Rooms - James L. Rubart [64]
Or parents.
Great, Micah thought. Here we go.
If we do not face the wound, we will fabricate a variety of salves to dull the pain and thus bury it. The relentless pursuit of money, the quest for fame, the approval of men, drug abuse, illicit sexual relations, movies of a degrading nature, even an addiction to food. The list is long, but the reason is always the same.
We try to forgive those who wound us, but this only deals with the symptoms. The wound remains like a field of dandelions with their tips cut off. No, we must always go after the root of the tree and remove it completely so there is no opportunity for the stronghold to return. Only then can we truly forgive.
So he had to forgive? Easy. He would. And he didn’t need to go into some wound to forgive someone. As long as someone didn’t include his father.
I pray you have the strength to go to the root.
Across time,
Archie
P.S. Psalm 51:6: “Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.”
Micah sighed. He felt it. The Counselor wanted to uncover some causes.
He tossed the letter aside. No thanks. Rick always said he had a choice. This time he would choose no.
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That evening he sat in the chair facing his picture windows and numbed his mind with a mystery novel in an attempt to distract himself from the loss of Julie, his outburst at RimSoft, and whatever Archie meant by “going to the root.” His escape was interrupted after seven pages when he stretched and a flash of color to his right caught his attention.
Up on the bookshelves surrounding the fireplace sat a picture he’d never noticed. A Little League team looked down on a Seattle Mariners game, all of them in uniform. The backs of their heads were to the camera. He turned it over to look for clues. “Wildcats ’91” was scrawled across the back. That was the name of his team when he was a kid.
He slipped the photo into the back pocket of his 501s, sank back into his chair-and-a-half, and eased back into his novel. He refused to focus on any unsolved mysteries for at least a few hours.
Micah didn’t think about the picture again till he stripped off his clothes for bed. He pulled out the rumpled photo and stared at it. It could be a picture of any Little League team in the Puget Sound area, out to see the big boys play. Twelve kids, some too big, some too little for the uniforms that united them for a spring of dreams. But something about the picture tickled the back of his mind. He propped the picture up against his nightstand lamp, buried himself in his comforter, and disappeared into sleep without another thought.
Until the dream started.
He stood in a hallway. His house? Micah wasn’t sure. Dim light floated in through the windows telling him the last black shaving of night was about to give over to the rush of dawn. He walked down the hallway slowly, feet padding without noise on the thick tan carpet.
Light spilled into the hallway from the first door on his right. A muffled sound came from behind it. Micah pressed his ear against the six-panel door. Yes. Someone inside the room was crying.
He touched the door and the crying stopped, like the mute button being pushed on a TV remote. Micah pushed open the door and stepped inside. Daylight splashed all around him, and he threw his hands up till his eyes could adjust. The smell of overcooked hot dogs swirled around him along with shouts of, “C’mon, need a hit now!”
Sitting. He was sitting somewhere. He lowered his hands and looked around. Third base was right in front of him, stale popcorn at his feet, a crowd of more than fifty filled the faded bleachers.
Little League baseball. He gazed at the scoreboard. Bottom of the ninth with two outs, the team at the plate down by one run, the count two and two with one man on second.
Classic. The glory every kid dreams of.
The terror every kid dreams of.
The kid at the plate was average size. Eight, maybe nine years old. His back was to