On These Pages

Surrender
Sensitivity
Scripture
Supplication
Self-Denial
Service

She found these words hastily scribbled on the last few pages of his New King James bible. The words self-denial stood out the most.

The bible sat on the kitchen counter top beside a cup of old pens, highlighters, and pencils. Its pages, once a neat expanse of well combed Sunday ready hair, were now disheveled - tousled by impatient hands. A strip of silver duct tape ran along its spine.

"So you're reading the bible? It's amazing - it opens to just the right page."

"It's not a magic eight ball you know."

"I'm just saying. That's what happened the first time I opened it."

She scooted the bible closer to her and turned the pages instead of letting the pages fall. Entire passages had been highlighted, while other passages had been left untouched. Familiar pages, noticed her and said hello. She stopped somewhere in the book of John and read,

I am therefore I am

The words stood still, waving a little inside the stillness of her heart and then they began to dance. Circling wildly around every corner of his quiet, beige condo, and stamping themselves loudly across his lonely, white walls. The words began to shout, a chorus line of starving artists singing before an audience that refused to see.

She wanted more than anything to say these lines to him:

I am therefore I am.
And you are, who you are and therefore you are.

Instead, she let the words continue to rise up until they came down. Her heart was as ragged as the pages of his bible, as broken and in need of repair as its spine. So she scribbled down the chapters she discovered inside the pages of her journal. And decided to call him back later, to ask him the meaning of the word supplication.