Broken: A story of hope and forgiveness

by Kevin Mark Smith

  Chapter 7

  A Peaceful Interlude

  According to some of his friends, Max Johnson was a victim of being too nice for his own good. He married his first wife, Monica, shortly after graduating high school, had three children with her, and slowly built up a nice little plumbing business in Stonelee, Kansas, over twenty or so years. One month after their youngest son graduated high school, Monica informed him that she had had enough, that she was tired of being married to a nice guy—she wanted adventure. He offered to sell the business so they could share her thirst for adventure together, but it wasn’t enough.

  Indeed, he slowly faced the truth: If she had been honest earlier and he would have been a little less naïve, the true meaning of her desire for freedom would have been crystal clear and would’ve saved both a lot of time. She didn’t want to be anywhere near Max, or Stonelee, for that matter. The kids were grown and she was no longer weighed down by her desire to do the best thing for them. Max, as far as Monica was concerned, was the ball and chain keeping her from being what she truly wanted to be, which she still couldn’t put a finger on. She was determined to live the rest of her life for herself, not others—even a husband and family that loved her dearly.

  After the divorce Max was a financial, emotional, and spiritual wasteland. Half of his plumbing business was mortgaged to pay the divorce settlement, and he had to move into a one-bedroom apartment for the first year or so afterwards just so he could accelerate the payments on the mortgage to keep from losing everything. Fortunately, the strength he needed to make it through wasn’t his own. Max’s true love had always been, at least as far back as he could remember, Jesus. In fact, the thing that buoyed him up the most during the torrential downpour and accompanying devastation of divorce was his unwavering desire to work for God’s glory in all he did, regardless of the voracity of the relentless storm. The suffering he went through reminded him of Job’s, and he was strangely honored that God considered him worthy of such suffering in His name.

  Then God led him to Stonelee Christian Fellowship—Monica sporadically attended his old church, and she was the last person he wanted to see on Sunday mornings. He started attending the Fellowship’s adult singles Bible study, and through it he met Jessie.

  The match was rather odd, he acknowledged. Jessie’s unusual circumstances—she had been a single mom for more than fifteen years following a rather wild youth—combined with Max’s relatively straight lifestyle prior to his divorce, made some skeptical that any resulting marriage would last. However, Max was first and foremost a child of God, and he knew that the Blood of the Lamb covered all sin, from the guilt he felt after a failed marriage to Jessie’s long forgotten, sin-filled past. For Max, it was love at first sight: love for Jessie, and love for her two boys, Robert and Nolan. It was the family he had missed since losing his first love, and Jessie felt the same, though it took her a little longer—two dates—to get to the same place he was from the get-go. So they married, became a family, and the pieces of his broken life, from the business troubles to his emotional and spiritual well-being, gloriously came back together. Max, after too many years, felt complete once again.

  On the Sunday morning before Pastor Rick’s memorable sermon, Max did what he always did, even before marrying Jessie. He rolled out of bed from his right side as he faced away from the headboard, without the aid of an alarm clock, at 7:00 A.M., stood up clad in pajama pants and a t-shirt, and thought with a big smile on his face, Another glorious day to worship God. Before he married Jessie and she joined him in his bedroom, he would say it aloud in affirmation of God’s grace. But the first couple of times he did so after marriage, it woke Jessie, so he modified his ritual to accommodate her desire to sleep until the last possible minute. Now his thoughts echoed the mantra.

  He walked into the master bathroom, washed his hands in the sink, splashed some water on his face to bring himself to wide-awake status, and dried his hands. He then walked into the kitchen to prepare for one of his most favorite Sunday morning rituals: coffee, quiet time with God, and a few guilty minutes reading the Sunday paper. It was one glorious hour of alone time when all in the household but him, he knew from experience, would remain fast asleep and out of his and God’s way.

  Max pulled out the filter holder of the coffee maker, poured coffee into the gold filter basket, filled the machine with water, and pushed the start button. He glanced out the window directly above the sink, smiled, and said, aloud this time, “What a beautiful day.”

  Continuing the ritual, Max walked around the breakfast bar and to the front door. Moments later he was picking up the paper from the edge of the driveway, barefoot, as a neighbor glanced in his direction.

  “Hey, Max,” called Mike McDonald, a middle-aged father of two teenage girls, as he pulled his push mower out of the garage of the house directly across the street from Max’s. “Looks like a good day for yard work.”

  Mike and most of the neighbors didn’t share Max’s faith. None went to church, though most had been raised in one. They usually went about their business each and every day without any so-called religious influences getting in the way. All were good, decent people; they just weren’t into “church.” And that was fine with Max. He would pray for them, and they would all enjoy the periodic block party together, as neighbors do.

  He looked up at a cloudless sky and sucked in a deep breath of the 75-degree air. “Yes, it is. I’ll be joining you in a few hours.”

  He turned around after picking up the paper and went back inside the house. He sat down at the breakfast table and opened the paper, scanning the headlines for whatever articles he might be interested in reading, which wasn’t very many. He finished his superficial “news” reading in a few minutes, stood up, and walked to the coffee pot, which had just announced to him that it had completed the brewing process through the tell-tale sign of a hollow puff and spurt as the water reservoir fully emptied. He poured a fresh cup of hazelnut, his favorite flavored blend, and sipped off the top. “Good stuff,” he said to himself.

  Max scanned the room for his favorite nonfiction title, leather bound. His Bible was sitting near the phone at the breakfast bar; it was almost always in a different place since Max read it daily—in the bathroom, at the table, in his recliner, even at his desk at the shop—so it never collected dust. He picked it up with one hand and held his coffee cup in the other. He walked to the living room recliner, the one Jesse called “Max’s throne.” He sat down, kicked out the footrest, and cracked open the Bible to the Book of Matthew, which was bookmarked with the Bible’s attached ribbon marker.

  Before he began reading, he prayed. “Dear Jesus,” he began with head bowed and eyes closed, “Please help me to understand your Word. Help me to see whatever message you want me to see. Help me to understand more deeply your purpose and plan for my life.”

  He paused for a moment then prayed about something that had been nagging his waking thoughts for more than a day, ever since his stepson, Robert, had left for Texas. “And please protect Robert on his journey. In your name, Amen.”