Three Simple Words

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When I first started walking with Jesus, I surrounded myself with a bunch of college-age Christians who were “on fire” for the Lord. Most of them were budding charismatics, and I sat among them—my little Baptist self—hearing concepts that I had never heard of before. Prior to college, I never knew that people in today’s day and age truly expected to hear from God personally.

The first time I heard God speak, and knew it was God, was the year I lived with four friends. We were out on our own, and we were a hot mess. We showed our behinds, freely offering each other the worst of ourselves, but seldom the best. We were young, immature, irresponsible, and catty. Not only did we annoy each other, but because we were all striving hard to be solid Jesus lovers, we also tried to imbed ourselves deeply in each others spiritual lives—praying & reading together, talking about BIG important spiritual issues together—and all our ultra-spirituality taken together with our pitiful excuse for community living made the year icky and painful. We had horrible boundaries, understood nothing of accountability, and lived out our issues.

One of the roommates “Beth” and myself became enemies.  From dating each others friends, to jealousy, to hating each other, we were trifling.  One day, the other three sat me down and told me they all wanted to live together again the following year, but without Beth. And they elected me to be the one to tell her. Dang.

I’m a major conflict avoider, so the only response I had to their request was to pray. And since I was into proving how spiritual I was, I decided to throw some fasting in too. For three days I prayed and fasted, begging God for resolution. I wanted help getting along so we could all be friends and roomies again. I wanted Him to make my friends feel guilty and motivate them to woman up and be better – love, forgive, and endure. But mostly, I wanted to avoid a difficult conversation with Beth.

In reality, I didn’t expect God to say anything.

Back then I prayed because I wanted God to do something – change a heart or mind, work a miracle, flip a table or a situation. But He didn’t do any of those things.

Instead, He spoke: “don’t leave her.”

Three simple words, nothing more. It wasn’t a coded message, rocket science, or soliloquy. It was plain. And short.

See, I was used to God talking to folks in big ways. The God I read about in the Bible sent world-consuming floods, led His people with a pillar of fire and smoke, spoke volumes to His prophets, and when mankind couldn’t get it with His instruction, sent His son to be a living example of the way we were supposed to go. So when he said “don’t leave her,” I thought something was off. My friends did too. My roomies told me I was wrong, that Beth had somehow worked some manipulative magic. Other friends told me that I had not heard from the Lord at all.

But a week later the message was still the same. It stuck with me, lingered, popping up between classes and while I was studying for my grad school entrance exam. It was there at work, choir rehearsal, when I got up in the morning, and when I went to sleep.

Around that time I remembered the Old Testament story where Elijah is hiding out in a cave and he goes out to hear the Lord’s voice. A powerful wind comes and breaks up the side of a mountain; but God’s voice isn’t there. An earthquake shakes the ground; but God isn’t in the earthquake. Then a fire comes; but the Lord isn’t there either. Finally, a gentle breeze rustles through, and bingo! The soft, still voice of the Lord was there.

About a month after I heard my little phrase, a mentor of mine was praying for Beth.   The mentor turned to me and said “I hear the Lord saying you’re not supposed to leave her.”

Boom.

Just in case I was changing my mind, the Lord gave me the grace of letting at least one other person hear the same thing – which let me know I wasn’t crazy.  Knowing someone else heard the same thing made me feel less self-conscious.  I had heard right.

Over a decade later, Beth is one of my dearest friends. We’ve held each others hands through funerals and emergency room visits; cried and laughed together more times than I can count. I was with her when she met her birth father.  She was in the birthing room, whispering “you’ve got this” during my sixteen-hour labor.  Her friendship is incredibly valuable to me. I could not imagine my life without my sister from another mister.

The day the roomies and I sat around our kitchen table, making plans about the future, I never would have imagined that Beth and I would become anything more than one-time roommates.

God spoke. His three simple words not only proved me wrong, but they also made all the difference.

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Bio: Brooke Jackson is a public defender who represents youth who are locked up in Ohio’s juvenile prison system. She is a church-planter and chairperson for a Christian community development organization on the near-east side of Columbus, Ohio, where she lives with her husband Matt and their son Miles. When she’s not defending children, chasing a baby, or baking cupcakes, she writes about life and justice at A Brooke in Dry Places.