JOURNEY OUT OF DARKNESS

 
I remember it even now as the most anxious night of my life. It was Christmas Eve, and Phyllis had been gone seven days. Now where was she? Nervously I paced the floor of the living room, waiting for the phone to ring. Handel's Messiah was playing on the radio. My whole life was hanging on a thread of uncertainty. Phyllis was supposed to be back by Christmas Eve. She was due to arrive this night at Kennedy and my sister Carroll was going to pick her up and drive her to Woodstock for the grand Christmas reunion. But where was Phyllis now? What was happening?

At last the telephone rang. "Lyn, darling, I'm in Washington and lucky to be here."

"Washington?"

"We were the last flight from the Orient allowed to land tonight on the Eastern seaboard. The captain announced that the whole East Coast is fogged in from Maine to Virginia. I have a voucher to come up to New York on the train tonight, and I'll drive up to Woodstock with Carroll in the morning."

I didn't know what to say. I simply felt relieved to hear Phyllis' voice.

"There is one very important thing I must tell you, just in case I never get back."

"Never get back?"

"Everything is in Baba's hands. I know that now."

I was stunned to silence.

"I want to tell you, Baba is God, and He loves you very much."

"What?" I was finding it difficult to take all this in.

"Baba told me to tell you, He wants you to come to Him. He said, 'Tell Lyn I will show him My face as it really is.' And said, 'This I give to very few.' He told me that I am to accompany you when you come."

"His face as it really is? What could that mean?"

"I don't know, but I can assure you, He loves you very much."

I hardly knew what to say. It was all too much to take in, and yet she had hardly told me anything. "Where are you right now?"

"I'm in customs. They're not set up here to handle this unscheduled arrival from the Orient. That's what I was told. So, it's taking a long time. Just think, none of these passengers here — they're all so tired — could possibly suspect that I just came from the Avatar.

"Here it is, Christmas Eve, and so many of these passengers are very disappointed not to have landed in New York. But the captain told us to consider ourselves very lucky. If we hadn't been allowed to land in Washington, we would have had to fly to Canada."

Still I had no thought what to say.

Phyllis went on, "All the way from India on the plane I kept hearing choruses of angels singing. And well they should, because Christ is on Earth."

When I hung up the phone, I found myself floating on a suspension of bliss. This was the night of nights. The spirit of Christ was arriving in this little make-shift 'House of the Lord,' our home. Phyllis had returned to America on Christmas Eve with words of the Living Christ.

I called Tom and Yvonne to tell them Phyllis would be arriving in the morning. The Rileys had been traveling back and forth between our house and theirs, taking care of our children while Phyllis was away. Tom and Yvonne were thrilled just to think that there would now be three of us in Woodstock who had met the God-Man.