Seeing is Believing

As she dressed for church, Nikki studied her reflection in the mirror and imagined cutting all her hair off, smearing her face with lipstick, and bashing her head against the glass until it broke. She opened the vanity drawer. Inside she stared at a pair of scissors. Her hand floated over them before she closed the drawer and finished applying the rest of her makeup.

A lapsed Catholic, she rarely went to church anymore. She never went anywhere except work. Every day she woke up, dressed, ate breakfast, and drove to her job. At work, she had the same routine: answer the phone, follow the script, try her best to sound happy and act courteous. Each cycle of the year flowed into the next and then back again, like a snake forever eating its own tail. After work, she drove home and ate dinner. She felt like a zombie. She didn’t even think about her future. What was the point? We’re all going to die anyway. When John, her friend from work, invited her to come to his church, she said yes without even thinking.

She wore her dress with dark red roses on it. She always loved the way roses looked. They appeared delicate and beautiful and yet strong and dangerous with piercing thorns. Roses always reminded her of her mom, Angie. Almost fifty bouquets of roses surrounded her hospital bed the day she passed away from breast cancer at forty-two.

Nikki drove to the church, trying to bury her memories of her mom. She didn’t even register the heavy Sunday morning traffic. As she parked, John ran to her car to greet her. He wore a light gray suit, and he had a Bible in his right hand. He opened her car door, greeting her with open arms.

“Thank you so much for coming, Nikki! I am so glad you’re here. Let’s go to the classroom. It is just down the hall in the annex building to the left.”

Nikki pointed to the right at a building with a steeple.

“Wait a minute. What classroom? I thought I came here to go to church.”

“You’re here for church. But first we need to go to Sunday school. You want to have the whole experience, don’t you?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Well, I guess so.” She shrugged her shoulders and followed John. As they turned to the left, she saw a building reminiscent of her old elementary school.

“C’mon, a little Sunday school never hurt anyone.” He put his arm around her and guided her toward the annex building.

“So, have you been coming to this church for long?”.

John opened the door, “Oh yeah, ever since I moved here for college. About seven years now.”

They walked through the hallway. Corkboards on each wall displayed children’s art projects.

“It’s the third door on the right,” said John.

As he led her inside, she saw a regular classroom: a chalkboard on the front wall, a teacher’s desk at the front, and several desks in rows. A few other churchgoers sat in some of the desks looking like overgrown fifth graders. John found a couple of empty desks and offered Nikki a seat. He smiled from ear to ear. Nikki thought she could see every single one of John’s teeth when he smiled like that. She crossed her arms over her body.

He turned to Nikki and said with a sparkle in his eyes, “I’m so glad that you’re here today.”

Nikki wished he would give it a break. No one in her entire life had ever been so happy that she was anywhere. Well, maybe except her mom…

An older man walked into the room. He was balding, with tons of wrinkles on his face. He reminded her of the actor who played Gandalf. He wore a casual tan suit with patches on the elbows of his blazer, a maroon sweater vest and a dark green tie. He carried several books with him, which he dropped on the desk to get everyone’s attention.

He opened his arms wide as if addressing a huge crowd and said, “I’m happy you’re here today! This Sunday is truly a special day and everyone is welcome. We have something special for all. First, let me close the door.”

He closed the door and then Nikki heard him lock it. He turned toward the class and whispered, “Not everyone is as lucky as you are. Today we’re studying one of the true miracles of God. I can’t tell you about it. I must show it to you. Please hold your questions and follow my directions precisely.”

Nikki looked around at everyone else in the class. They all sat straight at attention facing the teacher like soldiers. She went to Sunday school a couple of times, she even worked as a teacher’s aide for some elementary school classes during high school, but she had never seen anything like this.

The teacher said, “This miracle is called the Scriptura.” He wrote the word on the board. “Here’s what you’ll need to do: First, I am sending around pieces of paper and pens to everyone. Please take one and pass the rest around. Then get your Bible. If you don’t have one with you, there should be one under your seat. Open your Bible to the book of Deuteronomy. Go to chapter thirty. On the paper write down the word “Scriptura,” then copy the words from chapter thirty verse nineteen. Once you are done, put your pen down and you’ll witness the miracle.”

Nikki observed her classmates. Everyone else sat at their desk following directions like Stepford children. She looked to her right. John copied the verses to his page like a robot. Nikki decided that she might as well try. She reached under her seat and found the Bible stowed away. She turned to the Old Testament, found the passage and wrote the verse on her paper.

“Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! 

When she finished the last word, she put the pen on the desk and waited. After a few seconds, liquid formed on the paper. The moisture smeared the ink. The words morphed into two big blobs. Some miracle. Smeared ink! Then, she felt her heart race, she grabbed the sides of the desk. The ink blobs transformed into eyes, which opened. Nikki let go of the desk. All the muscles in her body lost tension as she lost herself in the most beautiful, kind, tear-filled eyes she’d ever seen. She forgot the classroom, the church, and everything else around her. She melted into those eyes, feeling like she saw someone who had known her all her life. She heard screaming in the distance and the thud of someone falling to the floor. Far away she heard praying and crying. She heard commotion all over the room as if chaos had broken out all around her. Yet the noise seemed miles away. She couldn’t pull her gaze away from those haunting crying eyes. Those eyes knew every piece of her. They knew all her secrets and her deepest fears.

Without warning, the eyes closed. The ink continued to smear until she held a round mass of pulp and ink.

Nikki didn’t want to believe what she had seen. She couldn’t have seen it. She looked around the room in a daze. The entire room had turned into a mad house. Several students had turned over desks and thrown them across the room. A group of students sat on the floor huddling together like a football team before a play. They swayed back and forth in rhythm praying and chanting. One young girl curled up in the fetal position on the floor. Next to her, flat on the floor, was a young man unconscious. The teacher sat next to another young woman. She smiled with tears in her eyes as they prayed together. As Nikki continued to scan the room, she observed a group of students standing close to the window.  They were pointing to a tree outside, fascinated by the intricacies of the branches and leaves. She saw a young man near the door. He had scratched the skin from his face and pulled at his hair, reminding Nikki of her earlier daydream in front of her mirror. She saw a young man and woman genuflecting, they raised their hands together towards the sky and began singing a hymn of praise.

Nikki turned to John. He sat next to her with the biggest smirk on his face, “Wasn’t that amazing, Nikki? We’re so lucky to have seen an actual miracle of God!”

Nikki shook her head. She ran to the door. She turned the knob, but it was locked. She pulled at the doorknob. Feeling like a caged animal, she searched for other possible exits. She opened her mouth ready to scream. The teacher unlocked the door, she sprinted from the room, jumped into her car, and sped home.

John called, but she let his call go to voicemail. She called in sick to work. She wanted to forget about Sunday, but every time she closed her eyes, she saw those haunting eyes staring at her.

She couldn’t sleep or eat. She wanted to know what it all meant. She googled the word “Scriptura,” but only found that in Latin the word means writing.

In desperation, she called her priest from childhood, Father Daniel. He asked her to come for confession on Thursday afternoon.

***

That Thursday, she entered the confessional booth and knelt on the small space provided. She had always hated coming to confession. She felt trapped inside of a dark wooden closet whispering her darkest secrets to a priest that she couldn’t even see. She didn’t think God had that in mind when He wanted us to confess our sins.

She waited for five minutes and then she heard the slider open.

“Good afternoon, my child,” said Father Daniel.

“It’s me, Nikki.”

“Oh. I’m glad you came. Would you like to tell me what happened?”

After she recounted the experience to him, he took several minutes to ponder the story and his response to it.

“Nikki, did everyone see what you saw?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t stick around to find out.”

“Have you ever heard of the Miracle at Fatima?

“I don’t think so. What is it?”

“In 1917, three children made a prophecy that on October 13, the Virgin would perform a miracle at Fatima.”

Nikki’s eyes widened. She straightened her neck. “Did it happen?”

“The Catholic church recognized the miracle, but that’s not the point. There were thousands of people there that day. Some people saw the brilliant multicolored lights from the sun, some people saw the sun zig zag in the sky, and some saw nothing at all.”

“What’s your point?”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways. We all experience God differently. I don’t know what happened to everyone else in that room. It’s possible they didn’t see what you saw. Did you ever consider that?”

Nikki leaned backwards and rested her body on her feet. She lowered her chin to her chest. “No, Father, I never thought about it at all.”

“My child, God might be trying to tell you something. I wish I could tell you what that is, but I can’t.”

They finished the confession. She thanked Father Daniel. As she left the church, she looked up into the sky at the sun.

***

The next day at work, John approached her in the break room.

“Hi, Nikki? Are you feeling better? I heard that you were out sick.”

Nikki swallowed her bite of sandwich and set her Bible on the table. “Yes, I’m doing much better. Do you want to join me?”

John sat in the chair opposite Nikki. “I thought you might never talk to me after last Sunday.”

Nikki blushed. “I considered it. What did you see that day?”

He grinned like a clown with the corners of his mouth reaching almost up to his ears. His eyes looked dark. Nikki noticed some saliva dripping off his teeth onto his lips. “I saw what I needed to see. What did you see?”

“The same. Thanks for inviting me.” She picked up her Bible. “I need to get back to work. See you later."

That night Nikki thought about her vision of the eyes.  It really didn’t matter what anyone else saw that day. Someone knew who she was, loved her and thought her life was important. She saw that in those eyes. Nikki created a vision board. She put pictures on it that represented her dreams: a career, a house, a family. She resigned from her job the next week. She moved home. She and her father visited her mom’s grave. She enrolled in a nursing program.

***

One night, Nikki watched the evening news with her dad. The police had killed John in a gun fight outside the call center. He brought a couple of hunting rifles to work, but the security guards stopped him before he entered the building. Although the police tried to arrest him, John refused to surrender his weapons.

“I don’t understand,” said Nikki. “He always seemed a little weird, but I never thought he would do anything like this.”

Nikki’s dad leaned over and gave her a reassuring hug. “Mysterious ways.”

***

Ten years later, Nikki walked out of church with her husband and their two children Mary and James. They were on their way home to finish packing for a two-week missionary trip to Africa. Nikki stopped for a moment. She stared at the statue of Jesus that stood near the church’s front steps. His arms were open wide in welcome. She noticed that the sculptor didn’t carve eyes for the effigy. For a split second, she thought she saw the eyes from that distant Sunday appear in the eyes of the statue.  As she did a double take, she noticed a drop of water falling down the statue’s cheek.

Nikki heard a familiar Bible passage whispered in her ear, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.”

Her husband, Elijah asked, “Is everything alright?”

She smiled, took his hand, and said, “Everything is wonderful.” As they left, she knew she’d never need to see to believe ever again.

About the author: M. Lee Goodson began her professional career as an elementary school teacher where she used her passion for storytelling to educate young minds. She has since obtained her master’s degree in creative writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Her lifelong passion for learning and storytelling has inspired her to study urban legends and psychological horror. She feels our stories reveal who we are as part of humanity.

Image credit: Krin Van Tatenhove via Midjourney