Imagination

As a child, I had a rather vivid imagination and found it easy to daydream about things I had heard. I have a special memory from a children’s conference that I was at. At a re­vival meeting brother Ole Olsen prayed for me that I would become a king and a priest. When I heard that, I laid hold of it wholeheartedly. I envisioned a king of great dignity in royal garb and imagined myself as that king. When I came out of the hall after the meeting, one of my friends asked me what brother Olsen had prayed for with me. I didn’t like it that he laughed when I told him Ole Olsen had prayed that I would become a king and a priest. I got so angry I beat him up; I didn’t like it that he was laughing at something I had believed in so simply.

I liked to play and to be together with others my age, but I didn’t have any problems being by myself. At those times I often crept into a dark closet and lived in my imagination. To this day, I remember imagining that I was commanding a great sea battle in the closet. I often pretended I was Tordenskjold, the sea hero who drove back the Swedish fleet in a mighty battle and went by the name “the Terror of Jutland” in Sweden.

Once when I was eight or nine years old, my father and I were on our way to catch the tram to the meeting. We had to stand and wait at the tram stop, and both of us were lost in our own thoughts. At any rate, before I knew what had happened, the tram arrived, my father got on and paid for himself and me and sat down. I was still standing back at the tram stop, daydreaming away. Suddenly I woke up. Dad had disap­peared! Frightened and tearful, I ran home to my mother. “Daddy’s gone—Jesus has come back!” I exclaimed.

“No, Jesus hasn’t come back,” she replied, “because I’m here!”

“No, Dad just disappeared—suddenly he was gone! Jesus has come back!”

“Were others waiting for the tram with you, Kåre?” asked Mama.

“Yes, there were a lot of people waiting for the tram.”

“Did they all suddenly disappear then, Kåre?”

“Yes, every one of them suddenly disappeared!”

“Then I’m sure that Jesus hasn’t taken all the others and left us behind,” she said.

Then I realized that Mama was right after all.

A few minutes later the telephone rang. It was my father. He had gotten off the tram downtown at Stortorvet and walked a long way when he suddenly realized: “Oh my! Where is Kåre? He must have stayed on the tram!”

He ran to the next tram stop but didn’t find me there either. Then he phoned home from a pay phone and said to Mama: “Kåre stayed on the tram; he didn’t get off with me at Stortorvet. I can’t find him anywhere!”

“No, Kåre didn’t stay on the tram; he’s at home here with me,” replied my mother, and she told him what had actually happened.

Whether it was God’s Word that occupied my father’s thoughts that day, or all the bills from the new house, I don’t know. Whatever it was, I have sometimes wondered whether it runs in the family.

All these childhood experiences made me very carefree and happy and gave me hope for the future. As time went on, I realized that there were certain people in the church who did not have the same living Christianity. It seemed to me as if they were striving for power and position, and that for them that was the most important thing. For me, they were like scheming guard dogs, ready to punish without mercy the slightest infringement. Their behavior scared me a little, and I was unsure about what motivated them in their Christian lives. I was scared stiff of these “guard dogs”—and rightly so. They did not have the mind of Christ, as history later proved.

Edwin Bekkevold was the elder brother of the church in Oslo. He frightened me. If it was our birthday, he would ask what we wanted for a present. Before we could even answer, he liked to say: “You probably want a long leash with a turd on it.” We felt quite embarrassed by this.

Bekkevold was very interested in trees and all kinds of plants. One time I got a sharp new scout’s axe for a present. It wasn’t long before I just had to try it out on one of the trees in the garden. It left behind a nice white mark where I had stripped off the bark. I didn’t have to wait long for a reaction. Then I had to go into town and buy grafting wax, and repair the tree as well as I could—but it still wasn’t good enough. The test of my manhood came when my parents made me go and ask Bekkevold for forgiveness for damaging the tree. I tried to get out of it, but it was no use. They promised to stand at the window and pray for me as I went to make things right. I re­member being mortally afraid that he would swallow me whole, and I was extremely uneasy about what was going to happen. I started crying and was afraid, but finally managed to stammer out a few words to say I was very sorry for what had happened to the tree. He stood there silently, looking at me, and then he said: “Come in, Kåre.” When I came in, he blessed me and had mercy on me like a sinner receiving grace. I realized then that he wasn’t really like I had imagined! After that, we had a good and blessed relationship—right up to the day of his death. I was also together with him and his wife on their last trip to Finland just before he died.