I’m so happy that Asphalt Jesus groups are finding this blog helpful!  The daily visits are gradually rising and a few group leaders have been forwarding me questions – like this one from Megan Seymour’s group, regarding “Becky” – the woman I write about in Chapter 2 with whom I’d shared a mystical experience in my junior year of high school:
Our Sunday evening small group is wondering if you have talked with “Becky” since you’ve both grown up. How does she remember that grand evening? Did it change her life’s direction?

Good question! “Becky” and I stayed in touch for a year or so afterward. What complicated matters was that our mutual spiritual experience which led us to high attraction to God morphed into attraction to each other as well. This was problematic. We weren’t attracted to each other that way before the experience, but when people experience intense spiritual connection it is not uncommon for them to desire physical connection as well (We never slept with each other.  But we found kissing to be awfully nice for awhile.)  The spiritual and physical realms do tend to be connected at very deep levels!

Anyway, since we weren’t truly compatible as a couple, the relationship fizzled and ended rather uncomfortably after many months, making it difficult for us to stay in close contact afterward.  However, on the seventh anniversary of the experience, when I was living in Princeton, NJ, I located her through her parents and gave her a call. She was living in California having become a nurse. I was curious if, after all that time, the experience was still as powerful for her as it was for me.   It was definitely as powerful for her.  Like me, she said there had been hardly a day since the experience that she had not thought back on it.  For her, nursing had become her ministry.   Now, 28 years later, I have completely lost track of her. The God-experience we had that night in 1981 (this May 31st is the anniversary!) continues to be something that surfaces in my mind every day. I suspect it does for her, too.