The word diminishing sprang to mind, and I forcefully pushed it away.
At three hours the Coke was gone, the candy wrapper long since wadded onto the empty passenger floor. I had tired of actively seeking my guardian angel’s comfort, now feigning nonchalance. Defiantly, I told God it didn’t matter; if he was keeping her away from me, it would be no deterrent.
You know the truth.
I blinked. Where was this stuff coming from? What was wrong with me? My foot pressed a little harder on the accelerator. After all this planning, why couldn’t I be happy today? It wasn’t as if I was going off to rob banks, for heaven’s sake.
I had mentally reviewed all I could of my apartment and employment and the Center. Unattended, my mind began to meander repeatedly back to Bradleyville. I found myself mulling over Thomas’s lie, amazed that he’d gotten away with it. Maybe Uncle Frank was right; maybe God could use anything for his own purpose. Without God answering the prayers of Miss Martha and the rest, I couldn’t imagine even Thomas Bradley possessing the fast-talking required to bend law enforcement’s ancient rigidity. Then I thought of Jake Lewellyn and his immediate response to sacrifice himself for an old friend. Once I’d opened my mind to those two, other faces and names crowded in like clamoring schoolchildren. Lee’s features were foremost. One by one, against my will, I remembered our evenings together, the conversations and kisses. Our fights. I told myself I couldn’t imagine living under the same roof with him. We couldn’t even get along three weeks straight, dating.
I counted the months until Thanksgiving, wondering if Lee’s house would be rebuilt by then. Probably. The whole town would help. If I had stayed, we could’ve been building our own by then. I wondered how big Katherine May would be, if Connie would have lost her pregnancy weight, and if Miss Wilma’s hip would be improved. I railed at myself for not having stopped at the hospital. I would make it up to Connie. Find her another angel lamp, that’s what I’d do. I wondered what it would be like at the mill by Thanksgiving, with Uncle Frank and Lee almost four months at the helm. Would production be up? Would the men be happy? I thought of Miss Alice and her sewing shop, Tull’s Drugstore, and the IGA. I thought of little Celia, berating myself that I hadn’t said good-bye to her either.
Listen to me, a voice whispered within. How much more must I show you?
Please, God, I begged, leave me alone.
Three hours and twenty minutes since I’d left. Soon I would hit interstate, leaving behind the narrow, undulating roads that symbolized rural Kentucky. Undoubtedly, assurance from my guardian angel lay ahead, somewhere along the great stretch of asphalt leading to civilization. It did not matter that I was feeling more miserable by the minute. Everything would be all right. It had to be.
The air was hot and sticky, my back wet. When I’d stopped at the store I’d bound my hair back in a rubber band, tired of it whipping my face. I steered the car resolutely, keeping eyes on the road as I wiped the side of my face with a sleeve. I wanted another Coke. I wanted the drive over with. I wanted to see Lee one more time.
“All these commandments I have kept; what am I still lacking?”
Inexplicably, the words of the rich young man in the Gospel of Matthew popped into my mind. I pictured Pastor Frasier preaching, remembering my anger at his sermon. That was so long ago. What purpose did it serve to think of it now?
“Nothing,” I said aloud. “I lack nothing.”
I pressed on. Fear bubbled, then rose within me. Desperately, I prayed again for my mother. Please let her answer me, God, please. I know you will. I know it.
I drove through another small town. Two stoplights, just like Bradleyville. A pretty, blond little girl waved at me from the sidewalk. I waved back. Beyond the town limits, I got stuck behind a U-Haul truck, and it was a while before I could pass.
Please, Lord. I’m begging you.
The minutes ticked by, my car wheels whirring.
Finally, my dogged pretense began to tremble. Somehow, I knew that if I did not shore it up, it would crumble quickly, as a long-enduring, rain-soaked hillside slides away under that final inch of water.
So I struggled. I sat up straighter, back not touching the seat, gripping the steering wheel. My shoulders squared, and my chin raised, as though I were staring down an ancient foe. But soon my back muscles grew weary, and my fingers cramped. I felt the first pebbles begin to fall, skittering sickeningly to the depths of my soul.
My eyes smarted. I swallowed hard and drove.
They picked up speed, those pebbles, then collided with little rocks, sending them tumbling. The rocks hit larger ones. And then heavy stones. The stones rolled into motion inside me, crashing into bigger stones until, ultimately, the boulders moved. The weight of the boulders’ riotous descent crushed tender soil beneath them until the very foundation of who I was shook, slid, then heaved itself in one mighty spill.
Anyone watching would not have known; would only have seen a young woman, tired and hot, gauging curves in the road. No one could have guessed my despair.
Not another car was in sight when I finally pulled over. My tires crunched on the graveled shoulder of a turn-about as I rolled to a slow stop. I turned off the ignition, even then trying to convince myself it wasn’t true, and sank my forehead against the wheel. But I knew it was.
No “guardian angel” could give me the peace I sought.
The realization cracked my consciousness like a hammer on glass. Aunt Eva was right. My dream and all its temporary solace had led me away from God, not toward him. Somewhere, somehow, in the tumult of the last three days, I had lost the belief in my guardian angel that I’d thought would sustain me forever. Like the angel on Connie’s lamp who wore my mother’s smile, she had crumbled to ashes. Without her, I wanted to wail, I might as well be the baby on that lamp, scattered also into nothingness. My eyes squeezed shut as I sought my mother in futility one last time, begging and pleading to God to let her sustain me. And if not, I screamed silently, just let me die, just let me be with her. We’d rise again together, from ashes to angels. I couldn’t believe that God sought to take her and my dream from me. God could not be asking this of me. I’d clung to my beliefs for so long, I didn’t know how to let them go.
“God,” I cried, “I can’t do it! What do I have without her?”
I am all you need.
A moan escaped my lips. Hollowly, I gazed at the bends in the road before me. Minutes passed as I stared at them with locked eyes, measuring their demands, their ultimate path. As I stared, they began to reshape themselves, looming narrower, more precarious.
Fruitless.
Time flattened itself, slipping over a distant horizon. I hunched in my old Ford, oven-like under the sun, still fighting. Soon trickling tears began to flow, a sizzle in their wake. No amount of denial could now stanch them. I do not know how long I sobbed, body rocking. Only that it was for a lifetime. The force of my tears soon shook me as jarringly as had the force of my blows against Al Bledger, a blurred succession of images deepening my grief. I cried for my apartment, its blank walls so expectant and ready. I cried for the job I’d worked so hard to earn. For Hope Center. For the dresses I’d sewed and the boxes I’d packed. For blue paint. For the years I’d spent planning, dreaming. I cried for the despair of a life “not good enough.” And finally, helplessly, I cried for my mother—for a long, long time until the tears ran dry and my chest ached and my head pounded.
When I was done, I slowly raised my head. My swollen eyes could barely focus. I was weary of fighting.
“Okay, Jesus,” I whispered, “here I am. I’m yours. Forgive me for not listening for so long, for putting my plans ahead of you. I promise to follow you.” In desperation, then, I tried one more time. “So please, Lord, please, will you change your mind and let me drive on now? You can be with me in Cincinnati, can’t you?”
I waited for the peace to come that would tell me God agreed. I waited and waited for it, then ultimately demanded it. “Why, God, why? They’re
good plans; I’m going to serve others; what’s wrong with that?”
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
Uncle Frank’s verse for Aunt Eva. The decision I faced now seemed no less calamitous than that night. I covered my eyes with both hands. For a long time I sat unmoving. Finally, in the end, I lifted my fingers away, my head tipping upward.
“Oh, Lord,” my voice was barely audible, “I’m going to need so much help.”
My hands trembled as I turned on the ignition. My breathing was unsteady, and I took my time, inhaling deeply. Strangely, then, the air seemed to grow alive, filling my chest, offering strength. With determination my back straightened, my fingers firming on the wheel. I put the car in gear and rolled into motion.
Then I turned around—and headed home.
About the Author
BRANDILYN COLLINS is the best-selling author of Color the Sidewalk for Me and Eyes of Elisha. She and her family live in California. Link to her website from: www.zondervan.com/collinsb
Praise
In the pages of Cast a Road Before Me, Brandilyn Collins not only delivers a captivating story, she literally draws you into the lives of the characters. As those characters become real enough to touch, suddenly Bradleyville becomes your town.
Sally E. Stuart,
Editor, Christian Writer’s Market Guide
What a page-turner! The character of Jessie is wonderfully vulnerable yet feisty. The Mayberry-like town of Bradleyville is both homey yet mysterious. This is not predictable Christian fiction! Cast a Road Before Me contained all the elements of a gripping story—tension, romance, inspiration, and yes, even humor. I read it in a single sitting.
Holly G. Miller,
Contributing Editor, Clarity magazine,
Travel Editor, The Saturday Evening Post
Brandilyn Collins’s Cast a Road Before Me is an intense tale of one woman’s confusion over God’s role in the universe, in her life. Ms. Collins’s characters are portrayed with realism and candor. A thought-provoking story.
Lyn Cote,
Author, Blessed Assurance series and
Hope’s Garden
Brandilyn Collins writes with a depth and clarity that makes the sights, sounds, smells, and the just plain folks of the South spring to life! She breathed life into her characters and fanned the flame of faith in this reader—just wonderful!
Annie Jones,
Author, Deep Dixie and The Snowbirds
Cast a Road Before Me is an engaging and sensitive story of a young woman’s coming to faith. Full of drama, romance, and subtle humor, it has all the makings of a good read.
Ann Tatlock, Author,
A Room of My Own
and A Place Called Morning
Brandilyn immediately transports her readers back to a slower, and what seems from the outside, a more gentle time, then jars you with one of those tragedies that changes a life in an instant. You cannot stop reading as you have to see what happens next. Her lyrical use of language evokes emotion and compels the reader into the heart of the story, the heart of her characters, and makes them come alive in the heart of the reader.
Lauraine Snelling,
Author, Red River of the North series,
Daughter of Twin Oaks, and Sisters of the Confederacy
(Secret Refuge series)
Books by Brandilyn Collins
Eyes of Elisha
Dread Champion
The Bradleyville Series
Cast a Road Before Me
Color the Sidewalk for Me
Capture the Wind for Me
ZONDERVAN
Cast a Road Before Me
Copyright © 2001 by Brandilyn Collins
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan e-books.
EPub Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 978-0-310-33338-8
Previously published by Broadman & Holman Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee.
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Collins, Brandilyn.
Cast a road before me / Brandilyn Collins.
p. cm. — (Book one of the Bradleyville series)
ISBN 978-0-310-25327-3
1. Strikes and lockouts — Fiction. 2. Women pacifists — Fiction. 3. Labor movement — Fiction. 4. Kentucky—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.O4747815C37 2003
813’.6—dc21
2003002414
* * *
All Scripture quotations are from the KJV, The King James Version of the Holy Bible.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Interior design by Susan Ambs
* * *
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About the Publisher
Founded in 1931, Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Zondervan, a division of HarperCollinsPublishers, is the leading international Christian communications company, producing best-selling Bibles, books, new media products, a growing line of gift products and award-winning children’s products. The world’s largest Bible publisher, Zondervan (www.zondervan.com) holds exclusive publishing rights to the New International Version of the Bible and has distributed more than 150 million copies worldwide. It is also one of the top Christian publishers in the world, selling its award-winning books through Christian retailers, general market bookstores, mass merchandisers, specialty retailers, and the Internet. Zondervan has received a total of 68 Gold Medallion awards for its books, more than any other publisher.
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