Last week, I had a routine medical checkup. The nurse pointed to a tiny closet with a robe on the shelf and said she would meet me in the waiting room shortly.

Inside that closet, I cinched the robe’s belt around my waist and gathered my belongings. In one swoop, I turned to leave and twisted the door handle. But it wouldn’t open.

Like, really wouldn’t open.

Echols: Memories of childhood mysteries better left undisturbed

I’m a reasonable person. I considered the facts. “She’ll be back in a minute,” I told myself, and leaned against the wall to check my email, attempting to be chill — like a Millennial. But the minute went by, and only stone-cold silence filled the air. So, I gently knocked — five friendly raps — and listened for a response. Nada. After a few more tappity-tap-taps, my forehead began to bead with sweat.

I couldn’t help but think how my mother would laugh at this story with gusto once it was all over. Why do these things never happen to her? The beads started dripping. I said goodbye to pretend Millennial me and unfurled my hand into a flat palm. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! I banged.

Crickets.

I rehearsed the facts in my head: the nurse knows I’m here. There are tons of people in this building. I could call the front desk, but I would have to work my way through the whole hospital system to get the correct person on the phone. The A/C is probably on. I’m not about to die. Someone will eventually come.

Right?

Wrong. I started hollering as if we were on the sinking Titanic and everyone had forgotten I was stuck on the lower deck. “The closet is locked back here! Can someone let me out?!” BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! “Hello?!”

Echols: If I left Memphis, I’d be trading one kind of venom for another

Far off in the distance, I heard a faint voice say, “Do you hear something? Wait. WHERE ARE YOU?!” Thankfully, the far-off-voice mirrored my Titanic panic and grabbed a nurse. They came running.

I dabbed my forehead, nervously giggled, and prepped my speech: “The door was locked shut, but no big deal. Happens all the time. I knew you’d come eventually. I’m totally cool.” Their footsteps approached and then, with a shockingly minuscule amount of effort from the outside, the nurse barely pushed the door and it opened with ease. “Oh honey,” she said, “You don’t have to turn the door handle. It just opens when you pull it.”

I’m a grown woman. I can drive a car. I can grill a steak. I have earned a couple of degrees and I’ve halfway raised a gaggle of kids. I even write this column for you fine people. I’m not a total idiot, but boy, I felt like one in that moment. See, I knew the truth — the nurse was coming back for me; but I bought into a lie — I had been abandoned. And my response revealed what I really believed.

When the heat of life gets cranked and we find ourselves in a proverbial locked closet with nothing but a gown on, all those well-thought-out analyses and brilliantly crafted arguments won’t matter. It will be the seeds of belief that have taken root in our hearts that expose us.

Because it’s out of the heart that the mouth speaks.

Some friends have asked why I am writing this column. I suppose in some small way I’d like to fight for the souls of Memphians. Sound dramatic? Here’s what I mean: for most of us, a rather large chunk of life takes place within three feet of our faces. Our calendars, phones, and headlines have taken us by the chin and nearly demanded our attention — as much of it as they can get, anyway — and that’s just life in this era. But between relentless busyness, dancing algorithms, and anxiety-producing news, on the whole, we’re not really thinking about what we believe down deep, where it matters.

Echols: Seeing the scar and the beauty all at the same time

As a culture, we’re not considering what has taken root — what is really behind our words and actions — as well as what we will depend upon when the ground beneath us shakes. At some point, if you live long enough, a diagnosis arrives or a dream doesn’t; someone you care about walks out or trauma barrels in.

Or perhaps it won’t take something as big as all that. Perhaps it will just take 90 seconds in a gown and a locked closet to show the world who you really are.

The way I see it, stepping back to consider what we each actually regard as right and good and true is a wise move to make in reclaiming a chunk of our humanity, and specifically, in learning how to live well in a city like our own. I’m certainly as broken as the next person, but as I look to what God says in the Bible for truth, I invite fellow Memphians to consider what I’ve found and take it or leave it as they process their own line of thinking.

Whether or not they use my lens, I hope readers who pass this way will at least stop to consider what’s buried in the soil of their own hearts, because there’s no person who is completely free of faith. Even atheism requires a hearty and confident step of conviction.

And when you find you’re locked in a teeny, tiny closet, even the smallest step matters.

***

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.

Proverbs 4:23

***