by Heather Gray
Skye looked up from the Bible she’d brought with her, one so new the pages were still stuck together. “That’s all? Yesterday you read a bunch of verses.”
“It’s like that sometimes. This verse came to mind yesterday, and I’ve been mulling it over since. What do you think it means to make everything beautiful?”
“I don’t know. It’s the Bible, so I’m not sure beauty means what we think. I doubt it’s about flawless skin or the latest fashion.”
Exactly. “I had the same thought. When we think beauty, we think of people or sometimes nature. When God talks about beauty, though, I’m not always sure. The verse says everything, right? So people, things, situations. It’s not like I was a murderer or anything, but I did stuff before I knew Christ, stuff He didn’t approve of. If He makes everything beautiful, does that mean He turns my past into something of beauty, though?”
“I — I don’t know. Like you said, what about murder? That can’t be beautiful.”
“I’m not sure we get to tell God what is and isn’t beautiful. He sees things beyond anything you or I will ever understand in this lifetime. Even if God’s ways are often a mystery to me, I can say for certain that He redeemed my past. He took me out of it and saved me, sure. That was only the beginning, though. He transformed my past into something that allows me to reach men others can’t.” A fire started burning in his soul, the kind that told Sam he was on the right track and heading in the direction God had intended when He’d brought this verse to mind.
Skye looked around the room, her eyes delivering the message she wouldn’t – that she wanted to change the subject. She didn’t voice it, though, so Sam kept going. “I can help these vets because I know where they come from. I can minister to them — whether it’s a Bible study or a hot meal — because of my past. I understand the things they battle, the demons and the temptations. God took a past I could have been ashamed of, and He made it into something that helps me do the things He wants me to do. He redeemed it by making it useful, and in its use lays the beauty.”
Skye stared at him, the expression in her eyes falling somewhere between argument and question. “For something to be redeemed, a price has to be paid. I looked it up in the dictionary.”
Sam nodded. “I’ve never thought of it, but that makes sense.”
“You’re going to tell me Jesus paid the price for your past, that He’s the one who redeemed it.”
He thumbed over to 1 Corinthians and found chapter seven. “Here, look.” He slid the Bible over so she could see it and pointed to verse twenty-three. “You were bought with a price.”
She gave her head the slightest shake.
Either she wasn’t interested or didn’t agree. He pulled the Bible back to his side of the desk and let her have the space she seemed to crave. “Let’s go back to our original verse. See where it says God ‘has put eternity into man’s heart’?”
Skye followed along with her finger on the page of her Bible. “What does that mean?”
“A desire for God was built into our DNA. At least, I think so. He built us to crave eternity, but eternity means nothing without God, right? So He must have built us to desire Him, to want to be in His presence for all eternity. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me, but I’m open to suggestions. Do you have any thoughts?”
“I don’t buy it.”
A tap at the front door pulled Sam from the desk before he could respond to her remark. Oh, right. Conway was coming by that morning. “Hey man. Did you just arrive?”
Conway shook his head. “Nah. Water heater’s all fixed. It should hold for now, but you’ll need a replacement before too much longer.”
No surprise there.
“My shingle guy’s still on the hook, too, if you can sort things out with City Council.”
Sam shrugged. “I’m working on it.”
Conway nodded as he made his way back out the door. “I figured. Let me know when you make some headway.”
Sam settled into his seat again. “So what don’t you buy? The part about eternity?”
She waved his words away. “The beauty thing. God can’t make everything beautiful.”
Skye was a complex communicator. So, what was she trying to communicate this time?
“He can’t make drugs beautiful.” Her chin jutted forward.
Ah, she was asking him a question disguised as a gauntlet-throwing challenge. But what, exactly, was the question?
I know I keep asking, but wisdom please.
Sam took a deep breath. He could do this. He could walk blindfolded into the minefield. For her. For Skye.
“God could wave a magic wand and change the whole world into a perfect utopia, sure. Who does that help, though? He wants us to learn and to grow, not to be automatons. We each have the power to change the world by showing mercy, love, and grace to the people we come into contact with. We change the world by letting Him change us first. Then we get to be a part of what He’s doing by impacting the people around us. That’s where the beauty lies. And if we all do it, it spreads.”
“And the world is changed.”
Okay, so it wasn’t as easy as that. “I think so, if we lived in a perfect world. But we don’t.”
“So why bother, then?”
“I can’t tell you why you should bother, but I can tell you why I do.”
She tipped her head toward him, and he took it as her consent to keep talking.
“God didn’t just save me from my past. He saved me for something, too, and He’s at work in my life every day, growing me toward that thing, whatever it is.”
“What is he growing you for?”
“I don’t know yet. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure if it’s something in this world or the next. The thing is, though, God gave me this amazing gift. He saved me from myself, from a future much different from the one I’m currently living. If He did all that for me, how can I go through life and not want to tell other people about Him and about what He can do for them?”
She frowned but didn’t tell him to stop.
“That’s why I bother. Because He changed me for the better, and I want other people to have the same chance, that same hope.”
She broke eye contact, and Sam sat back. He’d said what God had wanted him to say, and there was a special joy in that. Skye didn’t appear to be interested in what he’d said, though. The glint in her golden eyes mocked the care he’d taken with his words and the part of his heart and soul he’d poured into his answer. Joy and dejection all rolled into one? He’d been there before, but it had never been quite so bittersweet.
“I’m glad that works for you and makes you happy. That doesn’t mean it’s for me, though.”
Oh, how he wanted to argue. She was shutting the door, though, and Sam needed to let her. He couldn’t muscle his way in. It didn’t work like that. So he did the gracious thing and gave her a way out of the conversation. “I’m taking the van over to your friend’s auto shop this morning. Want to come with? You ever seen where she works?”
Skye met his eyes again. “Her name’s Fern, and you can’t call it her auto shop while we’re there. Her dad’s kind of particular about that. I’d love to see it, though, and I’m not sure I can come up with a viable excuse otherwise.”
“Why would you need an excuse?”
“Fern has a brother. He works there, too.”
“That’s a problem…?”
“We sort of dated in high school.”
“Yeah, but… That was a long time ago, right?”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t know anything about small towns, do you?”
CHAPTER 31
Skye followed in her car while Sam drove the van to Green & Son Automotive. That man was infuriating. He talked about God with such a calm voice, as though everything he said was supposed to be perfectly reasonable.
So God worked in individual people, huh? What about her? Where had God worked? What about her mom? Nothing beautiful came out of her mom’s de
ath. Or her dad’s. Nothing.
The weird thing, though, was that at the same time she wanted to pick up a book to throw at Sam, she also wanted to soak in his every word. Something inside of her responded to what he was saying. It was almost like she craved those words. She didn’t like them, and she didn’t want to hear them. Yet she was compelled to listen. Talk about not making any sense.
Then again, nothing in her life had made sense recently… and it had been more than a decade since she’d felt so alive.
Maybe one of these days she would tell Sam about her mom.
If he tried to tell her it was all beautiful, though…
Skye’s jaw was clenched tight by the time she climbed out of her car and walked through the door Sam opened for her.
“Hey, Skye, I didn’t think I’d see you this morning.” Fern’s greeting was a warm balm to her irritated soul.
Sam held out his hand. “Sam Madison. I brought the van in.”
“Keys in it?”
Sam nodded.
“Give me a second.” Fern disappeared through a solid brown door and came back a few minutes later. “We had an emergency brake job that’s going longer than expected. It’ll be at least an hour before we pull the van in, and since they’re going to go over it bumper to bumper, it’ll be a few hours after that before they’re ready for you.”
“Sure. Skye came along so she could give me a ride back.”
Fern pushed a paper across the glass countertop. “Fill this out. We’ll call you when we’re ready to talk about what needs doing. Be sure to include your email address. You’ll give us verbal authorization on the phone to proceed with whatever you want done, but then I’ll follow up with an email going over those same points, and you’ll need to reply to the email with a confirmation.”
Skye grinned at Fern. “How’s that working?”
“Outstanding, actually. When someone asks why, I just tell them we need a paper trail, and they’re fine with that. Mr. Harchett’s the only one who’s gotten crotchety about it. He demanded to know why a paper trail matters, so I told him the truth. Some people give permission over the phone then refuse to pay the bill by claiming they didn’t give permission. He’s probably still complaining about it, but at least he’s upset at whoever cheated us and not at Green & Son.”
“How’d your dad take to the change?”
Fern leaned across the counter. “I haven’t told him yet.”
Skye winked at her friend. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
A few minutes later, Sam was climbing into Skye’s compact car, and she was pulling out of the garage’s gravel parking lot. When she took a turn a couple streets before the one that led to Samaritan’s Reach, Sam cast a sideways glance at her but didn’t say anything.
Until she pulled up in front of a house.
“Is this where you live?”
Skye scowled at the house. Could she go through with this? She forced her fingers to unlock themselves from the steering wheel and pull on the handle to open her door. She would just show him the place. She wasn’t ready to do something about the idea floating around in the back of her mind.
Sam followed her, his solid presence at her back.
With feet like cement, she trudged up to the front door and slid the key into the lock. Once inside, she started flipping on light switches in every room until no shadow could find a resting place within those walls.
She circled back around to the living room and stood, hands on her hips. “I brought you here to show you the garage, but if that’s all I show you, you’ll ask all sorts of probing questions because that’s what you do, even when you’re trying not to. I don’t want to deal with that right now. So I’m going to tell you a few things. It’s not the whole story, but it’s all I’m willing to give you today. I know I’m being cryptic. I just…”
“It’s okay. Tell me what’s on your mind. If I have questions, I’ll save them for another time.”
Skye was swallowed up by the look in Sam’s eyes, a look filled with so much more there than she wanted to see. Integrity and honesty, faithfulness and compassion. His eyes, the ones she’d previously classified as icy, reflected the understanding of someone who had battle scars of his own. And for whatever reason, he looked right in her childhood home, like he belonged. Too bad she wasn’t convinced that was a good thing.
She nodded and swept an arm to encompass the room they were in. “I lived here with my mom when I was younger. We stayed with my paternal grandparents while my dad was deployed. When Dad died, something went wrong between my mom and grandparents, so we ran away. We came here. My grandparents bought this house for us to live in. I didn’t realize they owned it, not until I was going through their papers after they died.”
She touched a picture hanging on the wall. Her tenth birthday. She posed with both her parents, and they all looked so happy.
Skye turned away from the picture, and her gaze sought Sam. “The house has a two-car garage, and I thought maybe Samaritan’s Reach could use it for flea market storage. No one lives here, though. Nobody’s lived here for a long time. It might become a target for thieves if people realize the garage is full but the house is empty. You can’t afford to have stuff stolen.”
“We converted one of the rooms at the shelter to use for flea market storage.”
“I know. But if you want to grow the flea market and turn it into a real income stream, you’ll need a place to store the items that don’t move quickly. You can’t sell winter coats in July, and you can’t sell kayaks in November. Samaritan’s Reach doesn’t have enough space for that sort of thing. Or you could look into getting a trailer and keeping everything in it so you’re not constantly loading and unloading the van.”
Sam stuffed his hands into his pockets. “It’s hard for you to be here.”
“No questions.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “It wasn’t a question.”
Skye sighed and made her way through the house again, flipping off the lights. Her gut clenched with memories of the past and dreams of the future. The words were there, trying to make their way past her gritted teeth. If she could just loosen her jaw… “Would the shelter have use of a three-bedroom house with a two-car garage in the center of a middle-class neighborhood?”
“Honestly?”
She stared at him. “That’s the type of relationship we have, right? Honest.”
“I’d do almost anything for a home like this. When our guys graduate the leadership program, we throw them right back out into the world, and they flounder. I always wanted to have something like this. A kind of halfway house, where they came to be out from under the control of the shelter but still room with one another until they get their feet on the ground and have the confidence they need to stand on their own and succeed. A house like this would be perfect. Provided we had men in residence, we could use the garage for storage, and it would be safe.”
Skye flipped the last light switch and left through the front door.
A halfway house.
Could she do that?
Could she let go of the bad memories and release this house to Samaritan’s Reach? Could she give her childhood home a chance to become a place of hope? Was she strong enough to let go of the pain that held her anchored to this place?
Skye got into her car and waited for Sam to latch his seatbelt. As she pulled away from the curb, she said the words clogging her throat. “Would Samaritan’s Reach want to buy it, or would I remain the owner and landlord?”
“Are we talking theoretical here, or concrete?”
She swallowed. “I’m not sure.”
Skye kept her eyes trained on the road ahead, but Sam’s presence still nearly overwhelmed her. He was far too big for her small car, and she didn’t mean just his long legs and wide shoulders.
“I’d love to buy it, but we don’t have the money. I sold my home to buy the old Silver Heart motel. I’m tapped out. I don’t have anything else, and you’ve seen our books.”
<
br /> The steel bands tightening around her chest eased up, and Skye was able to take a breath. “I might not be prepared to sell it yet anyway, but I think I’m ready to see the house used for something positive.”
Sam was silent for a minute before his soft words filled the space between them. “That’s kind of like redemption. I don’t know the details, but it’s obvious the home has bad memories for you. You’re willing to use it to do something meaningful, though. You’re redeeming it. You’re redeeming the years you spent there.”
“Redemption comes with a price. Who’s paying this price?”
“By the look on your face, I’d say you are. Jesus is willing to pay it for you, though, if you let Him.”
CHAPTER 32
Sam watched Skye drive away after dropping him off at Samaritan’s Reach. With each passing week, it was harder to watch her leave. He was getting closer and closer to danger where she was concerned.
There was something about her, though. Her strength. Her resolve.
Yep. He was in trouble.
Alan and Jack were waiting for his help to fill out their financial aid paperwork so they could start their online college courses during the upcoming term. He was going to have to put them off for a bit longer, though. He needed to clear his head.
He popped into the supply room, where Lance was doing inventory. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
Lance glanced up long enough to blink. “Sure thing, Boss. All’s quiet on the home front.”
Sam collected the gym bag from his room, tossed it into the backseat of his car, which he kept parked behind the shelter, and headed to the nearby boxing gym.
He pulled into the gym parking lot and jogged inside. Before the ink was dry on the sign-in sheet, he was gloved up, in his southpaw stance, and throwing some warm-up light jabs at the patched and worn bag.
There was something about the smell of sweat, leather, and testosterone that reminded him of his time in the Marines. He hadn’t liked every part of his job, but he’d thrived in the environment of male camaraderie. The shelter provided a similar atmosphere, except he was the one in charge. Everyone looked to him to lead, and by default, that put him outside the circle of camaraderie. It had been a hard adjustment to make and was one with which he still sometimes struggled.