Under A Million Stars by Mindy Haig
“You call me beloved, but I still have not kept my word. I will heal you. I will give you the parts of me that no other will ever know. I will cause you sorrow, because what I am called to do can end only one way. Knowing this, can you always think of me as that which is beloved to you? Can you always call me by that name?”
“Yes. I will be Meiri and I will call you Dodi.”
“You are more than that. You are more than I can even tell you now.”
“Please, Dodi, would you heal me? Can you have mercy upon me so I might have that redemption you offered? Can you make me worthy of walking by your side? Can you cleanse me so that I might hear the song that the angels sing?”
“You are worthy already,” he said softly as he took my face in his gentle hands. “I will not heal you to make you better in virtue or more deserving of everlasting life. I will heal you because you are in pain and I wish to take that burden away. The soul within you is the one I want to walk this path beside me. You are precious to me. Can that be enough for you?”
“Yes, it is more than enough.”
He pressed his forehead to mine and called out, “Heavenly Father, grant me the means to heal this mortal body that you have chosen to house the soul of a blessed angel. Make my hands the instrument of your mercy so that I may bring her peace.”
Seven heavy tears fell from my eyes as he spoke. They were my Grief, Shame, Pride, Envy, Discontent, Pain, and Anger. I felt those demons leave me. My soul sang Hosanna to The Father. For the first time in my life, I felt clean.
“Let them fall to the earth, Meiri. Let those tears that have held you captive sink deep into the soil so that the light of Heaven within you can shine.” He let go of me and walked over to the well. He wet his hands, cupping the water. He thanked the father and he came back and washed my face. “They are gone, My Light. You are whole,” he whispered as he held my damp face in his hands and kissed my lips.
His kiss was soft; his kiss was the purest love in all creation. There was no lust in that touch, just a bonding of two souls that were made to be together.
Arba:
Again, as it would be every day we were together, I awoke beside him. The moon was low in the sky when we took our respite, and the sun brought the day far too quickly. I wished he could rest a while longer, but he opened his eyes and even lying there he had that tilt to his head and that look upon his face that was love.
“The Father restores me, Meiri. You needn’t fret over me.”
“I cannot help it.”
“I know,” he grinned.
I stroked his hair for just the briefest moment. The morning brought with it a brand new life for me. I awoke in the warmth of his arms with a clear mind and joy in my heart. Never had had I known such a day.
We were preparing to leave. It was a bittersweet feeling. On the one hand, a new life had begun for me within those walls and leaving was akin to leaving the place I was born. On the other hand he was taking me with him and that was what mattered most. I knew full well the road was not going to be easy. I did not walk out that door amid his company with any delusions. There would be days when food was a luxury. There would be nights in the cold. The facts did not dissuade me. I would be by his side. I would help him spread his word in anyway he needed because being near him was the only thing that was important, significant, vital to my life.
~ ~
The nights were my favorite part of this new life.
Most days were spent in a crowd. He belonged to the people during the day. Wherever we traveled they came to listen. And whether it was one person or one hundred and one people he spoke his words of peace and love, of brotherhood and goodwill, of redemption and life everlasting.
But the nights were mine.
We slept under the stars.
Well, that is to say that we lay side by side beneath the stars. No matter how tired I thought I was during our travels, sleep never seemed important in those moments when he was in my arms. I asked him questions, endless questions about his life, about his work, about his calling.
And he answered them.
He told me about his childhood. He told me he worked alongside his earthly father making yokes for the beasts of burden. He admitted that he didn’t like doing it, that he felt it very personally.
“Every time my father and I delivered the finished product, and I saw it fitted onto the animals, I saw the subjugation in their eyes. They seemed to look at me accusingly, and sometimes, worse than that, I could hear their minds say, “what you do unto us shall be done unto you in tenfold.”
I held him tight in my arms. The fears he would never let the men see he shared with me, but then he felt remorse for telling me such stories and he would try to tell me others that were humorous to him. He once fell from a roof during a sandstorm. He said for the briefest instant he knew what it was like to be an angel.
He looked up at me with a smile filled with joy.
“It was the greatest moment of my life at the time, Meiri! The Angels carried me along. I did not see them, but I felt them there. I think they would have set me down properly, but my poor mother saw me falling and she began to scream. The sound was startling and I must have twisted in their grasp. I hit the stairs quite hard. It left a good sized bruise upon my leg,” he laughed.
I loved the sound of his laughter. I think only a pure heart can make such a sound: like a child being tickled combined with the pure notes of a Nightingale and the joy of the first rays of sunshine beaming through the clouds.
“Dodi, do you remember the first words you said to me?” I asked as I ran my fingers into his hair and stroked his cheek.
“Of course I do,” he said softly as he pressed his lips to mine.
“Why did you say a woman’s heart was different?”
“You are more complex,” he shrugged. “There is much more to a woman than there is within a man. A man feels hunger and he eats. A woman feels hunger and she makes a meal. She feeds her husband and children, giving them the best part of what she has to offer. She worries over whether they have eaten enough to sustain themselves. She weeps for those who have nothing to eat. She will feed herself last, making her own need the lowest priority. A woman’s heart feels her emotions differently than a man’s. I think it has a much greater capacity for love and compassion.
“But I am not like that. I have spent this life in search of a way to help myself. To rid my mind and my body of all that plagued me. I am selfish.”
He began to laugh as he rolled to his side. “It is funny that even you cannot see you. As surely as I am here beside you, you have a woman’s heart Meiri. The first thing you worried over was not that leaving with me would be a hardship for you, but that your ailments would cause me trouble. I have been first on your mind since the moment our eyes met. I know that, and I am grateful. You stood aside in fear that I would be judged by your appearance.”
“I was dirty.”
“Not where it mattered. If I were thirsty, would you find a way to bring me water?”
“Yes.”
“If I were bleeding, would you find a way to bind my wounds?”
“Yes. I would do all you ask of me and all you do not ask but still need. I would protect you and shelter you. I would bind my hair and cover it so that you will not have to hear the rumors. I would...”
He stopped me. He reached over and ran his fingers into the golden locks that lay about my shoulders. “No, I don’t want that. The angels in Heaven do not disguise the beauty The Father has given them and neither should you,” he said as he lifted my hair in his hand and nuzzled his cheek against it.
“Do you know that with each passing day I am happier than I was the day before?”
“Do you love me?” he asked with that tilt to his head.
“Yes,” I answered simply because there did not seem to be words great enough to tell him how much. “But the others whisper, Dodi. They wonder if we l
“A man that loses faith in the words of The Father because he witnesses love is not a man I want at my side. I need for you to understand that he picked you for me just as certainly as he picked each of them. I draw strength from their numbers and their conviction, but not in the same way that you give me strength. They protect me from the dangers of those who fear my purpose, but not in the same way you protect me.”
“Should you tell them so? I don’t want to be the wedge between you and the others.”
“They don’t understand, Meiri. They will never understand. You are my Migdal, the fortress that my heart lives within. I am ever protected by your walls. We are one. We will always be as one. The bond that we have made here is more sacred than that between a man and wife, it is eternal. It is what I need to complete this task. As long as my heart is alive in you, I will be able to return. As long as you love me, I will continue. They may think what they like, but we are one and you stand above them in my eyes.”
“My love will never fail, Dodi. Never.”
Hamesh:
‘He kisses her openly, often.’
‘They lay side by side in the night, but I have never seen or heard more than quiet discourse.’
‘Do you think he has made her his wife?’
‘He confides in her above all of us. He calls her Beloved...’
The whispers constantly followed me. They did not diminish with the years. The looks in the eyes of the men sometimes weighed heavily upon my heart and I prayed that their words would not reach Yeshua’s ears. He bore enough upon his shoulders. He did not need the weight of the doubt that burdened those supposed to be most loyal to him. Especially not on days such as this when those who sought him to hear his message came with blackened souls and daggers in their mouths. When honest words of love and eternal glory were shredded and debased with rhetoric and veiled insults. When men defamed the purest connection between two people until true love could be blasphemed into something ugly, something shameful. When his own kindness was wielded against him like a lethal weapon loaded with vile threats of death by the most brutal means.
Days such as this, when he was condemned and sentenced by those who had not spoken a truthful word since the day they left their mother’s bosom, he did not need to hear whispers from those of his men who should have been his pillars, but instead chipped away at the foundations of his simple message.
Faith and Love were all he asked.
Faith in The Father, Love for each other.
It was so simple, and yet, impossible for so many.
But it was not so for me.
Still, on days such as this, I knew in my very soul the truth he told me when he said his task had only one possible ending. The men who came only to discredit him, to make a mockery of his message, did so out of fear.
And fear motivated men to do terrible things.
These men who belittled The Father would publicly shame the one person who would give his last crumb to feed the hungry. They would remove the messenger because they feared the message.
And I feared that day.
He said he would return, and my soul believed him, but my heart feared the grief of the moment they would take him from me. I feared that first night when I would lie alone in the darkness without his sheltering arms. I feared seeing him in pain. I feared the moment when the Glory of Heaven would leave his mortal body and we would be of separate realms.
Oh, I could not think those thought.
I could not let him know that I feared his death when I vowed to walk beside him and be his strength in the hour of his deepest need.
My love would not fail him.
I would never fail him.
~ ~
Yeshua sat alone, plucking at the grass before him. His countenance my have seemed peaceful, but I knew his heart, and I could feel that the arguments and harsh words of the day had wounded him more than he would ever let the others see, probably even more than he would ever let me see.
I sat beside him. He pulled me into his arms as he lay back, looking up into the night sky.
The air was cool, but his embrace was warm.
“It is on days such as this that I wonder why you stay, Meiri.”
“Then you are a foolish man,” I quipped as I let my fingers tickle his side and felt him shudder just a little.
“Am I?” he grinned.
“Obviously. I do not care one single grain what ignorant men such as those we met this day think of me. I have spent all my life around men who twist words. I won’t hear them anymore. I stay with you only because I enjoy this life of luxury with its fine foods, rich wines and lavish accommodations.”
He said nothing for a moment, but I could feel the laughter grow inside him as it made its way to his mouth. It was a beautiful sound; the sound of innocence and childhood, it was the sound of his soul.
“That you can find humor after such disrespect is truly a gift, My Love.”
“Look around, Dodi. Look at the accommodations The Father has made for us. All the world is yours. The heavens have cast their blanket over us and given us a glimpse of the kingdom beyond. I stay because these moments of lying in your arms and hearing your heart beat within your chest are my treasure. These private words between us are my jewels. I am the richest woman in the entirety of the world.”
“You are the most beloved to me, Meiri. I know I told you that The Father replenishes me, but sometimes the strength to continue is not enough. You give me the courage and the will to do this task. I want you to know that I also fear the day it ends. I fear what will become of you when the day comes that they arrest me. I fear that you will try to join me. I know my fate. I don’t want that to be your fate. That cannot be your fate.”
“Will you truly come back, Dodi?”
“Yes.”
Then I will be waiting. I will walk along side you even when everyone else falters. And I will wait where you rest.”
“I will not hold you to those words.”
I sat up and leaned over him. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “My words are not the honeyed words of a man. I make this my promise. I will never fail you, Yeshua. If I am your Migdal, and your heart lives on in me, I will protect it until my dying breath, and I will rejoice in that last breath because when it comes I will spend the life ever after with you.”
“You are a greater miracle than any simple illusion I have made.”
“I am no miracle. I am a woman. And if you still believe the first words you said to me, if you still believe that a woman’s heart has that great capacity to love, then believe my words. I will love you with every beat of my heart and every breath in my body and I will be the light that guides you home.”
He tilted his head and looked into my eyes, but beyond what was colored and into the part of me that The Father made for him and he kissed me. His kiss was deep and passionate. He ran his fingers into my golden hair and pulled me in tighter to his body. His heartbeat was my heartbeat. His soul was my soul and my love was his. It nourished him. It healed his pain.
But alas, he lay back. His eyes were closed and his lips parted as though her were dreaming already. And then soft words filled the space between us. “I needed to feel that comfort, Meiri. When I press my lips to you, I feel the love that all creation is born from. But when my mouth meets your mouth I know why there is creation. I know why the angels sing.”
“Dodi, that is the most wonderful thing you have ever said to me. I will gladly be your comfort whenever you need to be comforted. But if it pains you so greatly to listen to such men as we spoke to this day, why do seek them? Why not speak to men who would embrace your words?”
“It is not the virtuous man who needs redemption, My Love. If I meet a good man who is a loving father, who helps his neighbor in times of need, who is generous and peaceful, an
“Man is a peculiar creature. It is strange that they should all be made the same way, come into the world in the same fashion, with all the same attributes and abilities and grow to such extreme differences,” I mused.
“That is why you are so very important, Meiri.”
“Me? I am of very little importance.”
“You complete the task which is most important to my mission; you speak to the women. You speak with love in your words. The men of this age are very likely not to change. Their ways are set. Some that hear the words of The Father will consider the life they want for their children, and that gives me great hope. That is how Yehudas came to be with me. But it is the women who will make a better future.”
“Do you think they will rise up and become equal to men?”
“One day. But who has greater power over the lives of the young than their mothers? Children who see their mothers treat people with love and respect will also treat people with love and respect. Who has a man’s ear more often than his wife? Even the wife of the sternest man has the power to subtly influence his mind. That is the reason the others whisper. I know you hear them. I know you wish I did not hear them, but their doubts give me direction. They fear that you have the power to change my path. And they should fear, because my love for you is equal in strength to my faith, but there are times when I need the love more. There are moments when I wish to abandon this cause with its hardships and threats and simply curl into the warm comfort of your arms. But it is those doubts, those troubled whispers that set my path. Those things the men fear are the things I must uphold or confront. I harden myself to the Pharisees so their condemnation is met with a facade of peace even when I want to shake them and say ‘where is your reason? How can you be so blinded by irrational fears that you forget simple goodness?’ And I uphold you above all else because your path to me was the most difficult to traverse and still your faith is strongest of all, your heart is purest of all. You do not lead me astray, Meiri Migdala, you simply love me with all you have inside you. Every private word I have is yours, My Light. Know that their whispers cannot change that which The Father has made as one.”