This Close To Okay

by Leesa Cross-Smith

“Does it bother you, talking about God? About religion?” “Not really,” he said. “So yesterday you said, ‘What if there’s no God’…Is that what you believe?” “I think God is there, but indifferent.” “Feels too cruel to me. Him being there, but not caring. I can’t believe in that kind of God,” she said. “But when things get dark and hopeless…that’s exactly what it feels like.” Tallie took in his response. She knew healing—if and when it happened—happened in increments, the same sneaky way the days got longer and shorter. Barely noticeable at times, slow. Tallie had been treading water of her own, in that estuary where sadness spilled out into healing and joy. Believing in God came easy for her, even in her worst moments. Even when she sat there and listened to her clients tell her their secrets—the hidden, terrifying demons some people kept locked away for so long that when they finally did talk about them, it was as if a cloud of black death wanted to swallow them whole. She’d seen people come out at the other end of that darkness. She knew God was real. When people were really messed up, most of them wanted to do better, only they didn’t know how. So they showed up in her office, simply wanting to learn more about themselves and how to live in this world. She wasn’t exactly labeled a Christian therapist, but with their permission, sometimes she liked to mention to her Christian clients that the Bible talked about all sorts of people—a lot of terrible, confused, miserable pe...