During the seven months my then boyfriend, now husband, Jamison was deployed I was having trouble sleeping. One particular night I was emotionally drained by my sleep troubles and the fact that Jamison being gone was somehow getting more difficult the longer he was gone. I did what all adults did in that particular scenario — went to cry at my 80-year-old neighbors house.
“I don’t understand why I’m 26-years-old and still unable to sleep alone,” I told Fred through my tears. “I’m supposed to be older and smarter. Not act like a child afraid of the dark.”
What I like most about Fred is that, unlike what people might imagine a dude who claims he’s spiritual, Fred doesn’t look or act spiritual. He doesn’t wear a long white robe or do yoga. He doesn’t pick up rocks from a zen garden and sprinkle them into tea, claiming it a healing agent. He’s just a dude. A dude who wears the same striped polo shirt and khaki shorts 360 days out of the year and watches the history channel because he loves WWII, like all old, white men.
Fred didn’t tell me how brave or strong I was that night. Instead, he simply said “age has nothing to do with anything. Fear has no age limit.”
I rolled my eyes at him as if to say listen dawg, I know you can be scared at any age. But I am afraid of the dark and of ghosts and shit. Those types of fears weren’t rational, emotional fears like loss or loneliness. They were the type of fears children had after watching a particularly scary episode of Scooby-Doo. Fears with expiration dates that aren’t supposed to follow you into adulthood.
“I guess,” I murmured. My sobs had already turned into sniffles and my panic had shifted to a bratty level of irritation. “It’s just that every time I go to fall asleep I get this distinct feeling I’m not alone.”
“You’re not alone.” He told me, straight-faced and serious, as if it weren’t a very odd thing to say. “God is in there with you.”
The gimmicky side of spirituality I was so afraid of when I first met Fred suddenly came rushing back at me, full speed. Perhaps he wasn’t some mushroom foraging, crystal collecting weirdo, but somehow the whole God thing was worse. Was I accidentally at the home of a man who was trying to save my poor sinner soul from the fiery depths of Hell? How had I not seen this coming?
“Oh,” I said, like a person negotiating with a murderer. “Ok. Sure. Totally. It’s God.”
Fred could see I was uneasy.
“You don’t believe in God?” He questioned, a little amused.
We had had this conversation roughly 62 trillion times since we met nearly a year prior. I had said, as kindly as I could, that while I certainly believe in ghosts, a guy in the sky who created all mankind, has a beard, and just casually watches human atrocities without intervening? That was where I drew the line.
“No. I don’t.” I told him again. “ I find it all to be a bit…” I searched for words that wouldn’t sound insulting. “…uninviting.”
“You’ll see him one day.” Fred said with confidence.
I didn’t argue. I just said I was tired, and went upstairs to the spare room to sleep.
In the middle of the night, I woke up to the sound of tree branches scraping the window.
Half asleep I lifted my head up from under the blankets. The wind outside was aggressively blowing the leaves of the tree and the branches attached, persistently enough it sounded like someone was knocking on the outside, waiting for me to let them in.
If I had been at home I would have undoubtedly begun to panic and clutch the nearest sharp object (my only options being a t.v remote, a cat, or an old tube of chapstick I could have maybe whittled into a shank) for protection. But in the guest bedroom, it was easy to dismiss the scary wind storm attempting to burst through the window. Vegas is windy sometimes, I told myself, snuggling back into the fetal position. And trees make noises in the wind.
The next day, about halfway through my shift at the community center I worked at, Fred showed up as he usually did. Without asking I went over to the coffee bar to make his regular bland latte without sugar and my regular healthy coffee of 98 sugar packets and hazelnut syrup. When I placed the coffee in front of him I took a long sip of mine and sighed.
“I’m tired,” I said. “Last night the storm woke me up.”
“Storm?” Fred asked, as if he had no idea what the word meant.
“I woke up to tree branches hitting the window. I mean, maybe there wasn’t any rain, but there was definitely heavy wind.”
Fred picked up his phone, his face puzzled. The screen lit up his face as he scrolled through his apps. Suddenly, his face lit up.
“My weather app says last night wasn’t windy.” He said.
He twisted his phone around for me to see in case I thought he was lying. I looked at the screen. The weather the night before, according to the one particular weather app in front of my face, had been calm, cool, and allegedly wind free.
“Ok, but I did hear the wind. And the tree against the window. So I don’t care about what this dumb app says.”
He challenged me, looking for inconsistencies in the breaking news story forming in front of him with the enticing headline girl wakes up to normal weather, proceeds to sleep after.
“There isn’t a tree tall enough in front of my house to reach the guest bedroom window.”
I was lost. He apparently noticed and cut right to the chase.
“I’m saying the wind who visited you last night was not wind,” he insisted, without any sign he was messing around with me. “It was God.”
If I had been sipping my coffee the moment he said this I might have choked. “God” me once, shame on you. But “God” me twice — in the same 24 hour period?!? — please get serious.
“Jesus,” I said, sounding as irritated as I felt, then instantly regretted my choice of people to mention.
“I’m sorry to say,” Fred said between laughs, “but it was God. He visited you last night. In the bible, God shows up as the wind many times.”
“This isn’t the bible.”
“So what?”
I didn’t have a great comeback for this answer. The rest of the day, and for days after, the conversation replayed in my head. I didn’t quite believe what Fred was saying. And yet, I didn’t quite not believe it either.
About a week or so later, I woke up early and drove to the bottom of a tall desert mountain. I was not looking forward to the hike. It was for work and I was tired and back then, physical exercise was something I needed to coerce myself into. I was grouchy, wondering why I was expected to traverse with a bunch of acquaintances for my job.
The first mile or so of the climb my legs were tight and my breaths were shallow. The air was stale, hot, and dry, and the sun was soaking into my skin, causing my face to feel tight and sweaty. Being from New England, I was used to hiking in some capacity. But in the desert, there are no trees to shield you from the more intense elements. You run into less adorable animals, like snakes, lizards, and black buzzards with the hopes a hiker will drop dead from the heat so they can swoop in and eat the body. I was having trouble enjoying it all, despite really loving the desert most of the time.
But somewhere in the middle of the hike something happened.
The higher I climbed, the lighter I began to feel. It didn’t hit me all at once. I went from panting, slogging each step like I was trudging through thick mud, to practically floating up the mountain. The air, thinner in theory toward the top, flowed into my lungs, filling my body with colder, fresher air. I looked behind me and found I was ahead of the other 10 or so people on the hike. I looked at the view around me and saw the hills of sand, the houses in neat rows around the city, and the puff of clouds in the sky, seemingly so close I could reach out and scoop a piece off like cotton candy.
There was this unusual feeling inside my chest. I was there and I was a part of this.
I caught myself — was I being…positive?
I stopped and closed my eyes. I decided I would experiment with this new feeling and play Fred’s game.
Ok “God”, I thought, if you’re really there, send me a gust of wind.
I felt very stupid, like someone hiking past might read my mind and start laughing at me. I felt no wind and was not surprised by this. The air had been motionless the entire hike. So I continued on, the peak in view.
I hiked for a while, happy to be doing so well and to be alone, not having to make small talk and distract myself from this strange, new feeling of being connected to the world around me. I was almost at the top. Still sweaty, I wiped my forehead with the bottom of my shirt, and stopped for a second to drink in the view around me. In the distance, the city skyline sat. At the top, a flag stood tall, moving slightly from the little wind at the top. I suddenly needed to feel that wind. Maybe it wasn’t God wind, but it would feel great on the heat of my body. I started walking again.
And then, suddenly, I felt it. A gust of wind so strong, it rustled my hair and cooled my warm skin. It was just a quick breeze, gone as soon as it came, but powerful and purposeful. My heart raced and for a fleeting second, I felt very seen. By what and by whom wasn’t too clear, but the feeling was so strong nevertheless.
When I reached the top of the mountain only a minute or so later, I looked over the city of Las Vegas, wondering if I was really starting to think Fred was right. I wondered if maybe God wasn’t the old man in the sky, gatekeeping heaven from those he considered sinners, but more so a feeling. A sense you belong to the world and the world belongs to you. And like the wind, you couldn’t see it, but when it was there, there was no doubting it was there.
Shauna Cook 
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