October Joy (Moments In Paradise 1)

by Melanie Wilber

  Sarah’s cries quieted slowly until she was completely silent.

  “Are you okay, Sarah?” Tabby asked.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  Grace felt like they should go now, and she pulled Tabby away. They left the room, but she heard about it later when her dad came downstairs after Sarah went to bed. James had left, but she and Tabby were still up.

  He told them he didn’t know a lot of the details, but several women had hurt Sarah deeply over the course of twenty-five years in three different churches. They had abused her emotionally with their critical comments, judgmental attitudes toward her as a pastor’s wife, and even turning Levi against her at times by going to him and getting things done their way after she had told them otherwise. Levi hadn’t known about it, and she never told him. She told him things women had said or done occasionally, but he always brushed it aside as part of the territory. He knew how to handle people like that and not let it affect him, but she didn’t.

  As the years had gone by, she had been less and less open with women and didn’t seek out friendships with them because she’d been taken advantage of too many times. But then she had been hurt in another way by women who told her she wasn’t social enough and doing enough to support the women in her church. If she did things, she got criticized for what she did, and if she didn’t, then she was criticized for that.

  “Did Mom feel that way?” Grace asked.

  “I think she did at times, but she always came to me about stuff like that, and I wouldn’t tolerate it. But sometimes it was bad enough for us to move on.”

  “Is that happening to her now, at her church in Minnesota?”

  “Yes. And it’s been happening with her daughter recently too.”

  “Is there anything we can do?”

  “I think there’s one thing,” he said with a smile.

  “What?”

  “Be happy for us. We’re engaged.”

  Grace was speechless. Tabby squealed and leapt off the couch to go sit on his lap.

  “Please, Grace?” he said.

  She smiled and went to hug him as well. “I’m happy for you,” she said, truly meaning that even if she was shocked by the news. “I’m happy for us. And I’m happy for Sarah. I know she’ll be all right with you.”

  Dad had them pray for Sarah together, and Grace prayed later when she was alone in her bed. She understood how Sarah felt. As a pastor’s daughter, people had sometimes put expectations on her to be doing more than she did. That had happened during her high school years. One of the youth leaders had badgered her about not being at every youth event, not bringing more friends, and not going street-witnessing with them on Saturdays. She wasn’t comfortable doing that, and she didn’t have a lot of friends to invite. Most of her friends were her church friends, and he criticized her for that too. She had never thought of it before, but she wondered if that’s why she had been reluctant to date James.

  She hadn’t experienced that here, she realized. She hadn’t been a part of the church much until after her mom died because she was away at college, but during the last five years she felt welcome and had the support she needed. She hoped Sarah would find that to be true for her too.

  In the morning she did something James had arranged before he left the house last night. Yesterday on the beach they’d had an honest conversation about their strengths and weaknesses as individuals and how they could support one another in those areas. They both admitted they had a difficult time being consistent with daily Bible-reading and personal prayer. They both studied the Bible and knew it pretty well, and they were good about praying for others; But spending time alone with God, listening to Him, and praying in a personal way: they both needed to work on that.

  They had agreed to start meeting at the coffee place close to her school before she needed to be at work to share with each other what they had gotten out of that personal time the day before--whenever they chose to do it. She could see God’s hand in leading them to begin meeting this morning because before she’d gone to sleep last night, she had done her reading with Sarah’s years of pain on her mind.

  She didn’t tell James anything specific about Sarah, but she gave him the basic idea and then shared how she had been hurt in a similar way as a pastor’s daughter.

  “I think that’s why I was reluctant to go out with you. I never thought about it before, but my youth leader in high school probably damaged my relationship with God more than he did to nurture it, and then I didn’t have another youth pastor or have any direct contact with one until you came along, and you’re so sold-out for Jesus, I thought you would be the same way.”

  “Please tell me I’m not.”

  “You’re not,” she assured him. “But I didn’t get close enough until last week to see that.”

  “Is that why you haven’t wanted to work with the youth group, or is that not your thing?”

  “I think that’s why.”

  “Would you like to?” he asked. “I could really use another female leader.”

  “Okay.”

  He smiled. “If you don’t like it and want to stop, just say so, all right?”

  “I will.”

  He leaned over and kissed her. “I think you’ll be great at it. I wanted to ask you to join the team many times, but I was afraid you would question my motives.”

  She laughed. “And would your motives have been right, Pastor James?”

  “Well, mostly.”

  ***

  The peacefulness of the quiet house surrounded Sarah as she sat down in the front room on Monday morning to read her Bible and listen to God. Opening her journal to a blank page, she put the date at the top and then wrote:

  Andrew asked me to marry him last night, and I said yes! I am so happy, and I can’t wait to be his wife.

  She felt the same as when Levi had proposed to her, and yet different. With Levi it had been more about moving on to the next phase of life. Go to college, graduate, get married, have children. Those had been her goals and dreams, and everything had happened just like she hoped it would.

  With Andrew she had similar feelings and the desire to marry him, but there was the added factor she hadn’t planned on this. She hadn’t known if she wanted to get married again, let alone so soon after Levi passed away. And she certainly had never imagined getting engaged to a man she had known for a week.

  Reflecting on her thoughts and emotions, she felt God leading her to turn to some verses in First Corinthians on love, and she read the familiar words in Chapter 13. Reviewing the qualities of love carefully and writing them in her journal, she knew Andrew was showing her that kind of love in every way. And she knew Levi had done the same. But there was something different about Andrew’s love she couldn’t put her finger on. She felt the question forming in her mind and she wrote it out.

  What is it, Jesus? How does Andrew love me differently?

  She read it all again, and this time one verse stood out to her. Verse 10 said: but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

  He loves you like I do, Sarah. Perfectly. Completely. With grace and passion, gently and like a whirlwind: to rescue, protect, provide, and heal.

  Sarah had been loved much in her life. She’d had a good childhood and knew her parents loved her. She had her older brother and friends who were good to her, and in her adult years she had Levi. She had been loved well by all of them. But she realized she had equated God’s love for her with their love. Solid, consistent love. Love that was sufficient. She had no complaints about those who had indeed loved her.

  But Andrew went beyond that. His love was so protective she could wrap herself up in it and feel completely safe. His love was so consuming, she couldn’t escape its reality and try to hold him off for a month or two. Wherever she turned, it was there. He had loved and lost, and yet he was willing to love again. His love was beyond himself--supernatural. Passionate yet controlled. Like wildfire and a gentle breeze. Like God’s. A love that would
give up everything for her. A love that had pursued her until she had no strength left to run from it. A love she needed more than life itself. A love that could heal her weary soul, soothe her open wounds, and bring her more joy than anything else in her whole life.

  She had been grasping at God’s love for so long, knowing she wanted more but she didn’t deserve it. She hadn’t served Him well enough. He wouldn’t say to her, ‘Well done, My good and faithful servant;’ He would say, ‘Nice try. I’ll give you an E for effort but not excellence.’

  But He was teaching her to think differently. He didn’t want anything from her. He wanted to love her, and He wanted her to receive that love. Period. Just like Andrew.

  She didn’t have to serve Him for years to earn it. One week was all He needed to completely transform her heart and reveal His perfect love for her. Love that took something so vital and precious from her, only to replace it with what she didn’t know was missing.

  Going back to the verse about perfection, she thought of another verse Levi used to quote all the time. She turned to it in Matthew and wrote it in her journal, and she was still thinking on it when Andrew arrived. He was earlier than he said he would be, and she smiled.

  “You’re early,” she said.

  “I know. I couldn’t stay away.”

  He sat down beside her and gave her a gentle kiss. “How are you today?”

  “Better.”

  “Do you still want to marry me?”

  “Yes.”

  He kissed her again, more passionately this time, and in light of what she had been thinking about, his touch took her beyond the physical realm into a spiritual one. Andrew wasn’t just kissing her. He was showing his love in a tangible way. And receiving his love drew her more deeply into God’s love because that’s where his love came from.

  “I’ll let you finish with this,” he said. “I have a couple of things to do here, and then we can go to lunch.”

  “Can I ask you something first?”

  “Yes.”

  She showed him the verse in Matthew she had been thinking about. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” she read. “Levi loved to quote this verse to his congregation, and to me, and he would say, ‘He demands perfection from us.’ And I always felt about an inch high when he would say that. How can God expect us to be perfect? We’re not!”

  Andrew looked at the verse for himself and seemed to ponder it, then went back and read the verses that came beforehand out loud, and they were talking about loving people who are difficult to love.

  “He’s not talking about our actions, Sarah. He’s talking about our hearts. He wants us to have perfect hearts that love beyond ourselves.”

  “But how can we do that? How can I love people who have hurt me so much?”

  “When you loved Levi, you were returning the love he had for you. But to love someone who doesn’t love you, that love has to come from somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  He smiled. “From God’s love for you. His unconditional, complete, and perfect love for you. When you believe it--not just the idea of it, but really take it in and live and breathe it--then you will have His heart and you will love more deeply than you’ve ever loved before. He doesn’t want perfection from you, He wants perfection for you. He wants to give you a perfect heart, just like His.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  After Andrew left her side, Sarah thought about the people in her life she found difficult to love, and she wrote their names in her journal. Most of them were women at her church in Minneapolis, but she also wrote the names of some she had known from other churches and kept in contact with. Her relationships with them were different now and basically good, but at times old wounds would surface and she would put off writing or calling them.

  She also wrote her daughter’s name. In recent years she and Faye had gone back and forth in their relationship. It had never been awful, but Faye had said some hurtful things to her at times, and she had either responded in anger or remained silent, but some of the joy of their relationship was lost. And since Levi had been gone, that seemed to have escalated. Faye’s outburst about her flying off to California with Andrew had only been the most recent thing, and she felt very reluctant about calling her to tell her they were engaged.

  She decided this list would be a gauge for her to determine how much she was allowing God’s love to saturate her heart. Her lack of love for them wasn’t about them, it was about a void in her own heart. A void that could be filled by God’s love for her if she would allow it to be. She shared that with Andrew on the way to their lunch destination, and he said, “Can I use that in my message this week? Not about you specifically, but about making a list and using it like a gauge?”

  “Are you serious?” she asked.

  “That verse you shared would go perfectly with the message I was thinking of for Sunday. This week’s definitely has to be about love if I’m going to work our engagement into it.”

  She laughed and knew he was serious. She didn’t tell Andrew so, but she couldn’t recall a single time Levi had used something she said and worked it into one of his messages. He never discussed his messages with her before or after they were given. He was the Bible scholar. It was his work, not anything to do with her or their personal life.

  Andrew took her to a nice place for lunch. It wasn’t fancy, just quaint with a beautiful view of the water. After they ordered, Andrew had two things to tell her. He knew he wanted to take his wedding ring off sometime this week, but he wanted to take some personal time to do so in a special way, not just pull it off and stick it in a drawer or something, and she was fine with that. Removing hers would always hold special meaning for her, and she wanted the same to be true for him.

  “And I’d like to take you shopping this afternoon,” he said. “Would that be all right?”

  “Sure,” she said, not getting what he was saying. “For what?”

  He smiled. “For an engagement ring.”

  “Oh.” She laughed. “I guess I will be needing one of those.”

  “I told Grace and Tabby last night.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. They were concerned about you, and I told them some of what you told me. I hope that was all right. I think it’s good for them to know because both of them are probably going to end up being pastor’s wives too.”

  “Does Ryan want to be a pastor?”

  “He doesn’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where God leads him. He has the heart for it, and so does Tabby.”

  “What did they think? Your girls, I mean.”

  “They’re happy for us.”

  She didn’t say anything, but he read her thoughts.

  “They really like you, Sarah. And they don’t think you’re a mess. Don’t forget they lost their mother at tender ages. They understand.”

  “And they love you, Andrew. I know they like seeing you happy.”

  “Don’t feel like you have to do anything to gain their love,” he said, reaching for her hand. “Just loving me is enough. All you have to be is you.”

  “I’m good at being me with you,” she said and laughed. She had cried so much with him, it was a wonder he didn’t carry a box of tissue everywhere they went. “Maybe too good.”

  “No such thing, sweetheart. I want you. All of you.”

  Andrew seemed to have all the time in the world, and they didn’t hurry through their lunch. He asked if she planned to tell her children about the engagement anytime soon, and she said what she had been thinking.

  “I think I’d like to wait a few days--give them a chance to accept the fact I’m here before I lay another huge piece of news on them.”

  He seemed to understand and asked her something else she had thought about but had no real answer for. “And when exactly would you like to have the wedding?”

  “I knew you were going to ask me that.”

  “Do you have an answer?”

&nbs
p; “No.”

  “Me neither,” he said. “We can take our time. No need to rush into anything.”

  They both laughed, and Sarah knew it wouldn’t be too far away. She wanted to have a few weeks with him here before she went back to Minneapolis to take care of some things, and then after she returned she couldn’t imagine waiting too long. But she wasn’t speculating at this point. For today they were engaged, and she knew it was right. Tomorrow would be another day.

  She took her time looking for a ring that afternoon, and Andrew didn’t rush her. She actually selected one she really liked at the first place, but he said they had all afternoon, so she agreed to keep looking. There were several she liked, but her mind kept returning to the first one, and they eventually went back, and she tried it on again.

  “I want this one,” she said. “I feel like it’s meant to be mine.”

  “Then yours it shall be,” he said, giving her a kiss right there in front of the saleslady.

  While Andrew was paying for the ring, Sarah looked at some of the men’s wedding bands and wondered what she would select for Andrew, or if she would have him select one for himself. The one Annika had given him was very simple, and it suited him. She couldn’t imagine him wearing anything too fancy, but something a little different would be nice, she thought.

  When they got back to the house she asked Andrew if they could go for a walk so she could get used to the streets around here without getting herself lost. While they were walking, his phone rang, and she could tell by his end of the conversation there was something at church that needed his attention. They didn’t have to hurry back to the house, but when they got there, he said he would go attend to the problem and return as soon as he could. She couldn’t complain. He had spent almost the entire day with her, but he seemed apologetic anyway.

  “It’s fine, Andrew. I know this is what you do. I want to share in your life, not interrupt it.”