More Than This: Contemporary Christian Romance Novel

by Stallings, Staci

  Finally he breathed out a sarcastic breath. “Fine.” Standing up on his own, he walked across the room and shook his head. “You know this is embarrassing, right?”

  “I don’t know.” Liz shrugged and sat back to watch, really admiring the view. “I kind of look forward to it every night.”

  “That is so wrong.” He shook his head at her. “You’re being cruel.”

  “Honest. It’s called being honest.” She sat up and clapped her hands. “Now, chop-chop. Get to it.”

  Jake really did hate this one. First off, it was hard. Coordination was not his strong suit. Worse, it was awkward. It involved turning his feet out with his heels together and then in. Out. In. Out. In. It was crazy how much concentration it took just to do that. Then he had to walk forward and backward five steps with his toes out. Who came up with this anyway?

  Throughout that process, he scowled at her watching him. “Having fun yet?”

  “You just look so cute like that.”

  “Ha. Ha. You think it’s so cute, you get up here and do it with me.” He didn’t think she would take him up on the offer, but she sprang up and came to stand next to him.

  “Oh, come on. It really can’t be that hard.”

  “Oh, yeah?” This one was harder. Instead of toes going out, he had to make his heels go out while his toes stayed together. Out. In. Out. In. It wasn’t fair that she looked so very much more coordinated doing that. “Okay, now we walk.”

  Forward toes together, he felt like a loose, klutzy duck.

  “See, it’s not so bad,” she said, putting her hands under her arms and bobbing her head like a chicken.

  Jake had to admit she looked awfully cute doing that. However, he knew he still looked like a geek. “Very nice. I had no idea you were so talented!”

  She straightened and swatted at him. “Now who’s being cruel?”

  “Cruel? That was a compliment.”

  “Don’t even try that. Meanie!”

  “Hey! Hello! Boyfriend abuse. Boyfriend abuse!”

  “Boyfriend?” she asked in horror. “Hey, buster! This ring on my finger says you’re a lot more than that.”

  “Sorry.” He smirked at her. “Fiancé abuse!”

  She nodded. “That’s better.”

  On Sunday, Jake picked her up, and they walked to church in the light snow. December in New York. Nothing could be prettier.

  “So I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said, and he could tell she didn’t want to. “What’re you doing for Christmas?”

  His glance over at her took in the burgundy stretch cap dotted with snowflakes. It wasn’t cold per se, but it was cold enough to preclude holding hands. “I don’t know, the pigeon walk?”

  She smiled and then it fell again. “I’ve been kind of thinking. I mean, we haven’t gone to tell my parents yet...”

  Jake breathed down the panic. Christmas. Parents. Engaged. Yeah. No pressure there.

  “I don’t want to freak you out,” she said softly.

  “I’m not freaking out.” But he had to breathe to get the words out. Finally he took a flying leap off the cliff of it’s going to happen sooner or later, might as well get it over with and be happy about it. “It sounds like fun. When are we going?”

  Liz could hardly believe he took the parents-at-Christmastime news so easily. She had been trying to figure out how to ask him for a week, and now it was over and they were going. Home. Together. In five days.

  At the church door, he held it for her and she stepped through. He was like that— kind, such a gentleman. It was one of the first things she had liked about him so long ago. Amazing how much they had been through together. It felt like he had been in her life forever, and yet, she could clearly remember him not being there as well. How glad she was she had left that coffeepot on his table.

  “Liz!” Traci said, greeting them as she turned at the back of the church.

  “Hi.” Liz hugged her old friend, and when she stepped back, she realized Jake was right there, shadowing her. Traci’s gaze slid over to him and then all the way up and down the length of him. With a breath and a smile, Liz stepped back into his waiting embrace.

  Traci tilted her head as if asking a question. “We haven’t seen you at youth group in a while.”

  Liz couldn’t help herself as her smile brightened. “Yeah. I don’t think I’ll be coming anymore.”

  That’s when Traci caught sight of the ring on Liz’s finger, and her mouth dropped open. “Are you...?”

  By now Liz was beaming. “Yes. Traci, this is Jake McCoy, my fiancé.”

  “Your...? Oh. My. Wow! I had no idea you were that serious.”

  “It was all kind of sudden, but we’re really happy.”

  Traci perused them together. “I can see that. Well, I’ll be sure to tell everyone. Do we know when the wedding will be?”

  “Probably sometime in the summer.”

  The organ blared through the conversation, and all three of them looked that way.

  “We’d better get in,” Traci said, but she waited one second to hug Liz again. “I’m so happy for you, and he is hot.”

  Liz barely caught the laugh.

  Jake loved seeing Liz so happy. It made his heart feel lighter that she looked excited about their coupledom with her friend. He hadn’t met a lot of her friends. Mostly just Mia. And he had wondered about that. Now, as he sat down, he wondered a little more. His thoughts snaked back to before he knew her, to who she was when she’d first come to college. Liz a party girl. He still couldn’t see it. Not really.

  She sat down next to him and snuggled close into his arm, so close he finally just put it around her because she was pinning it to his side. His heart lifted more when she burrowed in next to him and took his free hand in one of hers and ran the other down his thigh. Yes, she definitely seemed happier.

  The first few readings went by like a quiet wind. Jake didn’t really hear them, more felt them go by. He liked the words— hope, peace, light. Strange how, without even concentrating on what it all meant, they made him feel so good about everything. When they finally sat for the sermon, he didn’t bother to give her time to snuggle. Instead, he simply wrapped his arm around her as if it was meant to be nowhere else. Crazy how very right that felt even sitting in the middle of a church.

  “Have you ever,” the preacher started, “said to yourself, ‘There must be more than this’?”

  Jake shifted and tilted his head. This preacher had a way of making him feel as if he’d been watched all week.

  “More than what I’m seeing right now, more than what I’m living, more than this life I’m struggling through that seems so insignificant?” The preacher paused, gathering the attention of every person in the pews. “We think about John the Baptist today, out in the wilderness, crying out, trying to make people understand it was time to prepare the way for the Savior of the world to enter. Do you think he ever got frustrated— John the Baptist? Out there eating locusts and honey? Wearing animal skins in the hot and the dry and the lonely? Do you think he ever wanted to chuck it all and say, ‘Seriously. There’s got to be more than this.’”

  There were a few soft laughs.

  “And when that baby was born in that stable with those animals around. Do you think for one, little tiny moment Mary looked around and said, ‘There must be more than this. Something I’m not seeing, something I’m not getting here. God, we’re in a stable. This is not how I pictured this moment’? See, sometimes in our limited human perspective, as we perceive our situations, we can’t see how this is benefiting anyone, how this moment fits into a larger plan, a greater scheme— into eternity if you will. Maybe you’re a mom with small children and your whole day is consumed by strained carrots and messy diapers. Or maybe you’re a businessman, stuck all day in an office looking at numbers and more numbers that will still be there next year if you’re employed that long.

  “Or maybe you’re going through something really difficult— a divorce, an illness, the loss of
a loved one, and you look around and you think, ‘There’s just got to be more than this.’ Why? Why do we feel that way? What is it inside of us that knows this isn’t the whole story? That little spark of Heaven that John the Baptist believed in so that he was willing to live his life in the desert, preaching to anyone who would come and listen about Someone no one even knew existed. It’s that tiny thread of hope that became human in that manger Who calls to us to believe in something more than just what our mortal eyes can see.”

  Funny, how the light seemed to soften and then brighten in the room. It wrapped around Jake like a warm, soft blanket, and he knew he was exactly where he’d always been meant to be.

  “It’s that hope, that knowing that pulls us forward and calls to us to find Heaven in the midst of whatever we’re going through.” At the podium the preacher shifted and paused. “You know, for a long time I didn’t tell anybody this, but I think today is as good a day as any. You see, I wasn’t always a preacher. I didn’t always have these nice suits and a theology diploma on my wall. For a long, long time I was a common street thug, existing, surviving— if you could call it that.

  “I kept telling myself as I’d lay in bed at night, hoping and praying the drive-bys wouldn’t happen in our neighborhood that night. ‘There must be more than this.’ I watched friends die, good friends, gunned down for dissing someone in the parking lot three days ago.” He stopped again and took a long breath. “And for a long time after the good Lord got me out of that mess, I promised myself that nobody would ever know what I came from, that nobody could ever find out because if they knew, they would never accept me preaching about God’s grace and mercy. But you see, I’ve come to understand something. When hope is all you have to hold on to, these words aren’t just words anymore. They become real.

  “They become the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things you cannot even see right now. It’s because I was on those streets that I can tell kids now, that that ain’t no way to live. It’s because of what I’ve seen... of what I’ve done... that I know to the depths of my being that there is more than this. There is more to this life than what we can see right now. And God will lead you out of the misery you are in and into the Promised Land if you will let Him. If you will give the whole situation over to Him and believe more in the hope of Him than in what your mortal eyes are telling you. And I’ll tell you this too— whatever your situation, wherever you are right now is a piece in a greater plan that you can’t even see.

  “You can take those hurts, those things you are too ashamed to let anyone even know about and use them with God’s help, to lift others up and say, ‘Dude, I’ve been there. I know what it’s like, but the Good News is... there is hope. This is not all there is. Come with me. I’ll show you the Good News that I have found lying in a little manger, and His Name is Jesus Christ.”

  The journey back to her apartment had been a quiet one. They walked together but as if existing in their own separate worlds. Liz wondered what he was thinking about. She knew her own thoughts on the preacher’s words— how hope had battled in her heart with the darkness that had consumed her spirit in an inky blackness for so long. Her hope had come, draped in black, sitting in the back corner, surely praying that everyone would just leave him alone. It was, even now, a most remarkable thing because frankly, she had thought prior to his arrival that God really could never have forgiven her for her sordid past. Now it felt like maybe forgiveness wasn’t just some word in a book. Still, her heart wouldn’t let go of the guilt. If she had just been smarter with her choices back then, maybe...

  “You’re awful quiet,” Jake said, his head down, his gaze anchored to his feet sliding along the cold sidewalk.

  “I just keep thinking about what he said about this not being all there is. About there being more than this.”

  He nodded but never really looked up.

  “If that’s true, why does it feel like nothing ever changes? I mean, I keep thinking when this semester’s over or when I get that project done, then I’m going to feel different. But I never do. I just don’t know how you get past... life.”

  Jake nodded again but said nothing for a long minute. “I talked to Arnold again the other day— the guy with the son.”

  It was Liz’s turn to nod.

  His gaze drifted her direction. “I just keep thinking about what the pastor said about being able to tell kids that kind of life doesn’t work. Then I think about telling Arnold about me, about what I’ve been through, what I’m going through, and something in me just cringes like what if he laughs in my face.”

  The sincerity in his voice touched a chord deep in her. “I think it took a lot of courage for the pastor to admit that to everyone today, about his past, about everything.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know if I’d have that much courage.”

  They spent the rest of Sunday eating, doing eye therapy, and just talking about life— where they saw themselves in ten years, plans, dreams, and even life together. As strange as it seemed, somehow for Liz, life had become almost bearable. Almost.

  After he left Sunday evening, she cleaned the apartment and went to her room. The heaviness of her spirit dragged behind her like a sack of rotten, smelly potatoes. She hated this guilt, hated feeling like forgiving herself would be a greater betrayal of her child than even the abortion had been. How does one forgive and forget something like that? How do you go on when you’ve done the worst conceivable thing and you can’t go back and fix it?

  She had no answers to that. Nor did she have any better ones when she awoke the next morning. It wasn’t anger now, it was just a pervasive sadness that had overtaken her spirit. She got up and dressed as if in slow motion. When she sat at the little vanity in her room and picked up the hairbrush, her gaze snagged on itself in the mirror, and tears flooded into her eyes. Pain welled up in her chest, and she crushed her lips together to stop the torrent of tears. “God, how... how could I do that? How...?”

  An hour later Liz had dressed and was outside walking. With finals over and not having to be at the Literacy Center until the afternoon, she really didn’t know where she was going. The swirls of the feather-dusting of snow they had received the night before hardly registered. Neither did the crowds of fellow New Yorkers streaming past in either direction. They were all going somewhere, all in a hurry. Getting ready for Christmas in just a few days. Christmas, normally such a joyous time. So why did she feel so incredibly heavy?

  She felt like she couldn’t hurry if she tried. Somehow she had always known if she let herself slow down, this is exactly what would happen— too much time to think, too much time to feel. It was dangerous for someone like her. Her steps carried her past the street where she would turn to go to The Grind and the theatre. Mia was surely home and asleep, Liz couldn’t call her though it would be nice to have someone to talk with.

  The thought brought her gaze up and through the throng of morning travelers, right to the street sign. She saw it, and in that moment, she suddenly knew where she was going.

  Ten-thirty morning break was the first chance Jake had, and he wasn’t going to waste this one on self-pity and the false sense of pride that had kept him chained to silence before. “Arnold!” he called, half-sprinting up to the older man who turned from those he was following to the break room. “Hey.”

  Arnold looked at him with concern but said nothing.

  Jake took half a breath to settle his nerves and another half of one for a quick prayer for the right words. “Listen, I was thinking about what we were talking about the other day, about the eye thing, and I know they are looking for people of all ages for this study. I was wondering if...” Boy, this was hard. Harder even than he had thought it would be. The thoughts of Arnold laughing outright at him in front of everyone spiked through his mind and shut down his ability to speak. His gaze darted around, measuring who might overhear them. No. No! I’m not going to chicken out. I’m doing this whether they laugh or not. His gaze came back and landed square
ly on his co-worker. “I’m sorry, what’s your son’s name again?”

  Cornered and panicked. That’s exactly how Arnold looked. “Kasen.”

  “Kasen.” Jake nodded, feeling an instant connection with this boy he had never met. He turned them both for the break room. “And he’s in what grade?”

  “Seventh.”

  That dug a knife right into Jake’s heart. Some weird part of him wanted to hug the kid and tell him that he completely understood. “And he’s having trouble in school?”

  “Yeah. Probably not going to make it through this year. He’s already flunking like three classes or something.”

  A report card he hadn’t even remembered flashed onto the screen of his mind, and Jake had to drag in a long breath to blot out the yelling and the crying that had resulted from that one little piece of paper. “Well, I was going to say, I’m going over tonight to pick up my girlfriend. She works at the Literacy Center. I could get some information for you, find out if they have some other spots for Kasen, if you want.”

  For one second Jake knew exactly what hope looked like because in that moment it was suddenly staring back at him through the sad, tired eyes of a man he had never thought could register much more than burly harsh words. “You would do that?”

  This smile was the easiest he’d ever felt. “Absolutely.”

  “I’m sorry, Pastor,” Liz said to the man who was no more than five-years her elder. “I don’t have an appointment.”

  “That’s all right.” He had been standing at the front reception desk, talking with the secretary when she walked in. It almost seemed like he’d been there waiting for her arrival. But she knew he hadn’t, and suddenly she felt very silly for having come. What could he say? There was nothing he could do to make any of this better. Her past was hers to carry. What could he possibly do to help? “Please,” he continued, “just come through this door over here, and we can go back to my office.”