“I cannot speak for him or for Mrs. Thoresen, Miss Kari. I can only speak for myself.”
“You? You, too?”
“And my sweet wife Mercy. And Priss and Wayland. And Clover and Lorene. And Oskar.
“But . . . it can’t be, can it? . . . Wait. Is that what made Daddy so stubborn against his uncle’s wishes?”
“I can only assume so, Miss Kari. I never met him, but Clover knew him well—and Clover and his father did lead your daddy to Christ, after all—and it is what Clover has told us.”
“I . . . but if it’s true—if it can be the way Rose wrote about it—then wouldn’t more people be like her? Why wouldn’t everyone know God the way she did?”
Owen’s smile was tired. “It is up to each individual to respond to God the way Rose did, Miss Kari. But in my experience, it is both sad and astonishing how hard people fight against Jesus when he calls to them.”
He sighed and scratched the stubble just starting to show on his cheek. “I may be taking liberty in saying this, Miss Kari, but . . . haven’t you been fighting Jesus as he calls to you?”
She gasped as the implications of what he said hit her.
All the judgments I’ve made about Christians. All the snide remarks I made to Ruth every time she tried to tell me . . . and I know I hurt her! The way I reacted when Clover told me about Daddy’s conversion to Christ . . . and the way I sneered at him, at God himself?
Kari heard Ruth’s words again and swallowed.
I have been praying for you over this whole inheritance thing, and I truly believe that something good is going to come of all this. Something wonderful and good from God himself.
The tiny warning Kari had heard or felt when she’d scoffed at God came back even stronger, and a chill jittered down her back. She swallowed again.
It was as though all the laws of nature she’d taken for granted her whole life were proving to be lies. Everything firm upon which she had based her life was disintegrating and dropping out from under her. Kari was grasping for something solid on which to stand, but the floor was gone. And she was falling.
Have I been wrong all along?
“I-I need to go,” Kari muttered weakly.
Owen, looking apologetic, tried to say something, but Kari waved it away.
“I . . . we’re fine, Owen. I just need to think. I need to think and I need to figure this out.” She threw some money on the table. “Thank you. I-I so appreciate you.”
Without looking at him she stumbled toward the door.
~~**~~
Chapter 12
How Kari got home was beyond her. She sat in the living room of Peter Granger’s house staring at nothing, but hearing Owen Washington’s voice ask, “Miss Kari . . . haven’t you been fighting Jesus as he calls to you?”
She must have turned that simple sentence over in her mind a dozen times, looking at it from every angle, until she opened the little cedar box and laid Rose’s journal on her lap. She sighed and stroked the cracked cover, trying to imagine what Rose might have looked like. Kari randomly opened the book.
Journal Entry, September 12, 1909
We attended Calvary Temple again this morning. Thank you, Lord! I have been so nourished and strengthened by the worship and the pastor’s messages. This morning he spoke on eternal life using John 6:67-69:
Then said Jesus unto the twelve,
Will ye also go away?
Then Simon Peter answered him,
Lord, to whom shall we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life.
And we believe and are sure
that thou art that Christ,
the Son of the living God.
“‘The words of eternal life,’” Kari huffed. “What does that even mean?” She scanned down the now-familiar page and read, He called those who wished to surrender to Jesus to the altar to pray. Thank you, Lord!
Kari shook her head in confusion. “He called them to the altar to pray? To surrender to Jesus? How would you do that?”
She thumbed gently through the pages and read from an entry dated February 7, 1910.
Tonight I confess I longed for Jan’s strong arms to hold and comfort me! So many trials are upon us, and I just wanted to run from them, run into Jan’s embrace and hear him say “Nei, Rose; I have you.”
Lord, we are pressed out of measure, above strength. We cannot trust in ourselves and so we trust in you, Lord, the God which raiseth the dead.
“‘We trust in you . . . the God which raiseth—raises?—the dead . . .’” Kari’s puzzlement increased.
She read on, stopping at March 30, 1910. “Flinty died,” she murmured, saddened for a gentle old man she’d never even seen. She studied the long Scripture passage Rose had taken the time to write out in longhand. “You have such beautiful penmanship, Rose,” Kari whispered, but her eyes were scanning the verse, looking for something, some clue.
But I would not have you
to be ignorant, brethren,
concerning them which are asleep,
that ye sorrow not,
even as others which have no hope.
For if we believe
that Jesus died and rose again,
even so them also which sleep in Jesus
will God bring with him.
For this we say unto you
by the word of the Lord,
that we which are alive and remain
unto the coming of the Lord
shall not prevent them which are asleep.
For the Lord himself
shall descend from heaven with a shout,
with the voice of the archangel,
and with the trump of God:
and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together
with them in the clouds,
to meet the Lord in the air:
and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Kari’s reflections turned toward her parents. “Them that sleep in Jesus. Surely that is a euphemism for death?” She read on. “Yes. That’s what Rose explains in the next paragraphs.”
Dear Maria did not quite understand that “them which are asleep” refers to those who have died and left this life, but Grant explained it so beautifully. He said, “When we die, our bodies fall asleep, to rest and wait for the return of Jesus. When he awakens us, our bodies will be restored, not to their fragile former state, but to one that is incorruptible and eternal.”
“Does this passage mean that Jesus will awaken Daddy and Mommy? Their bodies will be restored like Grant said?”
The idea fired Kari’s imagination. For long minutes she visualized seeing them, just as she had remembered them that last night. She saw herself running—running to them—and them catching sight of her and running to embrace her!
As they drew near, Kari could see their happy faces and their arms reaching for her, just as they had that last night—
Something about the thought of that last night, the last time she had seen them, tugged at her mind. Kari grasped at the thread, so close, so near, only to encounter a familiar rush of anxiety. Of dread.
I haven’t had a panic attack since that first day at Brunell & Brunell! Kari realized, her throat closing on her, choking her. She fought it, turning her eyes back to Rose’s journal and the words she had been reading.
She read further, How you fed and strengthened us with the Bread of Life in that moment, Lord! We have so much hope for eternity.
“Hope for eternity . . .”
Is eternity a real thing? Kari pondered. Can we hope for something beyond death? She realized that her heart yearned to believe that eternity was real and that she would see her parents again.
“You have the words of eternal life,” Kari repeated from the early passage.
He called those who wished to surrender to Jesus to the altar to pray.
“Surrender to Jesus?” Kari closed Rose’s journal and sat thinking, wonderin
g if Jesus was real, if surrender to him were possible.
At almost the same time a realization intruded, one that snapped her attention elsewhere.
Wait. I saw them the night they died? Kari’s eyes widened. I saw my parents the night they died?
She grew still, stunned, knowing she had remembered a piece of her past that had been eluding her for more than thirty years. “I remember seeing my parents the night they died,” she breathed.
The scene was dark with occasional streaks of light, and Kari intuitively knew it was nighttime. The glimmer of light racing toward her was—
Kari gasped. “I was there. The accident on the highway—I was there! I was standing on the side of the road in the dark!”
As she struggled to see more of that night, dread began to course through her body. Kari was angry with herself for forgetting all these years, and she pushed at the anxiety and fought against The Black, the fearful curtain that always fell between her and the forgotten truth.
“No! No, I don’t want to forget! I want to remember!” she screamed.
“Jesus, please help me!”
Abruptly, the dark, the panic, and the breathlessness—
Ceased.
Kari, gasping but in complete control of herself, jerked her eyes open, staring around the room, peering into corners and shadows. “What just happened?” she whispered.
I asked Jesus to help me . . . she thought. Is it possible . . . that he did?
She paced the living room thinking, going over what she’d seen. I remember being at the scene of the accident that killed my parents. I suddenly remember being there. Why? Why today? Why do I remember that now?
The other realization that came to her in a rush was so obvious that she spoke it aloud.
“What else have I forgotten?”
She sat on the arm of the sofa and reached for the telephone sitting on the end table. She dialed Ruth’s number from memory and listened to the phone ring. On the fifth ring Kari was about to hang up—until a breathless Ruth picked up.
“Hello?”
“Ruth. It’s Kari.”
“Hi, stranger. Sorry it took so long to pick up. I was just seeing a client to the door.”
“Oh. I’m sorry—I didn’t even look at the time.”
“No problem! What are you up to?”
“Funny you should ask . . .” Kari muttered. “Do you have a minute? May I ask you a question?
“Shoot.”
Kari took a breath. “Ruth, is it possible that my panic attacks happen because I’m about to remember something I’ve forgotten? . . . Something perhaps traumatic?”
“Did you have a panic attack? Is that why you’re asking?”
“No; that is, I almost did, but . . . something sort of amazing happened.”
“Tell me?”
“I was . . . reading and thinking and suddenly I remembered my parents reaching for me and it was night—that night—the night they died. I remembered that it was dark and I was on the side of the road. I could see the lights of oncoming traffic on the other side of the road.”
“What? You were there when your parents, er, the accident happened? But I thought it was a car crash? How could you have been on the side of the road? You weren’t in the accident, were you?”
“Ruth, I don’t know. I can see them coming toward me and then nothing. I tried to remember more and then the panic started coming on and that black curtain came down. It’s like something bad is about to happen and my brain just short circuits it so I don’t remember.”
“Are you all right? Did you pass out?”
“No; the crazy thing is that the panic just stopped. That’s one of the . . . reasons I called to talk to you.”
“It did?” Kari could hear Ruth’s dubious but hopeful tone.
“Yes, I, er . . . Ruth, when the panic started in, I-I asked Jesus to help me. I . . . is that even possible? That he would help me, I mean?”
The silence on the other end of the line was deafening, and Kari got on her feet and started to pace again.
“Glory be to God,” Ruth finally managed. “You asked Jesus to help you and the panic stopped?”
“Yes . . . and there’s a little more. I was actually reading something.” She picked up the journal and found the entry she was looking for. “I was reading some words from the Bible and thinking about them, thinking about what they said. It was, ‘you have the words of eternal life’ and a different place where it talks about ‘the dead in Christ shall rise first.’”
Kari sighed. “I was wondering if it could be true. I was thinking about my parents and if Jesus would raise them from the dead and if I would see them again and then—without trying—I remembered.”
“Kari, slow down. No; wait, I need to sit down.”
Kari heard Ruth’s ample backside slump into her office chair.
“All right. Let me get this straight. You’re reading the Bible?”
Ruth made the idea sound so incredible that Kari laughed. “Not exactly. I mean, yes, the words are from the Bible but they are quoted in another book.”
“All right . . .” Kari heard Ruth blow out a big breath and then shuffle through her appointment book. “Listen, what is happening is wonderful, and I want to talk to you about it further, but I have another client coming any moment. Can you call me this evening? Don’t say ‘no,’ because I know you can.”
Kari laughed again, for some reason feeling lighter in her heart than she had in a while. “Yes; I’ll call you. I . . . I want to tell you about something I found.”
“About seven then? I’ll make a pot of tea, throw on my nightgown, and curl up in my chair with my cat. We can talk as long as we want.”
That evening Kari, a little ashamed of herself for holding back on Ruth, finally told her about finding Rose Thoresen’s journal and the letter addressed to Joy Thoresen Michaels. She then related the conversation she’d had with Oskar—and the passages in Rose’s journal that had led to her memory breakthrough.
“Rose’s writings are changing the way I look at God,” Kari admitted, “the way Christianity could be.”
“You mean the way God is so real to her?”
“Yes; that’s it exactly. Not religious—but real.”
“It wasn’t possible for us to truly know God before Jesus came to earth, Kari. He came to open the way for an intimate relationship with his Father.”
Ruth paused to sip her tea. “It’s just that most Christians don’t understand that Christianity is not rules and regulations but love and obedience in response to that love. Either that or they aren’t sincere in their surrender to the Lordship of Christ. Some people only want a nodding acquaintance with him.
“As a result, well, some ‘Christians’ are probably God’s worst P.R., you know? They profess to ‘know’ him, but they only know of him. Big difference.”
Kari thought about what Ruth was saying. “You said ‘surrender to the Lordship of Christ.’ I read something like that in Rose’s journal—and I couldn’t figure out what it meant. How do you surrender to a God you can’t see?”
“Ah. I hear you. I think of it as ‘Close Encounters of the Spiritual Kind.’ God is real, but he is a spirit. We are spirits, too, but our spirits live—at least temporarily—in a physical body and in a physical world.
“Jesus put it this way, ‘You must be born again of the Spirit.’ I think this means first, that your spirit, the part of you that yearns for God but has been damaged by sin, needs to be reborn—made clean and made new.”
Ruth answered Kari’s next question before she could ask it. “So how does that happen? That’s the second point. When you surrender to the Lordship of Jesus—when you make him the ruler of your life—the Holy Spirit comes and makes your spirit alive and clean. Then he stays and lives in your spirit so that you have that continual communion with God.”
“Wait. God the Father and Jesus. Now the Holy Spirit?”
Ruth chuckled. “We have a lot to talk about, Kari, but we’
ve been on the phone for an hour and a half. Your long distance bill will be right through the roof.”
“Apparently I can afford it,” Kari drawled and snickered. And then sighed. “I miss you, Ruth. I wish you could come for a visit.”
Ruth grew quiet. “Does this mean you aren’t coming back to Albuquerque, Kari? Will you stay and rule your little empire from New Orleans?”
“My little empire? Wow. Some days I wish it were just little. I still can’t grasp it all. And I don’t know yet, Ruth. I just don’t know. Right now, while I’m waiting for probate to close, I . . . I’m thinking about doing something . . . daring.”
“Oh? What might that be? A cruise around the world? Do tell. And take me with you!”
Kari giggled. “No; nothing exotic like that. The thing is, I don’t need to find a job anymore and I won’t have any legal obligations until that pesky probate closes—which could still be months, according to Clive and Clover.
“So I’m thinking about taking a little road trip. Oskar tells me my Caddy’s engine needs to be properly broken in, and a road trip is just the thing to do it.”
“Road trip? Would you come here for a visit? That is a long drive for a woman to take alone.”
Kari, thinking of how she longed for an open road ahead of her and the freedom and time to think it would afford her, ignored Ruth’s last comment. “Yes, I definitely want to see you and Anthony and Gloria. And I need to go through the storage unit and decide what to keep and what to sell or give away. But Albuquerque would just be the first stop on the trip.”
“Wait. Hold the phone. Where are you thinking of going?”
Kari dithered. “I’m thinking . . . of Denver.”
“Denver? Who do you know in Denver?”
Kari tried to find the words to explain. “No one, not really. But . . . I’m wondering if I could, you know, find out what happened.”
“Happened where? Happened to whom?”
Kari sighed. “I want to find out what happened to Rose Thoresen, Ruth. I want to see if Palmer House is still standing and, if it is, if they are still using it to help young women escape prostitution.
Lost Are Found (A Prairie Heritage, Book 6) Page 14