When God Whispers Loudly
Published by Chris Hibbard at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Chris Hibbard
Smashwords Edition




He was late, rushing to his daughter’s piano recital from a job that took all his strength to leave while it was still daylight.  Driving just a little over should get him to the recital before his daughter finished playing.
Earlier the same day, he found he’d been passed over for a promotion.  Worse yet, it had been given to a man ten years his junior.  His new boss was the man in his office he least respected, and in his mind, least deserved the job.  As if it were related, he felt disappointed his commitment to his family hadn’t affected his children the way he’d hoped.  In reality, he was angry it cost him his dream job.
The winding road on his route led him past an empty field before a sharp turn and a sign which read CAUTION. 
“Why, God?” he prayed, his brow set firm.  He thought of his wife’s email, reminding him to leave work early for yet another of his children’s activities.  “Why do I have to sacrifice everything, and she only asks for more?”  He knew it was reactionary and selfish, but for the moment he allowed his anger to lead him just the same.
As he sped around the corner, he prayed he wouldn’t have to go to work the next day and see his new boss—the weasel—sitting in the office he deserved.  The road was wet and he crept into the opposing lane—and as his did, he faced an oncoming lumber truck which had also crossed the center line.  
As he swerved he prayed, “I didn’t mean it—save me.”  Fleeting relief came as he narrowly missed the truck, then slid off the road, out of control.  Still far over the speed limit, his car struck a gnarled, bent oak and turned over.  Once—twice—it rolled, then finally came to rest on its roof, leaving him dangling from his seatbelt. 
He woke unable to move and surrounded in chaos.  It took him a moment to realize he was in a hospital.  He felt his consciousness slipping, and fought in vain to keep it.  
He heard voices as his eyelids closed, “…prepped for surgery”, and “Get him to the OR…”  He heard his wife crying not far off, and for a moment he thought he would fight his way back to consciousness—but he was wrong.

He next woke in familiar surroundings.  He was lying in the guest bed of his own home, only it was somehow different.  His wife stood at the foot of the twin bed where he laid, while small group of young adults crowded around him.  His wife was smiling, tears rolling down her face.  The curious group of strangers stared at him anxiously, some smiling, some crying.  Others stood still with their eyes closed peacefully. 
“…he’s waking,” one of the strangers in his room whispered.
“God,” he prayed silently, suddenly panic stricken, “please don’t let me be paralyzed.”
His mind reasoned, it’s a group from church, come to pray for me.  It would explain the young men and women standing over him in bed—though he strained to recognize them.  To his relief, he was able to sit up, though it required more effort than he expected.  
His wife dropped to his bedside and threw her arms around him.  He cradled her head on his shoulder, but her embrace felt unfamiliar.  Her shape didn’t conform to his own as his muscle memory expected.  His own body seemed unfamiliar, as if he’d instantly lost weight.  His joints were stiff, and they ached when he moved.  He looked around the room wondering who the young men and women were, intruding upon such a private moment.  He noted how familiar the eldest young lady was; she looked like a younger version of his wife.  Only then did his mind register what his wife was saying as she wept on his shoulder.
“You’re back, you’re finally awake—I knew you’d come back to us.”  
Confused, he pulled back from her embrace and looked hard into her face.  Her hair was grayed, and the lines on her face were deeper, further reaching.
“How long?” he asked, his voice an uncertain grumble.  His wife shook her head, not wanting to answer at first.  
“Fifteen years,” she whispered tearfully.
Over the next day he didn’t have a single moment alone.  He spent every precious minute with his wife, his children and their spouses.  He found it bittersweet, coming to know his children again.  
His daughter was married to a fine man, unashamed of his commitment to Christ.  They had a child of their own, his first grandchild.  They had begun the next cycle in the wonderful gift of life God gives so freely.  He found his daughter just as strong in her commitment to God, alive and vibrant.
“But you seemed so angry,” the father said at one point.  “I was so afraid you wouldn’t listen to God; you might ignore His still, small voice.”  
“I did, Daddy—I ignored it for a long time,” she replied.  “But He showed me.  He used you to show me.  All the times you were patient with me…all the times you waited up for me, the times you prayed over me as a little girl…the times I heard you praying under your breath when you thought no one was near.  They all pointed me to Him.  So many times, Daddy…” and she told him of all the little ways he’d shown her God’s love.  He began to feel proud of the example he’d been to her.  Proud, that is, until she began to list things he couldn’t remember.  Then she listed things he knew he hadn’t done.  
Who is she remembering? he wondered.  How could she confuse someone else with her own father?  His expression grew more concerned until his daughter noticed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.  But it was too perfect a day, too wonderful a time to dispute her. 
“It’s nothing.  My mind must be tired—not used to being awake, I guess.”
And so it went with his sons.  When they each told how they’d lived out their childhood, each pointed to memories of significant choices in their lives; of steps in their spiritual maturity.  They each mentioned a talk he’d given or lesson he’d taught they later realized had influenced them.  Just as with his daughter, some he’d remembered, and others he didn’t.  His youngest son mentioned a private talk he was sure he hadn’t given to him; it was a talk he’d given his older children when they reached an age he’d missed in his youngest child’s life.  
Who gave my youngest boy this speech while I was trapped in a coma? he wondered.  He must have heard his older brothers tell the story so often, he felt like he’d heard it first hand, the father thought.

  

Gradually a great wave of accomplishment, a feeling of unashamed success washed over him as he spoke with his children and he saw firsthand how each one of them had begun their adult lives.  He shared this thought with his wife the next morning as they sat together in their backyard.  His sons had talked with him straight through the night.
“What did you expect?” asked his wife, so familiar to him, yet eerily different in her appearance.  “Did you think they would abandon God, they would live out their lives as lost sheep?”
“Of course not,” he answered.  “I guess I was only hopeful they would follow Him so closely.  After all, it’s a choice each of them must make for themselves.”
She gave him a look of shared knowledge.  Without looking for it, he realized the deep wisdom in her eyes.  She had matured for 15 years while he slept, and he now felt somehow lesser to her.  He wondered at the years of wise choices sparkling in her eyes.  
“I love you so much,” she said, and a thought struck him hard in the chest.  
Those aren’t idle words.  She’d brought him back from the hospital after months of unresponsiveness.  She’d moved him back into their home and cared for him fifteen long years.  She’d cleaned him; she’d rolled him over and treated his bedsores.  She’d fed him for a decade and a half as he lay there, unresponsive as death.  
What commitment, he thought, but directly afterward, he knew she could have done nothing less—not from obligation, but from her strong character and devotion he knew so well.  Suddenly, he knew she’d been just as committed to him and their children in all the years before his coma.  Somehow he’d neglected to recognize her powerful and steadfast love; a love strong enough to carry his family through the long years he laid sleeping.  
She was far more committed than I.  He saw the love in her eyes, the endurance she’d shown as a single mother raising their family while he’d slept.
“How were you all waiting in my room when I woke?” he asked through watery eyes.
“Your toes,” she laughed.  “You started wiggling your toes yesterday morning.  When I had the doctor stop by, he found your brainwave patterns were beginning to change.  The kids came home to be here just in case.  We took turns with you all yesterday, so we could all be with you, if you woke.  When you began to stir, we all rushed in.  The next thing we knew you were awake.”

After sitting alone with his wife for most of the morning, his children and their spouses took turns spending more time with him.  They kept him awake as long as they could, to the point when he could hide his weariness no longer.
“Please, let me sleep.  We have the rest of our lives to catch up,” he told his eldest son at one point.
“No, Daddy.  Let me spend a little more time with you,” he replied, “I’ve waited so long to talk with you again.”
The irony of the tall, strong man before him calling him Daddy was more than enough to dissuade him.  Eventually, even getting to know his grown children couldn’t keep his eyelids from falling.  As if being sleep’s prisoner for fifteen years wasn’t enough, he began to succumb to its call.  His eldest son lifted him from the bench in the yard—as easily as if he were a feather—and carried him to his bed.  His wife and children gathered around him once again as it became obvious he would soon be asleep.  They had talked and sat with him for an entire day and night, keeping him awake through the following morning.
“We love you so much Daddy,” his daughter said, and all echoed their affection for him, just as tearfully as when he first awoke.
“I’ll be awake in a few hours,” he lied, sadly aware of the warning he’d overheard the doctor giving his family only hours ago, thinking he was out of earshot.

“He may return to normal after today,” his doctor had said, after performing a few tests.  “But I fear it’s not likely.  His brainwaves aren’t normal—they’re still too close to those we find in a comatose patient.  I don’t understand how he’s awake and responsive with such minimal brainwave activity.”
“It’s a miracle,” said his wife, and the doctor agreed.  
“Yes, but even miracles don’t last forever.  I’m afraid when he next falls asleep, he’s not likely to wake again.  I’m so very sorry.”

When he could fight it no longer, he simply closed his teary eyes.  As he did, he heard his grown children and wife quietly mourn losing him once again.  And yet—sleep didn’t come as he expected.  He wasn’t able to open his eyes or feel his body, but he was able to hear.  He listened as his children and wife each came near and whispered to him, as he lay still as death.
He wondered, “Is this what a coma feels like—did I somehow forget?  Will I be trapped forever, able only to hear—wishing every day for death?”  
As alarming as the thought was, he didn’t feel distressed; in fact, an unexpected peace seemed to envelope him.  He realized all he’d wanted out of life had come to pass.  He’d seen his children grown, each so familiar with the joy of serving Christ, each raised by the loving hand of his wife and his God, graceful through all.  He saw his wife, and knew her needs—physical, spiritual and emotional—had been met by God, and also by the support of their grown children.  
“I can die now,” he thought, “I am complete”.  Immediately he was bombarded by the memory of his thoughts from the night of his accident—and he knew how foolish he’d been.  
“How does a promotion compare with this: to see my children grown and successful: committed to God and enjoying the peace only He can bring—to see my wife, cared for and surrounded by them, a loving family knit so close together?  If I’d been promoted, it could in no way have added to this great treasure.”  
Inwardly, he wept for how he’d taken so much in his life for granted.  He understood how he’d often abandoned this peace for some pathetic imitation he’d fleetingly desired.  He saw how he frequently he’d traded God’s treasures for pale substitutions, mere shadows of what he truly wanted.  The perspective was unbearable to him.
“How could I have missed it?” he asked himself, gradually sick with the bitter taste of regret in his mouth.  “How could I have been so blind?”  He begged God to grant him one last request.  “Tell them Lord—show them what I now see.  Don’t let this revelation go to waste.”  Then, amazingly, he heard God reply.  At first he wondered, “Am I dying?”  Quickly, he shoved the thought aside to listen to the voice in his mind’s ear.
“Yes, I will tell them.  I will call them, and I will tell them this same message I’ve been telling you for so long…this message you chose not to hear.  Why did you ignore me, dear child?  I told you every day, and showed you in a thousand ways, but you were too busy to listen.  How loudly must I whisper before you hear Me?”
He wept bitterly to hear such revealing truth.  “I told you so often…” he heard God again, “but don’t be bitter now.  Let go your regret…”  
It was too much to take in at once.  The words rung all too loudly in his mind as he lay there, motionless.  And as amazingly as falling asleep and not waking for fifteen years, he awoke that night without falling asleep at all.
“…relax…relax…” he thought he heard God’s voice telling him.  Then louder, more brashly, “You have to lie back and relax.”
He tried again to sit up, and a nurse far too powerful for her small frame leaned her forearm against his shoulder.  “Lie down,” she continued shouting, clearly unconcerned with offending him.  “Your family is fine.  Your wife is waiting in the next room.”
“What—” he stammered, “what’s happening?”
“I told you.  You’ve been in a car accident, and you’ve had emergency surgery.  The drugs are still wearing off.  You’re not going to remember any of this, so lie back and relax.”
But he did remember; he remembered everything.
“What kind of accident?” he asked, “Did I hit a tree?  Was I in a coma?”
“A coma?  You haven’t had time for that.  Now lay still and relax, or you’ll pull your stitches.  Your wife will meet you in recovery soon enough—she got here almost as soon as the ambulance.  I told her you’re going to be fine, but she’s worried just the same,” the nurse said, shaking her head.  
“No coma?  The accident…was today?”
“The ambulance arrived just a few hours ago,” replied the nurse, pressing even harder into his shoulder.
“Thank you, Lord,” he whispered quietly, eyes closing.  At last he made sense of the words his children in his dream had remembered, the words he’d spoken but couldn’t recall.  They’re instructions, not memories—God sent me instructions in my dream.  And unexpectedly, other words rang again in his ears—the words God had whispered so loudly to him that day—so loudly it nearly killed him.

“I told you every day, and showed you in a thousand ways…  How loudly must I whisper before you hear Me?”


The End 



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