The soft rap on the door startled me, "Hey, are you in there?"
I pulled my knees up tighter under my chin and stayed silent.
"I know you're in there. Open the door." It was Mr. David
"No."
"Why not?"
"Just leave me alone."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"I don't want to go sit in the lawn chair, it's uncomfortable."
"Go away." I didn't want him to see what I had done, so I stayed quietly in the closet, hoping he would get tired of waiting and leave.
After several minutes, I realized it wasn't going to happen, so I pushed the door open, barely. "Are you happy now?"
"It's a start." He stepped into the very small closet and sat beside me, pulling his knees up under his chin, "I'm too old for this."
"What are you doing anyway?"
"I'm just going to sit here with you."
We sat in silence. I could barely feel the warmth of his arm against mine and I felt safe. After several minutes the tears started. "Do you see what I did?"
"What did you do?"
"I went and got some of my stuff back."
He looked around and noticed the bundle of pride on the shelf, and the bucket of anger in the corner. "Wow, even the anger huh? Where did you find it?"
My friend, Lucy. Every time things are going well, she seems to show up and want to go through old pictures."
"Lucy? Who is that?"
"You probably heard of her dad. She's named after him. He's the guy trying to destroy the whole neighborhood."
"I see. Where did you get that pile of lust?"
"Lucy got to quit her job and she's taking a long vacation."
"I see. Why did you go get this stuff?"
"It's what I know. It's comfortable. All that new stuff was scary. Healthy friendships? Forgiveness? Ministry? It was just too much."
"So you decided to get your old stuff back?"
"Yep."
"Come on." He struggled to get to his feet.
"I'm not coming out. It's scary out there."
"It's the same house outside of this door."
"The furniture's new.
"You don't have to sit on it all at once." There was that smirk.
"I'm not coming out. It's too hard."
"Okay. You go ahead and sit here and when you're ready, you call me."
I waited several minutes after hearing the back door close, before I finally crawled from the closet. I stood outside the door and stretched, my muscles sore from being cramped in the small space. Suddenly something caught my eye and l looked to the back door to see Mr. David leaned against it, with his familiar smirk.
"I thought you left."
"And miss you stepping out of there? It's just a little set back. That's all."
"I don't think I can do this. I don't know how."
"Well first of all, we need to get you prepared for the next time Lucy stops by. She is not your friend and you can't be opening the door to her."
"I know." I took a few steps toward Mr. David when I heard the closet door squeak behind me. I looked back to see The Man walk out. "I didn't know he was in there."
"I know. He was sitting on the top shelf, swinging His feet and talking to you, but you refused to see or hear Him. That's why He called me. I can't believe you didn't hear Him up there moving stuff around, while we were talking."
"Why would He get in the closet with me?"
"Same reason I did. Now, you two spend some time together and when you're ready, I'll be back to help you haul that stuff away."
"Again?"
The Man finally spoke, "As many times as it takes for you to leave it there."
“I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.”
― W. Paul Young, The Shack
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