Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [110]
“What were you looking for when you went to law school?”
I wasn’t sure if it was the question or the hot raisin, but I spit the contents of my mouth onto the plate. “What do you mean, looking for?”
“Don’t play with me. You know I already know. The question is, are you ready to tell the truth about it? What were you looking for?” The force of his words made my heart pound and my head feel light.
“I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, to save the world, to do good things for other people.”
He was staring at me. Obviously I had given the wrong answer. The stillness made me nervous. I had to think of something to say. Breathe. Just breathe. I closed my eyes and allowed the words to spill forth truthfully.
“I was looking for a way out. I felt powerless, and I was looking for a way out of pain. A way to feel powerful. I was trying to prove to myself and to other people how smart I was. I thought if I could finish law school and become a lawyer, no one would ever call me stupid again. I was looking for a way to prove to people that I was not stupid.”
The tears running down my face were falling all over the apple crispy thing.
“But you didn’t believe it, did you? You know that’s why you didn’t pass the bar, and that’s why you are so unhappy. Do you want to practice law?”
“No.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to make up to my children for all the years I couldn’t give them the things they needed and wanted.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to prove to people that I am not a bad mother.”
“What do you want to do? What do you want to do for you?”
“I have no idea. I just don’t know.”
“Good. Now have some more dessert.” Balé got up and left the room. I wiped my face and stared at the apple stuff. I felt sick to my stomach.
The rest of the evening went pretty well. I was shaken by Balé’s words and by my own. How did he do that? What did he do? I wanted so badly to ask him, but I knew my godfather. He would tell me in his own time and in his own way. We talked about his family, what he had been doing, where he had been. His mother and sister were still in Florida. His father had died. His son was still in New York. I told him what I knew about all the girls from the dance club. I did not tell him that I was sneaking around seeing Adeyemi behind his wife’s back. I was too embarrassed.
As I was preparing to leave, Balé gave me a box. It weighed about twenty pounds.
“What’s this?”
“These are books. I want you to tell me the major differences between them.”
“That will probably take me about a year.”
“No. It will take you until Saturday. When you come back next Saturday, I want you to tell me what each book reveals and the major difference between the books.”
The box contained the Holy Bible; The I Ching, or Book of Changes, translated by Baynes and Wilhelm; The I Am Discourses, by Saint Germain; The Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda; Essays, by Ralph Waldo Emerson; Esoteric Astrology, by Alice Bailey; and the Holy Qur’an. Each book looked to contain between three and six hundred pages.
“I can’t read all of this by Saturday! I’ve got cases. I have to be in court.”
“Well, call me when you are finished.”
I loved Balé, but he could be a bit weird and a bit demanding at times. On the way home, I tried to peek into the books while I drove. It was very frustrating. After I got home and had a chance to review each book, I was even more frustrated. Three weeks later, I was only sixty pages into the first book, The Autobiography of a Yogi. I called Balé.
“You’re not finished, are you?”
“I am trying. This stuff is very hard and very confusing. Why do I have to read this?”
“Because you are a priest. A priest has to know what the people need. How do you expect to serve people? You have to be prepared.”
“I want to be prepared, Balé, but how do I get prepared and earn a living?”
“God prepared you. Your job is to remember what you have