If I Had You

by Deborah Bedford

  “They’re mother-daughter shirts. One for you and one for your daughter. What do you think?”

  Ben heard his daughter. “B-but I thought these would have been for you and Tansy.”

  “I’m not her mother, honey. You are. You get the mother-daughter shirt.”

  “How can you trust me that much after what I did? Taking her away from you like that?”

  The rustling silence that followed must have been an embrace. “Because it’s a part of healing for us, to be able to trust each other. Good night, sweet Tess. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  It’s a part of healing for us, to be able to trust each other.

  In their bedroom a few minutes later, Ben felt the mattress sag. He felt her crawling in beside him. He lay with his hipbone pressed into the foam and his backbone as stiff as a blade. She touched his nose and scooted toward him.

  The next thing he knew, her head was on his shoulder. Her ear lay on his chest right against his clattering heart.

  “Ben,” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

  “Yes.”

  He’d always wanted to have a boy.

  He’d always wondered what it would be like to have more children. That’s what he would argue; Nora had taken that chance away.

  They laid there in the same position for a long time, his heart pounding, her temple resting against the pulse in his throat. They laid there some more, her knees bent to fit against him, his knees locked and his legs as unyielding and straight as planks of lumber. But when he felt the wet of her tears against his chest, he came undone.

  Ben rolled toward her and swept her hair away from her wet face with his hand. She whispered through muffled sobs, “Oh, Ben. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  He wouldn’t say, It’s okay. Because it wasn’t okay. He remained wordless, letting his fingers brushing her wet cheeks and her sodden hair and her sniffy nose communicate for him.

  Whatever else happened, for better or for worse, they were in this together.

  Ben waited for a long time, wondering what he should say. He had feelings about this, oh yes, he did. Important feelings. They had only been dating in college, but he felt like she had taken a part of him and stolen it away.

  “Something’s happened to you these past days, hasn’t it?”

  He felt her hair crumple as she nodded against him.

  “You’re peaceful.”

  She nodded again. “Yes.”

  Then, “If you had only asked me, Nora. If you had only given me a chance to be responsible for this. If we could have made the decision together.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve been so distracted, thinking of what you took from me.”

  Her entire body wilted. His conscience battered him. But what if you had never married her. You might never even have known.

  Ben couldn’t understand it but, even as he blamed her, he yearned for this new serenity that his wife had shown. He felt blank with exhaustion. He thought, God, if this is something You’ve given her then I want it, too.

  She rolled over to the other side of the bed, pulling three-quarters of the blanket with her.

  What if you hadn’t spent your life with her? What would it have been like?

  He couldn’t answer that question. He couldn’t even imagine these past years without her. And when that thought came, the sensation of losing her left him bereft.

  “Nora,” he whispered into the darkness. “I’m sorry, too.”

  She didn’t move.

  He remembered his college dorm at UT with its posters of ABBA and The Eagles and Iggy Pop, the friends who crowded onto the floor to watch the Dallas Cowboys on the tiny television he’d brought from home. He remembered the way he’d worn his hair feathered over his ears and his boat shoes untied and his Izod shirt collars neatly folded.

  And he thought: I’m not so sure of who I was then.

  I only know who I am now. And I love my wife.

  “Nora,” he whispered.

  Silence.

  “I don’t know what I would have done when I was nineteen. Sure, it’s easy for me to judge you now. When I’m honest with myself, I don’t know how I would have reacted to it then.”

  Outside the window, he heard one of Claude Simm’s favorite mockingbirds making catcalls in their maple tree. The moon glistened like an opal in the sky outside. In the distance, the train tracks began to rattle as the 1:00 A.M. Texas and Pacific whistled its approach into town.

  “It wasn’t my only choice,” she said, “but I thought it was. I was so sure it would be the end of the world.”

  Suddenly, halfway between dark and moonlight, she was there. For a moment, they found themselves entangled in bedsheets and pajamas. He felt her touch him on the cheek, and the weight of her head found his chest again.

  “We’ll never know what I would have done, I guess,” he said. “I can handle that, I think.”

  “I can handle it, Ben, if you’ll hold me.”

  And so he did. When they finally drifted away, intertwined with each other, they sank peacefully into sleep like stones sinking through deep water.

  EPILOGUE

  Butlers Bend Baptist Church had never looked prettier than it did this Saturday morning as Nora Crabtree was ushered up the aisle and seated as the mother of the bride. Creede Franklin stepped toward the altar with his father at his side. Two dozen candles flickered and danced in the room.

  This wasn’t an ornate wedding ceremony at all. Only the very closest friends and family had been invited to attend. After all the time and struggle for both bride and groom, this was too poignant a celebration to share with many others.

  Afternoon sun shone pure and luminous through every window and the heavily polished pews smelled of hickory and Murphy’s Oil.

  As the music changed to Minuet in G and the families turned to watch the processional, one small girl pranced proudly up the walkway. She wore black patent-leather shoes, a dress with a black velvet bodice and a skirt with rows and rows of ruffled lace. Her dark curly hair, which she loved wearing short and tousled now, was crowned with a wreath of baby’s breath. In her hand she clutched a bouquet of tiny purple tansy asters, which her mother had picked from Buxton Lance’s cow pasture this morning especially for her to carry.

  Although Tansy Aster Crabtree was still the right size to be a flower girl, her mother had asked her to be her bridesmaid instead. She was the only bridesmaid. And she was the groomsman, too, Creede had told her, because they would all three become a family of their own. Her mama and Creede wanted the three of them to stand in front of the pastor while the bride and groom took vows. It was going to take her a while to get used to her new last name. Franklin. Well, nobody had better call her Crab-Apple Tree at school any more!

  When Tansy reached the bottom step and Creede winked down at her, Dolores Kay Jones struck up the Wedding March on the church’s breathy organ. The small group of well-wishers turned, expectantly waiting for the bride.

  Ben lifted his chin in pride and touched his daughter’s arm. Yep, she was a little scared. He saw her hands shaking. “You ready?” he mouthed to her.

  Tess’s violet eyes met her father’s, and he ached when he saw the deep happiness there. She looked so beautiful to him, with her hair back to her natural blonde, her eyes rimmed with just a tad of lacy mascara, her cheeks flushed with a healthy glow. “Thank you, Daddy,” she mouthed back to him as she wrapped her slender fingers around the crook of his elbow. She gave a slight nod. “Yes, I’m ready.”

  “I’m so proud of my daughter,” he whispered and, this time, his words were loud enough for people to hear.

  “I love you so much,” she mouthed back. And with that, he stepped forward to escort her toward Creede and Tansy.

  Once her daughter had reached the front of the sanctuary and the onlookers had been seated, Nora glanced up at the stained-glass window positioned directly over Pete Franklin’s head. For one quiet minute, she observed the glass that had not been destroyed in
the tornado and that had glowed with mysterious light that one Sunday years ago. It didn’t appear unusual or mysterious or miraculous now. It remained, each pane of color as true as a jewel, the sunshine rich and even and true behind it.

  As Tess and Ben had come up the aisle, Nora’s Bible sat open across her knees. Oh, how she loved this book now! Even the weight of it in her hands felt delicious. All morning, the morning of Tess’s wedding day, one word had been pouring into her soul. Light.

  Light.

  Earlier, she had looked in the concordance for all the verses in the Bible that contained the word light. There were so many to pick from, it might have taken a month to read them all. But she had found this one in Ephesians almost immediately. Here was her verse, right in front of her on this day, the pages spread and balanced against her knee.

  She hadn’t brought her reading glasses. Who wanted to carry glasses in the little evening purse she’d bought for Tess’s wedding?! But if she kept the words at a distance, she could read them.

  “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord . . . find out what pleases the Lord . . . everything exposed by the light becomes visible. This is why it is said: Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”

  She read it twice, three times. Oh, Father. Thank You for my new life with my daughter. Thank You for all that You’ve given us.

  As Nora embraced the joy that God wanted to give her, there was a sense of discovery in her heart that felt almost sacred with intensity.

  Thank You for shining on us.

  At the front of the church, Tess Crabtree extended her left hand to Creede Franklin. Pete Franklin dug in his pocket and handed his son a gold wedding band. Creede reached toward the little girl who stood beside their knees and looked a question at her. She nodded her head, yes. And all the dark curls on her head bobbed. Only then did Creede slide the ring on Tess’s finger. He lifted the veil and her eyes rose to meet his. And for that second, that moment before they kissed, the expectancy on Tess’s face was visible to everyone.

  There she stood amidst everyone she loved, confident and beautiful and assured. Nora caught her breath at this amazing sight of her child, blessed, welcomed. How she rejoiced in miracles. And outside the stained-glass window, to the south in the city of Dallas, the neon Pegasus might have bloomed into movement and life and winged its way heavenward amid the sound of angel song.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  So many of the books I have written have been based on true stories and true struggles in a Christian woman’s life. A Rose By The Door, A Morning Like This, and When You Believe were all written, researched, and documented through the struggles of friends and family.

  If I Had You is my own story.

  Last year in church, a woman stood up and began inviting anyone who had had an abortion to a Bible study called “Healing Hearts.” I had listened to this invitation many times before. My reasons for ignoring it had always been the same: “I’m already there. I know Christ died to wipe away my sin. Of course, I’m forgiven.”

  But on this day, Jesus wouldn’t let me turn away.

  The room grew huge. The one woman speaking became a tiny speck in a sea of heads. Light poured into the windows behind her and her silhouette was like a pinprick against it. I couldn’t see her face. I could only feel my own heart growing so heavy that I couldn’t breathe. Minutes later, I realized that my face was wet, and that I had been crying.

  When I whispered to Jack, my husband, that I was thinking about doing the study, he said, “Maybe you ought to leave that well behind you.”

  “I know,” I answered. “I was thinking that, too.”

  It is easy to keep things like this quiet, even to ourselves. We come to a point where we convince ourselves that it happened in another life, and that it doesn’t affect who we are today. But in a confidential group with five precious Christian sisters, we began to examine the Father’s view of the choices we’d made in our lives, and the Father’s view of us.

  To look at the depth of what you have done, to see the detestable for what it is, is to stare face-to-face into the presence of a Holy God. When Isaiah cried out, “I am a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips,” he was faced with the same thing. I had lived with that part of my life locked away in pride. I had rationalized and justified. Over and over again I had put my reputation, my relationships, and my fear ahead of the Father’s heart.

  In my own life, living forgiven in Christ, I thought I had come through my abortion unscathed, that God had healed me, and that I had forgiven myself. When I asked Him to show me anything in my life that I hadn’t seen, He began to reveal an entire list.

  While my fictional character, Nora, channeled her feelings into deep shame when she saw her daughter, my feelings came out in other places altogether. Some mornings when I would drive my children to school, I felt so depressed that it seemed like a camera-filter of darkness covered the sky and my children’s faces and the neighborhood around me.

  When I was in high school, I loved to fly. But something happened while I was in college. By the time I married Jack, my nightmares about planes crashing made it difficult to sleep, never mind traveling. Throught the next twenty-five years, talking to friends and counselors in our church, no one could explain why these dreams haunted me. Last winter, I prayed the same prayer that Nora prays in this book. Lord, help me. I don’t completely understand my heart. Help me see this through Your eyes so that I might be broken in spirit before you. Show me the truth about my abortion in Your name.

  Within minutes of praying, my Father began to show me. I kept trying to grasp God’s forgiveness and mercy. But my human heart couldn’t quite get there. Every time I set foot on a plane, something hidden, something that I didn’t even know was there, whispered that I deserved to die.

  Although it wasn’t required in the Bible study, I felt the Lord asking me to be honest with both of my teenaged children about my abortion. Avery, my fourteen-year-old daughter, was gentle in her forgiveness. Eighteen-year-old Jeff grew quiet and asked me more questions than I had ever allowed myself to ask. Did I know whether it was a boy or girl? How far along was I? Did I have any idea what it had looked like, the color of its hair?

  We held onto each other and cried.

  Jesus wanted every part of me, even the part I was hiding from myself.

  We think sometimes that the longer we wrestle with something that we’re somehow helping God in a process. But repentance isn’t about emotion, it’s about a decision. We can’t go back to innocence, but we can go to the cross. That’s the only way we can walk away clean before God.

  If current trends continue, statistics show that 43 percent of women will have had an abortion in their lifetimes.* Sue Liljenberg of Healing Hearts Ministries believes that number could go higher. I share with you this story from the depths of the Father’s love and forgiveness, not to jump on the bandwagon with a hot issue, but to tell you of the mercy and grace and healing that the Father poured out on me at a time in my life when I didn’t know I needed it. When I lift my hands to my Father in praise, I lift them to a God who has plucked me out of the depths. Understanding His love for you can change your dry paint-by-numbers Christianity into a masterpiece. I have learned that the deeper a woman is able to go in her honesty to her heavenly Father, the more realistically she is able to view her own humanity, that’s when she can begin to understand what Jesus did for her on the cross, and rejoice. I dance before Him in joy, and you can, too. How powerful and how gentle is our loving, seeking, healing, passionate God!

  Your heavenly Father wants to have you completely. It is my prayer that, like Nora, you will ask the Father to show you the truths in your heart regarding your abortion, that He would enable you to see this through His eyes. If you cry out to him, His love will overpower you and show you where He still wants to heal you.

  The Master’s mercy knows no end. It dawns fresh and new and strong, every morning.

&nb
sp; Deborah Bedford

  August 2004

  I love hearing from my readers:

  P.O. Box 9175

  Jackson Hole, Wyoming 83001

  HEALING HEARTS MINISTRIES

  IF YOU OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW has been touched by post-abortion trauma, the Father can use a Bible study support group such as this one to break through in your life.

  Healing Hearts offers intimate ten-week-long studies in your community, led by trained Christians who have experienced abortion themselves. If you are a man touched by abortion, there is a study for you, too. If you can’t find a group meeting close by, you can take the study on-line with a one-on-one counselor.

  For more information, visit www.healinghearts.org, e-mail info@healinghearts.org, write P.O. Box 7890, Bonney Lake, WA 98390-0966, or phone 1-888-792-8282.

  Directions for making Nora Crabtree’s baby blankets

  BEGIN WITH ONE YARD of 45" cotton flannel of your choice. If the fabric is not already prewashed and preshrunk, launder and press it.

  Turn the flannel under 1/8" on all sides and hemstitch.

  Select a cotton crochet thread #10, in a color that accents or blends with the flannel. A variegated color is fun!

  Using a #5 steel crochet hook, finish off the edges of the blanket with a large shell trim, chain 3, skip one loop, double crochet, chain two, repeat. Do this along all four edges.

  THE FLANNEL RECEIVING BLANKETS used in this story were first sewn for my babies by my mother-in-law, Mollie Lou Bedford. How excited she would be to know that I have used her idea as a part of this book! During the writing of this story, our family has lost our precious Mollie. In honor of her, I have included her instructions for those of you who enjoy crocheting. I hope you will make many blankets for babies you love. You could even make these your ministry to a crisis pregnancy center or a hospital that serves young or at-risk pregnant women in your area.