“Yes. Of course I do. I’ve been given the gifts of preaching and teaching.” He hesitated, because despite her casual question, he could tell this was important to her. “What made you mention that?”
“Well… I’ve got a gift, too. I… I don’t talk about it much. I learned to keep quiet when I was very young, after a couple of dreadful experiences. Then later on, when I finally did talk about it… to… someone, it ended up underscoring my decision to keep it quiet.”
Paul knew when something was sitting heavy on someone’s heart. “What gift?”
“I know… well, what I mean is, I know when… The gifts of the Spirit are pretty well known for the most part. Teaching, preaching, wisdom, even the more miraculous gifts like healing, speaking in tongues, and interpretation of tongues are ones people talk about. But mine is… well, it’s…” She fell silent again.
Paul didn’t rush her. Finally, when it looked like she wasn’t going to say any more, he asked, “When was the last time you talked about this?”
Keren let her head drop back on the headrest. “With the exception of my parents… and one other time… I haven’t talked about it since fourth grade. I made a really public announcement in school about someone…” She looked sideways at him.
“Go on.”
“A boy was pushing a smaller kid around in the lunchroom, and I announced to the whole room, ‘He can’t help himself. He’s possessed by a demon.’“
Keren rubbed her hands over her face. Paul could well imagine the fallout from such an announcement. “So did you get beaten up?”
She came out from behind her hands. “If only I had. Unfortunately, the principal came in at that moment.”
“Unfortunately?”
“Yeah. Instead of getting punched, which might have been the end of it, I got hauled into the principal’s office, and he called my parents. Then he called the boy’s parents. He thought I was being a little hard on the kid, I guess. It turned into a circus, because the bully’s parents demanded I apologize. So, right in front of his big,
nasty father, I said with perfect sincerity to this big, nasty kid, ‘I’m sorry you are possessed by a demon.’“
Paul couldn’t stop himself from laughing.
“You can imagine how well that went over.”
Finally, he said, “You were pretty harsh.”
“I wasn’t trying to be. It was true. I thought they’d want to know. I’d never even said such a thing to my parents. Maybe the gift hadn’t come to me yet or maybe I’d never been near someone possessed by a demon before, but the whole thing was really unexpected by everyone. Me included.”
“Were your parents… how did they handle it?”
“They had a long talk with me and they supported me, believed what I’d said. And they got out the Bible and read 1 Corinthians 12 to me and talked about their own gifts. We had plenty of time for all this because I got suspended from school for three days. They helped me to appreciate my gift, but we decided I should maybe be a little more discreet about it. Then I got back to school and, well, let’s just say kids can be cruel. I’ve never… well almost never… talked about it again.”
“So you just ignore what you see?”
“No, but now I know better than to blurt something like that out in front of everyone. I’ve learned the art of thinking before I speak.”
“Some people never learn it.”
“Well, I did—the hard way.” Keren glanced at him as if she expected him to haul her up to his office and call her parents. “So anyway, that’s my gift. I discern spirits. I can tell when a demon has taken up residence in someone’s soul.”
“Every time?”
Keren seemed to give his question considerable thought. “I guess I don’t know if I can do it every time. I only know sometimes
I can. I assume God lets me see it because He wants me to know, either to help or to be careful.”
“That’s a beautiful gift, Keren. I’ve talked to a few people who believe they have such a gift, but it’s more subtle with them. They talk about being repelled by certain people, and they think that’s a sign that they have an evil spirit of some kind. But I’ve learned that people can be really bad without a demon being involved. Or at least God doesn’t always reveal a demon when I’m tangling with criminals. It’s not a well-understood gift.”
“I’ve never talked to anyone who claimed to have it.” Keren ran one hand back and forth over the steering wheel and seemed to be looking into the distance. “But then, I’ve never asked because I never talk about it.”
“You said you did one other time, outside your parents and that fourth grader. And it was bad. Tell me about that.”
Keren scowled at him. “You listen like you’re some kind of… of…”
“Pastor?” Paul smiled at her.
“Yeah.” She slumped in her car seat. “Just like a pastor.”
“Occupational hazard.” Then silence stretched, and Paul quietly prayed for her to feel safe with him, safe enough to tell what was obviously a very difficult story. And for himself to have some wisdom to offer. Wisdom didn’t seem to be one of his gifts when it came to Keren.
Apparently the silent treatment worked. Keren inhaled slowly and said, “I was engaged once.”
That caused a very basic, very unpleasant reaction.
Jealousy.
Paul was shocked at the strength of it. Now he was afraid to talk for fear of saying something stupid.
“What happened?” There, that sounded neutral enough.
“I had a lifetime of secrecy behind me, but I knew I really needed to be open with the man I wanted to marry. I kept putting it off more out of habit than anything.” Keren sounded guilty, like she blamed herself for the end of her relationship. “In fact, I put it off until the night he proposed. But he was a strong Christian. He was a decent man, someone I really thought God had chosen for me. It seemed so right.”
“It was obviously wrong.” Paul didn’t think he quite managed neutrality with that comment.
“Obviously.” Keren nodded. “I really didn’t think he’d be put off by it. He produced the ring and I said yes.”
Paul could hear the bewilderment and hurt in her voice.
“We spent hours that night talking about the future. He owned a house, but he offered to sell it, and we’d buy one together. We talked about me being a cop, and he wasn’t real thrilled with it, but I’d told him it was a calling and I expected to make a career of it and he seemed okay with it. We talked a lot about our faith and wanting to raise our children the way we’d been raised, and somehow we worked our way around to that story I just told you.”
“Fourth grade.”
Nodding, Keren said, “He was really taken aback by it. He started asking a lot of questions, really detailed stuff, because by then I’d already confronted a lot of people in trouble. The questions took a turn that was weird, accusatory. Honestly, it reminded me a little of that mess in fourth grade, and I kept expecting him to call the principal and my parents.”
“I wonder why he reacted so strongly. It seems strange that he would.”
“He changed the subject back to my work, and suddenly we were having a fight. The first real fight we’d ever had. We were so compatible. The whole thing was shocking. By the time the date came to an end, the engagement was over.”
“How long had you been dating?”
“Close to a year.”
“And that was it? You couldn’t work things out?”
“I couldn’t even get him to talk to me. I phoned a few times and he wouldn’t answer. I still thought it was about being a cop at that point. After a couple of weeks of him ducking me, I went to his house and waited for him one night, and when he came home, he had another woman with him.”