“I CAN’T DO THIS, LORD.” DANA STOOD ON THE OTHER SIDE of a huge maple tree on the edge of Reece’s property looking back at the fire and the three men whom she would have to give permission to.
You can.
“I don’t want to, with everything in me, I don’t want to. Not with Brandon here.”
I know.
“Then why?”
For healing. For freedom.
“Can I do it later? Tomorrow?”
There is no tomorrow. The time is now. I am with you. You are not alone.
A leaf floated down and landed on her shoulder. God’s touch. She ambled back to the fire, feeling like she was about to post her most private journal entries on the internet for the entire world to gawk at.
No, it’s not like that. Be strong, dear one.
When she reached the fire pit she stopped on the outside of the circular bench. Deep breath. Here we go.
“You don’t have to do this.” Reece stared at her with intense eyes.
Dana shuffled over to Reece and sat, her chin resting on her fists. “Yes, I do.”
“Now?”
She nodded. If only Brandon were gone. Anyone else but him. But she didn’t get to pick the actors in this movie.
Brandon stared at Dana, wishing he could leave. She couldn’t want him traipsing around her soul. But she didn’t say anything and God had told him to be there for her. Words sputtered out of his mouth before he could stop them. “Do you want me to leave—?”
“Yes.”
Brandon stood but as he did, Dana’s head fell back and she gritted her teeth. “But you’re not supposed to.”
He eased back down and stared at the flames.
“Are you ready, Dana?” Reece asked.
She nodded and Reece turned to Marcus and Brandon.
“Ready?”
The professor nodded and Brandon did the same.
He glanced at Dana again, hoping to at least make eye contact before they went in, but her eyes stayed closed.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Reece closed his eyes and Brandon followed his lead. A rush of wind and a sensation of falling struck Brandon and he held his breath. Seconds later they stood in a forest of redwood trees that towered above their heads. The sound of birds calling to one another across the canopy filled the air. Sun streamed through the trees, thin shafts of light warming their faces, and the rich scent of the forest swirled around them.
It felt like midmorning on a summer day. Patches of blue sky framed the branches three hundred feet above. Behind them a dark jade-green river flowed through the trees.
“My assessment is we’re in the California redwoods,” Marcus said. “This is reminiscent of places where I camped as a kid.”
Reece gazed at their surroundings. “Dana must have done the same.”
“People rarely create places in their souls they haven’t experienced personally. So Dana must have been to a place or seen a place like this when she was growing up. A peaceful place. Beautiful. A place to escape. A place of safety.”
“Any idea where we are?” Brandon asked.
“Dana’s soul,” Reece answered.
“Duh. I get that part. I mean, what area of her soul are we in? And what are we supposed to do?”
A beam of light flashed and a little girl stood before them. Dana? The girl smiled, but not at them. She spoke as if she were staring right through them—a lonely look in her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re here. I know you can help me.” She turned and waved her hand in front of the trees. “This is my forest. I hope you like it.”
It was Dana’s voice—younger and with a trace of sorrow—but there was no mistaking it was hers. She skipped in between the trees, disappeared behind one, then poked her head out from behind it. “I created it for myself. It took a long time to get it the way I wanted it to be.”
“Dana?” Brandon called.
If she heard him she gave no indication.
“Take your time here.” She came out from behind the tree and skipped along the border of the trees like she was playing hopscotch. “It’s beautiful, don’t you think? Sit by the river, or skip a rock, or just sit and listen to the birds.”
“Dana!” Brandon called.
“I have to go now.” A sad smile rose to her face as she again looked through them, then turned toward the forest. “I love having you here.” Dana waved over her shoulder and skipped into the trees, where she vanished an instant later.
“Why couldn’t she hear us?”
“That wasn’t exactly her,” Marcus said.
“You think?” Brandon said.
“What are you hearing from the Spirit?” Reece asked.
“That we follow her into the forest,” Brandon said. And in his gut he heard the echoes of isolation. He knew they wouldn’t find anyone else in the forest.
“Marcus?”
“I agree, although I didn’t receive that from God. I’m simply flummoxed at what else we might attempt.”
Reece stepped forward toward the forest. “Don’t get separated in here. Things are never what they appear to be. Ten feet apart, max. Understood?”
Brandon and Marcus gave confirmation and the three stepped into the trees. The forest floor was covered in bark and needles. The birds had gone silent or had vanished. The only sound was the crunch of their feet on the ground as they wound through the massive redwood trees.
After fifty yards the trees grew closer together. After one hundred they were less than a foot apart and Brandon and the others had to turn sideways to slide in between them.
“If the trees get any closer together, this is going to be a problem,” Reece said.
“No kidding.” Brandon pushed through an opening, his front and back scraping against the trees.
Marcus pushed through the same opening, then pointed to a line of redwoods ten feet ahead that were less than a foot apart. “You mean like that?”
“Exactly.”
“Interesting forest,” Brandon said.
“And obvious.” Marcus turned to watch Reece struggle through two trees behind them.
“Care to enlighten us?” Reece asked when he got through.
“She’s built a forest to keep people out.”
“Exactly.”
Brandon glanced to his right and left. “If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, and I am thinking you’re thinking what I’m thinking, we could go back out to where the trees are thinner, circle this thing for eternity, and we wouldn’t find an opening.”
“You could be a songwriter with catchy lyrics like that,” Reece said.
“ The man who never smiles makes a joke.” Brandon laughed. “Miracles still do happen.”
“They do indeed.” Reece motioned toward the trees. “Time is always against us when we’re inside a soul, so let’s figure out a solution.”
“Why is time against us?” Marcus asked.
“The longer we stay in, the greater chance the enemy will notice our work to set someone free and send his soldiers through the gate to attack and thwart what we’re doing.”
“Then let’s move.” Brandon smacked the giant redwood in front of them. “Let’s grab a chainsaw the size of the Space Needle and cut all the trees down.”
“You’re thinking in the physical realm. Here we are spirit and we’re not bound by the same rules.”
“What are you saying, we should fly over the tops of the trees?”
“That’s an option.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No. But I’m not sure you’re quite ready for that,” Reece said. “But you will be in time.”
“Do you have another option in the meantime?”
“If we can’t go around the trees, let’s go through them.”
“That makes perfect sense.” Brandon nodded. “How?”
“Like Jesus did. He walked through walls. So we should be able to walk through trees.” Reece held out his arms. “Grab my forearms and close your eyes.”
Brandon reached out and grabbed Reece’s arm with his left hand. Marcus did the same on the other side, then closed his eyes.
“Can you believe?” Reece flexed his forearms. “There is infinite space around every molecule in our bodies. All that has to happen is the empty space in those trees needs to line up with the empty space in our bodies.”
Brandon cocked his head. “Of course, how could anything be simpler?”
Reece glanced at each of them. “Here we go.”
It felt like he was walking through Jell-O, only the Jell-O was going through him as well as around him. Then a burst of wind and the sensation of the trees fading away. Brandon opened his eyes.
They stood on the edge of a massive meadow at least half a mile across. Lush wild grass wavered in the breeze. No birds sang here. A sense of peace and loneliness floated in the stillness.
“Take a look at what’s in the middle of the field.” Brandon pointed to the center of the meadow.
A person sat in a chair—it was too far away to see if it was a man or a woman—with their back turned toward them.
“Open our eyes, Lord,” Reece said.
The range of Brandon’s vision increased, and soon he saw light brown hair resting on the back of a woman dressed in jeans and a gray sweatshirt.
“I think we all know who that is,” Brandon said.
“She’s older than she was at the river.” Marcus tore off a piece of grass and rubbed it between his fingers.
Reece extended his hand toward Dana. “Shall we go greet her?”
They waded through the knee-high waving grass. Dana sat so still that after a few minutes Brandon thought she might be a statue. But a few seconds later she turned and looked at them. Or looked at him. Even though he was much too far away to see her eyes, he couldn’t shake the feeling she stared only at him and that the look on her face wasn’t pleasant.
Emotions of rage and loneliness swirled inside him. Not his emotions. Hers. The feelings swept around him like a tornado, pushing out in wider circles till it felt as if he were the only being in the universe.
“Brandon,” the professor called. “Are you feeling all right? Your face is gaunt.”
Brandon stared at Marcus. “I know what she’s feeling.”
Reece stopped and turned to him. “So you know how to pray.”
Brandon nodded and walked on. After what seemed like fifteen minutes, he looked back. Something was wrong. The distance between them and the edge of the forest looked as far away as the distance between them and Dana when they’d first stepped out of the woods. They weren’t getting any closer.
“Is my brain addled or does this field seem to keep getting bigger?”
“It’s getting bigger.” Reece marched on as if this wasn’t a problem.
“So we just keep walking? Or do we do something about it?”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
An instant later Brandon’s head slammed into something hard, and he found himself knocked backward onto the ground as a feeling of simmering anger engulfed him.
“What in the world?” Marcus said, sprawled on the ground.
“Force field.” Brandon rubbed his forehead and watched Reece and the professor do the same.
“She could have had the decency to put a sign up.” Brandon staggered to his feet and reached out with his fingers. Two feet in front of him was an invisible wall. Hard. And ice cold.
“How do we penetrate this, Reece?” Marcus asked. He studied Reece’s head. “You’re bleeding.”
“Yeah, I hit that wall pretty hard.” Reece wiped his head. “I’ll be fine.”
Brandon stared at the cut on Reece’s head. “Do you want to tell me if you’ll carry that with you when we leave?”
“I will. What happens here becomes reality in the physical realm.”
“That I don’t understand.” Marcus leaned in for a closer look. “But I’m sure you’ll provide us the understanding at some point.”
Reece nodded and reached up to feel the wall. “Spirit, break this by the blood of Jesus.”
Nothing.
“Jesus, we need to get through to talk to Dana. By your power bring this wall down.”
Reece turned to Marcus and him. “This resistance isn’t from the enemy.”
“Then where is it coming from?”
“Dana.”
“What?” Brandon said.
“We need to get out of here and have a conversation with her. She’s blocking us. We need to know why.”
Their spirits slid back into their bodies and Brandon gasped. Having his spirit travel out of his body and back in would take getting used to. By the time the world stopped spinning, Reece was talking with Dana.
“Are you doing all right?”
“I’m fine.” Dana glanced at each of them. “What are you guys seeing?”
Marcus described what they’d seen. Dana’s eyes widened. “That’s the field where I imagine myself being when I want to escape the world. I’ve done it since I was a little girl and camped in the redwoods in Northern California.”
“We can’t get to you,” Reece said.
“What? Why not?”
“There’s an invisible wall preventing us from getting close. We prayed against it and nothing happened. We’re guessing it’s not coming from the enemy.”
“Then where is it coming from?” Her gaze darted from Marcus to Brandon, then stopped on Reece.
“I think you might know, Dana.”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“This might be hard to hear, but it’s the truth.” Reece leaned forward and took Dana’s hands in his. It was the first time Brandon had seen him display this amount of tenderness toward any of them. “You’re the one blocking us.”
Dana pulled free of Reece’s grasp. “What? I’m not blocking anybody. I want this to happen.”
“You are. The shield surrounding you isn’t demonic resistance. It’s you. It’s the sin you’ve allowed to take root inside. You need to turn from it.”
“Sin?” Dana put her hands on her hips. “How am I sinning?”
“Another way to define repentance is when we repent, we choose to think a different way. We renew our minds with the truth. We recognize the old thought patterns as sin, then step into the new way of thinking that leads to life.”
“Where is my thinking off base?”
“You have believed it’s okay to keep a shield around your heart. You’ve believed it’s okay to protect yourself because you’ve been wounded. You’ve thought keeping a polite distance from others is appropriate because of your past. You’re holding on to anger as well and feel you have a right to do so. None of these beliefs are true and they are keeping you from healing. You must renounce them as sin.
“And if you continue to walk in this sin, it will be impossible for you to walk fully in step with the greatest command Jesus gave.”
“Which is?”
“Love one another.”
As Brandon listened to the conversation, a truth exploded in his head like a hand grenade. How could he have been so stupid? When the Spirit said, “Be there for her,” it didn’t mean for him to be inside. It meant be warring in prayer while the other two were inside.
“I’m part of the problem as well.” Brandon ground his teeth.
Reece turned to him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s me being here that’s keeping us out. Dana doesn’t want me getting that deep inside her soul. She didn’t say it. She might not even know she’s doing it. But she is. I don’t blame her for a second.”
Brandon stood. He should have been more sensitive. Thought things through. Prayed about it more. His gut ached. “I’m sorry, Dana. I should have figured that out the moment you talked about us going in.” He backed up two steps. “Listen, I’m going to give you guys some space—I’ll be in your house, Reece. I’ll pray for this”—Brandon waved his hand—“from there.”
Reece shook his head. “No, just the opposite. We’ll stay out.”
“What?” Brandon frowned.
Dana stared at Reece with a look of horror.
“It needs to be you, Brandon. You need to go in alone.”