Healing Sands

by Nancy Rue

  “None taken,” Sully said. “But what about to you? Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on yourself?”

  “No. I mean, I thought I was over wanting to hurl projectiles at people, and then sometimes I think about Ginger, and about Ian and what he did to Miguel and to Jake and to Alex—to himself— and I just want to flush him down the nearest toilet.”

  “Of course you do. But you haven’t done it, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Have you done anything else with that anger? Punched anybody in the face?”

  “No.”

  “Then there’s your progress, Ryan. There isn’t a mother in the world who wouldn’t get those surges of anger after what’s happened.”

  She gazed at the painting on the wall, though he wasn’t sure she was seeing it. When she looked back at him, her eyes brimmed.

  “What you’re feeling is righteous anger,” he said. “It’s the Jesus anger—turning over the tables in the temple.”

  “Telling the Pharisees they’re a brood of vipers. I’ve always liked that passage.”

  Of course she had.

  “I think what you’re really chasing is righteousness,” Sully said. “And the question you’ve been struggling with is: when do you fight, and when do you surrender? I think you’ve come a long way in learning how to discern that.”

  She looked again at the painting, this time with focus. “I hated that place when I first saw it.”

  “What—White Sands?”

  “Yeah. I couldn’t believe it the day I walked in here for my first session, and you had it right there in my face. It was like you knew what was going to tick me off.”

  Sully put up both hands. “I’m a lot of things, but I’m not clairvoyant.”

  “But now—I’ve figured out what it is that draws people to it, or at least me.” She glanced at him. “We’ve already established that I can’t speak for everybody on the planet.”

  “I said you were making progress.”

  Her eyes went back to the Sands. “There’s nothing out there— except that it’s so beautiful there has to be something. I think it’s God, in a form you can’t miss like you can everywhere else, with all the noise and people’s stuff. So I guess the reason it gives me so much peace is because there’s nothing but me and God. The images start coming to me, and I know things that I need to do—not the whole picture, which I would prefer, trust me.”

  She put up the goalpost hands again. “What I see is about this much. And so I guess that’s all I’m supposed to see at any given time. What’s that called?”

  “Are you going to throw something at me if I tell you?”

  She looked at him. “You’re going to say surrender, aren’t you?”

  Sully nodded. “Sometimes we fight in righteous anger. Sometimes we let it go. But the surrender to the way God sees it always has to come first.”

  “And it’s right here.” She let her hands drop. “But sometimes I still don’t see it. It’s like anger blinds me.”

  “And you’re getting to the bottom of that anger.”

  She gave him a squint. “Getting. As in I have more work to do.”

  “Let me tell you something my mentor always says to me.” Sully closed his eyes, saw Porphyria—felt his throat clench. “She says, ‘Sully, until you’re dead, you’re not done.’”

  “That sounds like something my mother would say.”

  Sully opened his eyes and tried to grin. “And we haven’t even gotten to her yet.”

  Her eyes filled again. “I just wish you weren’t leaving. I want to work on this stuff. Dan and I could have couples counseling even.”

  “Who said I was leaving?” Sully said.

  “You did.”

  “Not for good. I’m only going to be gone until—well, until I see to a personal matter.”

  “And then you’re coming back here? To live?”

  “That’s my plan,” Sully said.

  He didn’t add that there was one important piece that was going to have to fall into place for that to come to fruition. He just grinned at Ryan.

  “What?” she said.

  “I’m just thinking about you wanting therapy.”

  “It’s not funny. Try to keep me out of here, and it won’t be pretty. Trust me.”

  “Oh, I do, Ryan,” Sully said. “I do.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Sully checked his calendar one last time before he shut the computer down. There was no doubt Martha would handle things flawlessly while he was away, but the specter of things unfinished still haunted him. He was getting a little paranoid about missing the obvious. Another topic he wanted to discuss with Porphyria.

  He slid the laptop into its bag and did a final eye-sweep of the office. His gaze fell on the picture on his desk. Automatically he picked it up to pack it as he always did when he traveled, but the frame felt too heavy in his hand.

  “What’s wrong, girls?” he said to it. “Tired of being on the road?”

  Lynn and Hannah did not, of course, answer. They simply continued to delight in each other, unaware of what he had tried to do for them, and untouched by it. It didn’t matter to them.

  Perhaps it never had.

  A prim knock brought him back and pulled a grin out of him.

  “You’d better get yourself in here and say good-bye to me, Martha.”

  She pushed open the door—the hair, the pantsuit, and the portfolio all in their usual order. But today’s variation on the smile appeared to be the real one.

  He nodded her to a chair and took the other one. “Frappuccino?” he said.

  “What in the world is a Frappuccino, anyway?” She shook her head at him, hair still immobile. “No, thank you. I just wanted to see if there’s anything else you want me to do while you’re gone.”

  “Just the interviews.”

  “I wish you’d let me wait until you get back, and we’ll do them together.”

  “Since I did such a great job last time?”

  Martha folded her hands on the portfolio in her lap. “I hope I’m not overstepping my bounds by saying this.”

  “Jump right over them, Dr. Fitzgerald. Matter of fact, it’s time we knocked them down anyway.”

  “I just think you’re being too hard on yourself about Kyle. He was very convincing.”

  “He didn’t convince you. Which is why you should be the one to hire his replacement. Have you gotten in touch with Carla Korman?”

  “I just talked to her.”

  “And? Is she interested in coming back?”

  “She said she’d think about it. She’s pretty gun-shy.”

  “We can’t blame her. I think if anyone can convince her, though, it’s you.”

  Martha’s face colored to a proper pink. “So what time is your flight to Nashville?”

  “Tomorrow morning at six.”

  “Ouch.”

  “I have a room in El Paso for tonight. I’ll head down there after I take care of a few things.” Sully leaned onto his thighs. “Listen, I just want to thank you again for all you did to help me.”

  “There’s no need, Sully. Just come back, that’s all I ask.”

  “I intend to. Meanwhile, I have no worries about you holding down the fort here. Oh, and by the way, if you feel like it’s time to let Olivia go, I trust your judgment on that.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Olivia? I would have gone completely over the edge if she hadn’t been here while all of that craziness was going on. I’m working with her on developing some decorum. She’ll be all right.”

  Sully grinned. The image of Olivia becoming a mini-Martha was the most delicious thing he’d thought of in days.

  It was close to noon by the time Sully pulled into Tess’s street, but he slowed down before he reached the house. If he didn’t get it together, he really was going to stutter like Porky Pig when he saw her.

  He’d called a few hours after Kyle was arrested and her voice had sounded just as he remembered it—like a br
ight silk scarf slipping across his soul. It was afterward that he dissected it. Of course she was happy he’d been cleared. So was the barista at Milagro, for that matter. But hadn’t she seemed a little guarded? Not quite as—something?

  The longer he’d stewed over it, the less sure he was that she wanted to hear from him again, much less pick up where they’d left off. He finally resorted to an e-mail to let her know he’d be going out of town. She’d replied within five minutes with an invitation to lunch.

  He was now in front of the house, which meant he had to either get out and go to the door, or drive around the block again. He didn’t have much faith that that would make him sound any less like Porky anyway.

  And then the door opened, and she was there. Silky and smiling.

  “Are you afraid you’re going to get stopped for speeding, Crisp?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “If you’d driven down my street any slower, you would have been going backwards,” she said as she nodded him inside. “Was it something I said?”

  “It was everything you said.”

  “About what?” She closed the door behind them and slid her hair back to look up at him.

  “You really want to do the whole small talk thing?” Sully said.

  “You don’t want to know what we’re having for lunch?”

  “What are we having for lunch?”

  “Steaks. Well done.” She put her arms around his neck. “Now, where were we before they carted you off to jail?”

  “A lot’s happened since then. You might want to refresh my memory.”

  “I can do that,” she said.

  She kissed him, and proved him wrong. She wasn’t guarded. She wasn’t anything—except in love.

  Porphyria opened her eyes the moment Sully entered the room. Winnie had told him not to expect much response, but her voice was stronger than it had sounded on the phone, and the expression that greeted him when he got to her bedside was vintage Porphyria— marvelous lips in an almost-smile, eyes knowing everything. She even managed to look queenly in a hospital gown. Winnie said Porphyria had eschewed the tangle of hanging bags and tubes and beeping machines. Nobody had argued.

  “My, my, Dr. Crisp,” Porphyria said. “I think you’ve fallen in love.”

  Sully grinned. “My lady love says I’m translucent. She must be right.”

  “No, I just know you.”

  “Yes, you do. Like no one else does.”

  “Except maybe you yourself.”

  She closed her eyes, and for an instant Sully thought she had drifted off. He curled his fingers around her hand, cool against his own sweaty palms.

  “Tell me what you found out about yourself,” she said.

  “That I am not, nor will I ever be, perfect.”

  Her eyes opened. “You’re going to have to go deeper than that, son. I don’t have time to fool around.”

  Sully held on harder. “I prided myself on being a good judge of character, but I can’t trust only that now.”

  “Go on.” She licked at her lips.

  “Do you want an ice chip?”

  “I want you to tell me what else you’ve learned.”

  “I have carved a life out of helping people choose healing, and now I know how hard it is to make that choice.”

  She nodded, wise old-soul eyes still on him from a place already far away.

  “That’s what I know,” he said.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  He was fine until she did that. Now he could feel his face struggling. “What mm-hmm?”

  “That’s what you know in your head, Dr. Crisp.” She pulled her hand, still wrapped in his, to her chest. “What do you know here?” “That I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

  She squeezed, her hand so weak it tore at his heart.

  “And that I don’t have to be.”

  “Mmm.”

  “And that I’m not.” He brought their hands to his lips. “And I never was. It was all God, all along, wasn’t it, Porphyria?”

  “Still is, Sully. It’s always about surrender. I’ve spent my whole life learning to succumb to it. It’s the hardest thing God asks of us.” She pulled her mouth slowly, painfully, into her magnificent smile. “But you know what I always say, son.”

  Sully closed his eyes and nodded. “Until we’re dead, we’re not done.”

  “And you know something, Sully? Look at me, son.”

  He did.

  “I think I’m about done.”

  “No—”

  “I waited for you, but now you have to let me go. That’s what I’ve always done for you.” She gave their hands a weak shake. “Do it, son.”

  Sully unwrapped his fingers from her hand, obedient as a boy, and laid it on her chest.

  “I’m going to rest now,” she said. “You, though—you go on.” The magnificent smile lit up her face. “Because you’re healed, Sullivan Crisp. But you aren’t done.”

  “Far from it, Dr. Ghent,” Sully said. “I still—”

  He stopped. There was no mm-hmm on her lips. No Talk to me, son in her eyes. The soft lids closed. A peace beyond him slipped over her face.

  “I’m not done, Porphyria,” he whispered. “It’s all God now.”

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  Our biggest fear in providing questions is that they’ll come across as an “assignment.” We really just want to provide you with springboards for thought and, possibly, discussion over coffee. If you’d rather just savor the story (and the coffee), please do so without hesitation.

  Blessings,

  Nancy Rue and Steve Arterburn

  About Anger

  1. Nobody can deny that Ryan is our angriest character so far. Even if you’ve never wanted to throw pieces of sculpture across a studio, could you relate at all to her frustration and rage? Ever come close to that in your own life?

  2. Sully muses that “innumerable expensive studies had shown that angry people who already knew they were ticked off didn’t feel better after they punched something out. That only worked for people who weren’t in touch with their anger—and that didn’t describe Ryan Coe.” What did describe Ryan’s anger? What describes yours, if you have any (i.e., if you are human . . .)?

  3. Ryan had to learn when to express anger for the sake of her sanity and when—and how—to get a handle on it. In reading Healing Sands, did you find a rule of thumb for that?

  4. How do you know when to take action based on valid anger, and when to let a situation go? How does the answer to that play out in Ryan’s situation? In Sully’s?

  5. Several other characters in the novel have their own issues with anger. It might be interesting to discuss where theirs came from and how it influenced their behavior.

  Kyle

  Ginger

  Jake

  J.P.

  Ian

  Martha

  On Faith

  6. In each of the Sullivan Crisp novels, we’ve shed light on a concept of Christian faith that misinterprets the Gospel. We tackled legalism in Healing Stones and the toxic name-it-and-claim-it approach in Healing Waters. What twisted version of Christianity shows its face in Healing Sands?

  7. Can you follow the thread of Ryan’s faith as it grows in the course of the novel?

  8. What about Sully’s? Over the course of the three, if you’ve read them all?

  9. What about yours?

  Ah, Love

  10. Before Healing Sands was even released, readers were e-mailing us, saying, “Isn’t it time Sully had a relationship?” We thought the same thing. Sully was the only one who wasn’t sure. What do you think about Sully and Tess? Is he more ready at the end of the book than when he first meets her? Do you think they can have a life together?

  11. What do you think the future holds for Ryan and Dan? How might Sully approach his work with them?

  12. An editor asked us why Dan ever got involved with Ginger in the first place. What’s your take on that?

  13. Moving to a different kind of lov
e—how does Ryan’s association with the soccer moms influence the changes in her over the course of the story? Do you agree with what she says near the end, that together they are the body of Christ?

  14. And then, of course, there’s mother love. How does Ryan transform as a mom? What do you think lies ahead for her and Jake?

  15. Finally—Sully and Porphyria. Can you define their relationship? Do you have that kind of spiritual companion in your life?

  In Therapy

  16. Ryan is by far Sully’s most difficult client. Could he have avoided her walking out on their session when she did, or do you think that was a necessary part of their journey?

  17. If you’ve read the other two novels, did you miss the Game Show Theology in this one? Would it have worked with Ryan?

  18. What (if anything) in the therapy sessions resonated with you? Is there anything you could apply to the challenges you personally face?

  19. One of our consultants told us after attending a conference for Christian psychologists that “Belinda Cox is alive and well.” Do you agree that there are counselors who use Scripture incorrectly, if not dangerously, in their work with troubled people? Do you think Sully is “biblical” enough?

  In Life

  20. Sully points out that we are all born with certain neutral qualities. Sometimes they serve us well and sometimes they don’t. That is certainly true for many of our characters. It might be interesting to discuss what those traits are in these people, and how they both enhance them and cause them to stumble—if not fall flat on their faces.

  Ryan

  Dan

  Alex

  Jake

  Ian

  Ginger

  J.P.

  Sully

  Kyle

  Martha

  You

  Did Healing Sands reveal anything else to you? Get you to consider anything differently than you did before? Confirm what you know? Make you want to call us up and tell us we need some therapy from Sullivan Crisp ourselves? If any of the above applies, we would love to hear from you.

  nnrue@hughes.net

  sarterburn@newlife.com

  With one flash of a camera, Demi’s private life becomes public news. She doesn’t know it yet, but her healing has just begun.