“Fine. Just a little woozy.” A lot woozy, but who’s measuring?
“Okay, let’s break up into groups of five,” Alison suggested.
“I–I’m not going,” Cyndi announced. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m just not going.”
“Oh, Cyn, come on,” Rob urged, but she was emphatic, shaking her head at a frantic rhythm.
“No. I’m not going. I am not going.”
Lucy understood. Deeply. She reached over and squeezed Cyndi’s hand, giving her a nod.
I feel you, Cyndi.
Then Alison did something she almost never did. Alison adjusted.
“All right then. We’ll go five and four.”
“I want to go with Lucy,” Wendy told them. “Matt and Justin, you want to go with us?”
Alison looked at her clipboard and gave a slight pinch to her face before agreeing. “That works.”
“Great.”
Lucy caught Wendy’s grin and returned it before following her across the grass toward one of the two waiting monstrosities, reminding herself that people did this all the time.
With Wendy and Matt both thinking good and safe and positive thoughts about the ride ahead, Lucy felt like she stood a chance of keeping it together so that Justin need never know how frightening it was for her to put more than a few yards between the soles of her shoes and the precious, stable ground.
After Lucy climbed aboard, she noticed Cyndi standing at the sidelines. She recognized that look in Cyndi’s eyes, too. Fear mixed with disappointment in herself for not conquering it.
“Cyn!” Lucy called out to her. “If I can, you can.”
Cyndi’s head tilted tentatively. Lucy and Wendy both motioned with their hands to call her toward them. At first Cyndi didn’t move a muscle, but suddenly she let out a loud scream and took off running toward them.
The occupants of both balloons erupted into applause as Cyndi crossed the wet grass and climbed over the side of the gondola to embrace Wendy and Lucy.
“I’m so proud of you,” Lucy told her through a mist of emotion. “I understand, I really do.”
“This is going to be so much fun,” Wendy seemed to promise them both. “And we’re always going to remember that we did it together.”
Justin dragged Matt into a comical embrace, repeating the sentiment in a high-pitched voice. “It’s true, Matt. We’ll always remember that we did this together.”
Matt pushed him away, laughing.
“Come on!” Justin exclaimed, shaking Cyndi by both shoulders. “This is an adventure. Let the adrenaline flow!”
Lucy noticed Alison waving and, as she started to wave back, she noticed the ground drifting away. The balloons had already been untethered, and they were floating upward while her stomach dropped in the opposite direction. The balloon overhead heaved a deep sigh.
Pthhhhhhhht.
John, their guide, busied himself with the flight, and Lucy reached over and clutched the side of the gondola.
A cape of early morning fog enveloped them, the promise of blue skies reaching from the horizon. In snippets through the clouds, Lucy caught sight of patches of green grass, canopy nets of crimson-leafed trees, and a thick, curvy snake of dark green waters.
“It’s beautiful,” Wendy said on a sigh.
Pthhhhhhhht.
Lucy jumped as the balloon groaned again.
“It’s just about the most personal look you can get of the Buffalo,” John told them.
“How long have you been at this?” Justin asked him.
“Ten years of amazing rides,” he replied. “The world and her problems are much smaller from this vantage point.”
“I can see that.”
Lucy grasped the side of the basket a little tighter and held on, leaning against Matt for further security. To her right, Wendy moved close to her and they locked arms. Then Lucy reached out with her left arm and pulled Cyndi into the fold.
“How are you doing?” Matt asked over her shoulder. “You okay?”
Lucy simply nodded. She couldn’t manage to look away from hundred-foot cliffs that framed the Buffalo below them, or from the fishermen that looked like small, colorful beans along the riverbanks.
The wind moved them northward, and she noticed her knees growing weak as the balloon dropped gracefully.
“We’re dropping! Are we falling?” Cyndi cried.
“No worries, little lady,” John reassured her, and Lucy clung to the promise as well. “In just a minute, you’ll get a bird’s-eye view.”
They floated along the treetops, and Lucy held her breath as Wendy released her arm and leaned forward to touch a sprig of leaves. She heard the continuous click-click-click of Matt’s camera from behind her, and Lucy started to wonder if God had answered her prayers about not making a fool of herself. There she was, after all, standing on her own (albeit trembling) legs, gliding across hilltops, trees, rocky cliffs, and emerald waters, and she was still upright. She hadn’t fainted or fallen or so much as rocked the basket. Her breathing was almost normal, and no one had been hurt, including herself.
It’s kind of a miracle, she realized. Thank You, Lord.
Lucy gazed at Justin, and the soft, warm smile he gave her seemed to stroke her cheeks with velvet fingers. He was really the most beautiful man she’d ever seen up close. The breeze caused his hair to dance a bit, and Lucy noticed golden flecks in his eyes that reflected the morning sun.
“This is fantastic,” he told her, and he slid his arm around Lucy’s shoulder and gave her a gentle hug.
A thousand feet above the ground, with Justin’s muscular arm around her, Lucy felt a little like the wind had been let out of her.
“It really is,” she managed, but it came out in a whimper. “It’s breathtaking.”
The morning had made her bold, and Lucy decided to make a daring and audacious move. Biting her lip, she tilted her head slightly and let it rest on Justin’s shoulder. Just for a moment, and not the full weight of it, but it rested there just the same.
Justin gave her arm a squeeze, and Lucy thought for a moment that she was in heaven. She smiled at the literal truth of it as she floated along in the sky, her head on the shoulder of the man of her dreams, the spicy scent of him mixing with brisk, fresh air and sweet autumn trees.
“You know what they say,” John declared. “What goes up must come down, right?”
Lucy’s head bobbed upright immediately and she slipped out of Justin’s embrace as the final pthhhhhhhht overhead squeezed her insides.
“What’s happening?” Cyndi asked, her dark eyes large and round as the top of a question mark, and Lucy shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“See that plot of grass over there?” John asked, pointing out a miniscule square of land in the distance. “That’s where we’re going to come down.”
Lucy’s heart began to race.
“Shouldn’t there be a runway or something?” she asked, looking from Justin to Wendy to Matt and then back at the guide.
“John’s done this a thousand times,” Matt reminded her.
“Yeah, but—” Lucy’s words escaped her, and her mouth hung gaping open in the shape of a large, round O.
Suddenly, the ride no longer epitomized peaceful abandon. In fact, the closer the tiny plot of earth came toward them, the less peace Lucy could manage to grab hold of with her two fists and clenched teeth.
“It’s okay,” John assured her. “You’ll hardly feel the landing.”
But Lucy didn’t believe him, proof of which was the morning’s eggs and bacon bouncing on a trampoline inside her stomach as a falling sensation set her head to spinning.
“Are you sure you can land in that little space?” Cyndi asked.
Lucy closed her eyes tight and tried to pray that he could, but the prayer wouldn’t quite come.
“Lucy?” Matt inquired.
“I don’t feel so good,” she told him, right before she leaned over the side of the gondola and sent the
remains of her breakfast spilling down into the trees.
So much for Matt’s prediction about no plummeting that day.
Lucy pulled the blanket over her head and tucked her entire body underneath it. Forget that there was no air, forget that she didn’t like closed-in spaces, forget that the tiny world beneath that blanket was closing in on her.
“Sugar?”
She yanked the blanket down to her chin and peered out.
“Are you all right, darlin’?”
Betty Sue stood in the doorway, holding a tray and wearing a crooked, sympathetic smile that made Lucy want to crawl back under the blanket.
“I guess you heard.”
“I did.”
Betty Sue set the tray down on the ottoman at the foot of the bed and perched on a corner of the mattress.
“Justin has convinced everyone that it was too much of my smokehouse bacon from this morning’s buffet. But that wasn’t it, was it?”
“No,” Lucy whimpered. “It wasn’t the bacon.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Lucy sensed their untimely arrival a fraction of a second before the tears made their way up and over the edges of her eyes and cascaded down her cheeks.
“Do you want to have a chat, sugar?”
Lucy didn’t have an answer for that one.
“Well, why don’t I do the chattin’,” Betty Sue suggested, nudging Lucy with her elbow. “You prop up those pillows behind you and have a little soup. You can’t go all day without anything on your stomach.”
Lucy wasn’t the least bit hungry, but she summoned up the courtesy instilled in her from a young age and did as she was told. Betty Sue lowered the tray to her lap. Chicken broth, saltine crackers, and iced ginger ale were all the right offerings for an upset stomach and a bruised ego.
Betty Sue lifted the soup spoon from its place atop a folded linen napkin and handed it to Lucy. When she took it, the woman smiled and smoothed back Lucy’s hair.
“I’ve learned a thing or two from my years in the service of people,” she said, her kindness washing over Lucy and turning her insides to a sort of warm putty. “And it can all pretty much be boiled down to one idea.”
Lucy slurped at the soup and then raised her eyes with eager anticipation.
“Do you want to know what that is?”
She nodded.
“Everybody’s got somethin’.”
Lucy narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow as she waited for more. When Betty Sue made no move to expound, Lucy set down her spoon and regarded the woman curiously.
“More?” Betty Sue asked.
“Please.”
“Take your church group, for instance. Alison, well, she’s got leadership.”
Lucy snorted, nodding in agreement.
“She carries around her clipboard with all her notes about where to go and what to do and how to organize it all. That’s what she’s got. Now, Brenda, she doesn’t have that.”
“No,” Lucy agreed.
“Brenda’s a watcher and a listener. She sees and hears every little thing that goes on around her. She stores it up and saves it for later.”
“When she’s sure to tell anyone who will listen.”
Betty Sue chuckled at that. “Sure enough.” She paused to break a few crackers into the bowl of broth before continuing. “Rob, he’s analytical. He’s a smart boy—could probably figure out just about anything if he worked at the puzzle long enough.”
Lucy hadn’t thought of Rob that way, but it was right on. Not that she knew Rob all that well, but she was fascinated that Betty Sue could so easily perceive that quality in him.
“Justin, now. He’s got the looks.”
Lucy let out a sudden pop of a giggle. “Yes. He sure does.”
“And Matthew has that heart of his.”
Matt’s heart was his best attribute. It was kind, understanding, and enormous.
“Do you see where I’m going here, sugar?”
“Not really.”
“Everybody’s got somethin’,” she repeated. “And there’s no shame in not having the something that somebody else has, because you’ve got something of your own.”
“Oh.”
She felt a flush of embarrassed heat move up her neck and straight over the top of her head. Betty Sue took Lucy’s hand between both of hers, and as she stroked it, Lucy noticed the wrinkled skin and short, clipped nails in contrast to her own younger, smoother hand.
“Why don’t you tell me why you’re working so hard to be someone you’re not instead of embracing the beautiful woman God made you to be.”
Betty Sue’s eyes were kind—two blue pools that decorated her suntanned face—and they looked straight into Lucy and sweetly tweaked her heart.
“I’m just so—” Lucy couldn’t complete the thought before the tears began to fall again.
“You’re so what, sugar?”
“Insignificant.”
She didn’t expect the chortle of a laugh that came out of Betty Sue, and Lucy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Insignificant?” she asked her, plucking several tissues out of the box on the nightstand and handing them to Lucy. “Where on earth would you get an idea like that?”
“I’m afraid of—or allergic to—everything, Betty Sue. I have no talents, and there’s nothing special about me.”
“That’s not true,” came a deep voice from behind them.
Both of the women turned to find Matt standing in the doorway.
“There is so much about you that is special, Luce. I wish you could see that.”
“Oh, Mattie, come on. I’m afraid of big animals, like horses! And mooses. O–or moose. I’m afraid of suffocating in dark, airless places. And having my feet more than a couple of yards off the ground makes me want to…well…you know.”
Matt crossed the room and sat down on the edge of Wendy’s bed, propping an ankle up on his knee. Betty Sue smoothed Lucy’s hair again, and Lucy found herself wishing she still had a mom to share moments like this one with.
“I don’t know how to fish or row a boat or…or…even pick out a pair of tennis shoes that feel good on my feet!”
“And this makes you insignificant, how?” Betty Sue asked her.
“In comparison to everybody else I’m just useless, Betty Sue.”
The woman shook her silver head and thumped Lucy’s blanket-padded leg. Lucy glanced at Matt, and he was shaking his head in much the same manner.
“Useless. That’s a mighty stern word to use about yourself,” Betty Sue told her. “And it seems a little ungrateful, which I never would have pegged you for being.”
“Ungrateful?”
“It indicates to me that you’ve ignored the many beautiful qualities that our Father crafted especially in you. Like your kind heart. And your sense of humor. And the way you took to cooking when you said you’d never had much practice before. That was evidence of a chef in the making, if you ask me.”
“Really?”
“And the way you notice every little thing, like the flowers in the vases down at the lodge,” Matt chimed in.
“That shows me there’s a nurturer in you,” Betty Sue told her. “You’re someone who sees the beauty in the details.”
Excitement rose up inside of Lucy at that, her eyes darting from Betty Sue to Matt and back again. “That’s what I always say, isn’t it, Mattie? In my work at the Conroy. I always say that the beauty of a memorable visit is in the details.”
“And you’re right. Dave and I adopted that idea long ago, and it’s proven itself to be true, time and time again.”
Lucy took a sip of the ginger ale and then set the tray aside.
“Do you see what I’m saying to you here, sugar?”
“I think so.”
“God gave each one of us something special, and reaching for what we want to be good at rather than cultivating what we were meant to be good at is just going to end up in disappointment. If somebody doesn’t love you because
you can’t catch a fish or because high places make you lose your breakfast, then they’re not seeing you for the beautiful, nurturing, sweet potato bisque master chef that you are.”
Lucy chuckled and rubbed Betty Sue’s arm briskly.
“Thank you.”
“Any time. Will I see you at devotions in the lodge tonight?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Because we’re having a very special fondue for dessert.”
“Fondue?”
“Strawberries and pineapple, with chocolate for dipping.”
“I’m there.”
“Now, Matt, why don’t you come with me and let your friend get some rest before she has to change out of those sweats of hers.”
Matt followed Betty Sue through the door and then paused, turning back toward Lucy without a word.
“What?” she asked him.
“Just tell him, Luce. Tell him you can’t ride a Ferris wheel, much less a hot air balloon. That you’re no outdoorsman but you have other qualities he might like just as much once you show them to him. Just tell the truth about who you are.”
Lucy lowered her eyes and twisted a loose thread on the blanket around her index finger without answering.
“Because who you are is pretty great,” he told her. “If he can’t see that, he doesn’t deserve you.”
Blinking back a mist of tears to which she was determined not to surrender, she raised a crooked, tight-lipped smile. “Thanks, Mattie. I’ll see you later.”
Thank You for sending Betty Sue to me today, Lord. I really heard everything she and Mattie had to say, and I recognize the Source of the message. I really do. I’m going to try to just see if Justin is interested in the real Lucy.
This morning in the balloon, B.B. (Before Barfing), we had a spectacular moment where he put his arm around me and I laid my head on his shoulder. For just that instant, everything in life was perfect. It felt as if Justin returned what I was feeling for him and I wasn’t just some crazy woman semi-stalking a guy she has no possible chance of landing.
So from now on, it’s the Real Lucy. Let’s see how she plays in Snowball, Arkansas.
Old and Improved,
Lucy B.
Love Finds You in Snowball, Arkansas Page 12