BY HANNAH HEIDER

'LL SEE YOU TOMORROW!" I SAID AS I waved goodbye to Marla.

We had been best friends during our eighth and ninth grades, and had shared everything--dreams, pranks, debates, and deep conversations about God. Then Marla's dad had gotten a call to another academy, and neither of us had seen each other for two years.

When you're 17, two years seem like a terribly long time to be separated from your best friend. So when I'd heard she'd be coming to camp meeting for the first weekend, I was overjoyed. My only disappointment was that our visit had to be so short.

Oh well, I thought, I'll see her tomorrow. With that, I turned happily for my parents' travel trailer on the hillside of the campgrounds. Bursting with joy, I opened the door and stepped in. Instantly my excitement skidded to an abrupt halt.

Life Interrupted
My parents both sat immobilized, as if frozen. My mother's tear-streaked face was filled with anguish. Suddenly aged, my ash-gray father looked down at the floor with deep pain-filled eyes.

"Wh-what happened?" I stammered. My stomach twisted in fear.

"Your father just got fired!" my mother said.

Suddenly my world seemed to flatten to a thin line, then disappear.

A few months before, the principal of the academy where my father taught had written him about a board action taken: he would teach one more year; then he'd have to look for work elsewhere. The letter came at the beginning of June. The day after the principal wrote it, he moved away. Wisely, my father decided to wait out the year and begin looking for a call to some other academy in November.

And now, in late July, he had been summarily dismissed. We never learned why. The registrar, a family friend, informed us that the minutes recording the action never stated a reason. When my father asked for a copy of the minutes, he was informed that there weren't any minutes. By this time the registrar herself had been fired, but she clearly recalled the action she had read as she filed those minutes away.

Soon after, my parents learned from friends and from a member of the conference committee that no one but the man who took the action wanted my father fired. "There was nothing any of us could do," the member of the committee said sadly. "We all knew it was very unfair."

Despite all this the conference president had drawn my father aside that fateful Friday and made the announcement. Then he asked to pray with him.

In the trailer that Friday evening I struggled to comprehend. I longed to say something to comfort my parents, but the words did not come easily. Never capable of dealing with crises, I felt I had to get away. So, like a typical teenager, I changed my shoes and announced, "I'm going to the evening meeting."

With that, I headed out the door and down the path toward the youth pavilion. I felt as though my life had suddenly been turned upside down, as though my father had been condemned and forced to leave home as a leper. I felt unclean and outcast.

As I reached the youth meeting, I realized how late I was. The song service had already ended, and the place was packed. As I neared the door, it seemed that every head in the building turned to look at me. Eyes seemed to bore right through me as though everyone knew what had happened and condemned me too.

It wasn't true, of course. I knew they couldn't possibly know, but neither could I force my legs to walk through the doors. I walked on until I was out of sight.

Bewildered, I kept walking--aimlessly, numbly, blindly. I didn't know what to do. Sitting in a meeting listening to a speaker seemed anything but comforting. And I couldn't bear to go back to my stricken parents.

What a Fellowship!
Just then I saw her. "Marla! I thought you'd left already!"

"No, but we'll be leaving soon," she said.

I didn't give her a chance to say anything more. My agony spilled out in a kind of desperate plea for understanding. "My dad got fired today!" There it was. The simple, stark truth, dumped at her feet.

"Oh no!" Marla was calm, but I could sense her dismay and sympathy.

For some reason Marla's parents ended up staying for the evening meeting, so we chose to retreat to the rocks where we'd talked earlier. By now the darkness had settled over the campgrounds. Stars glowed above our heads.

We didn't talk about my father. There didn't seem to be much to say. How does one discuss shock, pain, and bewilderment? So we talked instead about our lives, schools, and friends--but mostly about God.

Both of us shared a close relationship with God. We were young, getting to know Him--falling in love with Him--excited about sharing Him with others. Together, while the meeting below went on, we discussed Bible stories that revealed His love. We talked about what it meant for Him to come here, to be one with us, and about how we longed to see Him come again.

For more than an hour we talked, laughed, and bubbled joyously over with the good news about our wonderful, trustworthy God. We lifted our heads, looked at the stars, and reminded ourselves that the Creator of that vast universe loved us more infinitely, personally, and closely than we could ever imagine.

By the time we heard the closing hymn wafting to us from the main pavilion, we felt as though we had reached our heavenly Father's throne.

Back to Reality
On the way back to the trailer I wanted to sing for joy. What a wonderful time I'd had with my friend--and with God. Then suddenly I stopped. Something terrible happened this afternoon, I thought. What was it?

I searched my memory. Something like a mild jolt came back to me: my father had been fired.

Looking at the starry sky, I pondered the mystery of that moment. The most terrible thing I'd experienced in my young life had happened, and I had actually forgotten it. Eclipsed by the love of God, it had diminished to a gentle pulsing pain compared to the deep stabbing agony of two hours earlier. It was as if God had placed His warm, loving hands around all the hurt and transformed it into a deeper joy than I had ever experienced before.

Never again did I feel the initial intensity of that pain. Held in His hands, I made it through my senior year of academy--through conversations with schoolmates who wondered why my father no longer taught there, through the agony of listening to the conference president's chapel talk (I felt like running away), through sitting in classes my father had once taught.

Years later I received a call to teach for a denominational school. On the phone my parents congratulated me, but they marveled that I was willing to teach for the church after all they'd been through.

Yes, I bear scars. Every year I suffer from an unwarranted fear of being fired. I teach from contract to contract, knowing that there is no place on this planet that is really secure, save the heart of God. Yet I also live in trust, because no one can be safer than in His hands.

Recently I ran across a pastor's wife that my parents and I knew during those difficult years. She told me about the devotional message she'd heard that morning: that it is those who have been wounded who know best how to heal. As I looked into her eyes, I realized she was reliving in her mind what she considered to be one of the most painful moments of my life. And I was grateful that she remembered.

For me, though, the pain is gone. In its place is the memory of one of the most heavenly moments of my life--when a friend and I basked in God's love. When members of the church let me down, God was still there, holding me in the palms of His hands.

_________________________
Hannah Heider is a pseudonym.