m grateful for what I have and prepared to take action on what needs it.

So now I have to continue to apply this method to my writing life/publishing journey. I’ve been carping on about this for a few months, but I think that means I’m at the tail end of my transition: the daydreaming about my fabulous success, while fun, made it more difficult to handle my lack of actual publishing success. That disconnect planted giant seeds of discontent.

Think of the body language of discontent: shoulders hunched, brow furrowed, eyes downcast. Then think of the body language of gratitude: arms open wide, or embracing something/one, face open, lips smiling. I’ll choose number two.

I have time, a supportive family, talent, drive, discipline, inspiration, resources for further education, finished and drafted manuscripts, ideas. Because I’m a religious lady, this all comes back to God and what he has given me and made possible for me. I vow to be grateful for all of it — even while working every angle I can to make my work better and stronger.

I was in just such a state of gratitude when I was writing the first draft of It Is You and it was glorious. I’ve always love big-hearted fiction, and I don’t think I can write it if I’m suffused with bitterness. So I’m going to focus on gratitude. It’ll be a discipline, for sure. But it’s got to be more fruitful than the discontent was.

 

Momentum

According to a variety of sources, Jerry Seinfeld writes every day. He credits his calendar. Any day he works on his material, he marks off that day with a big X. His goal is to keep the streak of X’s going. In fact, the visual of the line of X’s is itself motivation for him sometimes — seeing that and knowing that he might break the line gets his butt in the chair.

If it’s good enough for Jerry Seinfeld, then it’s good enough for me. It’s simple. It’s achievable. Especially if I make it any writing-related activity: novel, blog post, potential article. Writing my prayers don’t count for this, but I can use the momentum idea for that, too: any day I do my Bible reading and prayer thing, I get to X off a day on the calendar. So today, while I’m out buying a few organizational products, I’m going to get a little desk calendar to track this momentum project.

Dat’s it

Our landlady in Astoria, Queens, was a widow who still hung on to her Greek accent. She’d end most conversations by brushing her palms together twice as if washing her hands of something, and say, “Dat’s it.” I’m going to wash my hands of bitterness and stuckness. Gratitude and momentum: that’s it. I can do that.

How about you? Do you have a word or idea you’re focusing on for 2013? Or are you more of a concrete resolution person?

 

 

Go Ahead, Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out

~ Natalie Hart ~ 3 Comments

Good riddance to you, 2012.

Not that you were all bad. I started this blog, which (this 3-week break notwithstanding) I’ve really enjoyed. I finished the first manuscript in my David and Saul series. I read a number of really good books. I took many great trips with my family. My children are thriving. I laughed a lot.

But I also cried. A lot. This has been a year of too-soon deaths, cancer diagnoses, scary health issues, church angst, lack of success in my publishing journey, and personal issues I’m despairing of ever turning the corner on. And compared to some of my friends, I had a pretty good year.

This doesn’t sound related, but I think it is: I’m annoyed with the Old Testament. In my goal of reading the entire Bible, I got from Psalm 116 to Isaiah 37 so far this year. Lots of great stuff, but also so many promises to be faithful and all will go well with you. “Trust in the Lord and do good. Then you will live safely in the land and prosper. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires. Commit everything you do to the Lord. Trust him and he will help you” (Ps. 37:3-5).

Which sounds great. But what if you feel you were a pretty faithful servant (given your usual failings), yet things did not all go well? Was I just not faithful enough? Not trusting enough? Not delighting enough? Can I ever be faithful or trusting or delighting enough to earn things going well with me?

Phfft. Of course I wasn’t faithful enough to “earn” no strife and no difficulty and no pain. There is no such thing. I’m a New Testament gal, with New Testament expectations that I will suffer, but that God will be with me in my suffering. Also, I am living safely in the land and I am prospering in many, many ways. There’s nothing like complaining about emptiness for making me realize how full my life is.

That’s what my head tells me. But my heart has been reading the Old Testament for the last three years, and has stored up all those promises. So my head knows that it is very, very, very hard to get traditionally published, but my heart cries out, “I’ve felt God’s hand on me and on this project from the beginning, how can it not be happening yet?”

This is similar to the difference between my 3:30 p.m. brain and my 3:30 a.m. brain. My 3:30 p.m. brain can take an issue and look at all the sides of it rationally, and recognize a good course of action. For example, it can take a loved one’s cancer diagnosis and look at the current research and agree that waiting and seeing is a right thing to do. But my 3:30 a.m. brain is incapable of this, and it swirls round and round in an ever-tightening noose of fear and anxiety. I’ve been waking up at 3:30 a.m. a lot this year.

So the more I argue with myself (OT vs. NT, 3:30 a.m. vs. p.m.), and, by extension, with God, the simpler my prayers are getting. They’re more basic. Not much more than, “I’m sorry,” “Help,” and “Thank you,” with a few “Wows” thrown in for good measure. Which is why Anne LaMott’s latest book, Help, Thanks, Wow, is so timely for me.

I will end this whine with her words (from p.27):

If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.

That feels so hopeful to me, more hopeful than promises of victory over my enemies, or reward for my faithfulness (such as it is). I am so ruined. I am so loved. I am in charge of so little. Help. Thanks. Wow. And (because I cannot shake my Calvinism), I’m sorry.

I’m going to try to start the new year by nestling these terrible truths and those simple prayers in my heart and in my brain — both the 3:30 a.m. and p.m. varieties. Maybe that’ll help me stop arguing with myself and set me free to really go after my heart’s desires.

How about you? How was your year?

 

The Substitute Campaign: David and Bathsheba, Part II

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

Over two thousand baskets of food sent out, one to every wife of a soldier, just to provide cover for giving Bathsheba a pressed orchid. This was ridiculous. He had to stop taking next steps.

The next day, David was determined not to give anyone any reason to wonder about him, question his actions, or speculate about what might be going on in his mind, so he gathered all his advisors and finally dealt with all the people hanging around the palace looking for favors or decisions. He received messages from King Hiram of Tyre and King Nahash of Ammon and dictated measured responses in return. He made a decision on a land dispute between two villages, and eleven other disputes among village elders. They didn’t even break for the midday meal, but had food brought into the throne room and ate while they worked. He received reports on his fields, his flocks, his storeroom of taxes and gifts, and the level of water in all the pools and cisterns. By mid-afternoon, they’d managed to clear all available business.

David leaned back on his throne, his face glazed with sweat, feeling a sense of accomplishment he hadn’t in days. “Why don’t you all go home and rest. I’ll see you tomorrow, or even the day after that, if nothing comes up.”

His advisors barely had energy to smile at the idea that nothing might come up. The shuffle and scrape of their sandals on the floor was louder than their conversation, but David managed to hear one man say he was going home to pour a bucket of water over himself.

That’s all it took. David had thought about Bathsheba only two or three — or four — dozen times over the course of the morning. His mind produced a perfect image of her tipping a cup over her head, the water rolling over her skin. He gripped the armrests and tried to keep himself in the throne room, but it was futile. He somehow managed not to race to the roof.

She wasn’t there.

Of course she wasn’t there. It was the heat of the day. Only crazy people were up on their roofs where there was no shade. Disappointment knifed through him. He needed to see her again.

He scraped his fist against the stone of the parapet. He either had to stop looking for her, stop imagining her, or stop fooling himself.

Stop fooling himself, it was. He swept over to the guards at the tower and asked them to have Ahithophel and Abigail and his kitchen manager brought to him in his throne room. He waited, in a daze, in his private rooms until a servant told him everyone was assembled.

David smiled and held his arms open as he entered the room. “Thank you all for coming. Especially you,” he turned to Ahithophel. “After you left such a short while ago, I was thinking back to the good advice you gave me about the issue in Bethel. I thank the Lord for you, Ahithophel.” David had to clear his suddenly thick throat. It made him sound overcome, which his audience seemed pleased by, but he knew it wasn’t with gratitude: it was with guilt at bringing the Lord’s name into this mess. He swallowed hard and forged ahead. “You and your family have been faithful to me since before I was king of Judah.”

“My lord,” Ahithophel said. “It has always been our honor to serve Israel and her rightful king.”

“Now you have three generations involved. You at the palace and your son and the husband of your granddaughter in the Thirty. I’d like to bless you and your entire family by inviting you to dine with us at our family meal this week. Abigail, do you think we can handle a few more?”

Abigail was always ready to extend hospitality — a trait David was counting on. She smiled with genuine pleasure at him and then at Ahithophel. “Of course. So long as you understand that the king’s table at family dinner is different than it is for official business.”

David managed an easy-sounding laugh. “That’s an understatement. With all the talking and laughing and singing—”

“And bickering amongst the children,” Abigail added.

“Can’t forget that.” David winked at her. “My six wives will be there, along with around twenty of my children, so any number you bring will fit right in. How many is your family here in Jerusalem?”

“I’m overwhelmed, my lord.” Ahithophel bowed his head.

“Let’s not play the game of you refusing because your family is not ready or not worthy, and then I insist, and you refuse, and I insist, and finally you agree.” David clapped him on the shoulder, and let his hand rest there. “Let’s just get straight to the part where you tell me how many extra people to expect so my kitchen manager can plan accordingly.”

Ahithophel sighed. “With the army away, our number in Jerusalem is small. It’s just myself and my wife, Elias’s wife and three younger children, and Bathsheba, my granddaughter.”

David grinned. “We’ll expect you all here tomorrow evening.”

The next day, David flitted from one room to the next, ducking in and out of the servant’s hallways, practicing all possible routes. He took a bath, oiled his skin and hair, and changed his clothes four times, finally settling on his first royal robes, made after he became king of Judah. The red embroidery had faded, but the linen itself was so soft and smooth, it flowed like warmed olive oil over his skin. Then he warmed up his voice twice, hung about the kitchen to taste the food and had them changed three dishes, and fussed with the scented water bowls on the low table.

When the servants began filing in from their hallway with the food, he hurried back to his room. The king shouldn’t be the first one there. He waited, his back flat against the inside wall next to his door, and counted to two hundred before sauntering back to the dining room.

The room was in barely controlled chaos, which was good. He wasn’t prepared for the jolt of seeing Bathsheba this close. She was even more … everything in person. Her skin glowed and her hair was as dark as the night sky.

He didn’t know how long he’d stood there when Abigail walked up to him, put her hand on his upper arm and steered him towards his place at the middle of the table. She leaned close and whispered, “She’s beautiful.”

David frowned. “What? Who?”

Abigail gave a low chuckle. “I’ve been married to you long enough to know that look. Will we have to make more room in the family wing soon.”

The back of his neck burned as he shook his head. “She’s married.”

Abigail gave him a sharp glance. “You are an honorable man, my king.” She pinched under his bicep and squeezed until it stung. “Remember that.”

That took some of the bloom off his mood, enough that he could function like a normal host and father for most of the meal, although he couldn’t taste any of the dishes he’d been so obsessive about earlier.

Then one of the little ones put a lyre in his lap and asked him to play something pretty. He smiled at her and snuck a glance at Bathsheba, who was looking at his daughter with hunger and longing in her eyes. Hadn’t Ahithophel said something about Bathsheba complaining about wanting a child? He snorted. He knew exactly what his advisor had said about his granddaughter. His storeroom of information about her was small, so he’d gone over and over every item he had.

He strummed a few notes, but then his fingers stuttered. What could he play? He couldn’t sing his normal repertoire. They were all songs for the Lord. Seducing a married woman by singing about the Lord’s faithfulness was wrong. All he had left were silly kids’ songs and bawdy soldier numbers. His wives wouldn’t stand for the army material, so it had to be the other.

Bathsheba clapped and sang along. David played wilder and wilder songs, hoping she’d get up and dance with the children and two of his wives, but she didn’t. When two of the younger ones cracked their heads together, Abigail suggested he bring it down. He sang a song that was usually a lullaby, but all the words about letting go of your cares, about surrendering to the night, about laying down twisted in his mind and became about other things. He closed his eyes and sang for Bathsheba.

The youngest children were almost asleep when he finished and looked around. The mothers of the little ones picked them up and carried them away, ushering everyone under ten to the family wing. His guests looked like they were getting ready to go.

No. The evening couldn’t be over yet. “Now it’s tour time,” David said. He turned to Eliab’s wife. “My oldest two boys would love to lead your children on a tour of the secret passageways and we adults can have a more sedate tour of the palace. How about it?”

It turned out that they weren’t comfortable having their children running amok in the palace, so Bathsheba offered to go with them. In the end, David wasn’t sure how he’d managed to do it or whether he’d managed to do it gracefully, but he and Bathsheba were with the children, and Abigail was taking the adults away.

David let his oldest, Amnon, lead the way to the pillar closest to the table. The children grasped hands in a line and slipped into the dark behind a banner. David maneuvered so he was second last, his left hand clasped with a child and his right reaching out to Bathsheba.

She hesitated. “It’s dark in the hallway.”

“Put your trust in your king.” The children were yanking and yelling for them to come on, pulling him farther into the hallway. He gave it one more shot. “It’ll be fun. When’s the last time you did anything just for fun?”

She grabbed the ends of his fingers and let herself be dragged into the hallway. It got darker and darker as the boys snuffed out the lamps until there was nothing to see but slivers of light where the hidden entrances were. After that, it was a small matter to detach himself from the children and lag behind.

“Uh oh,” he said. “We’ve lost them.”

Her fingers tightened on his.

“Don’t worry.” He took her hand and tucked it under his forearm. “I know these passages as well as they do. It’s my palace after all.” He slowed his pace and edged her closer to his side. “You smell beautiful, like new rain.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

In the depths of the hallway, hemmed in by two walls of stone, it seemed like a different world, different enough that he could say, “Must be from all those baths you take.”

She stumbled. “My lord?”

His heart was trying to leap out of his throat. “Your roof is visible from my private rooms.”

She pulled her hand free and halted. He stepped towards her and she stumbled back, her breathing loud in the narrow hallway.

“You have nothing to fear, Bathsheba.” It was the first time he’d said her name out loud and it rolled off his tongue like a caress. “Let’s return to the others.”

“But.” He could barely hear her horrified whisper. “But I’ve bathed up there every day this week.”

“It has been the highlight of my evenings.”

“I was just doing my purifications,” she said. “I never thought—”

“Bathsheba.” David spoke gently and didn’t reach out to her, as much as he wanted to. “Do not be ashamed that the Lord made you beautiful.”

Her breathing quieted. “You won’t tell my husband?”

David lowered his voice. “It’ll be our little secret.”

She whimpered, so he acted like it was no big deal, grabbed her hand and pulled her down to the next entrance, where he made a big show of surprising the children there and making them scream. Then those children wanted to scare the other children, which David happily encouraged, as long as Bathsheba’s hand was nestled in his. Too soon, the other adults returned. The children were gathered and good-byes were made.

David glanced at her. She was giving him one of those sidelong looks with a little half smile. It set off a sandstorm inside him. He knew a welcoming look when he was on the receiving end of one.

He managed to keep his dignity, but that only lasted until he returned to his room. He summoned the guard who’d first found Bathsheba for him and told him to bring her to him at the kitchen courtyard door. It only took a moment to change into a plain dark brown tunic and travel through the servant’s hallways to wait in the shadows. He didn’t think he drew a complete breath until he saw her face in the moonlight. They didn’t speak to each other or to the guard, although David pressed some silver nuggets into his palm.

David took Bathsheba’s hand and waited as long as six steps in before he cupped the back of her head with his palm and kissed her. The wine and figs they ate earlier tasted even sweeter on her breath.

Stuck in the Palace: David and Bathsheba, Part I

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

[David is king of the united Israel, living in his palace in Jerusalem. His uncle Jonathan is one of his advisors.]

David stared, unseeing, straight ahead. He’d already passed through “pretending to listen” and had gone into “not listening,” but someone kept saying his name in a harsh whisper.

He blinked several times and turned his head toward the sound. It was Uncle Jonathan. “What?”

“Do you have anything to say to the messenger?”

“Oh. Yes.” David rotated his shoulders and tilted his head. No more letting his mind drift off. “Does Joab need me to send reinforcements?”

“No, my lord,” the messenger said. “This month’s rotation of tribal units is waiting a day’s travel away, and Joab hasn’t even called for them yet.”

David gouged a groove in the arm of his throne with his thumbnail. “So his message is that he has everything under control?”

The messenger glanced left at Jonathan and then right at nobody before repeating his spiel from earlier. “The siege at Rabbah is continuing. We don’t have a lot of experience with a long siege, but the commanders—”

“I was listening earlier,” David lied. “What do you think?”

“Think, my lord?”

“Yes.” David slid forward a bit. “Unless my nephew has sent a fool to run his errands, you will have an opinion, your own analysis of how the siege is going. I served in the ranks myself, at one time. I know how soldiers talk. So?”

The messenger looked to Jonathan again.

When had it gotten so David couldn’t talk with a fellow soldier?

“I asked a-” David smacked his palm on the throne, “simple question.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, he knew he was overreacting, that the messenger wasn’t the one frustrating him, but he couldn’t stop.

“My lord.” The messenger’s face turned red and he dropped onto one knee. “Forgive me.”

David addressed the linen banner hanging on the opposite wall. “All I wanted was the opinion of a man on the ground. Is that too much to ask?”

Uncle Jonathan cleared his throat. “King David has always listened to and learned from even the least of his soldiers. It’s one of the things that makes him such a great king.”

“Of course, of course.” The messenger stood. “It’s going as well as can be expected. Some of the foreign soldiers have experience with sieges so they’re always in with Joab and Benaiah.”

“And running off their mouths to the rest of you, I bet.” David quirked an eyebrow.

The messenger blinked rapidly and swallowed hard.

David somehow prevented himself from sighing. Everyone thought they had to be so dignified around him now. There was a time a soldier would’ve bust out laughing at such a dig against the mercenaries, and maybe shared a story or two. Those were good times.

“We’re learning so much.” The messenger sounded like an overeager child. “The outlying garrisons are sending us plenty of supplies. And there’s a water source a short walk away. The men feel confident. The Ammonites can’t outwait us.”

“Sounds like you don’t need me at all,” David muttered. He squeezed his temples. Of course they didn’t need him. He’d chosen each commander because of his expertise, ability to lead, and wisdom on the battlefield. Chosen them precisely because they didn’t need him. It’d be worse if they did need him. Wouldn’t it?

Jonathan stood. “Thank you for your report and your opinions. We’ll get a food bundle made up for your return trip tomorrow.” He ushered the man out of the room, but threw one questioning frown over his shoulder at David.

David wandered over to the wine table and poured himself a cup. His uncle returned and they circled each other at the table. With the rim at his lips, he said, “I should be there.”

“So that’s what this is all about.” Jonathan tugged the corner of the linen covering of the table.

“I should be in the field with my soldiers.” David drained the cup. “Not stuck in my palace, on my comfortable bed in my clean clothes, dealing with petty arguments and disputes and granting royal favors to rich people.”

“Do I need to tell you the story of–”

“No,” David said. “I know it was smart strategy to put the garrisons in the north and it shows trust in my men that I don’t have to be there for every campaign—”

“But you’re itching to go, like when you were fifteen.”

David swirled the dregs in the bottom of the cup. “Guess I haven’t changed that much.”

Jonathan humphed. “You’ve changed plenty. Why else do you think you’re here instead of there?”

Duty.

It used to be that doing his duty meant being in the thick of the action. Now it meant sitting around. Uncle Jonathan was right, he was itching. In fact, his skin was crawling at the idea of spending the rest of the day in careful conversation. “Call off the jackals and the foxes for the rest of the day. I’m done.”

His uncle said some stuff about David needing to do something constructive, but he wasn’t listening. Maybe he’d visit one of his wives. That’d put him in a better mood. He clasped his hands behind his back and headed towards the private quarters.

Of course, being with one of his wives would mean being subjected to complaints about the other women, or sly requests for privileges, or pointed observations about how he didn’t see her as often as he used to. Except Abigail. But she wanted to have real conversations about how he was doing, especially when something was bothering him, and she could always tell when someone was. He didn’t need that kind of pressure today.

A nap? If he could sleep now, during the heat of the day, when he awoke in the cooler early evening, things would be better, clearer.

When he got to his room, he unwound his mantle, took off his robe, his armlets and his crown and curled up on his side on his mat. His room was stifling. He got up and threw open his shutters. No breeze. He opened his mouth top bellow for a servant to fan him while he slept, but he didn’t want even that much company. Instead, he pulled his tunic over his head and lay down, spread-eagled, on his mat in just his loincloth.

It was so quiet. The army wasn’t in town, so there was no noise of soldiers marching or training, no officers trash-talking each other and boasting about their unit’s prowess. No Joab galumphing around the palace.

The farmers and merchants had packed up after the morning’s business, so there was no haggling to be heard, no cart wheels rolling, no donkeys braying. Even the birds must’ve been resting in shady spots. There was nothing to keep him awake.

Except all that silence. It was distracting. He kept cataloguing all the things he wasn’t hearing.

He flipped over onto his stomach. In the field, he’d always been able to sleep, even on the night before a battle, when his heart would be pounding and his blood churning and his mind going over and over the battle plan. Even then he’d always been able to get rest.

The only time he hadn’t been able to sleep was when King Saul had made him play all night long because Saul couldn’t sleep. Lack of rest had to be part of what had made Saul so paranoid and volatile. That’s why David lived  as righteous a life as possible: so there was nothing to keep him awake. “Adonai, give me rest. Don’t let me wind up like Saul.”

When David was conscious of himself again, the sun was blasting through his western windows, beaming on his face and chest. He awoke covered in a film of sweat, wrinkling his nose at his own scent and at the sour taste in his mouth.

He rolled onto all fours to avoid the glare of the sun and then staggered to the bench that had a bowl of cassia water on it, soaked a cloth with the liquid, and swiped it over his exposed skin.

Air was what he needed. Maybe the early evening breeze had sprung up.

He glanced at his tunic and robe but rejected them. The idea of putting on even those thin and fine linen clothes was abhorrent. The chance of anyone looking up at the palace roof at the exact moment he was there and recognizing him was slim.

There was slight movement of air on the roof, very slight. Not enough to cool the skin, but just enough to feel like the stroke of a soft hand.

He leaned against one of the taller pillars of the parapet, holding his hair off the back of his neck, looking down over Jerusalem.

People were still not out and about in the streets, for the most part. Wisps of smoke curled up, so some women must be at their ovens. Groups of people were huddled under the broad atad trees near some of the threshing floors outside the walls. Snippets of a woman’s voice drifted up to him; it sounded more like melodic sighing than like any song that David recognized. It was entrancing.

Where was that singer? He searched the rooftops below him until he saw her. Maybe it wasn’t her, but the song was suddenly the last thing on his mind. This woman was bathing on the roof of her house, lifting her hair off the back of her neck, just like David was. Her back was turned to him. Now she was squeezing water from a cloth onto her skin. Her skin that was naked.

David stalked across the length of his roof until he was as close to her as he could get from the palace. Who was she? If he got the layout of the city right, the house was in the professional army section. So she’d be alone and lonely without her soldier.

He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. Those were not the kind of thoughts he should have.

His eyelids popped open.

She was still there, except she had turned. Now he could see her from the side.

He gripped the parapet with both hands, the stone scraping his skin. It felt like his heart was trying to leap out of his chest towards that woman, that beautiful woman. He needed the rough stone digging into his palms, needed the pain to interrupt the direction his imagination was taking him.

He pushed himself back and walked resolutely down the stairs to his private quarters. He had to put his clothes and his royal items back on. That would remind him who he was and what kind of thoughts and what kind of behaviors were expected of him. The fabric was rough against his sensitized skin, but that punishment felt right.

He headed for the door, but the south facing windows caught him. He couldn’t stop himself from looking out. Her arms were stretched to the sky. All of her was exposed to his gaze and his breath flew away.

He tore himself away from the window and walked in a daze toward the lower, public areas of the palace. Halfway down the upper hallway, he came across two of his guards with their heads half out a window. A south facing window. They were so engrossed that he snuck up behind them and clapped, startling them into cracking their heads together.

He couldn’t bring himself to yell at them, because he was just as guilty. “You were watching her, too?”

The taller one blinked hard and shook his head and denied knowing what the king was talking about, but the shorter one gave David a curious look. He was the one David took aside.

“Do you live in the army section of the city or in the barracks at the fortress?” David asked.

“In the barracks, my lord.”

David glanced at the solid wall in the direction of the woman. “Do you know who she is?”

“No, my lord.”

“Find out. She must be in the household of one of my officers. Beautiful as she may be, I don’t want anyone to bring dishonor to my forces.” How David managed to say that with a straight face, he didn’t know. His order had nothing to do with avoiding dishonor.

“Yes, my lord. Right away.”

“Shh.” David hauled him back within whispering distance. The words, “Bring her to me,” almost left his tongue, but he wasn’t a pagan king. He was the shepherd of the people of God. “Let’s keep this quiet. I don’t need every soldier begging to guard the city side of the palace.”

When the evening meal was almost over, the soldier came back to him: she was Bathsheba, daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah.

David excused himself from the table without finishing and took an oil lamp up to the roof. He sat between two of the teeth with his feet dangling over the side, staring in the direction he saw Bathsheba in earlier. Bathsheba.

This was complicated. Eliam and Uriah were both in the Thirty. She was the daughter of one of his most elite fighters and the wife of his most loyal and skilled Hittite mercenary. The connection with Eliam meant she was also the granddaughter of Ahithophel, one of his most trusted advisors. Which added up to someone he couldn’t trifle with.

He bumped the side of his head against the stone. When had this turned from a vague fantasy to something he was actually considering? It was wrong. And now that he knew who her family was, it was all tangled up. Nothing could happen. Nothing should happen.

Do You Want to be Healed?

~ Natalie Hart ~ Leave a comment

model of the Pools of Bethesda outside the Sheep Gate of Jerusalem
photo from bible-history.com

 

Nissim had staked out this base of operations before that kid had been born, and no upstart was going to take it from him. He poked the kid, hard, with the knot end of his olive wood cane. “Move along.”

The kid faced him, although there was no way he could see out of those clouded eyes. “But I need to be closer to the water. Other people always get there first and–”

“Bah.” If it hadn’t been a feast day, which always put Nissim in a good mood, the kid would’ve gotten another taste of the cane. “Dov, did you hear that? This kid’s trying to use the line I invented on me. Me.”

Dov snorted.

“What?” The kid looked honestly puzzled. “What line?”

Nissim went through it as though reciting a dull list. “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I’m making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.”

“That’s it exactly,” the kid said. “Except I have no one to tell me when the angel stirs up the water and my family is coming back for me today and….” He trailed off as Dov and a few other nearby professional beggars laughed.

But Nissim was going to do this kid a favor. “I’m going to give it to you straight. Feel my legs.” He lifted his robe past his knees to display the twisted and scarred flesh and held the kid’s hand there. “This happened working on the tunnel to supply these pools. Rock slide. So I know. The Pools of Bethesda are fed by a gusher. Do you understand what that is?”

The kid snatched his hand back. “No.”

“That means that the water doesn’t flow smoothly.” Nissim didn’t bother keeping his voice low. He didn’t care who heard him. “The spring gushes out and then stops, gushes out and then stops. There is no angel. It’s nature.”

“So the healing?” The kid’s mouth was pursed like he’d eaten a sour berry.

Nissim looked to his left. “Ze’ev! How many times you made it first into the pool?”

Ze’ev closed one eye while he counted. “Five, including last Passover.”

“And how are your legs?”

“Quit teasing me,” Ze’ev said. “Got a huge haul that Passover, though. Those brothers who made sure I got in were so happy to watch me move around, they praised the Lord by giving me lots of silver.”

Some of the men laughed, and Dov called out, “Yeah, well, next time you haul the old wolf out of the water. He’s heavy.”

The men cat-called back and forth for awhile, but the kid leaned closer to Nissim.

“So it did work for awhile.” The kid was not giving up his hope easily.

Nissim sighed. “You’re not getting it. It looked like he could move because the water held him up. We had to wait ’til he convinced those brothers to leave before getting him out, or they’d know they were tricked.” He said his next words slowly, so they’d sink in. “There are no healing powers.”

The kid was as still as a Roman statue. “Then why are you here?”

“For the pilgrims,” Nissim said. “They come to wash their sheep or themselves before heading in to Jerusalem for feasts and sacrifices, and it makes them feel righteous to give to the less fortunate. We make it easy for them by being where they need to go anyway.” He put his meaty right hand on the kid’s shoulder. “Believe me, it’s better to know the truth.”

The kid shrugged off Nissim’s hand and scooted away.

“What’s up with the flood of true believers lately?” Dov said.

“It does seem like they’re thicker on the ground these days,” Nissim said.

Dov rubbed at a groove in the floor with his thumb nail. “Do you even remember what it was like to think the water would heal you?”

Nissim recoiled. “You used to believe?”

“When I first came,” Dov said. “Ten years ago.”

“Did you listen to anything I said to that kid? I knew it was a fraud from the beginning. I dug these tunnels. I know this spring.”

“No need to get heated up about it.” Dov held his palms open in a peace offering.

“Thirty-eight years I’ve lived with these.” Nissim slapped his knee.

Thankfully, Dov knew better than to give him any sympathy. “Think your brother’ll come in today?”

Nissim blew out a hard breath. “Hope not.” He rearranged himself against the wall of the arch. “But I’m not holding out much hope for that. He always keeps the feast days.”

They raised their eyebrows at each other in commiseration.

“Get back to your spot,” Nissim said. “Sun’s fully up. They’ll be coming soon.”

As Dov dragged himself back to his usual place, Nissim closed his eyes and rested the back of his head against the stone arch. He could hear muttering and yelling coming from closer to the water: the sound of outraged true believers. He didn’t enjoy dashing their dreams, but it was like lancing a boil. Someone had to do it. Sure, it hurt, but it’d be worse if the boil were allowed to fester. He’d watched more people than he could count refuse to start begging, and then waste away until they died, waiting for those waters to heal them.

Someone stepped into his light. There hadn’t been footsteps coming from the entrance, so it wasn’t a pilgrim. “Get out of my sun,” he snapped. “Can’t I have a moment’s peace?”

Whoever it was cleared his throat.

Nissim opened his eyes. It was a man like any other man: long hair, beard, rough wool clothing, sandals, belt with a good-sized water skin attached, no apparent physical problems, so he was probably a traveler. A potential donor. Nissim exhaled slowly and slumped his shoulders, shrinking into himself, giving the impression of weakness, but before he could deliver his line, the man spoke first.

“Do you want to be healed?”

“What?” Nobody had ever asked Nissim that before.

The man sat back on his haunches and held Nissim’s gaze. The look on his face wasn’t exactly challenging, but it wasn’t the pitying look Nissim was used to getting, either.

A prickly flush traveled from Nissim’s chest to his jaw. He glanced at the water. If the man was going to offer to carry him over and make sure he got there first, this was a convoluted way to go about it. “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stir- stirred up–”

The man made a dismissive gesture at the pools and shook his head, no.

“But without anyone to help me,” Nissim forged ahead but he could barely get through it all, “someone else always steps ahead of me.”

“Do you want to be healed?”

What did this man mean, if he wasn’t talking about the water? He didn’t say anything else, but the longer Nissim locked eyes with this stranger, the clearer he heard the man’s voice in his head. It said, “We both know the pools can’t heal you, but do you want to be healed?”

Nissim squeezed his eyes shut. His heart pounded. He’d made himself cry dozens of times to impress onlookers, but this was the first time in over thirty years that he felt that pressure behind his eyes when he didn’t will it. He’d been begging for most of his life. What would he do if his legs worked again? Would his brother take him back?

He swallowed hard past the knot in his throat as he imagined rejoining his family, working in the olive groves, contributing to the running of the household again. His leg itched. He reached down to scratch it.

Damn legs. And damn man asking him impossible questions and making him think about what it would be like. This life wasn’t so bad when he had no hope of anything different. Of course he wanted to be healed. He also wanted to be wealthy and have his pick of young girls, but that wasn’t happening, either.

He slapped at his calves. Why did they have to choose now to hurt? The skin felt hot and tight, like he’d left them uncovered in the sun too long.

The man was still waiting for an answer.

Nissim glared at him and barely nodded his head.

“Stand up,” the man said, in the most ordinary, matter-of-fact way. “Take your mat and walk.”

A bitter sound escaped Nissim’s throat. So the man was one of those nuts who thought he could heal people. All the man was doing now was smiling. Nissim should’ve noticed it earlier. Only crazy people would calmly ask such a cruel question. It was his fault that he got taken in by it. “Hey, Dov,” he leaned to the side so he could see around the man, “we’ve got a live one here.”

The man grinned at that, stood, and left without another word.

Nissim’s legs were still burning and itching. Did a bunch of ants get under his tunic? He scraped the fabric back to check–

He couldn’t breathe.

Where was that man? What had happened? Nissim craned his head around, but the man was gone.

Finally, he gasped. This was a dream. He closed his eyes and counted to seven breaths before looking at his legs again. There they were. They weren’t pretty, but they weren’t twisted anymore. Would they remember what to do? After so many years of lying fallow, would they be strong enough?

He put his hands first under his right thigh and moved it into a bent position. The knee pointed straight up at the sky. Nissim almost laughed. The same thing happened with his left leg. His feet rested squarely on the stone floor. Squarely. As if they hadn’t spent almost forty years bent at that horrible angle. He pushed against the floor until he was in a crouch, but he didn’t pick up his hands until he was almost sure his legs would hold him.

They did.

Pilgrims were streaming past him now, and his friends were making their cries, but none of it made an impression on him.

He tucked his elbow into a seam in the arch and leaned into it with all his strength. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his upper lip as he flexed his thighs and forced his body up. Black dots crowded his vision and made him dizzy, so he had to rest against the wall for awhile, but that soon cleared. And he was standing.

Standing.

He expected to hear cheers and shouts, but everyone was so busy with their own pursuits, that nobody noticed he was upright for the first time in anyone’s memory.

So he did the rest of what the man had told him to do. He bent over, rolled up his mat, picked it up and put one foot in front of another, gingerly at first, but soon more confidently. He couldn’t stop watching the movement of his legs: he was walking.

“Hey!” Someone grabbed his sleeve. “You can’t do that.”

“I know.” Nissim grinned. “But I can now.”

“What?” It was one of the religious leaders. “You can’t carry your mat on the Sabbath.”

Nissim stared at him for a heartbeat and then laughed.

“It isn’t funny.” The leader’s bushy eyebrows shook in his indignation, which only made Nissim laugh harder. “You can’t work on the Sabbath. The law doesn’t allow you to carry that mat.”

“Tell that to the man who healed me.”

The leader bunched Nissim’s sleeve tighter in his fist. “What did you just say?”

“Don’t you recognize me? I’ve been sitting at that arch for over thirty years. I don’t know your name, but you’ve given me food and wine every feast day for ages. Without my believing it was possible, a man just came, healed me, and told me to pick up my mat and walk.”

“Who would say such a thing?”

Nissim shrugged. “He didn’t stick around.”

Neither did the leader, who rushed off as if something terrible had just happened.

What should he do now? Go to his brother’s? His legs were feeling good, but were they strong enough to walk across the Mount of Olives? They probably couldn’t handle that yet. But they could handle walking into Jerusalem. He had enough bits of silver that he could even pay the temple tax to see what everyone raved on about.

Being upright in a crowd was different from being seated while the crowd passed by. Before, strangers would avoid him, as if touching him would give them his lameness. Now, he was jostled and elbowed and almost tripped several times. He made his way over to a wall.

He wanted to yell at these people, “Watch it! I was just healed. Thirty-eight years I sat by the Pools of Bethesda, waiting for the waters to heal me, until a man took pity on me and spoke to me, and that’s all it took. Look at me now. I’m walking like any one of you. But ask any of the men by the pool and they’ll tell you that this morning, I was one of them. Now, I’m one of you.”

Maybe he should give such a speech. Imagine how much silver and food and wine people would give him. Then he’d really be able to come back to his brother with–

A man stepped into his line of sight. It was the man. Nissim raised his arms and prepared to announce to everyone who this was and what had happened, but the man wasn’t smiling.

“Now you are well, so stop sinning.”

Nissim dropped his arms and squinted up at him. “Sinning?”

The man nodded.

“But I’m just standing here.”

“Stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.”

And then the man walked away without explaining what he meant. “Hey! Come back!” Nissim pushed through a few people, but his legs weren’t strong enough to follow the man.

The leader who’d scolded him at the Pools grabbed his sleeve again. “Was that the man?” The leader barely waited long enough for Nissim to confirm it before taking off after him, a bunch of cronies in tow.

Nissim was left standing in an archway at the Temple. Should he go straight to his brother’s? Or stick around here to see what business he could drum up out of this healing? Or go back to the Pools where people knew him? And what did the man mean by sinning?