Sierra sat up straight, eager to hear all the details.
“She’s a Christian, Sierra. She was so excited when she heard I was a Christian, too. And she’s coming here in two weeks so we can meet.”
“Oh, Tawni, that’s amazing! And exactly what you’ve been wanting for so long.”
“I know! I can’t believe it all happened so fast. I was just telling Mom and Dad that she said my letter was shuffled to the bottom of her desk, and she opened it last Friday. She spent the whole weekend praying about how to respond, and then she called me. I just answered the phone, and there she was. It was a huge shock.”
“For both of you, I’m sure. What does she sound like?”
“She sounds sweet, but with a little bit of an edge to her voice, if you know what I mean.”
Sierra smiled to herself. She knew exactly what her sister meant, since that’s the way Tawni came across.
“I told her I was modeling, and Lina said she modeled professionally for three years before she went back to school. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Wow! This whole thing is amazing. You’re going to love having a face to put with her voice now, aren’t you? I mean, you found out her name and where she lived, then what she sounds like, and now you’re going to get to see her face. I can’t even imagine how excited you must be.”
“Thanks, Sierra. I knew you would understand. You guys are the first ones I’ve told. As soon as I hung up with Lina, I called Mom and Dad. They’re happy for me, I know, but they had all kinds of cautions and advice for me. I needed someone to be completely happy for me.”
“I’m very happy for you,” Sierra said. “This is a huge thing in your life.”
“Thank you.” Tawni sniffed quietly, apparently unable to speak for a moment.
Sierra filled in the silence by asking, “Do you still think you’ll go to UNR in January? I mean, did you really want to take classes there, or was it like Wesley and the others suggested, that you were eager to meet Lina?”
Tawni sniffed again. “I don’t know. A little of both, I suppose. I can’t explain how important it is for me to see her. No one seemed to understand that. They all thought I was being psychotic to go there, knowing I’d be around her. But if she wasn’t going to answer my letter, how else was I going to get what I needed? At least that was my thinking at the time. I know it wasn’t real healthy. Everything has changed now that she’s called.”
“I’m sure she wants to see you as badly as you want to see her.”
“I hope so.”
“It’s obvious she does,” Sierra said. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have called and made the plans.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I’ll be honest. I haven’t been right about a lot of stuff lately. But I think I’m right about this.”
“Problems?” Tawni asked, inviting Sierra to open up.
She hesitated and then decided Tawni would be a good person to give Sierra her perspective.
“How can you tell if you’re obsessed with something or someone?”
Tawni paused, then said defensively, “Are you trying to say you think I’ve been obsessed with finding my birth mother?”
“No, no. I’m saying … well, okay, I’ll just come out and tell you. I’m asking about Paul. How do I know if I’m imagining the relationship is more than it is? And how do I know if I’ve weakened my commitment to the Lord by becoming too wrapped up in Paul?”
“If you’re asking, then it means you’ve probably gone overboard.”
“Great,” Sierra muttered.
“Otherwise you wouldn’t be feeling that there’s a problem. It’s the old theory of ‘When in doubt, don’t.’ ”
“How do you have a good relationship, then? I mean, if you really, really, really care about the other person, how do you not become wrapped up in him?”
“I’ve always been of the opinion that you shouldn’t change what’s important to you when you enter into a close relationship. You keep doing the things that make you strong and healthy, and then you have more to offer the other person. Otherwise, you slowly start to lose your life and your identity and become unbalanced trying to please the other person.”
Sierra thought about Amy’s saying she had given up all her friends and other interests when she began going out with Nathan.
“For instance,” Tawni said, “I started to attend a Bible study on Thursday nights when I moved here. It’s for college-age women, and I need it to keep me on track with the Lord. When I started to date Jeremy seriously, he kept asking me out on Thursday nights because he had that night open. It was one of the only nights he didn’t have to work or go to class. But I kept my commitment to the Bible study because that time makes me stronger and provides me with more to offer in my relationship with Jeremy. Does that make sense?”
“Sort of. But Paul’s not here. It’s not the same thing.”
“Yes, it is. Have you given up other important things in your life to spend time writing to Paul?”
Sierra knew the answer was yes. She just didn’t want to admit to her sister that the main chunk of time she had given up was her time with the Lord. It was especially painful to realize that it had been the first thing to go. She still found time to shop, watch TV, and talk on the phone. But she never seemed to have any time left in her day to read her Bible.
Tawni continued before Sierra had to confess. “I guess what seems to be working so well with Jeremy and me is that both of us have other friends, activities, and commitments, and we stay involved with all of them. Then, when we get together, which is about once or twice a week, we have all kinds of stuff to talk about. We don’t talk to each other every day. Have you been trying to write to Paul every day?”
“Not every day,” Sierra said.
“Maybe you need to pull back and just give yourself one night a week that you spend a couple of hours writing to him. That’s how it would be if you were dating. Or at least that’s how it is with Jeremy and me.”
Sierra knew her sister was probably right. Between the gifts she had worked on for Paul, the letter writing, and the daydreaming, not a day had gone by during the past few months that Sierra hadn’t dedicated several hours to Paul.
“I know you’re right,” Sierra said to Tawni. “I’m just beginning to realize some pretty important facts about relationships. One is that I need to pull back and not write Paul so often.”
“How often does he write you?”
“That’s what’s funny. I was sure he was writing to me every day. I really believed that. Then Dad started to quiz me, and I realized Paul writes only about once every week or once every two weeks. And his letters are never as long and detailed as mine are.”
“That’s a good measuring point for you,” Tawni said. “It will be better if you respond to him at the same level that he’s pursuing you. Believe me, I’ve seen far too many of my friends become lopsided in a new dating relationship and pretty soon the teeter-totter gets too heavy on their side. All of a sudden, Plop! There they are, crashed in the dirt and devastated because they had thought everything was going so well.”
“I don’t want this relationship to crash in the dirt,” Sierra said quietly.
“I know exactly what you mean,” Tawni said. “I can tell you from experience that the best way to nurture a relationship with a Mackenzie man is with patience.”
“So I’ve heard,” Sierra murmured. Sierra knew she could do that. She could be patient. She could pull back and respond to Paul at the same level he was communicating with her. And she could definitely invest her time in developing other areas of her life.
“Tawni?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks.”
A gentle pause enveloped them.
“I needed to hear everything you’ve told me,” Sierra said.
“I should have made more of an effort for us to talk while I was there,” Tawni said. “I could tell you were spending a lot of time writing to Paul and thinking about him even
when you were with other people.”
“I don’t think I would have heard your advice. It’s like Randy said, I have to talk my problems out, and when I hear myself explaining them, everything begins to make sense and I can accept advice. I know I wouldn’t have been ready for advice at Thanksgiving.”
“Randy said that, huh? I like Randy. Did he have any other advice for you?”
Sierra started to laugh. “He told me I was like the marshmallows on the sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving. A little fire makes them melt, a lot of fire and the whole kitchen burns down.”
Tawni laughed softly. “That’s pretty perceptive. What was that clan motto you showed me for ‘Mackenzie’ on the stitchery kit you bought?”
Sierra had the needlepoint right beside her, but she didn’t need to read the Latin phrase. She had memorized it. “Lucero non uro,” she repeated.
“Yes, but what did you tell me it meant in English?”
Sierra stopped and stared at the square piece of needlework. She finally understood the key to unlock the great mystery that had kept her stomach in knots. With her heart suddenly open to a new understanding of relationships, she repeated for her sister, “ ‘I shine, not burn.’ ”
nineteen
SIERRA WROTE THOSE WORDS—Lucero non uro—in her journal that night after her phone conversation with Tawni. According to the last entered date, Sierra hadn’t written out her thoughts and prayers in this private book for almost two months. Beneath the Latin words, she wrote a letter to the Lord as freely as she had been writing letters to Paul for so many weeks. She apologized for ignoring Him and invited Him to again take the center place in the garden of her heart.
I want to shine for You, Lord. I don’t want that light to burn out. I want to have just the right amount of fire—light, warmth, and energy—in my relationship with Paul, but I don’t want to overdo it and watch the whole thing go up in flames.
From now on, I want to put You first and keep You first. Teach me how to do that, Father. My heart is Yours, and all the emotions You made that are stored there. I want You to protect my emotions and keep me from pouring them out too much at a time. Teach me to be patient with myself and with others.
Sierra continued to write rapidly until her hand started to cramp. It felt so good to get everything out. The only ache she felt in her stomach now was from hunger.
After she finished her prayer-journaling, she went downstairs. It was almost nine, and the house was quiet. She found her dad working on the computer in the study.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“Much. Pretty exciting news about Tawni.”
“Yes, it is. We hope it works out and that she doesn’t have unrealistic expectations.”
“I think Tawni has realistic expectations of all her relationships. She’ll be fine.”
Mr. Jensen looked somewhat relieved at hearing Sierra’s words. “You know what? You’re right. Tawni has always displayed maturity and good insights. She makes wise choices.”
Sierra felt like adding, “Not like your other daughter, who manages to make an emotional mess of nearly all of her relationships.” But she didn’t say that. She remembered Randy’s admonition not to beat herself up for being a sensitive, emotional person. That’s who she was. That’s how she embraced life—with open arms and a vulnerable heart full of feelings. She could see how Tawni’s self-discipline and sparing use of emotions had helped her to make wise choices over the years. Still, Sierra would rather be a bubbly bumbler than an aloof thinker like Tawni.
“If you and Mom have some time tomorrow, I think I’ll be ready for our talk.”
“Good,” her dad said. “We’ll talk after dinner. By the way, three e-mails are here for you.”
“Really? Who are they from?”
“One from your friend in Switzerland, and two from someone named Katie. Would you like me to print them out?”
“Yes. Thanks.”
Sierra realized it had been weeks since she had written to either Christy or Katie. Those were two other friendships she didn’t want to lose, but she sure hadn’t made an effort to maintain them while she was going overboard with Paul. Sierra thought of the items she had bought at the gift shop that she had intended to use to create a tea party for herself. Since her funds were low for Christmas, she decided she would send the tea party to Christy just as she had sent the instant birthday party to Paul. She would have to think of something else creative to send to Katie.
Gathering the e-mail messages from the printer, Sierra went into the kitchen to fix her favorite snack. She called it “mush.” It was a mug of smashed-up graham crackers mixed with just enough milk to make them wet and soft. For flair, Sierra added a handful of miniature marshmallows. Then she sat at the kitchen counter to enjoy her creation and to read her messages.
Christy’s was short. She said she was learning a lot at the orphanage in Basel and that she and Todd had been keeping in touch through letters. Sierra remembered how concerned Christy had been that her relationship with Todd would suffer when she went to Switzerland for a year, since, in all the years she had known him, he had never written to her. Well, Sierra vaguely recalled something about a coconut Todd had sent Christy, but that couldn’t have held much of a message. Sierra smiled to think that Todd was now writing letters to Christy.
Sierra also thought about how powerful letters could be. Maybe that’s why she had become involved with Paul so quickly. They both seemed to say in their letters what they probably would never say face-to-face.
She decided she wanted to reread all of Paul’s letters with her new, clearer understanding of what their relationship should be about. She carried the e-mails and the little bit of mush left in the mug upstairs and went to the antique dresser in her bedroom. In the top drawer, she had placed all of Paul’s letters, which were tied together with a ribbon. Flopping onto her bed, she untied the ribbon and read each letter in order. There were only eight letters and two postcards. She knew he had received at least twice that many from her. It made her wonder if he had saved her letters or tossed them once he had written back.
What surprised Sierra most as she read Paul’s words with a less-expectant heart was that, though his letters were warm and personal, nothing in them indicated he was falling in love with her, as she had supposed. Clearly, he cared about her and was interested in her as a person, but nothing hinted at his being as emotionally wrapped up in her as she had become in him. Painful as that realization was, it was freeing, too. The truth was setting her free. She could continue to write to him, care about him, and even daydream a little.
Sierra turned over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She had no way to judge the tone of the letters she had sent Paul. Had she smeared her emotions all over the pages in a fashion as messy as she had been processing her feelings? No, some of the letters, she knew, were calm. Some were newsy. Some were dotted with teasing and joking in response to experiences Paul had written about.
Again, Sierra remembered Randy’s advice not to beat herself up. She couldn’t change the past. Maybe she had gone too far emotionally with this relationship. But now she knew that she could start over. She could trust God for this area of her life and be more responsible in how much of her emotional self she gave away. She had all kinds of hope for a fresh start.
As it turned out, Sierra didn’t have an opportunity to talk to her parents on Tuesday. The chance for the three of them to sit down didn’t materialize until Sunday afternoon. That additional time allowed Sierra to work through a lot for herself.
One night she reviewed her written goals for dating and her purity creed. She had some amendments to add now that she realized that saving herself for her future husband included saving herself emotionally as well as physically.
When Sierra and her parents finally sat down together in the living room Sunday afternoon, she brought her lists with her.
“I guess you both know I’ve kind of been going through a lot lately, and I guess the easiest way to e
xplain things is to say God has been teaching me a bunch of important lessons. First let me say I’m sorry I’ve pulled away from you guys and claimed I was old enough to make my own decisions. I realize now I do best when I take advice and input from other people. I should have listened to what you were trying to say about Paul rather than being defensive.”
“What was it you heard us trying to say about Paul?” her dad asked.
“I think you wanted me to see that I was getting too involved emotionally and that maybe the feeling wasn’t mutual.”
Her parents both nodded.
Sierra pulled out all her papers. She felt like a junior lawyer presenting her case. First she showed her parents two of Paul’s letters, which was something she hadn’t done before.
“You can see that he’s interested in corresponding with me, which is what I felt I had to prove to you. But I also see more clearly now that he’s not approaching our friendship on the same emotional level I’ve been operating on.”
Sierra then handed her parents her revised list of dating goals and her purity creed. “The biggest thing I’ve learned is that purity and waiting in a relationship don’t pertain only to the physical. The feeling happens first in the heart, I think. When I become emotionally involved, I’m giving away a part of my heart, just as physical involvement is giving away your body.”
She felt a little embarrassed admitting these thoughts to her parents. Yet she knew it was the only way to make clear what God had been teaching her.
“I think I’m beginning to understand that the area of emotions might be a challenge for me, whereas the physical side, well, that’s nonexistent. But I see now that I’m a pretty emotional person, and I seem to get way more into my feelings than other people do.”
“That’s part of your personality,” her mom said. “Even when you were a little girl, you were more emotional than the other five kids. Don’t be ashamed of that. God gave you that level of sensitivity as a gift.”
Sierra nodded. She really felt as if she were beginning to understand that. “But like any other gift, I can misuse it, can’t I?”
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