The Wonder of You

by Susan May Warren

  Amelia bumped Max, who moved into the row, leaving a space for at least half of Vivie.

  “Can’t you ever be on time?” Amelia said.

  “This is on time, darling,” she said before raising her voice into the song.

  “‘Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.’”

  “How’s it going with Roark?” Vivie said under the start of the next verse. “I saw him yesterday in the coffee shop. He had a lineup of admirers.”

  “Thanks for that. And fine. He came to our campfire on Friday night.”

  Vivie’s eyes widened.

  Max nudged Amelia with his elbow and she wanted to nudge him back, something sharp right in his gut. Because yes, she’d seen Grace sneak out of their room again last night. It felt a little hypocritical for him to be singing about “Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,” when he and Grace had so much compromise going on.

  “‘High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art,’” Amelia sang and glanced at him.

  He frowned at her.

  But movement on the far side of the sanctuary snagged her attention. Seth and his parents, sneaking into the only available room on the far end of the front row. He’d cleaned up for worship, wearing a pair of dark jeans, a white oxford with sleeves rolled to the elbows, his glorious blond hair held back with a rubber band. He towered over his mother but put his arm around her as he began to sing.

  Oh, that’s right. Mother’s Day. With the resort full, Max and Grace had baked cinnamon rolls for each guest, filling the house with the redolence of Christmas. Amelia didn’t look forward to the days ahead of turning over the cabins for the coming week’s fishing groups, but seeing her parents—and especially Darek—overjoyed with the turnout tempered the drudgery to come.

  And then she had Saturday’s outing with Roark waiting for her like a reward.

  “‘Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.’”

  The song ended and Pastor Dan offered greetings before they took their seats, Vivie scooting tight next to her. She breathed into Amelia’s ear, “I see Seth.”

  Amelia put a finger over her lips.

  Vivie rolled her eyes.

  Pastor Dan continued with announcements as Amelia’s eyes drifted to Seth again—old habits, hard to break. She’d probably loved him even before he started flirting with her in seventh grade, before he began to taunt her on the playground in fourth grade, all the way back to when they fought over the rocking horse in the nursery. She didn’t know a life without Seth teasing her, then later, turning his hundred-watt attention on her.

  Of course they belonged together. Everyone knew it, and he seemed to sense her eyes on him because he looked over his mother’s shoulder and met her gaze. A slight smile pulled at his lips.

  She couldn’t help but return it.

  “Today we have special guests. Barb and David Gunderson, our missionaries to Uganda, are visiting us, bearing a report from their work at Hope Children’s Village.”

  Amelia checked her program, found pictures of the missionaries dressed in traditional African garb. Onstage, they looked all-American, David with dusty-gray hair, about the age of her father, Barb with short black hair, wearing a jean skirt and T-shirt. As a slide show played pictures of whitewashed buildings and adorable, dark-skinned children in pretty pink-and-yellow dresses or oversize Chicago Bulls T-shirts, her mind began to wander.

  What if she married Seth? She might one day have her own row—or two—of children, carrying on the legacy of two families whose ancestors built Deep Haven. And Seth—yes, he could be rough-hewn, but he had a tenderness that had made her crazy about him in high school. So when did that change?

  Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe she’d simply been sidetracked by the exotic allure of Roark, the sense of adventure. But a girl couldn’t build a life on adventure, right?

  What if Roark stayed in Deep Haven? The thought churned through her brain, trying to fit him into her world. What exactly would that life look like?

  The slide show ended, and David gave a recap of the year’s activities.

  Seth’s words began to burrow inside Amelia. He’ll leave once he breaks your heart again.

  But what if she went with him?

  David introduced his wife, and Barb took the mic. Amelia shifted in her seat. Checked her watch.

  “‘Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart.’ We sing it, but do we want it? Do we believe it?” Barb stepped out from behind the pulpit. “I used to sing it loud and proud, but I didn’t really want it. Sometimes I still don’t want it. God’s vision sounds terrifying. What if He sends us somewhere we don’t want to go?”

  Amelia glanced again at Seth.

  “We’re satisfied to get a glimpse of His vision, and then we seek out the places where we can accomplish it on our own. And frankly, that’s why we live empty, frustrated lives. Pursuing God’s vision requires faith in God to work it out. It means turning our hearts to Him fully, undivided, focused on loving Jesus with every part of ourselves. I can’t do that on my own. Truth is, I don’t even want to. Loving God like that takes courage and the surety that He won’t fail us.”

  She looked at the audience, the first pew. “Sometimes it feels like God fails us. Many of you prayed for us when we lost our middle son. A freak moment we couldn’t have stopped—he stepped on a black mamba and died in my arms, sixteen years old, his entire life ahead of him. In that moment, I believed God failed.

  “But did He? God didn’t promise safety for me or my children. He didn’t promise me riches or a home. He promised me Himself. He promised me eternity. He promised me hope. That is the vision. It’s only when I lose that vision that I begin to call God a failure. I’ve lost my focus.

  “I don’t know what call God has put on your life, but if you have tried to answer it on your own, you will find yourself wandering. Lost. Overwhelmed. Afraid.”

  She stepped back, reached for her husband’s hand. “‘Heart of my own heart, whatever befall, still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.’ The answer is in the song.”

  Next to Amelia, Max shifted, sighed, and on the other side, Vivie tapped her phone against her lap.

  The congregation stood for another hymn, then the offering, and Pastor Dan dug into a sermon on the book of Mark.

  I don’t know what call God has put on your life, but if you have tried to answer it on your own, you will find yourself wandering. Lost. Overwhelmed. Afraid.

  The service ended with a hymn about trusting Jesus; then Amelia found herself being towed by Vivie out to the lobby and into the bathroom.

  “Okay, dish. Are you back together with Roark?” Vivie planted a hip against the sink, folded her arms.

  “I don’t know. Not really. Roark and Seth had a fight, and I told them I would date them both.”

  Vivie’s reaction, eyes wide, mouth open, betrayed a little of how Amelia felt, overwhelmed and foolish.

  “But maybe I shouldn’t date either of them?”

  “Now that’s stupid. Two swoon-worthy men vying for your heart? I wish I had that kind of attention.”

  Someone pushed into the bathroom, and Vivie turned to the sink, fixing her lipstick.

  “Hello, Mrs. Draper,” Amelia said and headed back to the lobby.

  God’s vision sounds terrifying. What if He sends us somewhere we don’t want to go?

  She spied the missionary couple surrounded by a small welcome committee in the vestibule and went to join them. Their oldest daughter looked about her age, and she stood holding hands with a young man who sported a fresh haircut. Amelia introduced herself.

  “Esther,” the young woman said in return. “This is my fiancé, Mark. We’re meeting with your pastor after the service to talk about marrying us in a couple weeks.”

  “Are you heading back to Uganda with your parents?”

  Esther shook her head. “God called them to overseas missions. He has different plans for us. Mark just got a job as a history teacher in Blue Earth.”

  �
��I have a buddy I met at Vermillion from Blue Earth.” Seth’s voice cascaded over Amelia’s shoulder. He reached past her, hooked Mark’s hand. “Played football for the Buccaneers.”

  Mark said something about the Blue Earth team, but Amelia missed it, caught by the way Seth seemed almost jovial. And when he turned to her, he wore the smile that could always leave her a little weak.

  He drew her away from the group, pocketed her in an alcove, one hand braced on the wall. “You look pretty today.”

  She did? An unexpected blush rose in her cheeks. “You look nice too.” She straightened his tie, smoothed it against his chest.

  “How about later I come around and take you out for a picnic? You know, a real date.”

  He smiled again, a hint of tease in his eyes, but they landed on her with such affection that he seemed a different man from the one she’d seen Thursday night on the beach.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Perfect. I’ll be there around five.” He winked and walked away.

  Amelia looked around for her parents. Instead her gaze landed on Seb Brewster and the man he was introducing to Pastor Dan.

  What was Roark doing in church? Yes, they’d visited Notre-Dame and a number of cathedrals around Europe, and he’d professed a belief in God, but other than the time she’d found him sitting alone in the middle of a monastery garden in Prague, lost in thought—or maybe prayer—she hadn’t seen him attend church.

  He had grown up as a missionary, however.

  She headed toward him, her heart thumping.

  Tiger ran up to her, holding a treat in a napkin. “Want a cookie, Aunt Amelia?”

  “Thanks, Tiger.” She took the cookie and looked back toward Roark, but he had just stepped outside, moving toward his car.

  Pursuing God’s vision requires faith in God to work it out.

  What if she left it up to God to decide? Because the harder she looked, the more her vision seemed to cloud over.

  “I’ll take you to Europe if you want, Ames. I mean, I like castles and history. I’d go for seeing Normandy beach.” Seth sat up on the picnic blanket and threw a rock into the lake. It startled the loon feeding just offshore, and the bird disappeared under the water.

  “Seth!” Amelia lowered her camera, searching the dappled lake for the loon’s black head.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You can take a picture of me.” He grinned as she turned the camera on him, the sun catching his golden locks, his warm brown eyes. He wore a black T-shirt that outlined his powerful torso, those burly shoulders, thick biceps. Her lumberjack. And he did photograph well.

  True to his invitation, he’d arrived at 5 p.m. to pick her up, heading north, toward a picnic clearing on Poplar Lake, a blue lake rich in walleye that she’d fished a couple times with her father. Seth had unloaded from his pickup truck a blanket and a basket full of sandwiches, fruit, and bottled lemonade—a feast that she knew had taken some preparation.

  The gesture had touched her, as did the egg salad sandwich he’d handed her. “You remembered.”

  “Hello, you drove me crazy our senior year—the Thursday special at the deli.”

  She’d grinned. “We did have fun trying to make our Thursday deli runs in time to get back to school.”

  “To this day, I avoid the strip of road in front of the school—I just know Kyle is waiting for me to gun it so he can slap me with another $200 ticket.” He’d dug into his Italian roast beef.

  “Yeah, well, you would have gotten more of them if it weren’t for me. His kid brother had a crush on me.”

  Seth rolled his eyes. “Who didn’t have a crush on you, Red?”

  Now, their dinner eaten, the sun falling lazily into the horizon, Amelia lay back to trace the clouds and finally responded to his offer. “I’d love to go to Europe with you.”

  “I’m just saying, you don’t need James Bond to see the world. I can take you.” He rolled onto his side, propped himself up. “It’s not like I didn’t expect you to want to travel.”

  She glanced at him.

  “Sheesh, don’t you think I noticed you buried in the church library on Sunday mornings, reading those missionary books? I’d go in, pretend to check out a Left Behind book, and you wouldn’t even look up.”

  “They were about Bible smugglers. I used to dream I’d be a spy for God, hiding Bibles in the back of my tricked-out motorcycle.”

  Seth laughed. He picked a long piece of grass and tickled her neck with it.

  She swatted at him. “Beyond playing lineman for the Minnesota Vikings, didn’t you ever have any dreams? And driving NASCAR doesn’t count either.”

  His smile fell, and he nodded, suddenly serious.

  She waited, but he flopped onto his back, staring at the sky.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to tell you.”

  “Seth.”

  “It’s silly.”

  “It’s me. I’m not going to laugh at you.”

  He turned to her, his eyes suddenly rich with unshed emotions. “I used to dream that I’d build us a house out here. On Poplar Lake. I even drew it, had plans made.”

  She sat up. “You wanted to build us a house? Here?”

  “Want to, and brace yourself because I already own this patch we’re sitting on.”

  “Seth!” She stood and turned to survey the sloping hill down to the lake, covered by towering birch, white pine, and poplar.

  He stood next to her, settled a hand on her shoulder. Pointed. “I’m going to put the house there, with a deck that overlooks the lake. The house is open and big, so we can fit your entire family and more, and it has two stories, lots of bedrooms for our kids. It’ll be easy for me to get the logs—I thought I’d skin them and build it myself. It might take a couple years, but we can live in town until then, right?”

  Amelia swallowed, the vision too vivid—the sound of kids jumping into the lake, the smell of campfire. The life she’d grown up with, for the next generation. She looked at him, and her eyes blurred.

  He thumbed the corner of her eye. “What is it? Did I say something wrong?”

  “No. It’s so . . . right. It’s perfect.”

  A muscle pulled in his jaw. “Except I have a feeling that’s not a good thing.”

  “It’s a great thing!” She looked away. “It’s just—”

  “You don’t want it. At least with me.”

  She closed her eyes. “I do want it with you.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” He turned her. “Help me understand what you want!”

  She couldn’t put it into words, this simmer inside, a sort of ethereal sense of something bigger. “I want Jesus. I want that passion, that vision Barb Gunderson talked about today. I want to know what ‘Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one’ feels like.”

  She’d rendered him silent.

  She bit her bottom lip, shook her head. “I know I don’t make sense, but I think that girl who longed to be a Bible smuggler is still inside me. Maybe that’s why I went to Prague.”

  “Okay, fine. I get that. I know you wanted to leave Deep Haven, have some kind of grand adventure. But, Amelia—you had it! And came home, remember? Isn’t that enough? What more do you want?”

  “I want all of it. All that God has for me. All the vision, in faith. I—”

  “And that doesn’t mean me.” He was trembling, and she hated herself for destroying this perfect evening.

  “It might. I just don’t know yet.”

  He raked his hand through his hair. “Silly me for thinking you could have Jesus and me.”

  “Seth—”

  “Fine. When will you know? A week? Two weeks? A month? A year? You have to make a decision, Ames. You can’t just wait around for your life to happen. You have to make it happen.” He reached out and took her hands. “I’m trying to be patient—”

  “I know you are.”

  “But you’re killing me here.” He put his forehead to hers. “For the record, I want what God wants too. I just h
appen to think it’s you.”

  He started to kiss her, a whisper against her lips, and for a long second—too long—she ached to simply lose herself again in Seth’s embrace. To lounge on the blanket with him under the twilight and accept his words as her answer. I want what God wants. Wasn’t that a man after God’s heart?

  Maybe—but her hand came up anyway against his chest.

  “Ames!” He tore away from her, his eyes reddening. “What?”

  “I can’t kiss you. I mean, of course I want to, but I can’t kiss anyone until I know. It’s not fair.”

  “You mean it’s not fair to Roark!”

  “No! It’s not fair to me! It just confuses me. I love kissing you, Seth. Too much. So . . .” She shook her head, started to pick up the picnic supplies. “I think I need to go home.”

  “Ames, c’mon . . .” His voice held too much pleading, but she steeled herself against it.

  “I’m tired of wandering, Seth. I came home from Prague because I lost my vision of why I was there. And now I don’t have one. But I’m going to figure it out. I promise.”

  She heard his intake of breath, then his quiet movements as he packed up their picnic. He wrapped it all in the blanket and carried it to the truck, dumping it in without ceremony.

  Then he climbed into the cab, both hands on the wheel, driving her home in stony silence.

  When they reached the resort, she got out but paused at the open window. “Seth—”

  “Call me when you figure it out,” he said sharply and drove away.

  Amelia stood there in the dust a long moment before she went inside. Her mother sat on the deck, reading, most of the weekend guests departed. She guessed that Darek had gone home for the night, and through the window she spied Grace and Max teaching Yulia to fish off the end of the dock.

  She headed upstairs, sat on the bed, pulling her computer to her lap and inserting the SD card from her camera. Then she uploaded the pictures from the picnic—the loon, Seth, the sun ablaze across the lake. Editing a couple of her favorites, she uploaded them to Facebook, tagging them to Evergreen Resort. Darek would be thrilled.

  She couldn’t help but notice the contest link, still on her home page.