Free A Common Life by Jan Karon Page B

you!”
    That was apparently the most profound compliment a Southerner could pay, to insist that one was thought the “world” of!
    She realized she wouldn’t finish the illustration as she’d promised her editor; she would finish it tomorrow, instead. She, who was ever loath to break a promise, would break this one.
    “Timothy?” she said when he answered the phone. “Can you come over?” Her heart was pounding, and there was a distinct quaver in her voice; she was warbling like a canary.
    “I’m scared, dearest, scared to death.”

    She loved the way he sat with her, not saying anything in particular, not probing, not pushing her, just sitting on her love seat. Perhaps what she liked best was that he always looked comfortable wherever he was, appearing glad to live within his skin and not always jumping out of it like some men, like James, her editor, who was everlastingly clever and eloquent and ablaze with wild ideas that succeeded greatly for him, while with Timothy the thing that succeeded was quietude, something rich and deep and . . . nourishing, a kind of spiritual chicken soup simmering in some far reach of the soul.
    “Tell me,” he said at last. “Tell me everything. I’m your priest, after all.” She thought his smile dazzling, a dazzling thing to come out of quietude. She had pulled a footstool to the love seat and sat close to him.
    “I’m terribly afraid I can’t make you happy,” she said.
    “But that was my fear! I finally kicked it out the back door and now it’s run over here.”
    “It’s not funny, Timothy.”
    “I’m not laughing.”
    He took her hands in his and lightly kissed the tips of her fingers and she caught the scent of him, the innocence of him, and her spirit mounted up again.
    “Why don’t we pray together?” he said. “Just let our hearts speak to His. . . .”
    Sitting at his feet, she bowed her head and closed her eyes and he stroked her shoulder. Though the clock ticked in the hallway, she supposed that time was standing still, and that she might sit with him in this holy reverie, forever.
    “Lord,” he said, simply, “here we are.”
    “Yes, Lord, here we are.”
    They drew in their breath as one, and let it out in a long sigh, and she realized for a moment how the very act of breathing in His presence was balm.
    “Dear God,” he said, “deliver Your cherished one from feeling helpless to receive the love You give so freely, so kindly, from the depths of Your being. Help us to be as large as the love You’ve given us, sometimes it’s too great for us, Lord, even painful in its power. Tear away the old fears, the old boundaries that no longer contain anything of worth or importance, and by Your grace, make Cynthia able to seize this bold, fresh freedom. . . .”
    “Yes, Lord,” she prayed, “the freedom I’ve never really known before, but which You’ve faithfully shown me in glimmers, in epiphanies, in wisps as fragile as . . . light from Your new moon!”
    He pressed her hand, feeling in it the beating of her pulse.
    “Father, deliver me from the fear to love wholly and completely, I who chided this good man for his own fears, his own weakness, while posing, without knowing it a pose, as confident and bold. You’ve seen through that, Lord, You’ve . . . You’ve found me out for what I am . . .”
    There was a long silence, filled by the ticking of the clock.
    “. . . a frightened seven-year-old who stands at the door looking for a father and mother who . . . do not come home.
    “Even after years of knowing You as a Father who is always home, I sometimes feel—I feel a prisoner of old and wrenching fears, and I’m ashamed of my fear, and the darkness that prevents me from stepping into the light. . . .”
    “You tell us in Your Word,” he prayed, “that You do not give us the spirit of fear—”
    “But of power and of love and a sound mind!” she whispered, completing the verse from the second letter to Timothy.
    “And so, Lord, I