From 3 to 4

Everyone worships. The only choice we get is what we worship. And the compelling reason to choose some god or spiritual-type thing to worship…is that pretty much everything else you worship will eat you alive.

David Foster Wallace

To the patient-client-consumer that you are for an hour every week,

3:00PM. Your phone buzzes. You answer.
Three sessions had gone by and this was now your fourth—the determining one. “Your heart has a voice. You need to learn how to listen to it.” He, the doctor-therapist-counselor, took you off guard with those words the first week. It was different. You liked different. But still, something wasn’t clicking. You were expecting some kind of connection, a bond, something to give you a sense of peace over your confessed problems.

3:03PM. You went over your medical history, year by year. Your medications, dose by dose. The hospitalizations, week by week. All this stuff had become rote by now.

3:12PM. You brought up your prayers for peace and unity in your family. He hadn’t asked but you wanted him to know how deeply important family and unity and peace were to you. And you also wanted him to see the fundamental problem in this, because at one point, the issue of family and how you could rescue it from its fragmented state became a matter of life and death. You knew you needed help.

3:25PM. “With prayer comes expectation. Are you hoping for something?” You thought of an image—you, your brothers, your mother, and your father seated at the dining room table, passing the pasta or the braised lamb or the roasted potatoes because it was dinnertime and that’s what happy families are supposed to be doing at dinnertime. You shared this image with him, the doctor-therapist-counselor, suddenly growing angry and envious, coveting and clinging on to that picture-perfect dinnertime eating family. Why couldn’t you have that? You were awaiting the day when things imagined met reality. Yet time and time again, you found yourself disappointed when things were not so. “What would it look like to let go of that image?” Let go. You stumbled over those two words. You paused. But why, you asked? What was wrong? Isn’t it good to desire something like this? And if you let go, who would step in and take care of this broken, messed up family situation? Who would say that prayer if not you? Who would be the one to care?

3:47PM. Why not try praying for peace within yourself first?” You let this sink in. It took a while. You began to see that this—all the the asking, the listening, the shifting of perspectives—was the help you needed, so you forced yourself to reckon with what his words might mean. He was asking you to pray for yourself, in a sense declaring before God that your life matters in His Kingdom. Which means you need to keep living. You need to keep existing. You need to sever that agreement you made with Death. And rather than fixating your soul on some ideal family, you need to search your heart and ask for something that’s not so all-consuming. Maybe a family of your own, you thought, and perhaps with it would come a fresh sense of home.

4:00PM. “All changes start with awareness.” He, the doctor-therapist-counselor, said his goodbye and ended the call. With that, you were a patient-client-consumer no more… until next week, same time, same place. Because this fourth session, the determining one, had been pivotal. It was the one that left you believing there could be more waiting for you out there. From 3PM to 4PM, the doctor-therapist-counselor had imparted hope.

Sincerely, Esther