A Kiss Upon My Cheek

How many truly unbelievable experiences can you count on your fingers?  Think about it.  How many?  One?  Five?  A hundred??  Now I’m not talking about the ones that you can easily explain, you know, the plausible ones.  No.  I’m talking about the outrageous ones. The ones people wouldn’t believe even if you submitted yourself to a lie detector test and swore on a stack of bibles.  Like I said, the truly unbelievable.  The ones you don’t even believe yourself.  Pick one, any one…

Got it yet??  Got that whopper of a tale nicely framed in your head?

Good — because for today’s installment, Thunderheads, that’s exactly where I need you, in that unimaginable state of mind.

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The year was 1981.  The where was Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico.  I was 15.  My sophomore year at Antilles High School was just getting off the ground.  I was living the dream, life as a teenage boy on an enchanted tropical isle — the girls were fine and the waves were bitchin’.

Then all hell breaks loose.

Call it being inquisitive, a desire to be better than my peers, or just youthful stupidity, but one day I get it in my craw that its time to start taking things a little more seriously.  Maybe it was the stress I was under.  Maybe it was the bout of Dengue Fever I had had the year before.  Who knows!  All I know is I’ve started to grow a conscience and I’m suddenly asking myself questions like, “Why am I here?  What am I doing with my life?  And Is God real?”   I suppose that’s why there’s always at least one moral of a story warning us to be careful of our choices.  Because once you choose to go down a road, some roads can’t be walked away from.  I found that out the hard way, or the good way, depending on whether or not you choose to look at the end of a thing first, which of course you can’t when you’re at the start.  Nevertheless, there I was, barreling towards a destiny derived from one singular decision.  And the horizon in front of me was dark, and the storm clouds were brewing.

I was head altar boy. You know, a good Catholic kid, in charge of other white-robed, tassel-wearing good Catholic kids.  And after the vow to God that I had just made that I would be better, I was determined to be the best good Catholic kid there was.  However, that vow was going to take a lot more than just a few promises, not too well thought out I might add, and, as I was to later find out, severely tested.  Apparently, the Man Upstairs isn’t all that impressed with how religious we think we are.  Shocker.  Nope.  I was going to have to prove myself.  I was going to have to go through.

That storm I mentioned?  Well, it wasn’t just any storm; it was a crisis of faith, brought upon by a sudden shift in the atmosphere of my home.  My parents were fighting, increasingly and heatedly.  Arguments, put-downs, threats of leaving — you know, the usual stuff you see when a marriage is steering too close to the rocks.  And my parents were steering dangerously close.  And I don’t care who you are, even if you are a self-absorbed teenage boy who’s only serious thoughts center on girls, you’re gonna stop and take notice when the “D” word is being thrown around like pig swallop.  The writing was on the wall and it was flashing in my face in Arial BOLD, font-size 72.  My parent’s needed an intervention, like in a hurry; and I needed a sedative.  I was a wreck watching a wreck.  It was so bad even my mojo was taking a hit; and let me tell you, this Puerto Rican 15-year-old had some mojo.

So who did I turn to for help?  Not my priest, that was for sure.  Loved the man, but he was literally unapproachable — I could barely go to him with my confessions, I wasn’t about tell him what was happening at home.  He would have pinned back my ears for airing dirty laundry.  Couldn’t go to my parents, they were at the heart of the problem.  And I certainly didn’t go to God, because, of course, I had convinced myself that he was either too busy, or too disappointed in me to be bothered.  Little did I know that He had me exactly where He wanted me — at a loss, with nowhere to turn.  You could say I was ripe for the taking.  And I was.  I was ripe for something extraordinary, and something extraordinary was precisely what was headed my way.

I remember the day well.  It was late afternoon.  The sun was high.  And I was brooding.  William was with me, as he always was.  He was a dear friend, William, and we were headed straight for his house.  I needed a pick-me-up bad and his mom was the best voice of encouragement this side of the Greater Antilles.  This woman was so good she could diagnose you blind and from a distance.  I mean, it wasn’t even two shakes of crossing her threshold and she was already sitting me down with a cold drink and reading me like a book.  Who does that??  Well, Anita did.  And she did it all the time.  She had a gift, this woman, and, truth be told, it kind of wierded me out.  But hey!  I was desperate, so I rolled with it!

She listened to me for the better part of an hour, droning on about the in-fighting and stresses at home.  No judgment, no rush to opinion, she just listened.  And in the end, that gracious face of her’s smiled and words of wisdom started to pour like honey from a jar.  Yoda wasn’t this good.  She asked me a simple question: “Orlando, do you know Him?”  I said, “Yes,” of course, as any good Catholic kid would.  She countered with, “No, I mean, do you know-know Him…know Him enough to trust Him?”

I have to admit.  At that I went gumpy.  For all my religious upbringing, I had never thought of my service to God in those terms.  It wasn’t just the question, it was the manner of her question.  It spoke of an intimacy, a familiarity, like friends have with friends.  I didn’t answer because I had no answer.  But not to worry; Anita answered for me, leaving me as she always did: hopeful and with an awful lot to chew on.

“Ah, it’s ok, Orlando.  I’ll just have to pray you will.”

I’ll just have to pray you will — If words carry power then Anita’s were worthy of a gun permit.  Seriously.  Because that night, I had the encounter of all encounters.  There I was, laying in bed, bitterly trying to reconcile her parting comments with yet another one of my parent’s fights, only to have my frustrated mutterings cut short by a tangible change in the room.  It felt like warmth, combined with – well – weightiness.  You know, like being in the presence of something bigger and stronger than you.  Suddenly, I was more aware of my feet than I can ever remember being, because that’s precisely where this feeling, presence, you choose the word, that’s where this tangible change stood — right at my toes, just inches shy of the cherry wood of my footboard.  It lingered there.  And then it happened — the warmth slid over my comforter, past my feet, up my shins, across my abdomen, and was headed straight towards my chest.  I can’t begin to tell you how crazy I felt.  Not only did I think I was hallucinating and losing my mind, but I couldn’t stop crying.  Literally, I was sobbing.  No.  I was blubbering.  And I couldn’t have told you why.  I just was.  I remember uttering, “God is that you??”  But there was no answer.  The warmth and weightiness simply continued its climb, and I simply continued crying.  And then…  And then it reached my face.

Now before I tell you what happened next and perhaps paint myself the freak any more than I already have, let me remind you that to qualify for an unbelievable telling, the climaxes of your telling must first, by very nature, be truly unbelievable.  Remember that.

As I said, the warmth reached my face, hovering over me like an invisible blanket of tangible intangibility.  I couldn’t see anything.  I couldn’t hear anything.  I couldn’t smell anything.  And I couldn’t touch anything.  All I had were my tears and my feelings.  Again I uttered, “God is that you?”  This time there was an answer, and it came in the form of two impressions, one to the fat of each of my cheeks, and then this response, “YES,” He said.

I was petrified.  Speechless.  God was in my bedroom.  “What are you doing here?” I said.

Scripture speaks of God’s purposes being mysterious, and they are.  But it also speaks to His magnificent love.  “I am here to tuck you into bed,” He said, “as any father would tuck his son into bed.  And I am here to give you a goodnight kiss,” He said, “as any father would give his son a kiss.”

I fell asleep after that.

I often wonder what would have happened if this story had ended there.  But it didn’t.  Because that very next morning, after scouring my room for nearly twenty minutes for any evidence that I hadn’t completely lost my mind and finding none, the phone rang.  It was Anita.  “Orlando!” she belted with excitement, “What happened to you last night?!  Something happened!”

I probably looked like a cockeyed porcupine: every hair I had was standing on ends, and I was eyeing the phone receiver like the person on the other side had the plague.  “Mrs. L?” I said, “Is that you?”

“I’m serious, Orlando!  What happened to you last night?!  I know something happened.  God came to me last night.  Asked me to ask him for anything.  Anything, Orlando.  I could have asked Him for a million dollars and I know He would have done it!  But all I could think about was you…”  She paused there for a moment; it was one of the longest pauses of my life.  Who knows, maybe it was for dramatic effect.  Whatever the reason, my chest could barely contain the pounding.  “So I asked him to show you His great love,” she finally whispered, “I asked Him to give you a goodnight kiss…”

And there you have it — my tale.  Oh, you can disbelieve all you want; trust me, I struggle with it myself all the time.  But then I remember the warmth, then I remember the words, then I remember the kiss, and then I remember the call.  And then nothing seems more real.  Because it was.

Inkling #6:

What is The Seven Thunders?  It is surface meeting the profound, doubt on collision course with the inexplicable.  It is the impact of the divine exchange.