The Gate (12 page)

Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!

Anne Frank

I
woke to the smell of something wonderful, and when I went downstairs, Ahbee was pulling little spinach and artichoke soufflés out of the oven. He set two of them on a plate with some sliced strawberries and handed it to me along with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

“Have a seat, Scout,” he said. “Looks like you'll be spending the day with me today.”

There was something about him that both put me at ease and made me uncomfortable. There was a warmth in his voice and appearance and a tenderness in his eyes. I felt confident that he cared about me, but being in his presence was also intimidating. It's hard to explain, but I felt small in his presence. Like when I did something wrong as a kid and I'd have to sit on the naughty chair and wait for my dad to come home. I knew it was going to go one of two ways: I was either going to get a licking or a lecture. The licking was painful but quick, and so I much preferred it to the alternative.

When Dad would lecture me he'd take his time. He'd start with the look. He'd get this pained expression on his face that said, “You've really let me down on this one, Sky. I'm so disappointed.
We talked about this before, and I expect more from you than that.” The longer he'd wait to speak, the smaller I'd feel. And then when he did speak, it wasn't so much what he said but how he said it—slow, deliberate, almost in a whisper so you'd have to strain to hear him. He said it in such a way that you knew it pained him to have to talk about it.

One of the only times I ever saw my dad cry was when I got caught changing a grade on my report card. Dad had said that if I didn't get my English grade up, I wasn't going to be able to go on a fishing trip we had planned in Canada. I promised I would, but I didn't. So as I rode home from school on the bus, I took out my report card and a ball-point pen and changed an F to a B. But when the teacher called my house a few days later, my trickery was exposed.

“How could you do that?” Dad said. “They could tell me my boy wasn't trying, they could tell me that you just weren't able to understand, and I'd have believed them. But when they told me you were a cheat, that you lied to me, I said no way, not Sky, he'd never lie to me.” And then a tear rolled down his cheek. I remember feeling tiny when he said that, insignificant, like I'd let him down and there was nothing I could ever do to make it right. In a word, I felt guilty.

That's how I felt around Ahbee. I felt little, and unworthy, and exposed. Like he could see the secrets I kept hidden in my soul. It was unnerving, especially when it was quiet, so I tried to keep the conversation going. We exchanged words about the weather and the way the water was rippling across the lake, but he didn't seem to be in much of a mood for conversation. So mostly I just sat there feeling small in the uncomfortable silence.

After we were done with breakfast, Ahbee asked me if I was ready.

“Ready for what?” I asked.

“You and I are going to talk about what you've learned in the last couple of days,” he answered. “It's a lot of information to digest.”

Ahbee was right. I'd been through a lot in the last few days, and I hadn't really taken the time to digest much of what I'd learned. Even the day I took a walk by myself had been a learning experience. I'd relived some of the accident, and I knew that at least some of the lessons I'd learned here had something to do with that. There was a part of me that was ready to forgive myself for my part in it all, but there was still so much I wanted to know. Spending some time with Ahbee was exactly what I wanted to do, but I also felt like I needed to clear the air.

“I'm sorry for what I said down by the creek. I didn't mean it. It was just so painful for me to remember.”

“It was painful for me too,” Ahbee said. “But sometimes pain is necessary.” With that, he walked out the door.

“Well, are you coming?” he asked as he walked out back toward the carriage house.

“Right behind you.”

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, and the sky was filled with those big, cotton-like clouds that seemed to roll across the horizon.

Ahbee opened the garage door and got into the driver's seat of a cream-colored '67 Volvo 122s station wagon. It had red-ribbed leather interior, gray carpet, and big, black rubber mud mats. I took the shotgun seat on the passenger's side, we both clicked on the three-point seatbelts, and as soon as Ahbee turned the key, the little four-cylinder motor responded with a gentle purr.

The car was kind of a throwback. It had an AM radio and crank windows, and the gauges were round and retro, black-faced with white letters. The steering wheel was gigantic, speaking to the fact that the car did not have power steering, but the thing that stuck out most to me was the length of the throw on the stick transmission. Like the shift lever itself, it was awkwardly long, and when Ahbee put it in reverse, he banged my knee.

We drove along a winding road in silence for about twenty minutes before I asked where we were going.

“No place in particular,” Ahbee replied, rolling down the window. “Sometimes I just find it helpful to take a ride. There's something freeing about driving this stretch of road and listening to the sound of the tires on the pavement.”

The scope of heaven is much grander than we can imagine.

I had to agree. The road chased the coastline, winding its way through dense woods that tumbled up against the side of a snow-capped mountain. The terrain seemed to be a mixture of all of my favorite places. At times the coastline was rocky and dropped off several hundred feet from the narrow shoulder of the road. Other times there were woods out both windows, and then a little farther on, the road would open up to a panoramic vista as it ran along the coast flanked by the low bluff of a rolling sand dune.

The water was blue and clear, and finally I asked, “Is that the ocean?”

Ahbee answered, “No, not exactly. It's the Crystal Sea.”

Of course it is
, I thought to myself.
I should have known that. If this is heaven, then what else could it be?

“It could be lots of things,” Ahbee said, answering the question I never asked. “The scope of heaven is much grander than you imagine—oceans, rivers, mountains, deserts, rain forests, glacial tundras, magnificent cities.”

“Cities?”

“Of course! Shops, theaters, restaurants . . . whatever you've enjoyed in your world is but a taste of mine. You have no idea the things that I have imagined, and when I think of something, it is.”

“Just like that?” I asked.

“If by ‘that' you mean in that very moment in terms of time as you know it, then I would say no. Remember, I'm not bound by time.”

Ahbee continued, “To me a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like the blink of an eye. Time and all its
limitations and anxiety are a result of Adam's indiscretion. The Fallen One is in charge of calendars, the aging process, and death and deadlines of any kind. You'll notice that I wear no wristwatch.”

Up until that moment, I actually hadn't noticed. In fact, I'm sure that I probably hadn't noticed a lot of things, but since there were no hands on the clock in the kitchen, I shouldn't have been surprised.

“You're right,” Ahbee said, again reading my thoughts. “That's what this little car ride is all about. You see, at some point you're going back to your world again, and when you do, I want you to share a little bit of what you've learned here.

“Like Moses, the prophets, and the others, you've been chosen. You've been sent out ahead of the others so that you can go back and tell them what's waiting for them just over the horizon. You've been brought here so that you can go back there and give them a report. Every generation has its prophets, you know.

“Unfortunately, the Fallen One has found a way to cut the lives of most of them short. Their heightened sensitivity to all things spiritual made them targets. I don't want you to take this wrong, but to be honest, that's why we've chosen you. At times you've been an unwilling part of the conspiracy, and so you'll have credibility on both sides.”

God often uses unlikely prophets to share his heart.

To be honest, I wasn't sure if I should be honored for being mentioned in the company of men like Moses or offended for being accused of sometimes siding with evil, but I sat mute because I knew it was true. I've spent some time in both camps. Ahbee nodded as if he'd read my thoughts, then continued.

“Others have claimed to speak in my name with threatening rage and hellfire judgment or a smooth and easy promise, and they've captured people's attention by telling them what they wanted to hear. But for the most part, you've sat comfortably on the fence. You're wonderfully average, a mediocre Christian tucked
comfortably out of the limelight and off the Fallen One's radar, and so you're as an unlikely a prophet as I could find. He'd never suspect that we'd choose to use someone like you, and that's the beauty of it.”

“But I'm a psychologist, not a preacher,” I said. “Any teaching I do is merely a sideline—a class or two at the college, some Sunday school sometimes.”

Our potential is only as limited as our dreams.

“Exactly my point,” Ahbee responded. “We've had our eye on you for a long time. You've managed to elude the temptation to compromise the truth, but at the same time you've never proclaimed it with enough conviction to attract attention to yourself. Ordinarily, when someone is neither hot nor cold, they are of very little use to me, but in this case, you're perfect.”

Imagine that
, I thought to myself.
God thinks I'm perfect!
Of course, I wasn't sure if he intended that to be a compliment, but I took it as one. Besides, being labeled as an unlikely prophet put me in pretty good company—Jonah, Moses, Gideon, David, and Paul. None of them were professional preachers, and at one point, they were all as unlikely a candidate as I to be the messengers of the Most High.

“Is that what Roz meant when he said that you weren't done with me yet?” I asked.

“That's a part of it,” Ahbee replied. “You have a wealth of potential hidden inside you. Of course, I believe that about everyone, so I'm no more done with anyone else than I am with you. Each of you is born with a lifetime's supply of mulligans, second chances, and do-overs in your birth package. Unfortunately, you give up on yourselves when I have never given up on you.”

His blue eyes flashed as he began to explain. “Each day you're given a new chance to become the person I created you to be. Your potential is only as limited as your dreams. Children understand that. That's why they have such huge, bodacious dreams. They haven't learned to limit their possibilities yet, and so each night
they go to sleep dreaming about how they're going to change the world, and every day they begin a new adventure.

We were made for so much more than most of us settle for.

“But as you get older, you settle. You trade your big dreams for little dreams. Instead of changing the world, you dream about changing jobs, or changing your address, or changing the way you wear your hair. The problem is that I have planted eternity in your hearts. I have sown the seeds of greatness in your souls, and so naturally when you settle for anything less, it's not very satisfying. Does that make sense to you?” Ahbee asked.

“It makes perfect sense,” I replied. “It's what I've always thought Solomon was trying to say when he said that all of life was meaningless, but until now, I was never quite sure.”

“Be sure!” Ahbee responded. “Be very sure!”

I nodded as if to agree, but really I was only on the cusp of understanding. Little by little I shuffled his words through my mind like a deck of cards, and one by one the pieces began falling into place. So many of the things that I thought would make me happy in life in fact did quite the opposite, and now I understood why. We were made for so much more than most of us settle for.

“Let me ask you something,” Ahbee said. “Do you ever miss the car business?”

It was a question I'd been asked a lot in my life. “Not much,” I said. “I miss driving a different car home every night, and the dealer trips, and some of the people. Some of my closest friends and family are still in the car business. But I guess what I miss the most is feeling like I was in control. I felt invincible in those days, like there wasn't anything I couldn't fix.”

“The invincibility is part of the ignorance of youth,” Ahbee said. “Eventually you outgrow it. But the need to be in control, the desire to fix everything—it's your Achilles' heel.”

He was right. I'm a fixer, always have been, and never has that been more true than when it came to Ben.