God’s Missing Us
CREAK…] The confessional door opened and a young lady came out with a brimming smile.
“Leah! What a surprise!” Alain whispered loudly inside the church.
“Alain?” Leah was quite surprised to see her high school classmate. “What are you doing here?”
“Shouldn’t I be the one asking what our staunch, self-proclaimed atheist and high school president is doing inside a church and most of all going to confession?”
“Shhh…,” Leah silenced her friend. “Not here! Let’s go and have a cup of coffee somewhere.”
“As long as it’s on you, chief!”
“Free rider…!!!,” Leah sighed as her eyes rolled like two enormous millstones.
“Hey, did you know you really look cute when you do that?”
Leah clenched a fist at Alain and said, “You want to know who will look cute after this?”
“Geez, you’re even more sophisticated,” Alain laughed.
* * *
“So, it’s almost fifteen…?”
“To be exact, and for the record of which I’m not proud about, it’s nearly twenty years since I last went to confession.” Leah started to bite the unyielding foil of the sachet of cream.
“Hey, that’s not the way to celebrate your conversion. Here, let me help you,” Alain offered to open the sachet.
“Anyways…a whole lot of things happened in family, work and even my love life…,” she started sharing her story.
“Whoa! Hold it right there sis!” Alain interrupted her. “I accepted an invitation for coffee and not a life story.”
“I know, I know…,” Leah sounded irritated. “I trust you, Alain.”
“Hey, thanks, you never said that to me back in high school,” Alain joked. “I just want you to know that I’m not here to poke for juicy tidbits about your personal life.”
“Personal? I don’t think I could call it that. It’s more precise to call it selfish!”
“Ouch! Why so?” Alain opened the sachet and poured the cream into Leah’s cup.
“Thanks, Alain, at least you’re useful for something,” Leah winked at him.
“You’re most welcome. Fortunately, I didn’t study law, otherwise I could have turned out differently,” he quipped.
“GRRR! As I was saying, so many things really happened in the last few years. I felt I couldn’t piece things together no matter how rational I tried to deal with them.”
“And…?”
“I don’t really know, but I was passing by and I saw the confessional door open and the lights…,” Leah couldn’t hide her emotions just recalling what had happened a few minutes ago. She tried to sip her coffee.
“I figured I was right then,” Alain said.
“About what?”
“At first I doubted it was you entering the church,” he smiled.
“You mean you we’re following me?”
“Of course not, you know I’m such a lousy stalker even way back in high school,” they both laughed recalling common memories.
“And so that was all there was to it? I mean, you saw the door open and you jumped in?”
“I guess so,” Leah was at a lost trying to recall what happened. “I simply entered and found myself chatting with the priest.”
“What did he say?”
“I thought he would scold me. Instead, he said, ‘welcome back’ when he learned I hadn’t gone to confession for a long time.”
“That’s really cool!”
“Yeah, but what’s cooler was when he asked ‘what made me come back’.”
“What did you say?” Alain delicately nibbled on a cookie.
“You wouldn’t believe it, I said, ‘I missed God, Father!’”
“You said that?” Alain was quite touched.
“And you know what?”
“What?”
“The priest said something I never expected,” Leah felt a lump in her throat that made it more difficult to express herself.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to spill all of it in one go, take your time. Have a cookie,” Alain calmed her.
“No thanks, I’m good,” she took a long deep breath.
“What did he say?”
“That God missed me more!”
“I never thought of that,” Alain snapped his fingers.
“I felt I had to assert myself, so I said, but ‘how could He when I’ve offended Him so much?’”
“Wait, let me guess…,”
“No guessing, this isn’t an exam dude!”
“Okay, you win,” Alain was happy to see her more relaxed.
“The priest said, that God missed me more because He who knows how to love more tends to miss more that which He loves. And since His love is infinite, His missing is more than I can fathom. And perhaps, it was what drew me like a magnet to return to Him.”
“Wow! It’s really mysterious how He misses us in His love,” Alain reflected.
“By the way, Alain,” Leah was more composed.
“Yeah?”
“Why were you in the church in first place?”
“Funny you should ask…,” Alain paused and smiled.
“So…?”
“I guess, you can say I was also missing you, Leah.”
“Stalker!” [LOL]
