More Things In Heaven And Earth

Chapter Three

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12

Is she the one?

Has he chosen?

Does he know?

Will he act?

Faster! I'm bored.

This is madness.

We deserve more than this.

In the days that followed the angel's second visit, I thought of little other than what I'd seen. I described what he'd shown me, as well as possible, to Michael. I knew I failed to fully convey it and, though he remained as supportive as ever, he couldn't truly understand. I couldn't truly understand, either. I couldn't focus, and the boys sensed my distraction. They tested the boundaries of acceptable behavior to see what they could get away with. The morning they broke my grandmother's lamp, I'd been standing in the kitchen, staring out the window in search of forms to match the voices, and taking slow sips of my scorched, too-strong coffee. When Donovan split his lip open on the edge of the coffee table while jumping off the couch, I'd been wiping the kitchen table for the third time since breakfast. I couldn't even remember deciding to do it again, let alone why I'd felt I needed to. And Donovan was definitely the instigator of the two. He always had been, but lately he had taken his stunts to a whole new level. There was almost a frantic quality to his behavior: like he was trying to prove something by pushing the limits and my tolerance.

All of that was why, when Michael came in and found Ike on the verge of cutting his own hair with my giant, razor sharp sewing scissors, his reaction was to sit me down, and demand I talk to him. " I respect that you've got a lot to think about, but what's really happening here, Simone? You need to work through this before the three of us boys burn this place down trying to fend for ourselves."

My husband knew me better than I knew myself. "I just keep thinking it can't be that bad." I paused, trying to find the words to explain. "The world can be an ugly place. You would have to be blind to not notice that people have made a terrible mess of things. We don't take care of our planet like we should. We don't take care of each other like we should. We need to do better at helping those who can't help themselves. We can be cruel to one another. We are greedy and selfish. We do bad things to each other every day."

"But," he prompted.

"But it's not all like that!" This is what I kept coming back to. "There are food pantries where people give their time and money to feed the hungry. There are teachers who would--who do--die to protect their students. And hospice workers who sit for hours and hours with the dying and their families, just to offer them some comfort. There is so much good in the world! And hasn't it always been that way? Hasn't there always been lots of good and lots of bad, all mixed together? At least, ever since Eve ate the apple or whatever happened back then?"

"I suspect you're right," Michael agreed.

"So then, why now? Supposedly something terrible is happening, worse than anything that's ever happened before, but why? What has our generation done that is so much more terrible than the generation that invented the atomic bomb? Or the generation that fought the crusades? Or the generation that dreamed up the Coliseum and sold little children for sexual pleasure to the grown men who came to watch their fellow humans be slaughtered for entertainment?"

We quieted, pondering history as we understood it. When viewed in retrospect, the horrors of humanity were many, and every generation was as guilty as the others.