Give Him your hand, He will guide you.
Give Him your mind, He will teach you.
Give Him your heart, you’ll love so dearly.
Give him your life, He will remake you
In the image of God that lies within you.*
Stephen Michael Camp
It is living with Stephen that makes Jesus real to me by learning how Stephen lives with Jesus—Stephen resting his head in his hands, his elbows propped on my red kitchen table, saying simply, “Jesus,” as I watch from across the room—this in moments when he feels a need for help beyond what he could provide for himself. Stephen singing of Jesus guiding and teaching and remaking each one of us in the image of God—he is a natural minister. Jesus is in my going to church with Stephen, where his love is his shoulder I sometimes lean against in the front pew on the right, until it is time for him to sing. Jesus is in my listening to Stephen’s voice and the strong strumming of his guitar, knowing that he will close his eyes and be with Jesus, as Stephen’s heart fills with his words,
Now every morning when I wake up,
He’s standing there, He holds my cup,
of sweet surrender, sweet surrender
to the will of the Lord.” *
Before Jesus
As a mother with a fourteen-year-old daughter still at home, I am also a single parent. I have raised both my daughters with self-awareness, inwardly applauding while outwardly praising. Now it is necessary for me to discover who I am. A psychologist has pointed out that I have not yet “individuated” from my parents—I am forty-six. Ready to begin attending a support group, I read of a meeting at an Episcopal church that sounds interesting; I think it might be helpful. It is, but when we stand to leave, the church members all pause to say, “God be with you,” to each other, and I feel terribly frightened—especially of the word “God.”
By a year and a half later, I am attending the East Longmeadow group of A Course in Miracles. Stephen is one of the co-leaders, and it is here that our spiritual connection begins. He waits patiently for my recognition of his love for me that will awaken a twofold love in me, first for him and then for Jesus. Twenty-three years later, when I visit Judy Ebeling, a Course co-leader with Stephen that first night, she reminds me that I had told her there was one word I had a problem with. When I give her a puzzled look, she says, “God.”
One night some years later, when Stephen and I are living together, I awake to hear “Barbara,” my name then, clearly spoken, frightening me. I look around the small bedroom to see if someone has entered. No one is there but a sleeping Stephen. I don’t understand how I can, without a doubt, hear a voice. I grip Stephen’s arm, instantly waking him. When he asks if something is wrong, I tell him of the voice. “Give it to Jesus,” he says as he rolls back into sleep. Feeling alone, yet now having direction, I ask for Jesus and put out my hand, and that simple action calms me. Then higher in my view, Jesus appears in a vision of pale light.
In 1999, three years after Stephen’s passing, when my Network chiropractic doctor is ending a session, I see a vision. Jesus appears as a baby floating at the end of the treatment table, aiming straight for my heart, flying into my arms and nestling there, awakening such feelings of sweetness and joy that I know Him as mine.
My realization is, “The heart opens for the right word, the right touch, the right view, the right inner message, the right person, or sometimes for the right vision.”
* Stephen Michael Camp, composer, lead vocals, and guitar, “Give Him Your Hand,” Surrender
(Amherst, MA: Watercourse Studios, 1992), Cassette.
* Ibid.