My Wonderful Counselor

(This is a little glimpse into my life this past year, when I started going to regular appointments with the greatest counselor ever.)

I hold my hot cup of tea between my hands, letting the warmth relax the feeble muscles in my fingers and wrists until they tingle. (Friends tell me that my weird superpower is that I can tolerate extremely hot temperatures.) I let the steam gather moisture on my cheeks and the end of my nose and close my eyes to breathe in the scent of lavender and bergamot and vanilla. 

"It's just that I have all these dear friends who I see throughout the day, and caring family members who are just a phone call away, and yet I don't feel like I have anyone I can talk to, at least not about this..." I've been talking out loud, but with my eyes shut, focused on the comfort of the tea, but now I open my eyes and look at the chair sitting on the opposite side of my dining room table. 

(Before you think I am delusional, I'll clarify that I do know that physically the chair is vacant, and that if anyone walked into my house in that moment, they would think I'm confiding in an empty chair or an imaginary friend. But trust me, I'm not.)

He is sitting there in an easy but intentional pose, sideways so his legs are stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. His right elbow rests on the table and his fingers are curled through the handle of his own mug of tea. His eyes are on me, and he is listening to every word I say, patiently waiting for me to get to the point and invite him to respond. 

"And then I remembered that I have you," I sort of chuckle at the irony. "You are always with me, and you know what I'm struggling with. I don't have to give you the whole back story or try to explain or justify what I feel. You just... get me. No one knows my heart better than you." 

I take a sip, and he lets that last statement linger in the air between us for a minute. Then he nods and smiles and prompts: "What else is true?" 

"You knit me together, you made me with these emotions! Not the way they are all tangled up and distorted and misdirected right now, but at the core they are still from you and you made me to be able to feel these things and to feel them deeply. So I won't deny them or try to squelch them, not here when I'm with you. I can be completely honest with you, without fear, because you know it all anyway and you still choose to love me."  

"I do. What else is true?" 

"I am sad and angry and overwhelmed..." I proceed to give words to the things I have been holding inside, things that won't be fixed, cured, or resolved on this side of heaven, and the weight of it sometimes is suffocating. As I talk, I feel the tension return to my shoulders and my chest, and occasionally I scream because there just aren't sufficient words. 

All the while, he listens intently. He puts his hand on mine when my fist clenches so tight that my nails dig into my palm. When there's nothing more I can think of to say, he leans forward and makes eye contact. "And what else is true?"

I sigh and think for a minute. "You are a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, acquainted with grief..." tears spring to my eyes and I notice that they spring up in his, too. But I continue: "You know this old world is broken, that relationships and bodies and dreams are broken... you experienced it yourself, in betrayal and denial and death and more, and you let yourself be broken right along with it all. Your heart breaks with mine." 

He sets his mug aside, stands up, and pulls his chair around the table beside me. He takes off my seatbelt and lifts me out of my wheelchair, onto his lap, and wraps his arms around me. We weep together, for all that is broken. My head is on his chest, my tears soak into his shirt, and I feel his heartbeat against my cheek, the strength and steadiness of it soothes my soul. 

When I stop crying, he wipes my tears and my nose and helps me lean back to look at his gentle face. "That isn't the end," he reminds me. "Tell me what else is true."

I sniffle a couple times and then take a long, slow breath. "You have overcome the world. One day, you will make it all right. Death itself will reverse, and everything sad will come untrue. We will be whole and complete, not lacking anything, and we will be together with you forever. And nothing will ever be broken again." 

We both laugh goofily, the way people do after a good hard cry. We smile at each other, and our eyes still glisten with tears, and I realize they are the tears of the in-between: between lost and found, sorrow and joy, what is and what will be. 

He says, "This is all true." Then he shifts and lifts me back into my wheelchair seat and puts my seatbelt back on me. He takes both of my hands in his, and adds: "In the meantime, remember that I am with you and I will never leave you. Take heart, dear one." 

"He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."