Soon I’d read everything Lewis had written—more than a dozen books, including a thin novel of such searing satire that I found myself drawn again and again to its wisdom hidden in story: The Screwtape Letters.
“Bill.” I held up Lewis’s book I was rereading, The Great Divorce, over dinner one night as the boys twirled their spaghetti. “Here is a man who might help us with some of our questions.”
“Could be,” he mumbled, lighting a cigarette before dinner was over, leaning back in his chair to stare at me through his rimless spectacles. “Although, Poogle, I’m not sure anyone has the answers we need.”
Bill was cold hard correct—believing in a god hadn’t been as simple as all that. Every philosophy and religion had a take on the deity I hadn’t been able to grasp. I was set to give up the search, shove the shattering God-experience into my big box of mistakes. That is, until I contacted Professor Walsh, the writer of the article, and said, “Tell me about C. S. Lewis.”
Professor Walsh had visited Lewis in Oxford and spent time with him. He was turning his articles into a book with the same title and he replied to me. “Write to Mr. Lewis,” he suggested. “He’s an avid letter writer and loves debate.”
There Bill and I were—three years after my blinding night of humbleness, three years of reading and study, of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and debate, of joining the Presbyterian church—when an idea was born: we would write a letter to C. S. Lewis, a letter full of our questions, our ponderings, and our doubts about the Christ he apparently believed in.
CHAPTER 2
Open your door, lest the belated heart
Die in the bitter night; open your door
“SONNET XLIV,” JOY DAVIDMAN
1950
Didn’t most everything begin with words? In the beginning was the word—even the Bible touted that truth. So it was with my friendship with Lewis.
I descended from my second-story office in our farmhouse into the frigid January day to grab the mail. Two separate trains of thought ran along the tracks of my mind: What would I cook the family for dinner? And how would my second novel, Weeping Bay, be received into the world in a few months?
Frosted grass crunched under my boots as I strode to the mailbox and opened it. As I flipped through the pile, my heart beat in double time. On top of the pile of bills, correspondence, and a Presbyterian Life magazine was a letter from Oxford, England. I held the white envelope with the airmail stamp of a young King George in profile, his crown hovering over his head, in my hand. In slanted, tight cursive handwriting, the return address stated C. S. Lewis across the top left corner.
He’d finally written a reply. I ran my gloved finger across his name, and hope rose like an early spring flower in my chest. I needed his advice—my life felt unhinged from the new beliefs I’d thought would save me, and C. S. Lewis knew the Truth. Or I hoped he did.
I slammed shut the metal box, icicles crackling to the ground, and slipped the mail into my coat pocket to navigate the icy walkway. My sons’ quarrelling voices made me glance at our white farmhouse and the porch that stretched across the front—an oasis before entering. Green shutters, like eye shadow on a pale woman, opened to reveal the soul of the house, once pure but now clouded with anger and frustration.
The front door was open, and four-year-old Douglas came running out with Davy, age six, chasing close behind.
“It’s mine. Give it back.” Davy, only an inch taller than his little brother, brown hair tangled from the day’s wrestling and playing, yelled and pushed at Douglas until they both caught sight of me and stopped short, as if I’d appeared out of nowhere.
“Mommy.” Douglas ran to me, wrapping his arms around my soft hips and burying his face in the folds of my coat. “Davy kicked me in the shin,” he wailed. “Then he pushed me on the ground and sat on me. He sat on me too hard.”
Oh, how God loved to make a variety of boys.
I leaned down and brushed back Douglas’s hair to kiss his round cheek. In moments like this my heart throbbed with love for the boys Bill and I had made. Davy’s lithe body and frenetic energy were from Bill, but Douglas’s sensitivity to mean-spiritedness was mine. He’d not yet learned to cover it as I had.
“This is all nonsense.” I rustled Davy’s hair and took Douglas’s hand in mine. “Let’s go inside and make hot chocolate.”
“Yes,” Davy said with gusto and ran for the house.
All the while the letter burned in my pocket. Wait, I told myself. Wait. Expectancy always the thrill before having.