Chapter 11

At a glance

Scripture for reflection

“He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

Matthew 10:37 KJV

UECF.NET summary

A Ghost named Pam pleads to see her son Michael, who died young and now lives, transformed, in the mountains. Her brother Reginald, himself a Spirit, explains gently that she cannot simply demand Michael as her private possession; she must first come to love and desire God, and Michael within that larger love, rather than the reverse.

Pam resists at every turn, insisting 'Michael is mine' and that a mother's love should need no further justification or reordering. Her love, real as it once was, has curdled into a claim of ownership that cannot yet enter a country built on a very different kind of love.

In sharp contrast, the narrator then watches a Ghost tormented by a small red lizard on his shoulder, whispering constantly in his ear — an image of habitual lust. A bright, burning angel offers to kill the lizard outright, and after real hesitation and permission, does so. The lizard's death is not a diminishment but a transformation: it becomes a magnificent silver-and-gold stallion, and the ghost himself is remade into a strong, solid man, who mounts the horse and rides joyfully on into the mountains.

Main themes

• Possessive love versus love rightly ordered under love of God
• Lust as a small, hissing thing that shrinks a person, until it is surrendered rather than merely suppressed
• Transformation, not mere destruction, as the fruit of surrender

Key ideas

• Pam's love for Michael is genuine but disordered — she wants him as a possession rather than as a person she loves within a larger love of God.
• Reginald's patience with his sister models how truth can be spoken without cruelty.
• The lizard scene is the book's clearest picture of a disordered desire not simply suppressed but transfigured into something greater once surrendered.

Who appears in this chapter

• Pam — A Ghost whose possessive grief for her son Michael keeps her from Heaven.
• Reginald — Pam's brother, now a Spirit, who urges her to love God first.
• The lizard-ghost — A man tormented by habitual lust, pictured as a small red lizard on his shoulder.
• The flaming angel — Offers, and eventually carries out, the lizard's destruction — and with it, the ghost's transformation.

Related Bible references · NKJV

• Matthew 10:37
• Romans 8:13

Practical application

• Consider a love in your own life — for a child, spouse, or friend — and ask honestly whether it is ordered under your love of God or has quietly become a substitute for it.
• Name one small, persistent 'lizard' in your own life, and consider what it might look like to actually ask for it to be taken rather than merely managed.

Questions for study