She was beginning to think that he might be. Just maybe. The preacher’s message an hour before had done more to penetrate her armor-covered heart and mind than anything else she’d ever heard. She had sat in her seat and even asked herself the most relevant question she may have ever wanted an answer to: “Why do I need to hold onto my atheism? Why is it so important to me?”
She’d sat there pondering the question over and over, concluding that maybe it was some sort of emotional need to hold onto something from her “real” parents. Or maybe it really did just make rational sense to not believe in an invisible, all-powerful being.
Questions again began to cascade into her mind, and the whirlpool of potential answers weren’t providing her with true clarity.
And now there was Zach. How’d he find God? How’d he get the answer that she needed?
She wanted to cry. But she couldn’t. Not while standing outside a locked car with Jamie next to her.
Actually, she began to get a little angry.
Why was he there? What was he going to say? Right now, she wanted neither his attention nor any of the words that might escape his mouth.
Or did she?
She wanted to sigh but didn’t want to trigger him into speaking.
His presence was making it impossible to think anything through.
She realized then that, while she didn’t want to prompt him to speak, she actually wanted him to do so.
Something was building within her, and it needed to escape.
Just say something to me, Jamie.
But he remained silent, looking downward, as though he might be staring at the same crack in the asphalt that currently held her attention.
Please, say something. I’ll only be mean if you don’t say something first.
But the only response was that of a cranky child somewhere in the distance, probably being carried by his mom or dad to or from a store.
Fine. “What do you want, Jamie?”
It seemed that he might not respond, but after a few seconds, he said, “I don’t really have anything to say.”
She kept her gaze down, tracing the crack with her eyes. There was a tiny weed growing out of it.
“Then why are you here?” She made it clear that she was irritated.
Another pause, then, “I just needed to be.”
She tore her eyes away from the stupid little green growth to look over at him. She didn’t know how to reply to that. Her jaw clenched. After a moment, she redirected her gaze across the parking lot to the restaurant.
“They’re probably wondering what’s up with me. And you too.”
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Why are you here, Jamie?”
He shifted a bit, angling toward her. She turned and looked into his eyes. They were filled with kindness. There was nothing angry or disappointed or desirous in them. Just kindness.
He gave her the faintest hint of a smile and said, “I care about what’s going on in you.”
She felt the tears start again. She drew her hand up to her mouth to hide the quivering that began in her lips.
Jamie leaned toward her and allowed the slightest contact of their shoulders to take place. She allowed it to linger.
The tension in her voice eased a bit. “I don’t know what’s going on in me. I really don’t,” she said, slightly above a whisper.
“You’ll figure it out.”
Would she? She was a mess, and she knew it.
Then, almost unexpectedly, what needed to come out of her finally spilled through her lips. Brutal honesty.
“Jamie, I don’t know if I want to believe in God. And if there is a God, I refuse to believe he’s the judgmental type. I got enough judgmentalism living with my parents.”
Silence. But he didn’t move away from her.
Suddenly, she was struck with startling clarity. She finally understood.
The questions about God, along with the whirlpool of junk answers about his existence were gone, replaced with a turbulent need to reveal the truth behind all of her antipathy toward him.
“Your God wants a lot! But you know what? So do I!”
Jamie’s eyebrows rose with the sudden spurt of forceful revelation.
“Okay. I get that.”
“Do you? Do you, Jamie?” She pulled away and turned to face him directly. He looked her in the eyes. “I’ve never had anything that meant something to me. Nothing that I ever wanted did I ever get. Then, at fourteen, I got pregnant. That was something I didn’t want. Then I got kicked out of my house. And the end result of that? Total loss of hope of ever getting any kind of real love from my parents.”
Elizabeth stopped, calculating how to proceed.
Jamie took advantage of the pause.
“I know. But God wants to give—”
“No! Don’t even, Jamie. Don’t even. Your God wants. He doesn’t want to give. He wants my life. He wants my baby. He wants my service. And this whole thing about him wanting my heart too? Nuh-uh. Not. A. Chance! Not with as little as he’s given me. Not a chance!
“He wants, Jamie! He wants! Well, do you know what? I want too!
“I want happiness! I want love! I want to be a model! I want sex!”
She’d foreseen that last declaration heading toward her lips, but she didn’t care about preventing it from crossing them. Because it was true.
She saw an astonished look play across Jamie’s face.
She pressed forward. “What? Does that shock you?”
“I, uhh….”
“You know what I don’t want, Jamie? I don’t want to be a waitress! I don’t want to live a life stuck at home with a kid! But you know what? I’ve got to, because that’s the hand I was dealt! And don’t worry, I’m not going to blame your God for that. That’s all on me. Now listen, I don’t want the added pressure of your family making me feel as though the whole believe-in-God thing has got to be my number one priority in life. Do you get that?”
Jamie opened his mouth to say something.
“I’m not done, Jamie. I need to vent.”
He closed his mouth and nodded, apparently accepting that what he could do best right now was just hear her.
“I have a little girl that I absolutely adore. She’s mine. I’ve got some dreams that are probably never going to come true, but you know what? They are mine. But your God wants me to give him those things. And don’t you dare deny it. I’ve heard it over and over in church. He also wants my money and my time and just about everything else!
“What do I get to have? Huh? What’s mine?! What do I get to keep as my own?”
She stopped.
She folded her arms and glared at Jamie.
And then … she saw his expression of sadness and defeat.
And then … she started feeling a hurt in her heart for having pummeled him with her words.
And then … she adored him for not throwing up his arms, giving up on her, and walking away.
MONDAY, AUGUST 11
Chapter 40
T
he house was quiet—unusual for a weekday afternoon. At present, it was one of the few things for which Elizabeth felt she could be grateful.
She sat alone on the couch facing a muted, meaningless talk show on TV, and little Kyla played contentedly on the living room floor with some colorful, purposely not-noisy toys.
Everyone else was out and about, doing whatever was important for them at the moment. Tara, Jenna, and Amy had gone off to spend the late morning and afternoon shopping for a few necessities for Jenna’s upcoming collegiate life.
It wouldn’t be long before her newly acquired sister would be on her way. That looming eventuality held no happiness for anyone in the house, save for Jenna alone. The prospect of losing her to another state—to other friends—stabbed at Elizabeth’s heart.
I suppose God wants that too.
Tara and Jenna had both asked if she and Kyla woul
d like to “come with,” but she’d passed on the offer. Buying things to help send Jenna far away wasn’t a positive motivator in the least, and she couldn’t see any good memories coming out of it. Elizabeth knew she’d be more of a wet blanket to the two women she loved.
Brent was, of course, at work, and Jamie was probably spending time with Zach.
Zach.
Elizabeth couldn’t get him out of her head. She had certainly tried, but the circumstance of his conversion to Christianity wouldn’t let go.
She thought back to the raw emotion of the previous day. When she had finally calmed down enough, she’d reentered the restaurant with Jamie. The four of them had sat there eating their Sunday lunch, when Zach made another attempt to explain what was going on within him.
“It’s not like I thought I had ever done anything really terrible in my life. But when the pastor asked who we compared our own personal goodness to.… Well, I must have been comparing myself to others. You know, criminals and people like that.”
Elizabeth remembered that moment in the pastor’s message too. It hadn’t been the first time she’d heard it. But the guy had voiced it in a new way that jarred her a bit.
“Now, think about it,” Pastor Justin had said. “Most of us would like to think that we’re not so bad, that we haven’t done much wrong. But the way we come to that conclusion is to compare ourselves with people who have very obviously committed wrongs, especially wrongs done to other people. We logically imagine ourselves to be better than those evildoers.
“Think about it this way. Let’s pretend that you and I are having a conversation in which you are trying to lead me to Jesus, and let’s say I’m the one who doesn’t think he’s got anything to worry about when it comes to life after death. Imagine your response to me if I said, ‘Ah. Don’t worry about me. In the end, my good will outweigh my bad.’
“Hopefully, you’d say something like, ‘You can’t only think about your actions in this life; you also have to be concerned about every thought you’ve ever had, too. Justin, was there ever a time in which hate, lust, backstabbing, or revenge was internalized? Because it’s not just what a person does physically that condemns him. In fact, it’s always about what’s going on in an individual’s heart and mind.’
“And maybe you’d continue by telling me, ‘Justin, Heaven is a place of ultimate perfection. No sin is permitted inside. God can’t and won’t allow it. With a belief in your own goodness to save you, what would you actually be attempting to drag through the gates of Heaven with you? Think about it: What kind of darkness do you have packed away inside you right now? Do you really think you would qualify to enter into a place of absolute holiness?’”
Zach said that after he’d finally acknowledged that he was, in fact, a sinner and prayed the pastor’s prayer, he’d encountered a peace that he’d never realized he’d been missing.
“I felt something more than the peace, though. I still can’t explain it.”
Elizabeth saw both Jamie and Jenna smile and nod. They understood.
Apparently, the pastor’s words had reached deep into Zach and had the desired results. And now, admittedly, those same words were stirring up conflict within Elizabeth, as well. Her blank expression hid the confusion—the indecision—that was weighing heavily on her heart and mind.
But why? Why was she enduring anything at all? She was an atheist. She didn’t even believe in God!
She … was … an atheist!
Elizabeth looked down at her hands. She realized that she’d been scraping at the cuticle of her left thumb, causing the area to start bleeding. She forced herself to stop and lifted her thumb to her lips in an attempt to quell the formation of another droplet.
Elizabeth allowed her hand to fall to her lap, and she licked her lips. She was aware of the lingering taste of copper. Another droplet of blood slowly formed along her cuticle.
Blood.
Jesus.
Purposely shed blood.
It wasn’t an accident. It was on purpose.
For me.
She sighed. Maybe it was finally time to stop deceiving herself.
In truth, at this point, she didn’t think she could mount enough resistance to even consider herself an agnostic, let alone a true atheist. She was beginning to believe too many things about the Lawtons’ God to hold onto that much doubt.
She looked up from her hand to gaze upon her little girl. Kyla giggled and happily threw her hands up into the air, grasping tightly within her little fingers a happy yellow and brown stuffed dinosaur. Her favorite stuffed toy. Her “Dino.”
And what about Kyla? Is she going to one day need to be made clean by God too?
Warm tears fell from Elizabeth’s eyes. Not my little girl. She’s perfect.
“Please.… Please, don’t grow up, my little one,” Elizabeth whispered. “Don’t become like your mama.”
She took in a deep breath and let it out. Too many things were playing on her emotions right now. Too many things to sort out. And right now, the whole God thing was just too much to deal with.
Elizabeth knew that her internal dialogue about God wouldn’t be quieted for very long, but for now, she would force it to the side in favor of getting on her hands and knees to play with her lovely little girl for a short while.
UNKNOWN TO ELIZABETH, two invisible, battle-tested agents watched from opposite ends of the living room as she struggled with her decision about God. One, a guardian of light, a presence in the Lawton household for years. The other, a deceiver, a minion of the devil.
Neither was willing to back down from its role in the girl’s life. But one was restrained from much of what it could do to protect her because of a lack of human awareness and prayer.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 13
Chapter 41
H
e’d finally settled it during his commute home.
He was going to do it. In person.
Drew realized, almost too late, that if he mailed Elizabeth the portfolio, he’d risk being found out as a fraud. The postmark on the package would show that it had been mailed from Ohio, not New York, where he was supposed to be currently.
He walked into his den and withdrew Elizabeth’s modeling portfolio from the Priority Mail box and set it back upon the table.
He’d also spent no small amount of time replaying over and over in his mind their parting conversation on Saturday afternoon. He was convinced that Elizabeth would not be averse to him making at least a subtle move on her. And if she showed any sign of objection, he’d just backpedal and apologize for allowing himself to be overcome by “something about her.”
All he had to do now was create the perfect scenario for them to meet again.
Easy peasy.
BRENT OPENED THE front screen door and walked into the house. Looking across the living room, he knew immediately what he had to do. In his heart, he knew it was wrong, yet he also knew that he could claim he’d been unable to control the urge.
Looking at her, the temptation was nearly unbearable.
Quietly. Ever so quietly, he approached her.
Tara slept in the soft recliner near the couch. Oddly, she didn’t have the chair in a reclined position. Instead, she slept with her head supported by a wing of the backrest, arms on the armrests, with her right leg crossed over the other and her left foot on the floor.
Brent waved a hand before her face, more for fun than to check if she was awake. The fact that her mouth was slightly agape, with a soft snore escaping her lips, had already made it clear that she wasn’t.
He leaned over her knees, wishing that she was wearing shorts to make it easier to locate the sweet spot. He would have to “guesstimate.” Forming a flat hand, he assumed a karate chop position and slashed toward and just below—he hoped—her knee cap.
Tara’s right foot flew forward as her other foot propelled the chair backward, the result of an unexpected loss of relaxation and an immedia
te burst of adrenaline.
“It worked!”
Half terrified and one hundred percent not happy, she stared daggers into Brent. She immediately stood up. “What is wrong with you?!”
Brent knew he should be backing away and probably moving up the stairs to lock himself behind the bedroom door, but he manned up, held his ground, and chuckled. “Hey, it was a working theory. It had to be tested.”
“Excuse me?” Tara crossed her arms and looked at her husband, wanting the anger to remain. But Brent knew her too well. She’d have done the same thing to him, had she thought of it. “The next kick of my foot won’t be so funny, mister! Why’d you do that?!”
“Because one of us had to. And since you were asleep.…”
She punched him in the arm.
“Ouch!”
“Yeah, right, you big baby. Be glad you’re not getting what you really deserve.”
“Still love me?”
Tara glared at him for a moment. She drew in a deep breath and let it out. Her expression relaxed a bit. “Maybe later.”
Brent decided to take a chance and leaned in to give her a kiss. At first, she hesitated to respond. After a moment, she brought her mouth to his … and promptly grabbed his lower lip between her teeth.
“Ow!”
It startled him more than it hurt, and she quickly let go.
“Still love me?” she asked with a smirk.
Brent instinctively ran his tongue along and behind his lip to check for blood. Tasting none, he said, “Yeah. Lesson learned.”
With a nod of satisfaction, Tara stepped back up to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. She whispered, “Welcome home, you big lug.”
“Thank you, Vampira.”
She laughed and snorted.
“I still love that I bring that snort out of you.”
“I do too. It’s very ladylike.”
They lingered in each other’s arms for a few more seconds.
Stepping back, she said, “Guess who I received a phone call from today.”
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