Well, what do you know, it was the little girl again. Seemed she was going to make a habit of popping in when you least expected. Bobbed hair. Dark brown hair. Freckles. Eyes looking up to me without tilting her head. She wasn’t happy.
“So this is how it’s going to be?” she said. No. Accused, in that bird-like, whisper of a ten-year old.
“Sorry?” I asked. I really didn’t know where she was going with this. “This is how ‘what’ is going to be?”
She twirled her hair. The finger in curl thing again. “You know what I mean.”
“No. No I don’t.”
“Writing to us when ever you want.”
“When ever I want?”
“When it’s convenient for you.” She started the swaying. Finger out of her hair now, shifted down to her lip. She wouldn’t look at me directly.
She had a point. It had been a little while since my last post. But a lot had happened. The Lord sent a lot of new work my way for which I was incredibly grateful, my daughter had a birthday, everyone came over, the storm—I’d been baling seeping water for days… “It really wasn’t my intention,” was all I could muster. It would have to do.
“The Lord?”
“Yes, the Lord. He seemed to change my course. My work, my…”
“You’re talking about God?”
“Why are you being so incredulous?” This girl was too smart and playing too dumb. I wasn’t sure she even knew what the word ‘incredulous’ meant or, for that matter, or what I meant in saying it.
Her eyebrows raised, “Well,” she began, the whole of her almost cartoonish, the head shudder, the clicking of tongue against teeth. “We were waiting for you.”
“What do you mean ‘we’?”
She shot her eyes at me. “ ‘I’. Okay? ‘I’ was waiting…”
“I’m really sorry…”
“You can’t just start talking to people and then disappear…”
“It’s just a blog…” I offered, my own shoulders shrugging in innocence.
“Just a blog!!?”
“Sorry, not just—“
“It’s a relationship!
“Yes. Yes. It is. You’re right. It’s a relationship. But I really—”
“A relationship!!!”
“Okay. Okay.”
She wasn’t going to calm down any time soon. I didn’t know what to say. I simply wanted to explain that I had honestly wanted to keep writing. It was about encouraging people in the Lord. He is there for us. He’s always there and I wanted to be able to say—
“You just disappeared…” she said.
“No, I really didn’t.”
“Hmm. Yes you did. Seemed like it. Sure did seem like it. Seemed like you wouldn’t be back.” Seemed like she was beginning to pout. “And now you want the same people that you had promised to be in relationship with to come back and forgive you for breaking that relationship.” She waited. Her timing was better than Morgan Freeman. “And now you’re sorry.” Her tiny shoulders heaved in and up. She spun to face completely away from me, preparing to leave. Then she looked back. “I thought you were about encouraging people.”
“I am. I mean—I want to be.” Now I was halfway crying. “But I didn’t disappear. And yes, please, if they came back that would be neat. Look, I’m sorry… What do you want me to do?”
She looked at me, little dark eyes flitting back and forth, measuring me, examining as a lie detector, skinny hips swaying as background theme to the examination, waving as a nervous flag. She had me. “Write more often,” she said, spun on patent leather heels and headed off.
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