letters from sister balloue

Noble. Her family thought she was so noble.

It had been three weeks since she’d left for her mission. She was to preach the gospel and to serve the people of Paris, France. Paris, France! Everyone had gasped and grinned when she’d told them where she had been called to serve. Beware of pickpocketers. Write often. My little missionary. I’m so proud of you.

But there was nothing to be proud of. As much as she wished she was the girl who was going to Paris, France as a missionary; to teach the gospel, to bring people unto Christ, she was nowhere near the person that everyone thought she was. In reality, she was not embarking on any noble adventure. She was running away.

There is a song called “Come Thou Font of Every Blessing” that belonged to her church. In it, it says, “Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above”. How badly she wanted her heart to be sealed by the Lord! How badly she wanted to be perfected in His image, to be saved by His grace, to be redeemed by His love! But she had done something terrible, and she was almost certain that she never would be.

Before submitting her mission papers, she had met with her bishop. Her bishop had a smooth, bald head, and kind eyes with little crinkles around them. His office drawers were filled with wrapped chocolates and mints and he was the kind of person to go hours after a scheduled appointment time. The kind of person that you felt you could tell anything to.

The bishop always had to ask certain questions before anyone could submit their mission papers. She’d sat and smiled and answered everything the right way. Nothing felt untrue. But she’d felt the small buzz of a text in her pocket, and she thought perhaps she was lying by omission. She’d thought about telling him. She watched his kind face as he looked toward the next question and talked about what he knew to be true, and she wondered what he would have said. But she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t tell anyone.

In the quiet hour at the England MTC, she studied her sweet companion. Her chest rose and fell, every breath the same as the last. She lifted her own covers up over her legs and stood up in the room. A thick wooden beam nearly grazed her head as she walked over to the desk they shared. It was a beautiful place, the England Missionary Training Center. It was made of red brick and the lights were not white but warm and yellow and orange. Just outside, there was a small lake; frozen over now, but usually covered in soft lilypads that seemed to beckon her into the water. Let’s swim. The water will feel warm before you know it. Of course, missionaries are not allowed to swim, and the lake would be frozen for her entire time in England.

When she reached their desk, she opened a journal where half the words were indecipherable. She always wrote in pen because she’d been told it made the words last longer, but it also made them bleed when alligator tears fell onto the pages. Still, she lifted her pen, engraved “ClearWater Assisted Living”, and began to write.

Dear Sofie,

Remember that play we saw when I came down to Logan, at the Utah Theatre? A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder? It was so ridiculous we could hardly contain ourselves, and we whispered loudly to each other until an attendant came and told us that people had been complaining of noise in the theatre. And we apologized to her of course, but after we looked at each other and smiled, as if we had been caught entering into a world all our own. And we went to your apartment and I met your roommates, and they asked me about my Christian school and if I was going on a mission, and I just smiled and shook my head, because little did they know we were on a date.

Remember that afternoon we spent in the park? We played at least ten games of chess, and I didn’t win a single one of them, because your dad had taught you all of these new moves, and each time I lost I said,”I am never playing chess with you again”. But what I really meant was, “Let me lose to you a million times, and your smile will make me smile and I will never feel defeated”.

Sofie, remember the first time we kissed? And you told me I was beautiful, and I said that you were beautiful too. And you said, “I wish you lived here,” and I said “Me, too”. Now we are 5,285 miles apart, and I wish you were here. What a sight we would be, roaming the streets of Paris! What a pair we would make! Some sardonic twist it is that here I am, in the city of love, and you are nowhere near me. If you were here, the city of Paris would tell us that we were being too loud, and we would smile at each other and stay in our own little world. We would look at the Eiffel Tower from every angle, and ride the Seine on every boat.

Sometimes I imagine that everyone else in the world had gone somewhere else for the day, and it was just you and me. Our footsteps would echo for miles on the cold cobblestone. We would walk into french bakeries and teach ourselves how to make crème brûlée. We would recreate the funny faces in the portraits of the museums, and play hide-and-go-seek in the castles. We would have our very own world, all to ourselves, but this time real, and right in front of us.

Sofie, I am sorry if I ever made you feel like you were a part of me that I needed to run away from when, in reality, you are the only part of myself that I understand. I believed for so long that there was something wrong with me, until I saw that there was nothing wrong with you. You are intelligent, in your mind and in your heart. You are driven, and passionate, and kind. You are understanding without a second thought. If the only connection between us for the rest of our lives was the books you recommended, then I would buy them all and memorize every last line. I would look for secrets of you in every page. I would try to imagine how you must have felt, and where you might have laughed. I would picture outlines of alligator tears where you would have cried. And I would hug the books tight when I’d finish, and thank them for bringing me you.

On my knees at night, I ask my God to please, let this not be my test. Give me vanity, or greed, or envy but please, do not give me love. Give me haughty eyes and a lying tongue, but not a treacherous heart. Give me anger and rage and ruin but please, do not give me love. Open the gates of fiery hell and cast me into its darkest corner but I beg you God, do not tell me it was because I loved her. Ask me if I have cursed and stolen, ask me if I have used thine name in vain, ask me if I have not forgiven my brother but please, do not ask me if I love her. Oh God, my merciful God, how could it be a sin? Let me be patient and kind to her, God. I promise I will never boast and never envy and I will protect her to the ends of heaven and hell. I promise to trust her with my life and my death, with my salvation and my damnation.

Sofie, whatever the real answer is at the end of it all, I want you to know that I would walk through heaven and hell to reach you. I want you to know that heaven is hell without you and hell is heaven with you. If our tongues were cut off and our hands were tied I would draw words in the dirt until my toes were rubbed raw just to know what was going on in your mind. I would memorize the mazes to your heart and scour its city walls, give you my heart, here, take and seal it, seal it and keep it and I will never ask for it back.

It has always been yours,

Sœur Balloue