As I watched, thinking what an enchanting place this was, a single sweet high tone began to reach out to me, wooing me. A presence seemed to have taken notice of my own and was calling in an unbroken, haunting note.
I looked around, wondering where the song could be coming from, but I could see no one. The singular, evocative tone grew in volume, and birds from all corners of the jungle took flight, not away from but toward the sound.
And then I too took flight, as one sometimes does in dreams, sailing above the trees, up the valley. A low tone joined the higher one then, a deeper note that seemed to reach into my bones. I wasn’t afraid—on the contrary, I found the sound exceedingly comforting. It seemed to wrap itself around my whole body and pull me forward.
And then I was rushing, faster and faster, headed directly for a barren hill. It was there on that hill that I saw the form of a human. I couldn’t make out if the person was clothed or naked, man or woman, but I knew that the song was coming from him or her, and in my mind’s eye the singer was majestic. An exotic creature from another world called out to me in a voice that was unearthly, both high and low at once.
Come to me, it sang without words. Find me. Join me. Save me…
Before I could see the singer’s face, the dream faded, taking the song, the jungle, and the figure with it. I awoke with eyes wide open.
The images and sounds of that dream lingered for half an hour before I forgot about it in favor of holding my newborn baby.
But the dream returned a week later. And then again, several days after that. Every few days the dream would return to me, a haunting call that beckoned and gave me peace despite the plea to be saved, all of which I felt more than heard. My initial interpretation of this dream was that it was somehow my own son calling to me—after all, it had first come to me the very night of his birth. Stephen needed his mother to show him the way to a garden called Eden. Together we would always be safe, full of life, love, and beauty.
I fussed obsessively over my baby, ignoring the suggestions from more experienced mothers that I not jump at his every sound. Let him cry on occasion rather than grab him from his crib to nurse him, they would say. For heaven’s sake, smack his hand when he touches things he shouldn’t.
But I was ruined for my son. I simply couldn’t let Stephen cry, and I could never smack his hand, because then he would surely cry even more and I could not bear his suffering. I could, in fact, do nothing but spoil him. He was life to me.
Heaven on earth.
He was my Eden.
And he was life to my father, who poured his love into Stephen with an abandon that completely bypassed me.
Stephen was the most adorable bundle of joy a woman could dare wish for. I know mothers often say this about their babies, even if they are quite homely, but Stephen really was a perfect doll. Everyone said so. He could easily have been featured on television to sell baby food. Mothers would surely flock to buy whatever they saw him eating, subconsciously hoping that their own babies might look as healthy and precious as my little Stephen. He had a full head of dark hair and pale blue eyes, taking after me. And he was contentedly chubby, because I gave him all the milk he could possibly drink.
I treasured my baby more than my own life. He was, in more ways than one, the only life I had: my only true identity as a daughter, a wife, a woman.
And yet, apart from my child, I still felt an emptiness. I was aware of my longing to be accepted and loved for myself, not for my place in society or for what I could offer.
It was during this time that my church attendance grew from a cultural obligation to an honest search for meaning. As an unloved wife and a mother to a small child, I found myself reconsidering what I’d learned about God in my early years. I can’t say that my faith was profound—it was simple and childlike. But I took great comfort in believing that I was being watched over by a loving God.
It was during this time that my recurring dream of the jungle, which still came to me every few nights, began to take on new significance. Rather than thinking of the song coming from my son, I began to think of it as the voice of an angel calling out to me. And I started to wonder if the notes held specific meaning that would one day become clear to me. The dream was always with me, if only in my distant awareness.
I began to share the dream with those in my immediate circle—my sisters and my pastor. They smiled graciously, but I saw only dismissal in their eyes. I was not, after all, the Virgin Mary. Dreams were flights of fancy. Naturally I agreed, but secretly I wondered. Even hoped.
For his part, Neil paid no more attention to religion than he did to me or Stephen, and when I finally told him about the dream one evening, he only offered me a blank stare. He spent more and more time on long trips and remained totally detached when he was at home, preferring to spend most of his evenings at the local bar.
His disdain for God only pushed me closer to the church. As my love of religion grew, I felt less attached to the rest of my life in Georgia. Except where Stephen was concerned, it had brought me no fulfillment. And always there was the dream with its haunting song, beckoning me.
In the summer of 1962 a missionary visited our church and spoke of a land far away called New Guinea, where life was both pure and lost at once. I didn’t think much until he began a slide show. When I saw the jungle and the images of the natives on the south coast of that island, my heart leaped. Could the figure in my dream be one of these natives?
I sat in the pew, sure that I was staring into a corner of my own dream. Surely I was only making wild associations, but I couldn’t shake them all that afternoon or into the evening.
That night, when I dreamed of the jungle again, I was sure there had to be a connection. Was this God’s way of calling me to a land far away? But this too must be my overactive imagination, I thought, and I dared not tell a soul about my feelings. I was too young to cross the ocean, surely, and I had a child. I’d been brought up on a diet of tea and crumpets, not coconut milk and grubs. The idea terrified a large part of me.
But the call of those dreams refused to leave me.
In the fall of 1962 my husband’s dealings in oil exploration took him to Indonesia for what was to be a two-week trip. He was still in a deep place of depression, and I was grateful to see him go, as much for his own sake as for my own.
He never returned. One week after his departure I received word that he’d been found shot dead in Jakarta. A terrible tragedy. They said that bandits had mugged and killed him. I have my doubts, but it’s not for me to say.
I was surprised at the grief his death brought me. He was my son’s father, after all, and for that alone I think I loved him. I felt as if a cord that tethered me to ordinary life had somehow been severed.
I was a single mother.
But it wasn’t until February 1963, when my father died of a heart attack, that my world was finally torn in two. If my sorrow at having lost my husband surprised me, the profound sense of abandonment that swallowed me at my father’s passing shook me to the core. I felt like a lost little girl. My mother, my husband, and now my father were all gone, leaving me alone with my son.
For a week I sat and rocked my child, feeling hollow, sure that I could never offer Stephen the kind of love I wanted to give him, having never experienced it myself. My father’s, my mother’s, and my husband’s failures were sure to became my own. I may have appeared strong to the other mourners, who all shed their appropriate tears, but inside I was in free fall without a line to anchor me to any solid rock above.