What Abby needed, she wouldn’t say. She found Josh’s brochure somewhere, liked what it said and the way it looked. She giggled as she admitted she was drawn to his photo on the brochure. She knew what she did not want. She did not want Josh to use hypnosis on her. She did not want to lose control. Someone had done that to her before and she felt manipulated. She thinks he seduced her under hypnosis. Josh assured her he would only support her on her path, he would not offer anything she did not want to do.
~ ~ ~
Josh attended a workshop on learning to use his intuition. On several occasions, they had to pair up with a partner from the group. They were to get information intuitively about a relative of the partner so that information could be confirmed or refuted by the partner. For one exercise, they tuned in to a relative who was alive. For another, they were to tune in to a dead relative.
Janet sought to connect with Josh’s grandfather on his father’s side, Andreas. She said that Andreas told her he understood Josh now, he understood what he was doing with his life and he supported him. It certainly was a message Josh loved to hear, because he had felt so misunderstood by his family since childhood, but it was not a message that proved Janet had truly connected with his grandfather.
Josh sought information about Janet’s mother. As he closed his eyes, and took deep breaths to relax and be open to her mother, he saw a middle aged man, trying to pull a woman his age out of a fire. Her hair was dark and disheveled, long enough to reach her shoulder blades. Her dress was simple, uniformly navy blue or black. She resisted him, her face in pain, looking away from him. He had short brown hair and wore a white shirt with sleeves rolled up above his elbows. Neither one of them was on fire. The man came out alone. He could not save the woman. Janet did not know what to make of Josh’s vision. There had been no fires involving her parents. The teacher encouraged them to think metaphorically. What could the fire represent? Janet said that her mother was deeply depressed and her father had to leave her because he was getting burned out.
That experience convinced Josh he was able to tap into information one could not rationally know, information that involved people he had never met, whether dead or not. He was left with a feeling that the message from his grandfather could be real, that Grandpa Andreas really cared about him and his family more than he had known. He felt joy from this thought.
~ ~ ~
Abby had abandoned the Catholic Church as a teenager. She felt ostracized from her family. After a few sessions with Josh, she reconnected with her Christian roots. Josh was Catholic from his upbringing. He felt a kinship with any path that has love as its core. He had come to a place where he heard a common message conveyed by all religions: to love one’s neighbor, to be humble, and to be of service. He met many who preferred to commit to one religion and, within it, to a specific denomination. He respected that.
His goal was to help people love themselves and be the best human being they wanted to be. With this kind of support, the rest seemed to fall into place with time. Abby came to believe that her God and her Jesus Christ were different from Josh’s.
Josh asked Abby if she had gotten what she wanted from their work together. She wanted to keep meeting with him.
~ ~ ~
Janet called Josh. Would he continue to work with her? She wanted to exchange intuitive information with each other. Josh accepted.
She wanted to know when she would meet her next boyfriend. Josh tuned in for her and told her he had to ask her a question first. Did she already have someone in mind? She said yes. He was getting that the man she had in mind was already involved with someone. Janet knew that and thought she could change his feelings. Josh told her he did not want to participate in breaking up a relationship. Janet got upset with Josh.
~ ~ ~
Abby told Josh that she was falling in love with him. He listened. He was used to female clients falling in love with him as they seldom experienced being heard this deeply before in their lives. He did not make them wrong and never felt embarrassed or offended by their feelings toward him. Abby did not ask anything from him. Instead, she talked about her history of falling in love. When she paused, he told her it was nice that she was in touch with her heart and that she knew what she wanted in a life companion. He thought she was falling in love, perhaps for the first time in her life, with someone who would not abuse her. It seemed like progress. He told her that it wasn’t going to be him because, as her therapist, he did not cross that line.
~ ~ ~
Josh received a call from his mother. After five weeks, his father’s mother, Fiona, had gotten out of her coma, but she did not always recognize people. If he wanted to have a chance for a coherent conversation with her, he needed to call soon. She was thousands of miles away. He did not have time to tie up loose ends and take a plane to visit her in person.
Her coma had come right after surgery. She needed a replacement pig valve for the one she had received 10 years earlier. She looked and acted ten years younger then. She especially liked going to lectures from religious scholars.
~ ~ ~
Before he could call Grandma Fiona, Josh had a meeting with Abby. Her eyes were moist. She worried about him not being Christian. He wasn’t saved. He should be careful not to let the devil misguide him with his clients. When she stopped talking, he asked her if she ever felt he was trying to guide her away from herself, her heart, or her faith. She acknowledged that she had never felt that. That was indeed confusing her. But the devil works in mysterious ways.
She said she could no longer pay for sessions and receive help from someone who wasn’t a Christian. She had tears when they parted.
“I’ll be praying for you,” she said.
“I will for you too,” Josh said.
“It won’t work if you don’t pray to my Jesus.”
“I will pray to your Jesus.”
~ ~ ~
Back home, Josh called his grandmother. She thought he was her youngest son. She wasn’t really home.
“You know, Andreas is waiting for you,” Josh said, surprising himself. After he spoke, he realized he was simply sharing with her his new perception that Grandpa Andreas cared for them all and for her.
He did not foresee the impact of his words on her.
“You think?” she said, with a new sense of presence in her voice.
“You know who I am?” Josh asked, knowing she was back in reality.
“You’re Josh!”
“Grandma, are you afraid of dying?”
“Not of dying. It’s what comes after. When you said that Andreas is waiting for me, I felt lighter. What comes after death suddenly became friendlier. It’s not that I don’t believe in life after death. It just felt so unknown, so cold … unless there is something familiar on the other end, like Andreas perhaps.”
~ ~ ~
When he hung up, Josh called his uncle Ulrich, the relative living closest to Grandma Fiona. He told Ulrich he just spoke with his mom and he shared that she could die any moment now. Ulrich said she had been like this for a while now. Not wanting to get into the content of his conversation with his grandmother, Josh said that something had shifted. Ulrich did not get it.
Josh closed his eyes. Four separate interactions of different intensity intertwined within him like an emotional tornado. The outcome of each person’s path was not in his hands. He had to let go of the pull to do anything more, the pull of drama.
He thought of home. Not a physical or rational place. Something to do with peace and harmony with everything. Something like the source of love itself.
The next day, Fiona passed away. Josh smiled. She found her way. He celebrated in his heart for her. In contrast, he felt such a long way from home. There was no short cut. He might as well relax and enjoy each step on the way.