It’s not just big events in stories that are nothing like real life. It’s the little things too. The artificial dialogue and the moments when the small things come together like they’re supposed to and that makes a blossom of content that lasts.

One thing in particular I’ve never believed happened in real life is when a character is wandering aimlessly and their feet lead them to where they need to go. Even as a child I didn’t understand it. How could you be walking without knowing where you’re going? How can you go somewhere without intent? I didn’t believe it could happen, but it happened to me the other night.

It wasn’t a big thing. It had no part to play in any grand scheme; any story but my own. I finished dinner in the crowded cafeteria; a tasteless sandwich because food is always tasteless for me in the absence of comfort. It was still light outside and going back to my plaintive dorm room just seemed wrong when Indian summer played on my skin with the brush of a light rain. The sun still filtered through the clouds, so I donned my headphones and walked to the rhythm of Sufjan’s Seven Swans, looking through the kaleidoscope that the raindrops made on my glasses.

I looked at the grass as I walked, at the way the water sparkled there. A fork in the sidewalk; I had to choose. I looked up to decide, to see where each path might lead, and there before me was Weatherby Chapel--a tiny, always-open place for trysts with God. Right away I felt a chill; a shudder move through me, mysterious and mystic. I know I tend to over-romanticize things, but still I smiled at the thought that maybe God had guided me there. I’ve never really believed in coincidences, so this as well, to me, had to mean something.

I opened the first set of heavy double doors. They cracked as if stuck to the jam, like they hadn’t been opened in a long while. They led into a lobby about the size of my dorm room—quite small. An old woman, painted with meticulous strokes, gazed out at some middle-distance from her frame over an oaken table, set with half-burned candles. The wicks needed to be trimmed. They arched, thin charcoal and black and braided, graceful and coy from the opaque wax.

Muffled sounds, the firm yet plush notes of an old piano pushed their way through the cracks of the doors that led into the sanctuary. Though the music was pretty, I had to try to catch my heart as it sunk with disappointment. I couldn’t keep my lips from setting a grim line, though—I had hoped I’d be alone. Still, I wanted to see more of this place, so I crept into the dimly-lit sanctuary as quietly as I could. These doors—heavy and white and gold—popped and creaked as well, like an arthritic old butler--stiff and sore but still intent on serving a stately master.

I ducked my head as I pulled the headphones from my ears, hoping not to be noticed by the young man playing the worn, weathered upright. His playing faltered; I’d been noticed. I kept my head down anyway, pretending to be invisible as I shuffled to the opposite side of the sanctuary and perched on the edge of a plain wooden pew. The melody continued, simple but beautiful, and I opened my journal on my knee. My pen hovered over the page but made no marks, frozen in rapture by the music echoing from the quality acoustics of the room.

Everything seemed golden there. The lights were dim and gold and the wood of the pews reflected them from its cracked gloss, so that puddles of liquid light formed between the dull, splinter-like grooves all over the surface of the seats. The sound seemed golden too; each hammer on the string reverberating in air thick with evening and a sacred something, rippling vibrating undulating from the piano to my ears.

Too soon, the notes grew longer and less frequent, a signal that the end of the song was coming. The last chord—two simple keys—faded like smoke into the rafters, and I was compelled to speak.

“That was really pretty.” I said, my voice sounding harsh after the soft music.
“Thank you.” The young man turned towards me, sounding a little bit shy. “I was just making it up; I don’t really play.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Well then that was REALLY good, for ‘not really playing’.”
He laughed. “Thanks.”
“Sure.” I said, looking back down at the blank page on my lap. The uncharacteristic boldness that had caused me to speak in the first place had retreated, leaving me alone to finish the conversation I’d recklessly started with this stranger. Silence descended for a moment just long enough to make me feel awkward.

“What year are you?” I asked, my go-to question for awkward silences with fellow students here.
“Junior.” He replied, rising from the bench to replace the hymnal he’d taken from the music stand. “You?”
“Freshman.” I said with a measure of humility; upperclassmen are intimidating.

We talked of majors, of why and how. I looked at him as we spoke, lifting my eyes from my journal. Even with my glasses on, I couldn’t quite see. The features of his face were blurred, though I could see that he hadn’t shaved it a few days. I could see his hair was dark; I could see he was tall. I could see the big white “IF” on his black t-shirt. But insufficient sight hid specific features from me, so in my mind I made his face to match his voice: dark, strong but humble at the same time.

“I’ll let you read.” He said eventually, his backpack crushed in the crook of his arm. It occurred to me how my shyness must have looked at the beginning, like I was enthralled in some literary hypnosis and would rather be reading than talking to him. Right away I felt guilty. That wasn’t true; I had enjoyed our brief conversation, making him perfect in my mind. I had started it, after all.

But I just smiled and said, “Ok.”
“I’m going on a walk. It was good to meet you, El.” He said.
“It was good to meet you too!” I waved and he nodded back, his hands full of backpack and heavy white door.

Pop crack, soft echoing boom, and I was left alone in the chapel to ponder this ships-in-the-night meeting of two people who enjoyed walks in the rain and solitary chapel visits. And music.
The silence was big like cotton in my ears, every one of my movements amplified in the solitude. As quietly as I could, I walked to the piano, opened the hymnal on the stand above the keys. I played a chord, a note or two, stumbling my way through the first line of “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”. I paused, pulling dusty piano knowledge from the attic of my mind, scrubbing the grit from lines and spaces and key signatures. I tried the line again and again, but eventually gave up. It’s been too long now; these days my fingers are more accustomed to the callusing steel strings of my guitar.

But I had no guitar to play in worship, so I decided to use my voice, weary and rough as it was that night. Many of the hymns in the book were unfamiliar to me; others only vaguely reminding me of songs I knew as a child. I flipped through the pages, though, and once every several I came upon a song I knew well enough.

I flinched at the first notes I sang. They sounded sharp and intrusive after some minutes of absolute quiet. But I pressed through a verse and soon settled into softer tones. I tried to mean every word; to sing like a prayer, changing a word here and there in attempt to sing to God, instead of about Him.

Somehow, I always feel like a little girl when I sing or speak to God aloud. Awkward, vulnerable and helpless, but with a beautiful sense of innocence and trust.

I can’t explain it, though I suppose not many things about God or interactions with Him are logical. If these things could be explained—if we could break down exactly why one feels a certain way when praying or singing or reading the Bible, or if we could wrap our tiny human minds around the fact that God had no beginning and all of the hows and whys that have been discussed for centuries—if these things were logical to us then where would be the proof of divinity? If something—or Someone—is as much greater than humans as the Bible says He is, it stands to reason that humans would be nowhere close to comprehending Him. If we understood everything, if everything about Him had an answer that made perfect sense to us, wouldn’t there be some sense of disappointment? I think it might be even harder to trust a being simple enough to make sense to me.

But I tried to block out the more complex thoughts, all the hows and whys and ifs and whens. Tonight was for worship; for simplistic, child-like faith and wonder.
When I grew too tired to sing anymore, I crept to the alter table at the front of the sanctuary. I sat tentatively on a small wooden wall-like structure, my muscles tired and sore but my mind curious to investigate the books and papers and basket resting on the table’s dark wooden surface.

I picked up a spiral-bound book, yellowed and battered and torn from years of quiet service. It was a notebook, full of prayer requests and answers from anonymous believers. All seemed to have been written quickly—either in the desperation of need or in frantic joy of provision. For all its worn appearance, the book wasn’t full. So I took up a page of my own, writing a date but no name, like the others had done.

I used up my space, the margins dark gray with crammed scribblings, so I tried to find out what the blank papers were for. The basket was full of them, all folded in half and with the light shining through the thin white I could see writing on the other side. I didn’t want to pry, but I was confused. Were these notes to a pastor? More prayer requests? Confessions?

I squinted and craned my neck, trying to make out a backwards word or two. Awkwardly tilting my head, I tried to see the other side, as if reading the note didn’t count as snooping as long as I didn’t touch it.

“Dear Beloved,” was the first line. I sat up quickly, feeling as if I’d disturbed a pair of lovers. Because that’s what these were: love letters to God. The few random words I’d been able to read inside-out made sense now.

I picked up the pencil that lay on the stack of blank pages. For a moment I just stared at the stark white, willing new words to come to me. My love letter was short and simple; recycled words. But true ones; ones I wanted Him to know so much as to repeat them over and over and over again. I folded the paper, neat yet humanly imperfect, and let it join the other white squares whose corners spiked up over the basket’s rim.

For a moment I was still. Scraping pencil noise done, crinkling paper hushed, cotton silence once more.

I felt dazed as I gathered my things. It was time to leave; the black of deep night had filled the windows. It felt wrong to make an exit as simple as walking out the door. But, I thought as I left the sanctuary, that is one of the many facets of the beauty of Christ: He doesn’t require a dramatic exit or perfect eloquence of speech or an angel’s singing voice. All He really asks of me is faith as I step back out into the rain.