I didn’t stay in the driftwood cabin for long, just three days. I meant to stay longer, but I couldn’t. Now, as I walk, in the midst of these memories, I feel as though I am on trial and I am pleading my case. Who am I talking to? I look up. It’s a rare cloudless sky this afternoon. How fitting today, that even the sky has been emptied. I pitch my pleas heavenward anyway.
I didn’t give up, did I? And neither did Duncan. We left that island and came here. You know all we did here, how hard we worked! We dug our own well, built every one of these buildings! And the fish came and came, and the kids came—four in seven years into this huge, empty house! We were so happy to have them all! And we were done having babies. But you sent two more in my forties, and I couldn’t do it! How could I raise a daughter and five sons out here with so much dirt and an outhouse and an old wringer washer and all those fish, and then two of us, off on our own islands of fatigue and work, too tired to speak and even to fight. And did you see me those nights when I ran out into the dusk looking for a way off, a way out, the nights looking for you, for the Savior I chose, a Savior who I thought chose me too . . . but where were you? Why is it all so hard? Did you trick us? Where is this better life?
I’m on the trail again, walking faster, eyes stinging through a near forest of hogweed. I remember that flight in the fog—how can I forget? I remember how near he came, but in these other storms, surely he was sleeping! Can’t I wake him up and say, “Lord, can’t you see I’m drowning?” My father is gone. My mothering friend is gone. And now one by one, my children are leaving. I know they must go! But when I look ahead, just ten years ahead, I see an empty table. I see this house, the banya, the basketball court, the trampoline, the swing set, the tree house, the kitchen table—I see it all deathly still, deserted. I will be mending nets on the beach with strangers hired to work for us. I will be cooking for other mothers’ sons. I will be the boss lady. That’s all. What has all this been for?
I stumble now on a salmonberry bush. Crows mock from the alders overhead. I shout “Haw!” and they scatter, grieving and harassing as they part. I watch them, wanting to shout at them, I don’t want suffering! I don’t want to be meek! I want healing and blessing and power! I want my children to stay! I want my family restored! I want my family to accept me! I want Jesus to be the king who brings all our daily bread! But what you’ve given is not enough, Jesus! You come in the storm, but you bring the storm! The bread is a stone, after all; the fish is a serpent—you tricked us, Jesus!
And that’s all it takes to put me there in the garden that night. I am a woman walking alone on an island in faraway Alaska, but I am there at Gethsemane that night. Maybe I am the one pointing the soldiers toward the path to the garden. Here they come with their torches and handcuffs, and they arrest him, this one I have tried to follow all these years. They haul him off in chains. They should. He is not who he said he was. He is not who I thought he was!
They run that night, all of the disciples except one. In the light of the torches, in the flash of the swords, in the terror of seeing their Master chained like a villain, they scatter like seeds on the wind.
This is not what they signed on for. They know what they need: the Romans overthrown, their nation restored, the Temple worship reinstituted, the return of YHWH to live with his people, his chosen, called-out people! And then he came, this Anointed One! They knew the new life would be better than the old life, and it was. It was for so long! They knew they chose well. What they saw! Peter saw him on top of the waves, on the hillsides feeding everyone, on top of the mountain, his face aflame with heaven itself. They saw the enormity of his power, the magnitude of his compassion, his fearlessness against his enemies. Yes, this is the King who has come to bring the Kingdom of God. Here he is! The One we’ve been waiting for! And they themselves, paired up, walking village to village, touching shriveled hands and leprous bodies and watching the fingers come back, the fresh skin appear—in his name! In his power!
Finally, just when they understand, just when they know who he really is, they come—the soldiers, the torches, the arrest, maybe death? Yeshua saved them so many times! From the storms, the crowds, the Pharisees. He can heal anything, anyone! But why is he not resisting? Why is he letting them shackle him and drag him off? Why doesn’t he save himself?
Peter did not hear the dozen times Jesus told him, told all of them what was coming, that he would be mocked, whipped, that he would suffer and die. We don’t hear those kinds of words when we’re young, in the early days. We have no idea, any of us, what lies before us when we raise our hand, when we choose the ring, when we throw down our nets or pick them up, when we step on the island, when we sink under the waters, when we bow our heads. We don’t know what will come of our yes, our “I do’s,” our “I will’s,” but we believe in those words. We believe in ourselves and our ability to keep them.
I believed, when I was younger, that I would always follow Jesus, without question or pause. That night, Peter, sniffing the threat of violence, burst out passionately to Jesus, “I will go to the death for you!” Have I not said the same? But when the ring cracks, when your children leave, when the wrong kingdom comes, when the baby dies, when soldiers appear in the night with flaming torches, when one of your very own betrays your Master with a kiss—of course they ran!
Later that night, when Peter crept into the courtyard where Jesus was being held, the words of denial came just as easily as his pounding flight: I don’t know him. I don’t know who you mean. Man, you’re wrong! And Peter curses just before the rooster cries his morning dirge. Jesus, across the courtyard, fixes his eyes on Peter’s, and somehow he sees me too, and we are sobbing, both of us, Peter and I, as Jesus is taken away in chains. We’re done following him. He’s no king at all. We’re saving ourselves, we are nursing our disillusions, we’re giving up. We didn’t lie in that courtyard, on that trail of grief and memory. We don’t know him! He’s not who we thought he was. But we know who we are. We are the seeds choked out by thorns. We are the bad fish thrown into punishment. I should have stayed in that driftwood cabin and fallen with it into the sea. Peter wants to take it all back—the leaving, the following. I want off this island and out of this life. It’s a bust, all of it. We followed the wrong man.
Where is your power now, Jesus, Son of God? Where are your disciples now, rabbi? We are on our feet, trembling, and running away, all of us. I told you that day to leave me! I said, “Go away! I am a sinful man!” Why didn’t you listen to me? You chose us, and you chose wrong. We chose you, and we chose wrong. You are not who we thought you were.
Man, we do not know you!
Taken from Crossing the Waters copyright © 2016 by Leslie Leyland Fields. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
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Leslie Leyland Fields is an award-winning author of nine books, and Editorial Board member and cover story writer for Christianity Today, a national speaker, a popular radio guest, and a commercial fisherwoman for 37 years, working with her husband and six children in a commercial salmon-fishing operation on their own island off Kodiak Island, Alaska. Visit Leslie online at LeslieLeylandFields.com.
