The Desire

by Gary Smalley

  “Me too.”

  “I thought it would just take a minute to drop that report off.” He walked toward her.

  She sighed. “I know it wasn’t your fault.” They hugged. She felt like crying but held it in.

  “It was awful, Michele. I’ve never seen a compound fracture before.”

  She pulled back and looked into his face. “Allan, I don’t really want to hear the details. You know how I am about things like that.”

  “I know. I couldn’t see very much anyway. He had a blanket wrapped around his legs. But the angle of his leg on the gurney—”

  “Allan . . .”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Eventually. But I’m pretty sure he’ll need surgery on that leg. Julie’s with him now. That’s really why I was late. As they were putting Ray into the ambulance, he asked if I could meet her there at the ER, show her where he was. I didn’t see how I could say no.”

  “I don’t either.” Poor Julie. What a horrible thing to have to go through. “Can we at least go to lunch together now, so I can fill you in on what the doctor said?”

  A long pause.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t,” Allan said. “My boss called on the way over. A big client is complaining about something one of the other guys did, and he wants me to drive right over there and try to straighten it out.”

  She sighed again. This day was going from bad to worse.

  He hugged her again. “I’m so sorry, Michele. I really do want to hear everything the doctor said. Can we talk about it over dinner?”

  “I guess we’ll have to.”

  “Was the news mostly encouraging or discouraging?”

  “Discouraging,” she said. “I’m not sure I heard anything encouraging.”

  Michele had just arrived home. Allan had prayed with her before he’d driven to work, which helped for a little while. As she pushed the garage door button and got out of the car, she felt unsure if God had heard Allan’s prayers. The feeling of gloom and discouragement had returned.

  She walked through the garage and across the short sidewalk that led to the back of their townhome. As she unlocked the patio door, she heard the doorbell ring. Must be Jean, her sister-in-law. Michele had called her just after she and Allan had parted and invited her over for coffee. Maybe Jean could help her get unstuck from the pit she had fallen into.

  She set her purse down on the counter and hurried to the front door. “Hey, Jean, thanks for coming over. Where are the kids?”

  “Your mom said she wasn’t doing anything for a couple of hours, so it’s just me.”

  Michele was glad. She loved Jean’s kids, but it would be nice to talk without constant interruption. She closed the door behind her and walked toward the kitchen. “I thought we’d just use the Keurig, if that’s okay. I put some fresh water in it this morning.” She pointed to a rectangular ceramic bowl filled with single-cup coffee containers. “Pick whichever one you like. The half-and-half and hazelnut creamer are in the fridge. I’ll be right back. I just want to change into something more comfortable.”

  “Which coffee do you want?” Jean said. “In case you’re not back when mine’s done.”

  Michele walked over and picked out the one she liked. “I won’t be a minute.”

  She came back to find Jean fixing her own coffee. She had just gotten Michele’s started. “It’s a little humid out there. Want to just sit in here?” Michele pointed toward the living room.

  “Definitely. I walked over here, and I still feel pretty sticky. The A/C feels nice.” Jean picked out the chair she always sat in when she visited.

  Michele walked her coffee over and sat across from her.

  “So I take it the doctor visit didn’t go too well.”

  Michele sipped her coffee, shaking her head no.

  “Did they find something wrong already?”

  “No, it was nothing like that. I wish it was that easy. The problem is, it’s very involved and complicated trying to diagnose this kind of thing. I just saw my new primary care doctor today, and she did a fairly basic exam. But from what she told me and what her nurse said before she came in, we’ve got a pretty long road ahead. And an expensive one. That’s really the most discouraging thing I’m dealing with right now, the money.”

  “But I thought you guys had insurance through Allan’s work.”

  “We do. Pretty good insurance, I thought.”

  “But it won’t cover this? All these infertility expenses?”

  “It doesn’t sound like it. I’ve gotta do a lot more checking, but it sounds like the insurance may only cover the diagnostic side, figuring out what’s medically wrong with Allan or me. If it turns out something is, most of the time, the infertility treatments themselves aren’t covered. And they’re not cheap. Most of the cost is out-of-pocket.”

  Jean didn’t say anything for a moment. “You poor thing.”

  “She had some brochures to give me with a bunch of websites to look up. But I guess she’s had enough patients come in with this problem, so she’s looked into what they’d be facing. Apparently, there are a few work-arounds that might force the insurance companies to cover some of it. But she told me, we really needed to be setting lots of money aside if we’re serious about this.”

  “Like how much?”

  Michele took another sip and set her coffee on the coffee table. “Thousands. Depending on what’s wrong and how long it takes, could be tens of thousands.”

  “Oh my gosh. I had no idea,” Jean said. “And adoption’s even worse. A cousin of mine adopted a little girl, and they spent almost twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “This isn’t working.”

  “What isn’t?”

  “Having you over. You were supposed to cheer me up.”

  “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t understand why people make having babies so expensive. And why insurance won’t cover it.”

  “Me neither.” And that was so frustrating to Michele. If she and Allan could get pregnant the old-fashioned way, the whole thing would be covered by insurance right off the bat. She wondered if she and Allan had missed God completely when they turned Christina down. “It almost looks like a closing door at this point.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Jean said. “Don’t give up yet.”

  “I’m not giving up. I just don’t know what to do or what to tell Allan when he gets home.”

  “Did the doctor give you any ideas?”

  “She did, for now. The insurance will still cover the first part, all the tests Allan and I need to take. So we’ll start there. I guess it will help some to know what the problem is. If we do get that far. But it sounds like sometimes, you don’t even know after you run all the tests. We could go through all this and still come up empty-handed, not sure what the problem is.” The look on Jean’s face wasn’t helping. If anything, Michele had just ruined her day with all this.

  Neither one said anything for a few moments.

  “We’ll just have to start praying more,” Jean finally said. “Being helpless isn’t always a bad place to be.”

  Being helpless. That reminded Michele of something she’d read in the children’s ministry notebook a few mornings ago. She set her coffee down, got up, and walked back into the kitchen.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get this.” She picked up the notebook. “Something you said reminded me of something I read in this a little while ago.” She brought it back to her chair and opened it up, then began scanning the first few pages.

  “Is that the notebook Julie gave you for the children’s ministry?”

  “Yes. I just remembered something when you talked about being helpless, about it not being a bad place to be.” She read a few more paragraphs. “Here it is. Not in the lesson for the kids but in a section for the parents. The author says you can’t really help your kids if you’re not w
alking in the things you’re trying to teach them. So he takes the first part of each lesson and talks to the parents. The whole premise of the book is that there are four basic beliefs every Christian needs to own, and that all of Christ’s commands tie back to one of these four beliefs. We talked about the middle two. Loving God and loving others.”

  “So what’s this one?” Jean asked.

  “The first one, humility. Well, ‘Humble yourself.’ That’s how he puts it.” She found the paragraph and read it again. “He says humbling yourself means thinking of yourself as a helpless person, like a spiritual beggar who has nothing to give.”

  “Feeling helpless is a kind of humility?” Jean said.

  “In a way, it is. He’s saying we can’t fix ourselves or our situation. So we’re supposed to come to God aware that we need him for everything. And if we ask for God’s help with that attitude, he always will.” Just rereading the words began to stir something in Michele’s heart.

  “I like that,” Jean said. “And it definitely describes your situation right now.”

  Michele closed the notebook. It definitely did. She was helpless. Her situation was helpless . . . and hopeless unless God intervened. But she also saw how proud she had been. It had never dawned on her that God might be resisting her for being so self-sufficient. “Maybe we should do something about this. Would you pray with me?”

  “You mean right now?” Jean asked.

  Michele nodded.

  “Okay.” Jean leaned forward. They held hands and prayed, acknowledging how big this thing was. Too big for Michele to carry. The more she prayed, the lighter Michele felt. When they were done, she looked up at Jean and felt something else inside.

  Hope.

  45

  Allan arrived home after work that evening feeling a little tense. Michele seemed to be doing better when he’d left her in the parking lot of the doctor’s office, but he wondered what kind of shape she’d be in after having all afternoon with nothing to do but think. Then there was his concern about Ray in the hospital. On the car ride home, he’d spoken to Julie. Ray was asleep, thanks to some heavy sedation. Allan had guessed right about the surgery. She’d mentioned they had scheduled an operation on his leg for tomorrow morning.

  After setting his things down, he walked into the kitchen. Worship music was playing in the background. That was nice. Whatever she had going on in the oven smelled wonderful. He didn’t see her downstairs, so he walked to the stairwell. “I’m home, hon. You up there?”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  He walked back into the kitchen to get some ice water out of the fridge. That’s when he noticed a number of Scriptures handwritten on index cards, mounted with magnets to the freezer door. They hadn’t been there that morning when he’d left for work. Curious, he read each one.

  God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. (James 4:6)

  Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3)

  Apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

  Clothe yourselves with humility toward one another. (1 Peter 5:5)

  “I wonder what brought this on,” he said quietly. He poured the water, rereading the Scriptures. Clearly, humility was the prevailing theme. That, and needing God’s help. Nothing wrong with that, he thought. Still, he didn’t know what to expect as she came down the stairs.

  Michele almost bumped into him when she stepped into the kitchen. “Oh, there you are.” She reached her arms around his waist and gave him a hug. “So glad you’re home.”

  This wasn’t the greeting he’d expected. “You seem . . . upbeat.”

  “I am.” She turned the oven light on and bent down to check her dish’s progress. “Looking good. Maybe another ten minutes.” She turned the light off, grabbed his hand, and began tugging him toward the living room.

  “What’s for dinner? The smell’s killing me.”

  “Meat loaf.”

  She made the best meat loaf. Because she did, he never ordered it in restaurants anymore. She sat on the couch, so he sat next to her. “What’s going on? I was thinking that since your doctor visit didn’t turn out so well, you might be kind of down.”

  “I was. In fact, I was pretty much a wreck right after. Jean came over, and even she couldn’t cheer me up.”

  “Obviously something did. And I want to hear it. But first, tell me what the doctor said.”

  So she did. And it was discouraging. The more she explained, the more discouraged he became. The process the doctor had described seemed like it could go on for months and months, if not years. Costing thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars. She also shared the tidbit about Jean’s cousin adopting a little girl, and how much that cost. What he’d heard was right: almost twenty-five-thousand dollars.

  What a racket, he thought, but didn’t say it. He didn’t want to diminish the unusual joy she seemed to be experiencing. But a new concern began to build in his mind as she talked. About money. About how much discretionary cash they had each month after expenses. So far in their marriage, he’d been able to assign a decent portion of this to his mission activities. With Michele’s permission. From what he was hearing, this would have to stop when they began pursuing these infertility solutions.

  He found his anticipation growing to hear about whatever was responsible for her positive outlook. He could use a sip of whatever she was drinking.

  She finished her update with, “Now, that’s the bad news.”

  “Yeah, that’s . . . pretty bad. But you’re doing way better than you should be after sharing all that.”

  “I know, it’s weird, isn’t it?”

  Weird was one way to describe it. “I’m guessing it has something to do with those index cards on the freezer door?”

  “You saw them? Good. Yes. Isn’t it wonderful? I learned something today about humility. Something I never knew before. Maybe I never really understood humility. But after the things I read, my outlook completely changed.”

  “So, what did you read?”

  She leaned across the couch and picked up a notebook sitting on an end table. Allan had seen it around the last few days.

  “Isn’t that the notebook Julie gave you?”

  She opened it on her lap. “It is. I’ve been reading it every morning this past week. After I got home from the doctor’s, I was a mess. Totally deflated.”

  Probably like I am now, Allan thought.

  “Jean came over for coffee, and we talked. But that didn’t really help. The whole situation seemed so big and out of my control. I felt helpless. I couldn’t imagine how we could ever get all that money together. And even if we did, there are no guarantees I’ll get pregnant after we spend it.”

  “So you don’t want to pursue this infertility thing anymore?”

  “No, that’s not it. I still do.”

  “Then I’m not getting where you’re going here.”

  “Jean said something about being helpless, that it’s not always a bad place to be. Then I remembered something I read a few days ago in this notebook. It says when you’re helpless and you know you don’t have what it takes to make your situation work, it’s kind of a gift. That’s where humility comes in. Humility’s all about realizing how much we need God’s help. According to this, we turn to God as a last resort, only after we’ve tried everything else we can do ourselves. But the truth is, we need him all the time, we just don’t realize it. As long as we think we can handle our problems, that’s what we do. We handle them, or at least we try. We don’t trust God. We don’t even turn to him. We just . . . try to figure it out on our own. Then a trial like this comes along, and we find out just how helpless we really are. It’s so big, it overwhelms us. We realize we can’t fix it no matter how hard we try.”

  This was actually making sense.

  “All Jean and I did was pray. We surrendered the whole thing to God and said, ‘Lord, this is too big for us to carry. We need your help. We need to know what you want us to do.
Please take away all this fear and anxiety.’ And he did. I have no idea how this is gonna work out. Where the money’s going to come from, but that’s okay. According to this notebook—well, the Scriptures in here about humility—my part is simple. Humble yourself.”

  Allan looked down at the notebook, which had suddenly increased in value. “I’ve read a lot of things about humility. But I think I’ve learned more from what you just said than from anything I’ve read.”

  “Isn’t it simple? It’s like, after seeing it broken down this way for children, the lights came on for me. God’s not expecting me to do big things for him or try to impress him with my great faith. He wants me to depend on him . . . for everything. And if you think about it, that’s exactly how Jesus lived in the Gospels. Totally dependent on the Father.”

  “So why all the index cards on the fridge?”

  “I guess the idea is memorizing Scripture. This chapter on humility says our minds drift through thousands of thoughts each day. Many of them draw us away into doubt and fear. Our minds need something better to hold on to. So the author suggests putting Scriptures together that speak about the very thing you need the most help with. Well, we’re supposed to teach kids to do this, but he says adults need it just as much. One of the ideas for helping you memorize them was writing them down on little cards. So that’s what I did.”

  Allan reached for her hand. “I’m really proud of you, hon. I expected to come home and find you totally down and depressed. But look at you. I’m actually encouraged. How about you and I pray like you and Jean did, then we’ll get up and eat that incredible meat loaf.”

  46

  The following morning, Saturday, Michele texted Julie to see if there was anything they could do for her. It was hard to know how to handle something like this. Ray and Julie had plenty of family in town and tons of friends in the church. Julie would probably be bombarded by people expressing concern. Michele didn’t want to pile on. She sent just a quick text, telling her no need to reply if things were crazy.

  She stood near the patio door as she sent it, in time to see Allan’s car pull into the driveway. He had just made a quick run to the store to solve their coffee emergency. A few moments later, he walked across the connecting sidewalk holding a bag of half-and-half in one hand and a manila folder in the other.