By Suzanna Leigh
James and I were still living with the evangelical Jesus-loving Pilgrims in a mansion on Hilo Bay when it happened.
One day while James was in school, I hitchhiked into Hilo to buy some watercolor paints and a roll of rice paper. Karl and his partner, who had so generously put us up that first week we were in Hawaii, were getting married, and I wanted to make a painting for them as a wedding present.
When I stuck out my thumb for a ride back to the Pilgrim’s mansion on Hilo Bay, a man in his forties pulled over and offered me a ride. I think his name was John. He was curious about the Pilgrims, and asked for the phone number. I gave it to him, and he wrote it in his little black book. I thought no more about it.
That night, I dreamed of a white lizard. In my dream, the lizard bit my thumb but drew no blood, and I was unharmed.
A day or so later, the phone rang at the mansion and it was for me. It was a woman, probably about middle-aged, from her voice.
“John needs Jesus,” she said. “He is waiting for you in the gazebo in Lili’uokalani Garden.”
Hm. I hung up and paused. The garden park was less than a stone’s throw from the mansion, and very beautiful. It would be a pleasant walk, but no. I felt no calling to go “save” this man I had met only once. I went on with my day and forgot about it.
The next day, I had a visitor. It was the same woman who had called and asked me to go “save John for Jesus.” She was dressed smartly in white: white dress, white shoes, white purse. We went to the mansion’s conservatory to talk privately.
“I found your name in John’s little black book,” she told me. “I have been living with him for 27 years. I left a marriage to be with him. If you had gone to him yesterday, I would have shot you.”
I told her I had no interest in John. “I don’t need a boyfriend,” I told her, “I have Jesus.” It was true. When I missed Davey, the man I left on Vashon, it was to wish he could experience with me the joy of worshiping in song with the Pilgrims. That ache of loneliness was gone, the one that would attack me like a wolf at the door ever since my husband Bill left with his girlfriend.
I don’t remember the woman’s name. I do remember she told me she had decided to leave John and to make her life right with God, to go back to her Catholic roots. And I remember the dream of the white lizard.
I learned that “call no man father except God” meant pausing to listen to that “still small voice,” rather than following the expectations of any group or person. And I learned to pay attention to dreams; a dream saved me and my children several years later.
