Sacrifices of Joy (13 page)

“So, Ms. St. James, you're saying that I need to look real closely at my thoughts, and see what it is that I'm telling myself about my husband's infidelity.”

“That's exactly what I'm saying, Shanay. However, it's not just listening to your self-talk, but examining your thoughts to see if the messages you are telling yourself are true, helpful, or logical. For example”—I looked down at the thought log journal my twenty-seven-year-old client had brought in as directed—“you wrote down that you had the following thoughts last night: ‘If I were prettier, Caleb would have never cheated.' ‘I deserve what happened because of all the bad choices I made when I was younger.' ‘I can never trust another man again.' ‘I am unlovable.'”

I looked up at my 4:30 client whose light brown eyes filled with tears. “Remember, like we talked about last time,” I continued as she grabbed another tissue, “your thoughts lead directly to what you feel. If you are feeling depressed and devastated, look again at the thoughts you are having. Examine them. Challenge them. Separate truth from fiction. Change your inner dialogue to one that speaks to healing, wholeness, and moving forward. It's never about what happens to you; it's about how you respond, what you tell yourself about your circumstance. Your feelings are going to match the messages you play in your mind. You can't control what others do to you, but you can control how you respond.”

She nodded and closed her eyes. “That's true,” she whispered before reopening them and looking back at me. A small smile tugged on her lips. “Thank you. You have been very helpful through all of this.”

I smiled back at her as she gathered her things.

“Same time, same place next week, Shanay, but not the same thoughts,” I gently chided.

“I'm working on it.” She laughed as she left the office.

I checked my calendar. I'd seen seven of my scheduled clients today. There had been only one no-show and one cancellation.

And no sign of Mr. Bennett, or whoever he was.

I exhaled, realizing that my body had been holding tension all day as I'd wondered constantly if he would reappear. Taking two deep breaths, I tightened and loosened the muscles in my shoulders to relax, a quick tip I offered to my stressed-out clients.

I needed to take more of my own advice, I concluded as I began packing up my things for the day. I'd said all the right things to my last client, Shanay, but how much of what I said did I really listen to myself?

“Don't you worry about a thing for tomorrow. I've already taken care of your clients and a few of them have already rescheduled for Saturday afternoon.” Darci stood in the doorway, flipping through some charts.

“Thanks, Darci. I don't know what I would do without you.” My things in hand, I followed her to the reception area and waiting room.

“Oh.” She froze at her desk and used her free hand to run through part of her brunette hair. “Ms. St. James is done for the day. Did you have an appointment?” I heard her speak to someone just out of my view.

Him.

I inhaled and held my breath as Darci knocked over her pencil cup. “Oops.” She giggled and then quickly sobered and turned around to face me. “Sienna, your client from the other day is back. I know you were about to leave. Would you like for me to give him one of your Saturday openings? The morning times are still available.”

“That won't be necessary.” I spoke before thinking. My heart started beating faster. “I can see him now.”

I checked my watch. Laz and I had agreed to meet at a restaurant at 8:00 p.m. in Columbia, Maryland, a quasi-halfway point between Baltimore and DC, where he was still covering the terror attack. I'd been planning to go to a library to catch up on paperwork and look through some psych books and magazines until then. However, I knew there was no way I'd be able to get any work done knowing that I'd turned down an opportunity to figure out this man.

“Oh, you're leaving, Darci?” I noticed my assistant packing her bags and shutting down her computer.

“Yes. I have to pick up my . . .” She glanced over at the man, who stared back at her. “I mean”—she cleared her throat—“I have to leave a little early today to run an errand. Kierra and Soo Yun both called and said their evening clients cancelled, which is unusual, so I thought I'd take advantage of this rare free Wednesday evening to, well . . .” Her eyelids blinked rapidly as she looked from me to the man, who stared at her from his seat.

Was she trying to keep him from knowing that she had children, as if that would scare him away? I would definitely have to talk to her, the sooner the better. I knew Darci was professional enough not to cross any inappropriate lines with our clients, but just the same, I would speak to her privately the moment that I could.

“I was planning to make up this time on Saturday morning since you'll be in that day anyway.” She bit her lip and I realized that my silence was discomforting to her.

“Darci, that's fine. I'm not worried about your hours. I just want you to have a nice evening.”

“I'll be here Saturday.” She breathed out as she scurried to the door. She pushed a lock of hair off her face and gave both the man and me a slight smile. She exited with her head down.

“Well.” The Bennett man spoke for the first time. “Looks like it's just you and me.”

Today he wore a brown suit with a yellow dress shirt. The shirt collar was loosened and a tie hung limply from his neck. Was he coming from work? What did he do for a living? I remembered the list of questions I had about him that I'd written down the other night.

I also remembered that I had no desire to be alone in my office with him.

“Hungry?” I gave an easy smile. “We can go back to that café and talk again like we did yesterday. Continue our conversation?”

“No.” His reply was immediate and certain. “I wanted to talk to you privately today. That's why I came late to make sure that I was your last client.”

Everything in me screamed, yelled, quivered, and collapsed, and yet the easy smile on my face would not leave.

“Okay, Mr. Bennett. We don't have a lot of time to talk, but I can see you for a few minutes. Come on back to my office.”

What kind of fool crazy state was I in? I swallowed hard and sent up a quick prayer for continuous protection.

There had only been a few clients over the years who rattled me down to my ankle bones since I'd started my social work career. Aside from a couple I'd engaged in couples counseling a few years ago who turned out to have secrets that threatened my safety, I'd been disturbed once as a graduate student intern by a late teen who confided to me vague details about being a hit man for a dangerous, well-organized gang; and another time as a newly licensed practitioner by an older, snaggletoothed woman who claimed to see the souls of the living and the dead, and kept squinting at an empty space beside me.

However, the feelings of fright and unsettledness that I'd felt on those occasions did not compare to the paralyzing anxiety I was having watching the man quietly flip through the textbooks and manuals I kept on my bookshelves.

He's not a terrorist. He is a man who needs help, and I am here to help him.
My thoughts troubled me even more as I realized I still felt unsettled about what he had been doing at the airport on Saturday.

Stay logical, Sienna.
I had no sound reason to continue mulling those disturbing thoughts. I also realized that I had no desire to ask him about his trip on Saturday. I did not feel prepared to hear any of his potential answers.

As had been my approach, I stayed quiet, allowing him the chance to take the lead of our conversation. After about ten minutes of walking around my office, picking up thick books and studying the various knickknacks I'd set out, he finally sat down on the leather couch farthest from my office door.

Which I'd kept open.

I felt good about doing that, just like I felt good that I'd followed some advice from Ava, my life and career mentor, about another aspect of my office layout.

“Never have personal mementos out in your office where you do therapy. Some pictures and personal artifacts clients do not need to see, for their protection, and yours.”
I could hear Ava's warning.

I needed to call her. Hadn't spoken to her in a while. I made a mental note to do so. This would be a good case for peer supervision.

“So.” The man possibly named Bennett finally broke the silence. “You choose to practice an eclectic form of therapy. I see books from many schools of psychological thought, competing theories, even the Bible.” He pointed to the small, green book I kept behind a plant on my windowsill. I was surprised he'd seen it. Most clients never noticed the pocket-sized New Testament I stored within my arm's reach for when I needed a quick boost. It had been awhile since I'd picked it up. Its sun-faded leather cover was evidence that I'd nearly forgotten it was there.

The fact that he seemed to be observing and interpreting small details of my life did not comfort me.

“Sounds like you have some thoughts about what I do, an opinion about my approach.”

It was too easy of a bait, I knew. I did not expect him to take up my unhidden offer for him to further divulge his personal philosophies surrounding psychology and faith.

But I needed to try something. I needed to have some kind of understanding of this man.

It was an easy bait, and he knew it, but he took it anyway.

“Your confusion simply proves my point.” He smiled, but nothing in me was warmed.

“My . . . confusion. Can you explain what you mean?” I knew that I would be annoyed by whatever answer he gave, but the trained social worker in me knew that I had to explore, explore, explore.

“Why did you become a therapist?”

I nearly did a double take.
Was he in the room when Laz asked me pretty much the same question on Sunday? Of course not. Right? Get it together, Sienna,
I chided myself. I could not let my paranoia dictate this session. I was certain that's what he wanted on some level.

The upper hand.

Why?

All the questions I'd had I'd forgotten, except one:
What is his motive for coming to see me?
That was what I had to focus on. That was how I would not get derailed and end up in a land of insanity along with him.

“I find it interesting that you would want to know about my personal choices, but are not willing to disclose any basic or public information about yourself.”

“Basic or public information about me?” His eyes narrowed. I had touched a nerve.

Did I press it or let it go?
Think fast!
“A name is a pretty basic fact to know about someone.”

“A name.” He shook his head as if he pitied me. “We're back at that frivolity again. Is that what your textbooks state? That a name is basic and necessary?”

“To get treatment, you give your name, your contact information, and you sign a form consenting to services.”

“Treatment. Services,” he echoed. I noticed then that he had a small balled-up sheet of paper rolled up in between his fingers. He spun it around while he spoke. “We're having a conversation. Not a therapy session.”

“Why is it important to you that a difference between the two be made? Can't a conversation be therapeutic? Can you help me understand?”

“All these books on your shelf, and your Bible, too, and you ask
me
for understanding?”

“I am asking if you can share your thoughts about therapy.”

The man raised an eyebrow, smiled again, crossed one leg over a knee. “Well, for one, I find it interesting that even with all your textbooks, your theories, your Bible, and all the capital letters you so proudly wear in the title behind your name, you are having trouble understanding therapy.”

I swallowed down the immediate defensiveness that wanted to take over me because I was a professional, and, yes, trained to deal with people like him.

Or so I believed.

“So, there is a part of you that feels insulted when someone like me, who has degrees and textbooks purporting to understand the human mind, tries to diagnose you and claims to understand your inner psyche. Does it come off as superiority to you?” I stared at him straight in the eyes.

“I have a PhD. You have a master's degree. I am not threatened by the idea of your so-called superiority over me, or your uninformed view of therapy.”

“Then what do you have against therapy?” I asked, choosing to ignore most of his statement and focus on what would move the “conversation” forward.

“Therapy by its definition implies that there is something wrong that needs to be fixed. Your Bible implies the same thing. ‘All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it.' These are both verses in your Bible.”

“So you don't like to hear that you can be wrong.”

“Your textbooks say that the answer to everything is in changing your thoughts. Your Bible says that the answer to everything is having a change in your spirit. Which one is it? Which do you believe? On one hand, you have the power to change all that is wrong with you, which makes you all-powerful. On the other hand, only God has the power to change what is wrong with you, making Him the All-Powerful. In whose power do you believe?”

“You simplify a very complex topic,” my answer. “You are comparing the tools you can use to get to an end result. An artist who creates masterpieces has different tools at his or her disposal. Pens, paper, crayons, oils, canvas, brushes. Tools are needed to get the end result, but the vision and the skill, and the capability to create, comes from a deeper place. Having both tools and the power to use them are equally important.” Huh? What was I trying to say?

The man raised an eyebrow. “Why do you avoid talking about the Bible?”

“Excuse me?”

“I understand that as a secular clinician, the proper protocol is to avoid talking about specific religious beliefs unless and until the client opens the door. I have opened the door and you still avoid going in? Why is that, Ms. St. James? Are you at odds with what you believe about psychology and what you believe about God?”

“You are very interested in my thoughts.”

“Only because you are interested in mine.”

We paused in the “conversation,” as if we had reached the halftime of an intense quarterfinal game. I picked the ball back up. “The concept of faith is important to you, although you claim to be an atheist.” I absolutely refused to make the conversation about me.

“I never said I was an atheist.” His voice was soft and slow, as if I needed extra time to process his words. “I said I don't believe in belief. I don't exist. Theories exist. Philosophies exist. Confusion exists. This is the nature of humans. I am outside of that capacity.”

“Do you think you are God?”

“I am not anything. I do not exist.”

“So then you're saying that you believe God exists?”

Silence again. Then me again:

“Why are you coming every day to talk to me, Mr. Bennett?”

His smile returned. He leaned forward in his chair. “I will tell you a secret, Ms. St. James, LCSW-C, Founder and CEO of The Whole Soul Center. I have not talked to anyone in years. I talk to you because you intrigue me. Your confusion. Your theories. Your philosophies. Your difficulty understanding and living out your own faith.

“I asked you earlier why you became a therapist, and though you chose not to answer, I think it's because you didn't have an answer. I know, you would probably answer with something that you're supposed to say, such as you became a social worker to help people. But are you really helping if you don't have the answers to your own questions, or are you just placating the part of you that wants to understand, but doesn't know how?”

It took all I had to keep my face from dropping. Who did this man think I was? I clenched my teeth to keep from saying something unprofessional as he continued.

“Like me, you are seeking to understand the truth of it all, coming to terms with what your existence, or nonexistence, means. You don't have your own answers. But that is okay, because a flawed hero is always a loved one.” His hands became animated as he talked. “If you have no flaws, you'll be despised. Jesus was perfect, yet He was hated to the point of being murdered. It is human nature to embrace wrongdoers as long as they have a cause. And it is human nature to kill perfection if its actions go against what you believe. Look at the coverage of the terrorist attack.”

Everything in me came to attention, chilled as he uttered those words. The itty bitty hairs on my arm even seemed to rise. He didn't seem to notice as he continued unabated.

“Every TV station has story after story about Jamal Abdul, but what do we really know about the victims, the so-called innocents? Nobody is interested in celebrating them, just focused on showcasing the suspect. I told you yesterday, Sienna, that you are a hero. You should never be a martyr, and yet there are people in the world who would make you out to be one if you died supporting a cause that the other half of the world was disgusted by. Mankind is a hypocrisy. If there truly is a God, and maybe there is one, He alone is the only one who can save us from ourselves. Otherwise we are simply evolving into despicable creatures who are slowly sinking into a mire pit of decay.”

When he stopped talking, a hollow, a coldness, an emptiness filled the room that had not been there before.

“So.” I thought through each word I said. “It is easier for you to say that you don't exist, than to decide whether you believe that mankind is a random, flawed accident that came into existence by evolutionary chance with no hope for redemption, or we are the purposed creation of a perfect God who is grieved by our sins and our constant rejection of him. In your eyes, both options have pain and it is easier for you not to exist than to live and feel and decide who you are. Your name is meaningless because who you are as a man, your identity, the core essence of who you are is unknown even to you.”

We were at the end of the game, but there were no cheers, maybe even no winners. I was tired, and I needed him out of my office because my brain hurt, maybe even my soul, which struggled to make sense of his senselessness. He talked like he knew me, like he knew a part of me that had indeed been wrestling with my faith.

I needed him out of my office so I could quiet my own thoughts and fears and questions. I knew what I believed. I just didn't always know how to make it work for me. Or how to let God make it work for us all.

I needed the Creator's tools to make a masterpiece out of my life. Without His palette, without His initial sketch, my life would look just like it felt right now: a mess.

Jesus, fix me. Fix the picture of my life. Fix it so that when people look at me, they see an illustration of you, and not a messy, abstract, self
-
directed finger painting. I'm tired of feeling a mess because of my feelings, my pain, my running away from you. I need you to pick up my paintbrush again and fix this picture of me. You are the potter, I am the clay.

I needed this man out of my office. In my extended silence, I knew that he knew that he had gotten to me in a way that nobody ever had. I knew this because he was smiling, and it was a smile I had never seen on his face before.

I had no more comeback lines, only the broken picture of me and the self-assured darkness of him.
Get him out of my office, Lord!

“Well.” The man broke the silence, still smiling. “You understand now. We've officially finished our conversation. I will not be back. I'll mail your payment as promised.” He stood up and started walking toward the door.

“Wait.” I followed, as I even wondered what I was going to say. I needed my upper hand back. “Do you really want me to believe that you haven't shared a word to anybody in years?”