Hope Returns

by Dorey Whittaker

  Recalling the afternoon the conversation about dating came up, Lisa remembered how uncomfortable Ben had been as he explained, “I’ve been on dates, just nothing serious. You can’t be a widower in this town without everyone trying to set you up with some friend of theirs. It’s not that I want to live the rest of my life alone, but right now I need to focus on my son. Watching his mother waste away was really hard on him. I didn’t think it would be good for him to have me drag women in and out of his life just so I would not be lonely. He is going to be a senior this year and then off to college. I’ve waited this long, another year won’t kill me.”

  Opening the bedroom door, Lisa thought about Ben’s determination to “wait until his son went off to college,” and how he’d said, “another year won’t kill me.” Lisa knew she and Ben needed to have a long talk and soon. It was more than a week before that conversation took place and neither of them liked its conclusion. Even though they were not officially dating, the gossipers in town were frantically flapping their tongues. As a result, several of the guys on Benny’s football team had taken it upon themselves to keep him informed of everything being said about the newest couple in town.

  One night after dinner, Ben opened their conversation with, “It’s hard living in a small town sometimes. I know these boys like Benny, but that isn’t stopping them from being cruel to him. Actually, I think the real reason they are being so cruel is because they really are jealous. The three boys that are giving Benny the most trouble have absentee fathers. One is a doctor who is never home. Another has gone through two wives and is currently pursuing his third target, while the third one has had two DUIs and couldn’t care less what happens to his son.

  “Throughout high school Benny had been the guy they all liked and admired. When these three guys were busy complaining about how stupid or selfish their fathers were, Benny would stay quiet. I tried to never miss a game. After a game, if their dads were not able to make it, Benny and I would invite them out for burgers. But now, these same boys are the ones making life unbearable for him.”

  “It’s because of me, isn’t it?” Lisa said as calmly as possible. “Ben, remember when you told me you didn’t want to drag women in and out of Benny’s life? You said waiting another year wouldn’t kill you, remember?”

  “Well, that was before I fell in love with you. Now it would kill me to wait another year, believe me on that one.”

  “Ben, we have to think of Benny right now. This is his senior year and then he will be off to college and we can start our life then. I don’t like this anymore than you do, but we can’t make our happiness Benny’s burden, can we?”

  “But, Lisa, just putting off getting married won’t make this go away. I am not willing to stop seeing you, not talk to you, pretend we don’t care for each other for a whole year because of three selfish boys who don’t know any better.”

  “Ben, we have been talking about getting married at Christmas, right? That way my sister and the whole family would be together. We are just talking about six more months. We can be patient, can’t we?”

  “Lisa, that is not the issue. I can wait another six months. I’m not a foolish teenager who lives only for today. We are talking about what it will cost us to make the gossip die down. That, I am not willing to do.”

  Lisa was almost afraid to ask her next question. “Well then, Ben, what is Benny willing to endure? How does he feel about all of this?”

  Hanging his head, his shoulders heaving as he took a deep breath, “Benny wants us to cut it off.” Turning his face toward Lisa, he clarified. “Benny likes you, Lisa. He really does. He is a seventeen-year-old who can’t see past tomorrow, and tomorrow seems unbearable to him.”

  With more calmness than she was feeling, Lisa responded, “Well, I guess we either make ourselves happy and Benny miserable, Benny happy and us miserable, or we find a way to help Benny come to terms with the fact that not everyone in this world is going to play fair so we need to find a way to help him deal with these people in a way that we can all live with.”

  “It’s not fair, Lisa. You and I have both been waiting for years to fall in love. No one has the right to determine our future.”

  Taking hold of his hand, Lisa almost whispered, “We won’t have a future if we don’t handle this right. Benny is hurting and we need to help him deal with this so we don’t have to look back someday and know that we were selfish. We can give Benny some time and the help he needs so he doesn’t have to ever look back and regret how he handled this as well. Benny knows how much you have sacrificed for him, and he knows how much you love me. If we just cut it off because he wanted you to, he will always know it was because that was the easy way out for him. That truth will never sit well with him, once he grows up and is out on his own.”

  “When did you get so smart about teenage boys?”

  “I’m not so smart,” quipped Lisa. “You notice I didn’t tell you how we’d help Benny. I don’t know how we will go about this, but I know where we might start.”

  Ben responded, “Prayer, right? But I seldom do that in front of anyone. Years of church services, community service projects, hauling Benny’s youth group friends to every social on the calendar; those were easy. This is such a private act and I always feel so clumsy with words.”

  “Ben, first of all, I’m not just anyone. I’m the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with, remember? We need to start getting comfortable praying in front of each other. Besides, Ben, God doesn’t care about the words we use. He cares that we talk to Him. It took me two long years of listening to Gladys talk to God about me before I was willing to do it myself. I loved to hear her pray for me, even when I protested its value. I know it does work, especially when you don’t have a clue about what to do next.”

  Taking Lisa’s hand in his big mitt, Ben reticently said, “Well, that about sums up our situation because I don’t have a clue what to do next.” Lifting Lisa up off the sofa, Ben timidly suggested, “So, before we talk to Benny, let’s talk to God together.”

  Chapter 5

  The first thing Lisa noticed upon entering Gladys’s kitchen that morning was the absence of the morning paper. For the past eight years she and Gladys had always read the paper while having breakfast. Ever since she came home from jail, the paper was often missing during breakfast. Lisa waited until Gladys was finished filling their coffee cups before asking, “So, Gladys, what is in today’s paper that you are trying to shield me from?”

  “You don’t need to start your day with all this poison,” Gladys cautioned. “You know the editor is out to get Gordon and he is using your trial and history to keep everyone in attack mode. What he doesn’t realize, or more to the point, what he doesn’t care about, is just how hard this is on you.”

  “Gladys, we can’t stop any of this. Gordon was hated by many people in this town well before my trial came about. None of these people care about the backwash to my life, let alone to the lives of those around me. They have a single-minded purpose—to drive Prosecutor Gordon out of office, out of politics, and out of our town. I am just the tool they can use right now.”

  “Well, we don’t have to let it spoil our breakfast, do we?” Gladys gently suggested.

  “No, but everyone I care about is reading these stories. I can’t pretend they don’t exist. Every day, after one of these planted stories, Ben’s son gets teased at school. He has been shoved into a locker, had his lunch tray flipped, called all kinds of names, and just yesterday, he was suspended from school for three days because he punched someone in the face when the guy called his dad a name that Ben would not tell me.” Buttering her toast so hard that it crumbled in her hand, Lisa added, “Benny is the one feeling the brunt of all this. He has lost most of his friends, he and his dad are not getting along, and now he can’t even play in this weekend’s football game because of the suspension.”

  Pouring them both a second cup of coffee, Gladys confessed, “I thought when we walked out of that courtroom wi
th a not guilty verdict that everything was finally behind us, but I guess I was being naïve. Things like this don’t just go away.” Then replacing the coffeepot on the counter, Gladys paused, “I’m worried about you, Lisa. It’s hard enough to take all this when it is just directed at yourself, but when it starts hurting those you care about it goes to a whole new level of emotion.”

  “Gladys, Ben doesn’t know what to do. Benny is angry about everything. He is questioning everything he has ever been taught. Ben told me the other night that Benny locked himself in his bedroom and tore up all the photos of his friends, busted up all three of the model airplanes the two of them had spent all last winter putting together before Ben got the door opened and stopped Benny’s tirade.” Looking toward Gladys with pleading eyes, Lisa declared, “And it is all because of me. None of this mess would have touched Ben or Benny if I had just followed my own counsel. I knew it was a bad idea to let Ben into my life. I knew it. I warned him about this. I should not have allowed Ben to get involved with me. He was happy. I was happy. Why couldn’t we have just kept things the way they were?”

  “Because neither one of you were truly happy until you found each other. If I had been given the privilege of designing the perfect man for you, I could not have done a better job than Ben. And regardless of what you think right now, you are perfect for him.”

  The phone began ringing so Lisa stood up to answer it and said, “I doubt that Ben is feeling that way right now. It is killing him to see Benny so angry.” On the other end of the phone, she heard, “Lisa, Benny took off last night and I don’t know where he went. He wouldn’t go to any of his friend’s homes because right now he has no friends.”

  “Ben, we will find him. Did he take his truck? Do you dare issue a BOLO on the truck without having to tell everyone you work with why you need one?”

  “Right now I don’t care who knows what. I just want to get my boy back home safe and sound.” Then remembering the boathouse up on the lake, Ben suggested, “I think I might know where he went. I’m going to call in a personal day and drive up to Lake Charles. Benny spent two weeks at the lake this summer and talked about how quiet it was up there. Maybe that is where he went. I’ll give you a call when I get back,” and without waiting for a response from Lisa, the line went dead.

  She just stood there for a moment staring at the receiver before putting it in the cradle. “Gladys, Benny has run off and Ben is out looking for him.” Returning to the breakfast table, Lisa dropped into her chair with a profound thud. “One week ago last night, Ben and I started asking God for wisdom. But right now I don’t feel very wise.”

  “Lisa, wisdom isn’t a gift that comes to us all at once. When you came to live with me I was terrified of your drug habit and criminal history. Boy, did I need wisdom. Every day was something new with you and I didn’t know what you needed from me. But, Lisa, I knew the One who did know, and that gave me comfort. I had never been around someone addicted to drugs. Lisa, your addiction really scared me and I felt totally unqualified. But because I wanted God to use me to help you, I kept asking Him to tell me what to do. God was telling me to just keep loving you and when I needed wisdom it would come.”

  Lisa slid over and laid her head on Gladys’s shoulder and began to cry, “Gladys, I’ve never been as strong as you. I can’t do this. I am so afraid of all these feelings I’m having. I just wish I’d never fallen in love with Ben. Love hurts. Caring hurts. And, being responsible for hurting others is the worst kind of hurt.”

  Brushing the tears away from Lisa’s cheek, Gladys said, “Lisa, you and Ben have asked for wisdom. How do you think that wisdom is going to come if there is no issue that needs greater wisdom than you have right now? When he finds Benny, and I am confident he will, he needs to have a truthful conversation with his son. He needs to listen to Benny and he needs to be honest about all of these adult issues. So, today, you and I will add Ben and Benny to our top of the hour prayer request list, right?”

  “Right,” Lisa responded without much enthusiasm.

  Gladys continued, “Wisdom is a precious virtue, not a commodity. Few people acquire it because it is costly. Wisdom is not just assimilated by reading books and gaining knowledge. It is never attained when we choose the safest and easiest path in life. Opening yourself up to loving another person is costly. Anything worth having is going to expose you to hurt. Don’t be so afraid of getting hurt that you close up your heart and walk away from love. Just ask God to give you enough wisdom to handle what comes today. Don’t worry about anything else, just today. Ask this for you, ask it for Ben, and ask it for Benny, just enough wisdom for today.”

  At work, Lisa replayed Gladys’s words from that morning over and over in her head. “Love exposes you to hurts. Love is costly. Accepting love into your life is choosing not to take the easy path.” With every pie placed on the cooling rack that day, Lisa had a conversation with God. “You know I’m a coward. You know I am weak. You know I don’t want to get hurt again, and I don’t want to hurt anyone else, ever. But God, I so want to grow into the person you want me to become. I don’t want to remain a coward all of my life. I do want to become strong, like Gladys, full of faith and wisdom. I do want it, God. Please give me the strength to not run from this. Please pour your wisdom into me.”

  It had been hours since Lisa heard from Ben. At three o’clock, after her top of the hour prayer, Lisa decided to call Ben’s home phone to see if he would answer. The wait was agonizing. The phone kept ringing and Lisa did not want to leave a message so she quickly hung up before it went over to the answering machine. It was almost ten-thirty before Ben’s call came. Lisa grabbed the phone, “Did you find Benny?”

  “Yes, he was at the boathouse. Benny and I sat on the dock for six hours today, just talking. We talked about everything. He talked a lot about his mother and how much he missed her and we did a lot of crying, my boy and me. At first I wanted to just shake him for scaring me that way, but as soon as I saw his face, I knew this wasn’t about me and my feelings. It was about my hurting boy and I needed to get him talking. So, I just walked up and sat next to him on the dock and waited. I didn’t ask any questions. I didn’t lecture him. I just quietly sat there asking God for wisdom and I waited. I had no idea what Benny was really struggling over. I thought it was all the teasing and getting suspended and out of the football game this week. I thought he didn’t want me to date you because he couldn’t get over your past and that he had bought into the town gossip that the shame of your past would become his. I thought…I thought. Lisa, I was all wrong. I wasn’t even close to having a clue what Benny’s real issue is.”

  Almost afraid to ask, Lisa ventured, “So, do you know now?”

  “Yup, I sure do. Did you know that wisdom comes when we shut our mouths and open our ears? Sitting on that dock praying my heart out, I kept getting this feeling like I needed to just shut up and listen, so that is what I did. At first, Benny talked all around the moon, but I just listened. He talked about how it felt being the brunt of everyone’s jokes and the laughing stock of the whole school. But, even as he was talking about that, somehow I knew it wasn’t the real issue. Oh, yeah, it is an issue, but not the real one.

  “The truth is that Benny is afraid of loving you. He is so confused. It has nothing to do with your past. He really doesn’t have an issue with that. He said if God can forgive Lisa, who am I to hold her past against her? I can’t tell you how that made me feel hearing that come from my boy. I started crying like a baby. Then, Benny started crying and we sat there and hugged for a long time. It felt so good to hold my boy.”

  “So, Ben, why is Benny afraid to love me?”

  “He feels like he is being disloyal to his mother by liking you so much. He said seeing me so happy with you makes him glad and sad at the same time. He said when he punched that kid in the face he was more mad at himself than the stupid kid. Wanting to defend your honor against anyone and everyone proved to him that he really does care about you and he didn’
t quite know what to do with those feelings, so, he punched the kid’s lights out and got into trouble for it.”

  To lighten the conversation, Ben let out one of his deep, resounding laughs and added, “We both laughed over that one, but I told Benny he couldn’t do that ever again. Hitting people is never the answer to a problem. But then again, I doubt that any kids at school will risk teasing him anymore.”

  Lisa asked, “Is Benny feeling better now that you two have talked?”

  “Yes, but he and I decided that we both could use some counseling. We need some help sorting out feelings, something guys are especially bad at. Benny needs to come to terms with his mother’s loss and learn how to not feel guilty having feelings for someone else, namely you, Lisa.”

  Remembering all the petitions she had offered that day for Ben, all the requests for wisdom, Lisa summed up the day with, “Ben, if wisdom is learning what you didn’t know, gaining understanding about something you didn’t understand, and not being too stubborn to ask others for help, I believe you and I gained a little bit of wisdom today, don’t you?”

  “Isn’t that what we have been asking for, Lisa? Even Benny and I prayed together out on the dock today. I was really uncomfortable at first. He knew that I prayed, just never in front of him. But today we’ve started afresh and we will keep praying together about all of this and we are going to get through it together, all three of us.”