WANDA: "I AM PROCESSING..."

ANOTHER POST BY MILTON:

For new readers to this site, I am writing since Kristy's battle with a GBM brain tumor and her passing on July 21. Kristy made me a romantic so I write to share christian love stories.

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I waited to get an email back to me from Wanda after my first and only snail mail letter to her but several days passed with no response. She had sent me a brief text message wishing me happy birthday and I sent a brief response back to her, I was headed into a counseling session when I received that text and sent one back to thank her and said that I had a counseling session and couldn’t talk or text or something like that. I guess the awkwardness was still there for me.

After a couple more days or so I had not received a letter or email so I  called Wanda and asked if she would send me her email address and she said she would but didn’t say when she would. I asked if she could send it soon. She said she would and did and I emailed her and asked if I could call her again. She said that would be OK and in another day or so I called her.

We talked nightly for a number of days and you cannot imagine how much comfort that brought me in the evenings after returning home from a day of ministry and work. Everything seems to go fine during the day but when you pull into a driveway into a garage and walk into a house that used to be a home you can only imagine the hurt, loneliness, and pain that follows.

Wanda became a friend to help blunt the pain. She was a voice to hear my hurt. She took time and with a caring ear and heart helped me. She was a God send. She was a God sent help to me. There was an immediate connect, comfort, and consoling deep within me that was on a very high spiritual level and reached deep to the lowest pains of my mind, spirit, and body.

Our conversations from the very first always ended in prayer. She prayed for me for healing for me and for my children. I prayed for her and her children and for God's healing in her life. She still had some hurt and questions even thought Jim had been in heaven for over five years. A spiritual friendship was blooming. A partnership of faith and trust in God was developing. We laughed and cried and I wept. She understood and comforted. 

But it was more than grief comfort or counsel. God was releasing healing and tenderness and we both were feeling it. And God was in the center of it. We prayed and God was in the relationship from the very beginning.

Night after night after work the conversations continued. Finally, after a number of late evening conversations I told Wanda that I had something to say that was going to shock her. I think I said I didn’t know why I am telling you this but I feel like I need to tell you something.

I said to Wanda, “I have something to tell you and it is probably going to shock you.”

I said, “Kristy thought you were the one God has for me. That is what she told my sister Norma.”

The phone line turns to silence.

Cold.

No I didn’t hear at click sound, but I wasn’t sure anyone was still there.

Moments seems like hours or longer. Oh no, I thought. I have made a terrible mistake. I did feel like I was supposed to tell her that. Why I don’t know. We had only been talking a couple of weeks or so. We had not seen each other and had no plans to see each other. But now it was too late to pull those words back into my mouth. They had been said.

“Kristy said you were the one God has for me.”

Finally I said, “Hello, hello. Are you still there?”

There was no answer. No response.

Now there was more concern.

Fear?

Concern?

Mistake?

Is she gone?

Did I scare her away?

Why did I have to say that now? What is she thinking? Will this end it?

I thought in split second timing that surely she will remember that I am not a crackpot or spiritual screwball. Surely she want withdraw over this?

But there was still no answer. I didn’t hear a breathe. A word.

What is happening on the other end of the phone line?

Is she gone?

“Wanda? Are you there?”

No answer.

"Wanda?"

“Are you OK?”

With a soft answer I heard her say, “I am processing.”

Nothing more was said,

"What?"

“I am processing.”

I quickly sputtered something like, “I am not saying Kristy was right. I am not saying that I believe this.”

More words sputtered out of my mouth.

Wanda was processing.

She didn’t overreact. She didn’t giggle. She didn’t say, “Wonderful.”

She didn’t say, “Go jump in the lake. You are a goofball.”

She processed. She waited. She didn’t talk or do anything. It was quite on the other end of the line.

The other end of the line stayed quite for several days. That phone conversation ended somehow. I am not sure how it ended, but it ended.

And she didn’t talk to me for several days.

Thank God I didn’t tell her about the voice that came in the night or what Jennifer had said. That would have been a lot of processing.

I hadn’t told anyone about that voice. I certainly couldn’t tell her about that--at least not now.