Chapter Six
It wasn’t Danny who came knocking later, after I’d had my face buried in Psalms for several hours, but Abbie. “Hey, Eli. I hear you’re leaving us soon.”
“How on earth does this information get around so quickly?”
“Oh, people talk,” she said with a broad smile.
“I can tell.” I rubbed my head, suddenly noticing a ferocious headache, probably from squinting at the small type on the pages of the Bible that Danny had let me borrow. “Yeah, I’m leaving, just for a couple of days. I’ll be back not long after Christmas.”
“Aww, our first Christmas together and we won’t be together?” Abbie pretended to pout. Leaving the door propped wide, she came over to the bed where I was sitting and started to massage my temples.
“Oh, wow,” I mumbled. “That feels amazing.”
“I thought it might,” she said, fingers strong on my scalp. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stanley wander by in the hallway, and he paused for a second before going into his room. I couldn’t see his facial expression, but I could just imagine the impish grin he might have been wearing.
After a few minutes of massage, my head felt quite a bit better, and Abbie grinned brightly at me. “Well, since you’re going to be jumping town momentarily, I thought I’d take you to dinner tonight. My treat.”
“What a strange relationship, where the woman pays for the man.”
“You’ll get over it, I’m sure. Especially when you see where we’re going.”
I took Abbie’s outstretched hand. “Lead on, madam.”
Twenty minutes later, we were seated in a corner booth at Texas Land and Cattle, the name of which had me giddy even before I’d seen a menu. “You know me far too well,” I told Abbie. “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, followed by a left onto Steak Street.”
“You’re too funny.”
I was going to say something else, but what popped into my head was all the insecurities I’d been thinking about a few days ago. I paused, mouth half-open, changing gears in my mind.
“What?” asked Abbie, still smiling, amused at my mental hiccup.
“I want to be honest with you,” I told her. “It sounds incredibly dumb, but I feel like I have to say it.”
“Try me.”
And I did, I told her about all my fears and insecurities, about feeling like I wasn’t good enough. “And…this is the really dumb part, by the way, but I’m really afraid that once you get to know me, you’ll find out that I’m not all you hoped I’d be, and that you’ll just decide you don’t want anything to do with me.”
Her eyes were huge, and I think she was amazed at what I’d said. “Anyway,” I added, “I know what I need to do about it. Danny told me some stuff about finding my value in God and reminding myself that my worth doesn’t come from what I do or how well I do it. But that’s hard to internalize, you know? I’ve heard the opposite since the day I was born. I thought you might want to know what’s going on inside my head.”
Abbie nodded. “Thanks, Eli. Wow. I’m really impressed with you.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
“Guys tend not to talk about their feelings much. At least, the guys I’ve known. Most of them seem content to pretend that they’ve got it all figured out. I think it’s really mature of you to be so transparent. Two weeks ago you would never have said anything like that.”
“Yeah, God’s been dragging me right along, it seems.” We were interrupted at that point by the waiter, coming to get our orders. When he had left again, I rested my chin on my hand. “It’s weird, you know, all the changes that have been happening in me lately. In a way, it feels like I’m a completely different person than I was before that night, but in a way, I feel more like myself than I ever did before.” I smirked. “That’s a terrible way to say it, I know, but I can’t put it into words any better.”
“No, I know what you mean,” agreed Abbie. “You’re kind of stuck in the middle. You’re becoming the person you were meant to be, but the person you used to be is throwing a temper tantrum.”
“Yeah, I think that’s it. That’s part of why I’m going home. I didn’t know it when I told my parents I was coming, but I think now that I have the chance to make things right with them. We haven’t had the best relationship; they had a way of making me feel like nothing I did was good enough for them, so there’s just not much there. And I want to see if we can patch that up.”
“Interesting.” Abbie looked up at the waiter, who had just slipped our drinks onto the table, then absently unwrapped her straw and sipped her lemonade.
“I do have a question for you,” I put in. “You talked earlier about your past, and how it took a long time for you to forgive yourself for the things you’d done. Are you totally over that or do you still think about it sometimes?”
“Oh, Eli you have no idea.” She took a long drink of lemonade, buying herself some time. “Every morning when I wake up and don’t like the way I look, the doubts are there again, and I have to tell them that I know they’re not true. I told you last time that I have to rest in what I know. I can’t go by my feelings, because they lie to me. I have to remind myself of the truth, that God has forgiven me and I am not that person anymore. Sounds like Danny told you the same thing in different words.”
“Yeah. It’s just so hard to actually do it.”
“You’re right about that.” Abbie’s green eyes searched mine, and she reached her hands across the table. “Be strong, Eli. I’m proud of you and who you’re becoming. Don’t ever lose sight of what God has for you.”
I took her hands, smiling gently at her. “Thank you, Abbie. You’ve been a great friend to me. You believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, and that has to count for something.”
“I think there’s more to come. And I’m really glad you’re willing to stick with me, too.”
“You’re a wonderful and beautiful woman, you know that.”
In the dim lighting of the restaurant, I’m fairly sure Abbie turned red.
Our steaks arrived and we spent the meal discussing less weighty things. A couple hours later, bellies full of cow and dinner rolls, we rolled back up to my apartment building. Abbie left her car idling at the curb and walked me to the front door. Brushing her hair back from her face, she smiled, a really beautiful and carefree smile. “If I don’t see you again before you leave, Eli, know that I’ll be praying for you. I’m eager to see what God’s going to do with you.”
“Thanks.”
We embraced, the warmth of our bodies chasing away winter’s chill, and Abbie walked slowly back toward her car. I watched her go, overwhelmed by gratitude that I had friends like her in my life. How had I ever lived without them? What kind of lonely, miserable existence had I been living for the last 23 years, before I finally came alive?
Upstairs in my room, I began packing for my trip. I’d be leaving in about thirty-six hours; the next day would be my last full day before going home. I still didn’t feel ready, didn’t know what I was going to say to my parents. I wanted more time to prepare, but I didn’t have time. The trip was on top of me, and I had to either do what I wanted to do or be weak and find some way to not go or not have the difficult conversation.
I remembered something at that point, a conversation Abbie and I had previously the night we went to Whataburger for dinner. Abbie had told me that God would bring situations into my life, tough situations, where I’d have a choice to make between the old me and the new me. Suddenly I understood what she’d meant.
And that made the decision to go through with it a whole lot easier.
New Heart Church Page 32