3Chapter Twenty
A Special Someone
So, I turned to the Garden of Love
That so many sweet flowers bore;
And I saw it was filled with graves.
~William Blake
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness;
And all these things shall be added unto you.
Matthew 6:33
Snuggled against him, she thought of all the Master had done since she first noticed him and pretended she had not. She thought of him saving her from the grave and from dangers all along the difficult path, which turned out to be the Master himself, and she thought of him right up to the present moment.
Things had not gone the way she had dreamed they would go. Nor had they gone the way she had been taught they should go since she was a small child. She was more like him now and loved him more than ever as a result of what he had taught her during the hard tests, but she regretted still being sentimentally attached to the future she had imagined for herself back when the organ boomed and the colored light streamed through the stained-glass windows, illuminating the back of a certain golden young man's curly head.
Digging the third and last pebble from her pocket and placing it in the palm of her hand, she thought about it for a moment. She liked the idea of being made into gold, silver and precious jewels, but deep down inside her heart – and she did not know which – she wished she could have been treated in a special way, a gentle way, more in keeping with stained glass and pipe organs and ornate carvings and other respectable trappings of a civilized life.
She had not thought of this for a while, having been distracted by the prospect of coming to the Father's house and living with the Master forever; but the Master's 'soon' had taken far longer than she had thought it should. Talk of future gold, silver and precious jewels was all well and good, but there was something she thought she was missing as an ordinary life passed her by, while she waited for the Master's return. She longed for a fairy-tale castle complete with a handsome prince, but a little white cottage with a picket fence would do, if it included a romantic someone in flesh and blood.
"I'm flesh and blood," the Master's Spirit cut through her musings. "I've gone through all the same temptations and pains that you've gone through and, like you, I could only have gone through them by keeping my eyes on our Father."
"But I have a need for that special someone like I need to drink water and eat food!" her innermost longing cried with tears coursing down her cheeks.
At one time she thought she had found that special someone; but silly her, that young and handsome one had not even deigned look her way. Only the Master had filled her void and had given her the attention she craved.
"And I need a special someone for my life in the here and now; I can't wait until the far distant future when I get to the other side of the path to have that dream fulfilled by you. I need him now!"
"You don't have to wait," rays of sunshine smiled from him. "You're following the straight and narrow Path. I take you straight to the place you need to go and give you what you need the quickest way possible for your particular case, even if you think I'm taking too long getting you there. It has never been necessary for you to wait even for a moment, and you don't need to wait now."
Talk of leading her straight the quickest way, brought to mind a mortarboarded, gowned and bespectacled mathematics professor using a ruler to chalk a line between two dots on the blackboard, while saying, The shortest distance between two points in Euclidean geometry is a straight line.
"I don't have to wait?" new hope sprang up in her heart.
"I am in the 'Here and Now.' I'm not bound by time. You're living in me now, and I in you. As your Food and Drink I can fill that void in your new heart right now. Actually, I've been waiting to hear you say you're ready for me to fill it," the intense fire of his burning eyes was glad.
"How?" she breathed.
"Trust me to fill it as I have filled all your other voids," he whispered as he dried her tears. "I was the one who put it there in the first place, so I could fill it. Actually, I'm the only one who can fill it, even if you were to find that special someone of whom you speak."
"So, how do I go about finding him?" her little mind zoomed astray, again.
"You don't!" the Master grinned broadly at her. "If you tried to find him, you would naturally make a mistake. But if you persist, I can take any rocky road you choose to walk and turn it around for your good to bring you closer to me. Of course, you will lock yourself into a life of unbounded, unnecessary and avoidable pain, if you decide to take your eyes off me and make such a mistake."
"No, thank you!" she turned him down. "I've already gone through enough, and I think I won't see the end of pain and trouble until you come back to get me, anyway, so I don't want to add to it."
"That's a very wise sentiment," he nodded, "but to keep following me, you must walk in my provision for you no matter what it is, even if you think it could cause you more trouble. Just make sure you keep your eyes on me, so you won't require a severe mercy of more pain to keep you on the straight and narrow Path."
She looked up at the Master shyly, wishing to ask more about the 'special someone' subject.
"Don't worry. If you were ever to 'find' him, it would be because I had helped you find each other, as you both busied yourselves in my service. He would be someone I had created especially for you, who would help you continue to look at me."
She considered her history for a moment, thinking about what it had taken for her to keep her eyes on the Master. The method the Master had used in his eternal wisdom was to provide her a rocky road on which to travel with a broken leg. What would an earthly husband be like, created to help her keep her eyes on the Master? Would he be like a second broken leg? She was not sure she wanted to find out.
"As iron sharpens iron, you would both learn to look to me for harmony in your lives as you serve me together," he assured her. "Eventually, you and he would come to accept a very sweet life entwined with me. As my Book says, 'A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.'"
"If that is what finding a 'special someone' is all about, maybe it's better not to," she sighed.
"You're right. It's better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and nagging wife."
"I was thinking of what it would be like to live with a quarrelsome and nagging husband," she countered.
"I know, but you should be thinking of what you might become. Nevertheless, no matter how hard the marital relationship is initially, my Book says, 'He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord,' and 'A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.'"
She liked being compared to rubies; the Master had already told her she was his bride and that she was a little rock, a precious gemstone. It pleased her to think of herself as the Master's little ruby, not yet finished, but in a golden setting.
"So, am I longing for someone who doesn't exist? Is there no handsome prince on a white horse?"
"No, not unless you think you could consider me as fitting the bill," he grinned.
Yes, of course! He had filled her with himself and had been so sweet and kind to her, while teaching her so many wonderful things especially about himself all along the way; no other 'someone' could be so special to her.
"I wish I had known that long ago!" she smiled. "Then I wouldn't have wasted so much time and energy trying to make it happen. I also would have gotten on the straight and narrow path sooner, maybe."
"Maybe," he smiled back.
"And why didn't they tell me about that at the meetings, instead of teaching us so many crazy theories? Such knowledge as you just gave me would have given me a head start!"
"There were many, many things they neglected to tell you at the meetings, but that was mainly on account of not knowing the right things to teach you. They had filled their minds with so many other things that they considered to be knowledge, because they weren't searching for me."
The Master is Altogether Lovely, and I am his bride, she remembered being taught in many ways as she walked the path, but to consider him as her Special Someone in the here and now and not having to wait until the other side of the path to fill that painfully hungry void inside her, that made sense!
The more the Spirit grew in her new heart, the more voids could be filled. There was no better choice; she could not do better than having the Creator of the Universe as her Special Someone right now, lasting right into Forever! She would content herself walking with him and never look for another 'special someone' ever again!