by Lea Sims
Drew stood rooted to the ground, watching her walk away, his brows furrowed in concern. When Delaney had jerked her arm back and swung around to face him, there had been stark fear on her pale face. It was there only for a moment and she reined it in quickly, but it was unmistakable. He could discount any sudden swing of emotion in a person who was grieving, from sorrow to resentment to outright anger. But fear? What was she afraid of? He had watched her wrestle with her emotions for the last few hours, but this reaction was rather alarming. Certainly, he had just met her and knew virtually nothing about her, but he still found it curious. He chided himself for trying to analyze her. Maybe she was reacting to the thought of her aunt being buried. Some people really had a hard time picturing their loved ones going into the ground. Or maybe she’d suddenly been hit by the reality of her aunt being gone. Or it could have been just as she said—that she had been lost in thought and he had simply scared her by coming up behind her. But those luminous eyes of hers had communicated something else, something Drew had seen more than a few times…just not from a human being.
Drew waited for Claire to finish a conversation she was having with a group of women and then approached her. “How are you doing, Ms. Claire?” Drew asked her when she turned to him. Claire was one of Drew’s favorite people at Refresh. Like Elizabeth, Claire was a widow. She and her husband Dale had had two sons, one who had died as a baby and the other who was a pharmacist in South Florida. With no husband or children in her daily life, Ms. Claire spent a great deal of her time serving at Refresh and she considered Drew her “adopted son.” Drew’s parents lived in California and neither of them were Christians, so he’d loved having both Claire and Elizabeth as spiritual moms in his life. They had clucked over him like mother hens. Like Elizabeth, everybody loved Claire. She was warm, generous, and had a big boisterous laugh that could fill a room. But what everyone loved the most about Claire was her cooking. She oversaw the menus, meal prep, and volunteer scheduling for their lunch outreach, and she was training up an army of amazing cooks in the church kitchen.
Claire looked up at Drew. “I’m fine, honey. You’re a sweetheart for asking. Are you coming back to the house?”
“Yes, I’d like to. I think Jason and Lisa are coming. Abby and Eric said they’ll come by.” He cast a glance toward Delaney who was moving from group to group thanking the people for being there. “How are you and Delaney getting back to your house?”
“Well, Jason and Lisa are going to drive me, and the town car is going to take Delaney back to her hotel in the city. She’s got to get back there to walk her dog, then she’s going to drive out to my house in her car.”
“Oh wow, she brought a dog with her? All the way from New York?” he asked, interest piqued. Then his eyes narrowed. “Please tell me it’s not one of those designer handbag dogs…you know, a hairball with pink-painted toenails passing itself off as a dog?”
“No, definitely not that,” Claire said as they walked back to the car line. “Actually can’t picture Laney ever walking around with a dog in her purse. Don’t let her slick New York style and expensive clothes fool you, Drew. No, she’s got a black lab named…um, let’s see…Rebel? Roger? Something like that.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t surprised when she told me she was bringing her dog. That’s one thing I remember about Laney from way back in high school. You never saw that girl anywhere that she didn’t have a dog by her side or hanging out the window of her Jeep.”
That statement struck Drew in a very personal place. He found that the way most people felt about animals ranged from fear to indifference to affection, but very few people had such a heart for them that it actually defined them in the eyes of others. The fact that she kept a big dog in the city was kind of cool. But the fact that she brought her dog all the way down here from New York was rather amazing. Drew mentally chuckled to himself. Those blue eyes and she loves dogs? I may be a goner here, he thought wryly.
“You know, that’s one of those things you two have in common,” Claire wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, recognizing that look on his face. “Wait until I tell her you’re a veterinarian.” She grinned from ear to ear, making Drew laugh out loud. Claire had no idea that over the course of the day, her mascara had escaped in long faded streaks down the side of her face. The mascara streaks, wiggling eyebrows and wide grin, along with the sprinkling of girlish freckles across her nose, made for a comical and utterly endearing picture.
Drew returned her grin with a cheeky one of his own. “Actually, I already told her that I rescue dogs.”
“Did you happen to tell her what kind of ‘dogs’ you rescue?” Claire asked curiously.
“No, I didn’t tell her that part…yet.” They let the word yet hang in the air, and Claire simply nodded.
“Why don’t I offer to ride into town with her and drive her back out to your house?” Drew suggested. He was still concerned about the reaction she’d had just a few minutes before, and he wanted to make sure she was okay. Plus, he had ridden to the graveside service with Jason and Lisa, so his car was back at the church downtown.
“Oh, Drew, would you? That would be great…so she doesn’t have to drive there and back alone.” She waved at Lisa who was waiting for Claire at their car.
Drew smiled into Claire’s gray eyes. “Anything for you, Momma.” She gave his arm a squeeze, and Drew turned to walk back up the car line toward Delaney, who was talking to the driver of the town car.
“Oh! I almost forgot!” Claire exclaimed suddenly, calling after Drew. “Tell Laney to bring the dog when y’all come back. No sense in keeping her locked up in that hotel room when I’ve got a big back yard that the dog can run around in.”
“Life asked Death, ‘Why do people love me but hate you?’
Death responded, ‘Because you are a beautiful lie and
I am a painful truth.’”
—Author unknown
“Mind if I ride back with you to the church?” Drew asked Delaney, walking up to the town car, where she was leaning in through the passenger-side window talking to the driver. “My car is parked there.”
Delaney pulled her head out of the car, arms still perched on the open window frame, and looked at Drew approaching. She was hesitant to say yes to his request. Back there at the graveside, he had stumbled into an uncharacteristically vulnerable moment for her, and even though they hadn’t exchanged a single word since, she now felt rather exposed. In truth, she was mostly mad at herself for allowing something as silly as a headstone to rattle her. It was probably the emotional rollercoaster of the day’s events, but she hated giving that man a millisecond of her mental energy. No matter how hard she tried to mind-over-matter her responses away, the memories still had the ability to paralyze her. While she stood there on the brink of the kind of anxiety attack she had not had since she was a teenager, the man was literally dead and decomposing beneath her feet. Yet he still had a hold on her. She never hated him more than she did in that moment.
But she didn’t want to take it out on Drew. He just happened to walk up at the wrong moment. It wasn’t his fault. He had been nothing but gracious the entire day, the words he spoke at the microphone about her Aunt Beth still hovering in her mind and warming her heart. Everything from his words to his gentle kindness to the comforting gift of his worship had been a welcome balm to the wounds of the day.
She nodded and said, “Absolutely. I was just telling our driver that’s where I need to go. My car is parked there, too.”
They both slid into the backseat and buckled in. The car pulled down to the end of the drive where it looped around and came back up on the other side of the green tent. Delaney glanced over at the landscape. Everyone had gone, and she knew the cemetery staff would not lower the casket or begin back-filling the grave until all family members had departed the cemetery. For now, her aunt’s casket sat in solitary bleakness under the empty tent, stripped of the lush collection of lilies that sa
t atop earlier, a stark reminder that what was once full of life was now gone. The sight of it gripped her. The woman who had been a second mother in early childhood and her only mother since the age of ten was lying inside that box. In a few short hours, she would be deep in the ground. Gone.
Delaney pressed her forehead against the window, eyes searching earnestly for answers, as a few silent tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks. Are you inside that box, Aunt Beth? Or somewhere else? She was gripped with doubt, grappling in that moment with beliefs she had clung to for a long time. Before today, it was easy to say she was an atheist. It made sense to her. It made her life less complicated. But now, seeing that wooden box made her question those beliefs. Without God, there was no heaven, and without heaven, there was no more Aunt Beth. It meant that the body in that box, dressed in her Sunday best and lying on satin pillows with her Bible clasped in her hands, was all that remained of Elizabeth Lowell. Like ashes after a fire, the warmth and light were gone. She had simply stopped existing.
How is that possible? Delaney’s heart rebelled. How can someone who had been so full of light and love just stop existing? To believe that was to believe that human beings are nothing more than cells and tissue and biology. Elizabeth Lowell had been so much more than that, and for the first time, Delaney was confronted by her assumptions. She thought she’d wiped the issue of God off the canvas of her life, but she realized now that she had simply adopted that position out of convenience and, if she was honest, out of a lot of baggage about religion. She’d bundled God and faith up in the same garbage bag that all the fragments of her broken childhood were in, but she’d never really picked through the trash to ask the tough questions. She was an accidental atheist. She honestly had no idea what was true and what wasn’t.
Her pain and confusion were palpable, and Drew could almost hear her questions hanging in the air. Impulsively, he reached over and put his hand on top of hers. His head told him it was probably unwise to do so, but his heart could not help but comfort her. It was hard to sit next to anyone who was hurting this way and simply do nothing, but Drew was finding it even more challenging with Delaney. Despite many good reasons to keep his distance, he was drawn to her.
When Drew put his hand over hers, Delaney closed her eyes, face still turned toward the window, and allowed the comforting warmth of his hand to flow through her. Her defenses were down and she didn’t have it in her to snub the gesture the way she normally would. She’d seen enough of his integrity over the last couple of days to know his intentions were honorable, though she was also very aware that there was an attraction budding between them, so she needed to tread lightly. At the moment, though, she needed something from him she had never needed from anyone. She needed answers.
“Where is my aunt now, Drew?” Delaney asked, turning her head to look straight at him, tears glistening. “You believe she still exists somewhere, right?”
“I do believe that, yes.”
Take the wheel here, Holy Spirit, Drew prayed silently. These were the open-door spaces into which God himself had to breathe, and it mattered a great deal in these moments what was said and what was left unsaid. His answer could draw her closer to God or push her farther away. Delaney was a smart, educated woman who had likely been exposed to a lot of well-reasoned arguments against God. He had a feeling she would not respond to a lot of “church” talk or Bible quotes just now. She needed an intelligent response as a counterbalance, so he exhaled slowly and dove in.
“I believe we are both physical and spiritual beings—that what makes us who we are is more than just our physical bodies. Our human body is a complex organism, and while we can be amazed by all the ways it operates, we’ve learned pretty much all there is to know about how it functions. Don’t get me wrong. There’s still a lot of cellular research going on and new discoveries in medical treatment to be made, but science will eventually excavate them all, I’m sure. However, there is one glaring exception to all of this…the human brain. There is no more wondrous thing in all creation than the brain. Every scientist in the world could suddenly stop working on whatever they’re working on and redirect their attention to the study of human consciousness, and they would fall into an Alice-in-Wonderland rabbit hole they could never climb out of…it’s that complex.”
She turned slightly toward him, eyebrows knitted together, her gaze focused and engaged. He could tell this had been the right approach. She needed to be convinced in her intellect. So be it. Drew continued. “What science calls consciousness, Christianity calls a soul. Your soul is who you are, which is different than what you are.”
“Wait—what do you mean that who we are is different than what we are? Don’t they mean the same thing?” Delaney asked.
“Well, let’s test that theory. If I asked you who you are, what would your answer be?”
Delaney thought about that for a moment, trying to figure out just what he was asking. “Well, I’m a woman.” She shrugged, as if stating the obvious, and paused again. “I’m a designer and the senior director for creative design for a digital media company in Manhattan. I’m boss to a team of designers. I am a graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design. And I’m a dog mom,” she finished with a smile, which faded quickly when she remembered to add, “Oh, and I guess I’m now a divorcée.”
“Not one of those things tells me who you are,” Drew said, not surprised by her answers. “They are roles…titles…designations, some of them permanent but most are temporary and subject to change. They are also not unique to you. You’re not the only woman, designer, SCAD graduate, dog mom, or ex-wife out there. So, none of those can tell me who Delaney is.”
Delaney’s face registered immediate surprise and sudden understanding. “You’re right. They don’t.” It occurred to her that she would have to think a lot longer and a lot harder to answer that question in light of his statements. If you couldn’t identify yourself by any of those designations, what was left to tell people who you are?
“If you were stripped of all your current roles, titles, degrees, and designations, how would you describe yourself?” Drew eyed her steadily, watching the fascinating dance of intelligence that was occurring in her eyes. She was tracking with him. Thank you, God.
“How would I describe myself…hmmm. Okay, I get it. I’m 33 years old, five feet nine inches, not going to tell you my weight, blonde hair, blue eyes, and…,” she paused because he was chuckling and shaking his head. “Are you laughing at my description?”
“Yes and no. Your description is accurate,” he said with a grin, biting back a few more adjectives he wanted to add to her list, like stunning and gorgeous. “But those things only tell me what you look like. And like roles, our physical identifiers are greatly subject to change. You won’t be able to describe yourself the same way at age forty-five or eight-five. Besides, your description sounds like someone put out an APB for your arrest,” he teased her.
“Well, dang…who am I then?” Delaney quipped with an exaggerated eye roll.
“If I took away all the words related to roles and titles and all the ones related to physical description, what words would you use to describe yourself? Let me ask it this way: What do you care about?” he challenged, not backing down or letting her off easy. Astoundingly, she was letting him navigate her exactly where he wanted to go, and he found that he was almost holding his breath, not wanting to disrupt the moment.
Delaney considered his question for quite a long moment, and Drew did not rush her. She stared down at her hands resting on her skirt, and when she finally spoke, her voice was so low that Drew had to lean in at first to hear her. “I love my dog,” she whispered, then cleared her throat and looked up to elaborate. “I have loved dogs all my life, and it does something to my heart to see dogs who are abandoned and abused. I would rescue them all if I could. I hate injustice and I don’t let anyone take advantage of me, which means I’m probably more guarded than I should be,
but it’s worked for me so far. I care about my work…like really care. I want to put my head on my pillow every night and know I’ve done good work. I care about my team, not just the work that they do but who they are and what’s important to them. I probably drive them too hard sometimes, but I try to show them that they really matter to the company and to me. I am a loyal friend, I think…at least I try to be.”
And then, without warning, tears welled up in her eyes and she didn’t try to hide them or brush them away. “And I want to be happy, but I think I might be broken…at least when it comes to relationships.”
Drew’s heart constricted tightly. There was so much pain in her eyes, he could hardly stand it. Her description of herself was so beautiful, so raw, so honest, that for a moment, he could only stare back in awe at her courage. Then he stuck out his hand and said with aching tenderness, “Nice to meet you, Delaney.” She shook his hand with a wobbly smile, and he pulled a folded Kleenex out of his coat pocket and handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she giggled and sniffed, wiping her eyes. “You seem to have a knack for giving me a tissue just when I need it. I can’t even tell you how odd it is that I’m even saying that, since I never cry…like never.”
“Seems to me, you’re holding onto a lot of tears,” Drew responded quietly, but he didn’t want to probe those wounds. “Do you know that what you just described, Delaney, is your soul? It’s who you are in your innermost being. When our physical bodies die, I believe that everything that has imprinted itself on and shaped the soul separates from the brain, and we depart this world as spiritual beings. Anything physical is left behind—our flesh, our roles and titles, our earthly possessions. Only what is bound to the spirit can move on.” There was an entire theology around what would happen at the end of days and how the people of God would be getting new bodies, but this was the wrong time to dive into eschatology.
“So, everything my aunt truly was still lives on somewhere?” Delaney wondered out loud, with hope in her voice. He nodded.