I Saw Her…

I Saw Her…
Major Betzann Carroll

I looked into a streaky mirror, which was stuck to a painfully purple wall. I was expecting to see myself…and I saw her!

She was still pushing the same few strands of damp hair out of her eyes. It was not a side-to-side glance, not a piercing face-to-face glare, or even a pathetic penetrating stare, but it was a look. I could have counted her lashes. I could have felt her breath. I could have traced the tracks made from her glasses constantly sliding up and down the slope of her nose from beads of perspiration, which gathered there. I could have counted her wrinkles if she had any. Actually, I was the one with the wrinkles, she would say. We used to laugh about them.

Whether the moment was created by too much medication or too little sleep, or whether it was a moment of a vivid imagination or a misguided memory, I am not sure. I just know that I saw her at a time when I needed her the most. Just like the sudden water God sends to fill the deep dry cracks of the deprived desert lands, so my parched heart reached out for refreshing from a memorized picture God had given to me for refreshing. Seeing her face at such a time was unexplainable.

Everything I was thinking, feeling, grieving, experiencing – she knew. I cannot explain the experience or can I pretend it did not happen. We touched. We never shook hands, kissed, embraced or even exchanged a pat on the back. I never soothed her knotted hands or brushed that strand of hair back, nor did she retrieve the tear, which escaped my eye in spite of my stubborn efforts to hold it back.

There in the middle of the mixed matched, mildewed bathroom area filled with institutional equipment and medical supplies, both used and unused, with sounds of dripping towels and leaky faucets, with the collections of smells of every sort, I saw her.

Maybe it was my prior conversation with the Lord, which was the reason for such a meeting. I was telling Him how I felt about things! I was asking Him why I found in her an extraordinary relationship, a treasure of genuine love in a world of imitations; and then had to lose her. How I longed for her. God knew my thoughts, just as He knows them today. He knew I needed a friend. And as I left my hospital room and entered the humid bathroom searching for…I found her.

What does it all mean? It never happened before and I don’t suppose it will happen again. I just know that at a very difficult time God came close to me, and as I looked into the darkly lit mirror it came alive, if only for a moment. It was a turning point for me. It was a reassurance that I was not alone, that everything was not what it seemed and that I would improve. It would be all right.