Part six: making the call

My office sits on the second floor of what is called the ‘Student side’, I share it with two others and often one of them works late but she isn’t here tonight, and I’m grateful,  though her conversations always either soothe me or make me laugh but tonight I need the quiet office to myself. I move to the desk, put my coat on the back of my chair and I sit. I pick up my phone and dial. My fingers play with the cord as I wait for the ringing to start and when it does my I can feel my pulse quicken, nerves have me pulling the cord more taught and I have to stop myself before it pulls from the wall entirely. When I hear his voice I pause a beat before saying hello. “Breathe” I tell myself and then I begin the conversation that had been weighing on me all day. I had already moved many of my things to England in anticipation of the move but now I had decided I wasn’t moving and I needed a plan to retrieve my things, it wasn’t going to be an easy conversation so I stalled a little while and asked how his day was going. He was short with me, not wanting to chit chat so finally I had to just come out and say it. “I’m not coming to England.”. I blurted it out by accident in my haste to get it over with and the speech I had previously prepared was gone out the window. I paused; he paused, and then I heard the audible exhale of breath. We talked at length about how we had planned to try to work things through, I try to explain what’s been happening to me, how God has been showing me that I have been looking in the wrong places for love, that he is speaking to me, calling me to him, and that I needed to follow him but nothing was coming out right. I try telling him about how God has been using the story of Abraham and Sarah to talk to me about love, and his promises, how they had tried to maneuver to make the promise happen which ended with Ishmael but that wasn’t God’s plan, he had promised them a child through Sarah, and when they accepted that promise God delivered.  I twist the phone cord more and more in my hand and my fingers turn white, nothing was coming out right, he’s angry with me, he isn’t yelling but I can hear the unspoken words, the clipped way says ‘uh huh’ as I try to tell him what’s happening to me. I tell him how I think we had been trying to create the promise of love and marriage through each other when actually God had something else planned for us, that God had promised it yes but it had to be his choosing but all he hears is me saying that he is Ishmael and he begins screaming about me calling him a bastard. I hold the phone away from my ear, the peace from the chapel is dissipating and I close my eyes willing it to come back, I try assuring him that I don’t think he’s a bastard, that it was meant as a metaphor but he’s beyond hearing me now. I sit, listening to the screaming until finally his temper begins to cool and then I tell him I need to get my stuff back and he hangs up. I put the receiver back in the cradle and lay my head down on my desk, deep breaths, I have to count them because ten just isn’t cutting it and I wonder how many it will take to get my own blood pressure to lower. Nothing about that had gone according to plan I think to myself as I lie with my cheek pressed against the coolness of my desk, my arms hung limp beside me and I must have looked a little like a cartoon character from an office comic strip. I have no energy, only questions and frustrations and yet, beneath it all I also have a sense of ‘okayness’ that I didn’t possess before tonight. I wasn’t happy, but there was a peace and joy that I’m struggling to define.  I had been lying like that for another ten minutes when my phone rang, it was the mobile one this time so I knew immediately who it was and though I didn’t want to be screamed at anymore I also felt a calmness wash over me and I answered despite my misgivings. I knew immediately that he had cooled, he apologized, and then shocking me, he told me that he would pack my things and fly them out to me. Part of me would have rather thrown everything away rather than have to face him again but then the calmness comes, it covers me like a blanket and I find myself agreeing. He says he will get back to me when he knows when he can come and I say thank you and we end the call.  I throw the mobile into the desk drawer beside the discarded ring and quickly grab my jacket and leave so that he doesn’t have a chance to call back while I am in hearing distance, best to leave it on a decent note I think to myself as I head back to the cellar to forget the call and enjoy the people in my life that I love.

 

 

 

To be continued…