Rooms - James L. Rubart [131]
“Come in?”
Sarah didn’t answer but stepped over the threshold and into the living room toward the painting. “I love this.”
“Thanks.” Micah smiled, a look of peace on his face. He closed the front door and motioned her toward the picture windows overlooking the ocean.
She stood in the center of the room, arms folded. “I know God can do amazing things, but I don’t believe we had a romance in another life. Wouldn’t I sense it or at least have some miniscule feeling it happened?”
Sarah was angry. Angry for being here. Angry that Micah had stolen away any chance at there being something between them with his bizarre behavior. Angry Rick had asked her to give Micah a second chance, knowing she wouldn’t refuse.
“You don’t have even a little bit of that feeling right now?”
It stopped her cold. The truth? She had felt something the second Micah stepped into Osburn’s ten nights ago. Something small but persistent saying they had a deeper connection than just one dinner together. But his weird performance next to the ice cream counter had crushed any hope of it being real. When it had turned bizarre, she forced any thought of a connection to the far reaches of her heart.
“What do you want, Micah?”
His eyes closed and his lips moved silently. Probably praying. After a few seconds he opened his eyes, and with penetrating confidence said, “I want the impossible. I want to take you into my heart.”
“Your what?” Sarah squeezed her arms tighter.
“If you knew my heart, you’d believe.”
Sarah didn’t answer. As strange as the statement was, the maniacal attitude she’d seen at Osburn’s was gone. His countenance had changed. A quiet confidence stood in sharp contrast to the image she’d seen the other night. The man in front of her knew who he was.
“I can’t convince you with words that we’ve had more of a history than you remember.” He turned to look at the waves. “I can only reveal my heart to you and then let you choose.”
“And how are you going to show me your heart?”
“I don’t know.” He looked up at the painting.
The next words out of Sarah’s mouth shocked her. “But God knows.”
“What?” Micah turned. A faint smile appeared on his face.
Sarah didn’t answer. Her eyes were riveted on something to the left of where he stood. She spoke in a whisper. “When I had dinner with you here, that door was not there.”
“What door?”
“There. Right there.” She pointed to his left, and Micah turned to look.
It was normal height but twice the width of a standard door. An intoxicating aroma flowed from it. Like roses mixed with apple trees in full bloom. Light streamed from under it. The confused look on Micah’s face told her he didn’t see it.
“What door?” he repeated.
But in the moment he asked, his eyes danced, and she knew he could see it.
The door to his heart.
She reached for Micah’s hand, and together they walked forward. The door opened before they reached it, and she stepped through into what looked like liquid light. It was pure and piercing. Worries, pain, wounds, fear, all slipped off, consumed by the river of radiance.
A moment later they stood in a grove of trees. It was daytime—early morning by the look of it. Dew covered the grass, and the angle of the beams of light that streamed through the trees said the sun had only been up for moments. Beyond the forest swelled an ocean. But not the Pacific. This ocean was too blue, too big, the pounding emerald waves too full and rich, the foam at the top of the waves too white to be one of earth’s oceans.
So much passion and power. So much love she felt her heart would burst. The sounds, the light, everything said this was the place she’d been longing for all her life. She was in the presence of God.
“Where are we?”
“You know.”
“Your heart.”
Micah didn’t answer her. He didn’t need to.
An instant later a circular curtain of transparent light surrounded them, and Sarah gasped as vibrant images came to life on every inch of the curtain’s surface.
She watched herself in Osburn’s the day Micah and she met, then saw bike rides together, dinners, their hike up