(This is part five of a story. To read the rest of the series, go to Waking Desire. The posts in the story are listed from newest to oldest. I\’m working on fixing that. When I have patience to wrestle with WordPress. In the meantime… back to Emmy and her lumberjack Viking.)

The walks with Bryson were the highlights of Emmy\’s days. They talked about all kinds of things. Europe. Food. Politics. Their families. Trees (always). The end of the world. Bryson was a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but that\’s pretty normal for single men in Anchorage.

They talked about God. Because, of course they did. Emmy sometimes wondered if she annoyed people with how much she talked about God, but she didn\’t really care. Bryson went to church–he was the second person Emmy had met dating who went to some weird underground church that Emmy had never heard of. It met on Tuesdays in people\’s houses. Or something. None of her friends had ever heard of it, either. She had a fleeting thought that maybe this was something guys dating Christian women made up. There was probably some Reddit discussion board called r/datingcrazygodfreaks where guys all agreed that Jesus girls find it sexy when you make up an underground church that you attend…

Emmy often had crazy thoughts like that, and she was never sure how crazy they were. She\’d recently come to terms with some things about her marriage that she\’d been unable or unwilling to recognize at the time they happened, and it was messing with her sense of reality. One day she wondered whether it was possible that Bryson was some random homeless guy who lived on the bike trail (there were some in tents near the bridge). He would always just pop out of the woods, supposedly coming from his home across the creek. A home she\’d never seen… Of course, he did have a jacket with the name of a the large oil company he worked for embroidered on it. And he didn\’t look or smell like someone who didn\’t have regular access to a shower. But still… These thoughts were hard to put away, even ones that she recognized as pretty odd.

One more persistent thought she kept tripping on was that they never did anything but go on walks. This was great for awhile, but after a few weeks, it just got weirder as time passed. It was her habit to walk to her dog on the trail every day anyway, so she kept it up, but he never seemed too enthusiastic about suggestions to do other activities. There was always an excuse, mainly that he didn\’t have a car. That didn\’t seem right. Maybe he was shy? Maybe she just needed to be more patient?

One day, they passed Emmy\’s ex-husband on the trail by the lake. He passed without a word, and his face was so stretched with stress that she didn\’t even recognize him until he was already behind them. She was completely discombobulated, and told Bryson, \”I know it\’s a small town, but… He never goes outside! And definitely not just to take a walk by a lake…\”

\”Maybe he\’s a daywalker and you just didn\’t know it?\” They both giggled, but the encounter rattled her. She just wasn\’t used to running into him randomly, and with the realizations about their marriage that kept bobbing to the surface of her consciousness completely unbidden, the whole thing was more uncomfortable than she liked to admit.

She went home agitated. The walks were still enjoyable, but the generous smattering of the God moments she\’d seen at first were getting fewer and farther between. Her experience of God in the last year or so had been radically different from earlier in her life, and very different from most people she met. It wasn\’t a shared experience you could count on by checking the box next to \”Christian\” on dating websites. It wasn\’t until Bryson that she began to recognize how much she craved friendship not just with someone who knew Jesus, but company in her ability to see and hear Him. Not all Christians she knew had that. In fact, most didn\’t.

Today when they\’d talked about God, Bryson seemed like he\’d backed away from those shared moments from their first few walks together, the ones when heaven shone through to the bike trail and they had both seen and heard. Not quite together, but ever-so-close. Adjacent visions. Now he\’d stepped aside from it, he talked about the importance of the Old Testament law, about how his main experience of God was that he\’d come back to God and the law when he was angry at someone for stealing his car. Emmy was looking for someone who knew grace, who knew and talked to God like her. She had thought she\’d found that, but… Well, it had been that way for a few moments.

She prayed, \”What is going on here? God, I\’m confused.\” The fruits of the spirit came to her: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. If that is where God is, and they were in her experience, God was there, right? Emmy alwas tries to go where God is, and she began to feel encouraged again. She looked up the verse in Galatians. Yeah, she\’d remembered it right… and then her eyes strayed to the next column. It was her verse from Isaiah. Wait… what? She didn\’t know it was quoted in the New Testament.

The context of it floored her after her last God conversation with Bryson…

\”Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically… So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.\” (Galatians 4)

Phew. Children of freedom require free parents. That… this thing with Bryson wasn\’t that, that much was becoming clear. He seemed much more like a child of law kind of guy. He certainly identified himself that way.

That week she was reading Hebrews with some friends, and ran across chapter 4, verse 2:

\”For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.\”

Could… people could hear sometimes without listening? See without seeking? She\’d met so many people who were united by faith but who couldn\’t see and hear. Was it possible there were people who could see and hear like her but chose to ignore it? It seemed incomprehensible to her that someone would turn away from that kind of beauty, that anyone could fail to run after it with every ounce of their energy once they\’d gotten just a hint of it.

Their moment was crumbling. Emmy hung onto the fading light of it. She didn\’t want to let go in spite of increasing doubts. Besides, what was up with the conflicting signs? Why would the light of the presence of God shine on Emmy and Bryson one way one minute and another the next? Ahem, God? Why would you get my hopes up and show off like that if you weren\’t going to make good on your \”hold my beer\” moment? Just thinking about that gave her a lump in her throat. She wasn\’t sure she wanted to know the answer.

To be continued…