twenty-two
Willow wasn’t quite ready to give up on this conversation about God and faith with George. Even if it felt uncomfortable, it was important. Besides, she genuinely cared about George. “I’m curious,” she said slowly as she drove through town. “I know you don’t believe in God, George, but you mentioned your grandparents were churchgoing people. It makes me curious as to how you arrived at your atheist philosophy.”
“Time . . . and life. It just makes sense to me.”
“It’s ironic. I grew up in a family that never darkened a church door. I was a wild, crazy girl who never had faith of any kind. For most of my life too. But I eventually hit a place where I needed a higher power in my life. And when I discovered that God was really real, well, I grabbed on tight and I’ve been holding on ever since.”
“Interesting.” George sounded more bored than intrigued. But Willow was not dissuaded. Not yet anyway.
“I’m wondering about something.” She parked in front of his house. “I’ve decided it takes a lot of faith to be an atheist. Even more faith than it takes to be a believer.”
“Well, you’re putting your trust in your own belief that God does not exist.” She turned off the ignition and looked at him. “What if you get to the end of your life and find out you’re wrong—you discover that God is real, but you’ve banked all your bets on the conviction that he’s not real. What then?”
“What about you?” George countered. “Haven’t you banked all your bets on the possibility that God is real? What if he’s not?”
She considered this. “Well, at least I’d be able to say that I lived a good life. That I was happy and at peace. That I tried to love everyone and practiced forgiveness. I didn’t live in fear. And I fully appreciated the beauty around me and utilized my natural talents. So if by chance God wasn’t real, at least I’d have enjoyed a rich and full life. Can you make that same claim?”
George didn’t respond, but his brow was furrowed.
“So you see, my belief wouldn’t have hurt me. What about yours?”
He continued to stare straight ahead in stony silence.
“But, George, if God is real—like I believe he is—I will be exceedingly thankful that I did believe in him. Not only because of a satisfying earthly life, but because I’d like to continue a loving relationship with God throughout eternity.”
“That’s a very long time.” George sighed.
“It would be a much, much longer time if you had to spend eternity without God. I can’t imagine being separated from God’s love for even a day.”
“Here’s the truth, Willow.” He turned to her with a very somber expression. “If I believed in God, I would have to believe that he is a hateful, selfish, mean God.”
“But he’s not. He’s loving and gracious and kind and—”
“I must disagree. If God does exist, which I cannot accept, then the only explanation would be that God must hate me.”
“How can God hate you?” She frowned. “God is love. He loves all his creation, George. He loves you.”
“No . . .” He turned away, reaching for the door handle. “If you’re right and God is real, he’s had it out for George Emerson. He’s gone to great lengths to torture me. And for that reason, it is easier and less painful for me to not believe in God.” George got out of her car.
Willow refused to allow the conversation to end like this. “Wait,” she called out. Running to catch up, she followed him into the house. “You can’t leave me hanging like that. You owe me an explanation, George. What did you mean? What makes you so certain that God hates you?” She sat down on his sofa and waited.
George slowly sat in the easy chair across from her with a very perplexed expression. “Do you really want to hear this, Willow?”
“Of course, I do. And just so you know, I have no plans for the evening. I have all the time in the world.”
“Well, I plan to keep this as brief as possible.” He folded his arms in front of him. “First of all, there were my parents. They took my brother and me to church every Sunday. The same church my grandparents belonged to. My mother was kind and good and quite serious about her faith, but my father . . . well, he was a good guy when he wasn’t drinking. He’d been drinking the night he and my mother were killed in the car accident. I was six at the time and my grandparents told me that God needed my parents, that was why he took them up to heaven. But I missed them—especially my mother. I missed them so much that it seemed mean and selfish of God to take my parents from me.”
“That must’ve been terribly hard.”
He nodded. “Then my grandparents, as you know, took Alex and me in. And they continued taking us to church and time passed and I had nearly stopped questioning God about taking my parents. Then Alex went to Vietnam. I was ten when he died.”
Willow felt another wave of sadness. “Oh, George, how horrible for you.”
He nodded again. “So now God had taken all of my immediate family. I had two questions. One, did God hate me so much that he wanted them but not me? Was I not good enough? Or, two, did he hate me so much that he would take the people I loved from me?”
“I can understand that—especially from a child’s perspective.”
“I became pretty closed up after Alex died. For the next few years and into adolescence, I learned to keep my feelings to myself. Otherwise, my grandparents would either preach at me or send me to the reverend for counseling. Simply out of concern.”
Baxter jumped onto George’s lap and, as he petted his cat, he continued. “I didn’t start to open up again until college. During my senior year I dated a girl who took her faith very seriously. I loved her so much that I began to attend her church and my heart toward God softened. We became engaged.” George pursed his lips. “Then she died.” He shook his head glumly, but his eyes were misty. “After that, I knew that if God existed—although I no longer believed he existed—then he must really hate me. It was quite clear. Everyone I loved dearly had died. Even my best friend, you remember him, Greg Walters . . . he died too. From cancer. Not long after my grandparents both passed away. That felt like the final blow.”
“Oh, George.” Willow felt tears trickle down her cheeks. “I had no idea you’d been through so much pain. So much loss. No wonder you believe the way you do.”
“So can you still tell me that God is real?” He looked at her with sad eyes.
She wiped her tears with her hands. “All I can say is that there are a lot of horrible things in this world, George. You can’t deny there are atrocities like the Holocaust and terrible wars and famines and natural disasters and serial killers and all sorts of other horrors. But just because those things exist doesn’t mean that God doesn’t. That’s like saying the sun doesn’t exist because it gets dark at night. Or that because there is evil means there isn’t good.”
He barely nodded. “That’s true.”
“We live in a beautiful world, but it’s got some flaws. We’re human so we’ve got flaws too. And God doesn’t control us, George. He gave us free will. And our choices—or someone else’s choices—come with consequences. But I honestly believe the bad things can help us to turn to God. We get to a place where we realize we’re not enough. We know we can’t do this on our own. We are forced to admit we need God. And then we cry out for his help. That’s what happened to me. When Asher got sick and I knew I was losing him . . . that was when I found my own faith. I needed God—I cried out to him. And he answered. He didn’t let me down.”
She nodded. “I’m sure it must feel like that to you. But your story isn’t done, George. You might be living like it’s done. I know how you’ve frozen yourself into some sort of safety capsule, like you’re living all alone in a time warp, but your story isn’t finished yet. I believe you’ve got a lot more living and experiencing to do.” She stood. “But I didn’t mean to preach at you. I hope I haven’t said too much.”
She could see he was in pain and hated to think it was because of her. Willow went over to his chair and, after giving Baxter a good stroke, she wrapped her arms around George and just held him for a long moment. “For some reason God has put you on my heart, George, and I can’t help but think that means he’s trying to show you how much he loves you. He must love you very much.” Then without belaboring her point further, she stood up straight, smiled down on him, and quietly departed, praying for him all the way home.
Willow was barely out the door when George broke into tears. Not just trickling-down-the-cheeks tears, but a full-blown sobbing and wailing that was so loud that even Baxter was startled. He hopped down to the floor, looking up at George with a curious expression of concern. George wasn’t completely sure what had triggered this reaction in him, but as he continued to cry and sob like a little child, he hoped this wasn’t going to become a permanent condition. And he hoped Lorna couldn’t hear him. Fortunately his windows were closed.
He went to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face, then actually blew his nose with a hand towel, which was so out of character, but he continued to cry. Was this a side effect of the tai chi class? Or the result of opening old wounds and revisiting old hurts? Or was it that hug from Willow that had unhinged him like this? And what she’d said about how much God must love him?
George honestly did not know what had triggered this strange reaction. But what he did know was that he needed to get control of himself. Perhaps, for the sake of his own emotional health, he should give up tai chi for good. And maybe he should return to his avoidance of Willow West at all cost. He needed to get control again—even if that meant locking his doors and locking everyone and everything out.
George’s hands shook as he poured himself a glass of milk. Milk always had a calming effect on him. But he could barely swallow against his sobs. He set the glass down and leaned over, and gripping the counter’s edge, he attempted a slow, deep breath. Somehow he needed to get control again. He couldn’t let this emotional outburst get the upper hand. He continued to try a few more deep breaths, but finally, feeling miserable and hopeless and weak, George stumbled off to his bedroom, fell into bed, and even though it wasn’t yet seven o’clock, cried himself to sleep.
Although Willow felt terrible about George’s painful story and a bit guilty for having left him in such a desperate way, she knew that the only thing she could really do for him, at the moment, was simply pray. So as she carried a tall glass of iced tea out to her terrace, she did pray. Quite specifically, she asked God to make himself real to George. What more was there to say? She had too much respect for God to go on and on—as if God were dense and couldn’t understand what she’d just asked. She knew that God was big enough and smart enough to do something to get George’s attention—and she believed that he would. And so, she left it in God’s hands.
But as she lay back in her comfortable lounge chair, sipping her green tea, she wondered at what she’d just heard. She’d suspected that George had faced sorrows in his life, but she’d never guessed there’d been so many. In some ways, it was no surprise that the poor guy had reached the conclusion that God did not exist. It was simply less painful. Or so he thought. Hopefully God would prove him wrong.
As Willow looked at the beauty around her—the little world she’d created up on a neglected rooftop that had smelled of tar and cat urine—she thought about God’s beautiful world. The oceans and mountains and forests and meadows . . . right here in Oregon where George had spent his entire life. She wondered that George hadn’t observed the beauty around him, that he hadn’t questioned how such a place could’ve simply evolved. But it was possible that his pain had blinded him. It certainly had trapped him. Poor guy.
George woke with a start and tried to get his bearings. It was dark and stuffy and warm—and although he was fully dressed, he was in his bed. He sat up and shook his head, trying to remember the dream. It had been an amazingly good dream. So much so that George felt disappointed to be awake. As he got out of bed and turned on the bedside light, he was surprised to see that it was past midnight. He rubbed his hair. Had he really been asleep for more than five hours? Baxter looked up from where he was still curled up on the other side of the bed, gazing curiously at George—as if to ask why he was getting up at this time of night.
George felt hot and dry and rumpled as he padded, barefoot, to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of orange juice. As he sipped the cool, sweet drink, he tried to remember the dream. He’d been in a beautiful place—light and bright and unlike anything he’d ever seen before. He’d felt a sense of peace and calm . . . and a sort of weightlessness . . . like all his troubles had evaporated. As he set the empty glass down he remembered something. His mother had been there. She’d been smiling happily and stroking his hair like she used to when he was just a boy. It had been such a good, happy feeling. He wished he could get it back.
As he opened some windows to let some cool air into the house, George tried hard to hold on to the pleasant dream. But it was like trying to hold on to the gentle summer breeze wafting in—it just slid right past him. Feeling a rumble inside of him, George returned to the kitchen to make himself a peanut butter and honey sandwich. But before sitting down to eat it, George realized that he felt like something was missing in his dark, quiet house. Something that he wanted, but he wasn’t sure what it was.
Leaving his sandwich behind, George went into the living room and opened the cabinet that stored all the old vinyl LP records. Perhaps it was music that he needed. He remembered telling Willow that, once he retired, he planned to listen to music again. And yet he hadn’t. George looked over the two rows of albums that had once belonged to Alex and, seeing one that looked far more dog-eared than the others, he pulled it out. It was Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. He stared at the two guys on the cover—they looked like they’d been pulled straight out of the seventies . . . and yet they looked like someone he could know right now. He slid out the vinyl record, placed it on the old turntable and, hoping that everything still worked, turned it on.
The first song was “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and, although George knew that he must’ve heard this song before, he didn’t really remember it. It was like hearing it for the first time. The lyrics were so amazing that he had to sit down just to listen. The words sounded like they’d been written just for him. Despite the warmth of the summer evening, George felt goose bumps from head to toe. Although he feared he was hallucinating or about to suffer some fatal condition like a stroke or heart attack, it felt as if the words to that song were being sung by a higher power. God, perhaps?
He listened to the song three more times then turned the whole thing off and, just sitting on the sofa with his hands dangling between his knees, he shook his head. What had just happened? Was it possible that God Almighty—if he did exist—could speak to George through Simon and Garfunkel?
Still feeling slightly delirious, but hungry, George went back to the kitchen and ate his sandwich, washing it down with milk. Then he took a long shower and, feeling bone-tired and wrung out, he returned to bed . . . in the hopes that the beautiful dream would return and continue.