the last sunny day

The rain had pounded the earth with soothing violence for days. Fog had muddied vision and left us living in a haze. Today, however, the sky was blue and the sun was warm. As what seemed like a chilly spring day met with the fresh scent of fall-turning-winter rain, we sat outside of Caffé Ladro on top of Queen Anne. She struggled as always to avoid eye contact. I wanted to dive into the deep corners of her life, but I also didn’t want to. She wanted to be seen, but also didn’t want to, so we shallowly danced.

“It’s a beautiful day. I didn’t think we’d get another one of these.”
“Yeah. It’s nice.”
“How’s running start going?
“It’s really hard.”
[Shit. I told her it was easy. It was easy for me…but then I’m hoping to get a PhD…shit. I need to stop telling people what to do, or that things are easy when they aren’t. shit.]
“Oh, maybe we could study together sometime.”
“That’d be nice.”
[silence]
“Yeah.”
[silence and multiple sips of our respective hot chocolate and soy medici]

I don’t remember how the dance became something intimate. I don’t remember how we got there, but before I knew it, I found myself telling a 16-year-old, whom I am paid to teach to love God, to be angry at God.

“Please be angry at God. You have every right to be angry with God and I would hate for you to flee this moment of anger in thinking you should not be angry at God.”

I watched as those words somehow spoke some magic word that opened the door to her heart. “Speak friend and enter.” Her fast and dodgy eyes quit darting and held mine as we entered that space between us. When her eyes steadied, something left. Or, maybe when something left, her eyes could steady.

For years she had shown a perfect Christian front, fundamentalist, Bible-reading [bashing?], finger pointing, judging. For years, under that, she had been angry. Under that, she was ashamed for her anger at God. Present to her heart, I invited her to accept that anger, in response, she invited me to share that anger. We sat in transformative silence, both of our eyes dampened with the rain that wasn’t in the sky this day.