Running from Monday

by Lea Sims

  She nodded and sighed. “It’s a long story—too long to burden you with. So much has happened in my life the last few months, and I’ve been doing a great deal of soul-searching. I realized I was carrying a lot of baggage around from my childhood, and I brought it into our marriage.”

  “What kind of baggage?” he asked, unthawing slightly at her statement.

  “Stuff from my childhood, honestly,” she replied. “I don’t want to go into it all, but when my Aunt Beth died a few months ago, it forced me to confront some things I’ve kept locked up inside me since I was a kid—my parents dying, being raised by an alcoholic, and some other stuff that was just too painful to deal with, so I tried to ignore it.”

  “That’s the most I’ve heard you say about your childhood in all the time I’ve known you.”

  She pulled her face into a wry grimace and nodded. “I know. I got really good at compartmentalizing anything I didn’t want to deal with and turning off my emotions because it was easier than dealing with pain.” She sighed and looked him in the eye. “You were right about me, Danny. I have been Elsa for a very long time. It was just easier. But it wasn’t fair to you or to my Aunt Beth or anyone else in my life. And when you stop feeling anything, you make some really bad decisions.” She looked down at her hands, suddenly overcome with a deep sense of shame. “I should never have cheated on you, Danny,” she whispered, “no matter what was going on between us.”

  He sat back, surprised again by her words. “Wow…I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear you say that.”

  “I know it may be a day late and a dollar short, but I am very sorry. I hope one day you can forgive me. That’s just not the person I want to be.”

  She could tell her apology had really thrown him off his game. It’s hard to maintain a combative posture when the other person is on their knees. A gentle answer turns away wrath. She smiled at him again to reassure him.

  He studied her closely for a long moment and then said softly, “I forgive you, Delaney. It means a lot that you felt the need to meet me and tell me that.” His lips curved upward slightly, the first glimmer of a smile he’d directed her way in a very long time. One eyebrow slid upward. “You’re different.”

  “I am.” She didn’t feel the need to elaborate, but his acknowledgment lifted a weight from her chest that had been anchored there for over a year. Forgiveness is like an unexpected feast after a long journey. You never know how hungry you are for it until it’s served to you.

  She reached across the table, and laid her hand over his. “Thank you…for working so hard for us, Danny. And for your forgiveness. It means everything to me.” Then she got up, pushed her chair back under, and turned to leave.

  “He’s a lucky man.”

  She turned back at his unexpected but quietly spoken remark. “Who is?”

  “Whoever is responsible for putting that light in your eyes,” he said with a sad but curious smile.

  She broke out in a radiant grin and pointed a finger to heaven. “That would be God,” she said with unabashed joy. “And I’m the lucky one.”

  He could not have looked more thunderstruck if she’d suddenly turned into a unicorn in the middle of Starbucks. She blew him a kiss and left. She had practically skipped down the sidewalk on her way home, her heart lighter than it had ever been in her life.

  Now, two days later, as she pulled into the parking lot of Refresh Station, it was all she could do not to sprint into the church and up to the altar. The conviction she felt in her office on Friday had only grown stronger. There was such peace and joy in her heart about her decision to come home. She wasn’t sure what would happen afterward, but she knew this needed to be the first step.

  She turned to Rogue, who was sitting on the passenger seat next to her, seemingly just as excited as she was to be back in Savannah. “Okay, girl, I need you to behave in there.” She couldn’t check in to her hotel until after two o’clock, so she had nowhere to leave Rogue while she went to services. But she wasn’t going to let that stop her. She was just hoping no one would care if she stuck Rogue in Claire’s office for the next hour or so. It was just a small space where Claire did all the coordinating and meal planning for the lunch outreach, but there was enough room for Rogue to lie down and nothing she could bother while she was in there.

  The traffic they had encountered on I-95 this morning had put Delaney in the parking lot of the church ten minutes after service started, which was actually a relief to her. She really didn’t want to bump into anyone beforehand. She came in through the side door closest to Claire’s office, and was relieved to find her office unlocked. She spread a blanket out for Rogue on the floor and left her there with a rawhide and her stuffed squirrel.

  As she approached the stairwell, Delaney could hear that they were still in the midst of the worship set, and she paused at the bottom of the stairs. Drew’s beautiful voice resonated down the stairwell, and her heart leapt within her. He was leading the congregation in a song Delaney had never heard before, but the words captured her attention immediately.

  You unravel me…with a melody

  You surround me with a song

  Of deliverance…from my enemies

  ’Til all my fears are gone

  She paused with a foot on the bottom step, feeling those words wash over her. There was no longer a wall of resistance within her, and she leaned into those words with her face turned up to heaven.

  From my mother’s womb…you have chosen me

  Love has called my name.

  I’ve been born again…to a family

  Your love flows through my veins.

  With tears in her eyes, she ascended the stairs into the sanctuary and slipped quietly into the very back row. Without hesitation, she put her hands up and gave herself over to worship for the first time in her life.

  I’m no longer a slave to fear

  I am a child of God

  I’m no longer a slave to fear

  I am a child of God

  She peeked around the head of the tall man in front of her so she could catch a glimpse of Drew. Her heart ached at the sight of him, his eyes closed in worship and his amazing voice echoing through the rafters of the sanctuary. Her eyes drifted lovingly across the congregation, her heart near to bursting with the sight of it. Nearly every seat was filled, almost every hand raised, and the presence of God was pure and palpable in the room.

  At the end of the song, Pastor Jason stepped quietly up to the microphone to close out the worship set with a prayer.

  “Lord, we stand in your courts with our hearts uplifted this morning, so grateful to be called your children. I pray that each of us standing before you can truly declare that today—that we no longer live in the bondage of fear and rejection, but we now walk with our heads held high knowing we are part of your forever family. We thank you for the abiding presence of your Spirit. In Jesus’ name we pray…Amen.”

  At the conclusion of his prayer, he smiled in greeting at everyone. “Good morning, Church! Is there anywhere you’d rather be this morning than in the House of God?”

  Tucked away in the back row of the sanctuary, her head bowed in prayerful gratitude, Delaney Anderson tearfully concurred that there was not.

  “Like Jonah, the whale had swallowed me. Unlike him, I believed I would spend eternity in the belly of the beast.”

  —Bob Kerrey

  Drew sat on the front row, an ankle slung across his knee and his Bible open in his lap. Jason was on the platform opening the day’s lesson. Jason and Lisa had been away for a few weeks, visiting family and speaking at a conference, and it was great to have his friend and pastor back home. In the days following Delaney’s departure, Jason had been a great support to Drew, praying with him and over him frequently and checking on him often.

  This was the first Sunday in a long time that Drew felt like he was returning to some kind of
normal. The worship set this morning had been powerful, and he’d felt a fresh reminder from the Holy Spirit about the call on his life to usher people into the presence of God through worship. He had felt guilty for a while and had almost thought about stepping down from the team for a season, knowing he was going through the motions yet trying to be faithful and obedient to what God had anointed him to do. But today was an infusion of passion, and he felt a renewed sense of hope and purpose.

  He still thought about Delaney often, even more so over the last week or two since Lexie and her team had come to Timber Ridge, but he had handed that heartache to God. He was thrilled to know that the Bible he’d sent her was making a difference in her life, and while he would always harbor a little hope in his heart that one day she’d show back up here, he was just glad that she was finding her way to God, no matter where it was happening. Feeling a peace he had not felt in a while, he turned his attention back to Jason, who had asked them all to turn to the book of Jonah and had just finished reading all of chapter one.

  “You know, I’ve always had a soft spot for Jonah,” Jason said, stepping out from behind the podium and strolling across the front of the stage with his hands casually tucked in his pockets. “He’s given a rather daunting task by the Lord, something that would require great courage from him, and in verse three it says that Jonah flees from the presence of the Lord. Wow, think about that. He flees. That’s a pretty powerful word. By definition, to flee means to escape by running away, especially because of danger or fear.”

  He paused for a moment and then looked out across the congregation. “Have you ever fled from the presence of God?” A few hands went up, some quickly and some reluctantly. Listening intently from the back row, Delaney felt a pang in her heart. She had run as far away from God as she could get.

  “We just experienced the presence of God, didn’t we? In worship just now?” There was a vigorous nodding of heads and murmuring of agreement through the room. “It’s hard to imagine ever wanting to flee from God’s presence, and yet so many of us have. So many still do. I wonder why?” He posed the question to the room.

  “Jonah said no to the very purpose God had assigned to him, and he chose instead to flee from God. He set sail on a ship out into the vast sea. And the irony here, of course, is that while he was fleeing in fear from God, he had positioned himself in the most dangerous place imaginable. For an Old Testament man, nothing was more greatly feared than the sea. Storms, shipwrecks, and a fathomless dark ocean full of deadly creatures awaited anyone who ventured forth upon it. And yet, so afraid of the presence of God was Jonah that he was willing to take his chances out there,” Jason gestured out the window, “rather than trust in the peace and security of God’s presence in here.” He spread his arms wide to indicate the sanctuary in which he was standing.

  “Out there in the world, there is an ocean of danger. It can beckon to each of us like the sea to a salty sailor. It seems vast and full of adventure, like something out of Pirates of the Caribbean. Or maybe we just view it as an escape like Jonah did. But once we set sail upon it, we discover that there is great risk in the adventure—tumultuous and stormy winds, shipwrecked dreams, and more deadly things lurking below the surface than we ever thought possible. And you know what? We can get by for a while on the well-constructed ship of our lives, dodging storms and skirting danger, but if you spend enough time at sea, eventually you’re going to get tossed overboard.

  “When Jonah is thrown off the boat, he finds himself in over his head in the depth of the sea, and God allows him to be fully consumed by the life of rebellion he’s chosen. We see in verse seventeen that the Lord appoints a great fish to swallow him up, and he spends three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish.”

  Jason then unpacked, with great scholarly enthusiasm, the speculations of biblical historians around what kind of fish was being referenced in Jonah’s story—whether it was a whale, a sea serpent, or simply a metaphor for disobedience and rebellion, the latter of which Jason admitted he rather favored as an interpretation.

  “Whether Jonah was sitting in a real fish or a metaphorical one, we can probably all think of a time when we were sitting in the belly of our own whale. We can recall that time before Christ when we had reached a rock-bottom place in our sin and disobedience.”

  Then he shared how he had been a senior in high school, struggling with his parents’ divorce and hanging out with the wrong crowd of friends. His world came crashing down around him one Saturday night in the spring of that year when he’d gotten drunk at a party and tried to drive home in his father’s car. He had run off the road and hit a tree, totaling the car and ending up in the hospital with two broken legs. It had earned him a DUI and cost him a scholarship to Georgia Tech. It had also cost him his girlfriend, who’d been in the car with him but was thankfully and miraculously unharmed in the accident.

  “For about a year after my accident, I wished my life was over. I spent weeks in a wheelchair with my legs in casts and six months in rehab while all my friends went off to college. My parents were angry with me, and I felt like I had let everyone down.” His voice wavered slightly with emotion, all eyes now riveted to his testimony.

  “I was in the belly of my whale,” he said with quiet conviction. “And you know, there’s just something about being in a place of desperation. I’ll never forget the night when I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was alone and isolated, and I believed I had ruined my life. And while I never contemplated suicide, I did reach a point where I felt like nothing could possibly turn my life around. So, I did something I had not done since I was a young boy. I prayed. I called out to God in the midst of my distress, and I asked him to give me my life back. I promised him that I would do whatever he would ask of me if he would just get me out of the mess I was in.

  “It was just a few days later that I ran into a friend from high school who worked at the gym where I worked out after rehab. He invited me to his college group at church, and I went with him because I had nothing better to do. And it was in that group of new friends that I met God, gave my life to Christ, and began the life I was truly born to live.”

  He smiled and stepped back behind the podium. “I think this is why I like Jonah so much. I can relate to the broken place he was in and what he must have felt like by the end of that third day. The prayer he offers up to God here in chapter two is powerful.” Then he began to read again.

  “In my distress, I called to the Lord, and he answered me.

  From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help,

  and you listened to my cry.

  You hurled me into the depths, into the very heart of the seas,

  and the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.

  I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again

  toward your holy temple.’

  The engulfing waters threatened me, the deep surrounded me;

  seaweed was wrapped around my head.

  To the roots of the mountains I sank down; the earth beneath barred me in forever.

  But you, Lord my God, brought my life up from the pit.

  “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord,

  and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple.

  “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them.

  But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you.

  What I have vowed I will make good.

  I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’”

  “These were not the words I prayed in my room that night, but they echo my experience just the same. When my life was the most bleak, the most empty, I called out in my distress to the Lord, and he answered me. When my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord. And he remembered me. I told him that night that I would gladly do whatever he asked of me—I would sacrifice t
o him with grateful praise. And I paid what I vowed to him I would pay. I gave him my life completely.

  “I wouldn’t be standing in front of you today if I had not been in the belly of that whale. I would never have gone to seminary, become a pastor, met Lisa, planted this church, or done any of the other amazing things God has blessed me to do if I had not hit rock bottom and cried out to God.” He paused and said with fierce love on his face, “I am very thankful for that whale. It brought me to God.”

  If Jason had been able to see Delaney in that moment, he would have seen her sitting as still as a statue with her mouth hanging open. The little hairs on her arms were standing on end. Not only had Jason’s testimony grabbed her heart, but Jonah’s prayer had struck her to the core. The great deep engulfed me. The tears she seemed to have no ability to contain these days rolled down her face, and she dabbed at them with a tissue she’d grabbed from a box at the end of her row. Jonah’s prayer was her prayer. Fear and pain had driven her out into the deep ocean of a godless life. Sin and selfishness had tossed her off the ship of her marriage and into the depths of brokenness and shame.

  She knew full well what despair in the belly of the whale looked like. It was an empty and solitary place. In the belly of the whale, you have sex with strangers and feel no shame. In the belly of the whale, you harden your heart and forget your family. You pursue your flesh and your own ambitions. She thought of her Uncle Jimmy. In the belly of the whale, perversion twists you and addiction consumes you. In that place of desperation, you offer up your soul. You either mock God or cry out to him. I will look again toward your holy temple…I will sacrifice to you with the voice of thanksgiving…Salvation is from the Lord. Delaney delighted in those words. God had brought her life up from the pit, and like Jason, she would choose his salvation with thanksgiving.

  Jason closed out his message with a reminder that God had not given up on Jonah, that when Jonah cried out to him, God heard him and delivered him out of his wretched condition. “But did you notice something powerful between chapters one and three?” Jason asked at the end. “What does God say to Jonah? Let’s compare the second verse of chapter one to the second verse of chapter three.”