Charlie Stains was coming back to work at the high school.
At last he would be able to teach his woodworking students how to complete their lodgepole pine chairs. In spite of the gorilla glue, the chairs that they’d started with a substitute had all collapsed inward within three days.
And maybe they would build another dock somewhere, if Mr. Stains could scout out another one that needed fixing.
Rumor had it that, if Mr. Stains built another dock, Miss P might be along to help. Some people, who had been at the services up at Big Tree Baptist last Sunday, said they’d seen her wearing a ring. Some people said she’d even gotten her fingernails done up because she knew everyone would see.
The kids in Shadrach High School didn’t know how they’d feel about that yet. They’d already started talking about how hard it was going to be, remembering to call her Mrs. S instead of Miss P. But who could say how difficult it would really be. Because the Lord had a way of working things out in Shadrach.
BRAD GRITTON had his entire class of video students on the front lawn when Lydia Porter and Charlie Stains came out together.
“Okay. Okay,” Brad said to his students, his voice raised. “Practice a zoom shot here. Nagle, you need to take the lens cap off or you’re not going to get anything. Cassie, I don’t think you’ve got your camera turned on.”
“What do we zoom in on?” Cassie asked.
“Anything you’d like. That goose flying up there. The flag blowing in the breeze on top of the flagpole. Anything. Just to get the feel of the video equipment.”
While his students began to pan the brick façade of the building, Brad stepped toward Lydia and Charlie.
“Hey,” he called, somewhat smugly. “I hear there’s good news to report about you two these days.”
“Do you?” Charlie asked.
“Yes. I do.”
But Lydia didn’t say a word to him. She just held out the hand with the diamond engagement ring on it, her eyes reflecting the same sparkle of gratitude that he could see in the stone.
“Congratulations,” Brad told her with a somber smile.
After one stretch of awkward silence, in which Charlie glared at Gritton as if he wasn’t sure whether he liked him being this friendly with his new fiancée, Lydia couldn’t help smiling.
“So Brad,” she asked. “How are you doing these days?”
“Okay,” Brad said. “But, just okay. Taylor’s dad came to pick him up yesterday. So the house is a little quiet right now. Takes some getting used to.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she meant it. She wished Brad the best in the world. “I hope that kid comes back to visit again soon.”
“He will, if I have anything to do with it.”
“Good.”
Brad turned to Charlie. “Say, I hear you applied for a grant to fund your English Lit project at Missouri a few years back. You didn’t get it, huh?”
Charlie shrugged his shoulders. “No. One of those tough things. I have a tough time wearing a tie and sitting still in a meeting. I don’t play coat-and-tie politics well. Never have. Never will, I guess.”
Brad turned back to Lydia. “So now you know. It really was college politics that made Charlie quit university life. It really was college politics that made him come home.”
She couldn’t resist grinning. They all laughed. “And I am so glad that he did.”
As Charlie and Lydia’s eyes locked, they forgot all about Brad Gritton standing there or the video class that was in session or the past that they had all struggled through.
The future held a lot of promise.
Charlie bent low and drew Lydia tightly against him. He lowered his lips to hers, claimed her with his kiss.
When he did, at least a dozen video cameras zoomed in.
And, all around the schoolyard, the trees seemed to sing.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Many times while I was writing When You Believe, I questioned God’s will. Maybe nobody’s going to want to read about this, Lord, I said. Maybe mentioning the topic of sexual abuse is going to offend people.
But every time I questioned the Father’s will for this, He would answer by bringing yet another broken, beautiful, loving, hurt young woman into my life, yet another person who had lived this story.
So many parts of When You Believe are true. The story about churchgoers separating into sides at the Sunday service. The story about the woman who said, “Kids know how to tell when it’s a teacher or somebody like that. But when it’s somebody in your own family, there isn’t anything you know how to say.” The story of a mother never believing a daughter because, if she admitted the truth, then she would have to admit that abuse had happened to her, too.
Finding God in all of this was a struggle. Often, as I wrote, I felt like the Father was holding me back when I wanted to write something about Him. I did a first rewrite, and a second, without knowing exactly where Lydia’s heart was going. Without knowing where my heart was going. But then, as I began to discover where my own life ran in the same direction as Lydia’s, the pieces began to fit together.
I began to see my own disbelief. Not my disbelief in Him, necessarily, but my disbelief in how God sees me.
For a long time in my life, I wrote Harlequin romance novels. One of my favorite things to do now is explain the course of my career as I moved from writing secular mass-market paperbacks to writing books for the Lord. When I was a teenager, ready to find my own Prince Charming around every corner, my parents teased me about being “in love with love.” And it’s true. Even now, as I look back at my life, the times when I knew someone was standing beside me, believing me, loving me more than I thought I deserved to be loved, those were the times when I felt like my life was soaring with purpose.
How can I give you up, Ephraim? God cries to us. It was I who taught you to walk, taking you by the arms; but you did not realize it was I who healed you. I led you with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from your neck and bent down to feed you.
And so, on this last page, I write tonight with much joy. I have discovered, during When You Believe, that I am writing books about the greatest romance of all. The Father created us to be in love with love. He created in us a need for romance, because that is exactly what He longs to give us. In spite of what our minds tell us to believe, the crusty, hard layers of disbelief have been laying deep and heavy for decades in many of our hearts. We need to let our own unbelief be hammered, chiseled out and assailed by the Word of God. The Father calls us to look not into the mirror of the world, but into the mirror of how He feels about us.
Sometimes knowledge of that love comes in one day. Other times it must be replenished by weeks and months and years of reading and making the Bible your own.
In When You Believe, Lydia came to believe a new truth: that she was a one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable, beloved woman to God. That when she sought Him, He shouted over her with joy and sang over her with delight.
The Father wants to be the one you yearn for. He wants to be the one who stands beside you, who gives you confidence, who sets you to soaring with purpose. He believes in you. And that ought to change the way you believe in Him. And now that you’ve read this book, it is my prayer that you, dearest one, will believe in, seek out, and taste His immeasurable, extravagant love for you.
Blessings!
Deborah Bedford
P.O. Box 9175
Jackson Hole WY 83001
www.deborahbedfordbooks.com
When You Believe Page 20