Lily Fields (Garden of Love 1)

by Melanie Wilber

  Lily wanted to ask Josie about Peter: if Mark had heard from him and said anything about her, but she didn’t. She had turned down his offer to leave his phone number, and she knew that had been the right decision. She actually hadn’t thought about him during the last few weeks. She had been focusing on Marty, and Peter didn’t have anything to do with the decision she’d made.

  But he had returned to her thoughts this morning, unannounced but certainly not unwelcome. She didn’t know what it was about Peter that made her wish he didn’t live far away, but she knew that if he were to ever come see her again, she would be willing to find out.

  Lily rode the bus back to the church that evening with Josie and Tommy for Sunday night youth group where they both served as team leaders of the high-energy, big-program youth night where four-hundred teens gathered each week for games, worship, drama or video presentations, and a message from the youth pastor. It was different than what they did on Wednesdays: bigger, louder, and on the less personal side, but she enjoyed the time for what it was, and the two-hour program left little room for her to feel sorry for herself and dwell on the fact that she had told Marty good-bye yesterday. Taking a bus back to her apartment afterwards, she decided it was okay for her to grieve about Marty no longer being a part of her life, but at the same time she had to move on. Getting back to her normal, unexciting, predictable life was fine with her.

  Crawling into an empty bed that night, she resisted the urge to ask God to bring Mr. Right along as she often had in the past. She needed some time to recover from the emotional roller-coaster she had been on for the last six weeks.

  On Monday afternoon she went to the Christian bookstore at the mall, needing to get a birthday gift for one of the teen girls in her Bible study group. After scanning the CD display and finding the album she was searching for, she also picked up a card for Jessica and some cards for others. It had been too long since she had sent some notes of encouragement to anyone, and she knew getting her focus off of herself and pouring her heart into others around her would help dispel the loneliness. She also picked up a novel she saw on the new release wall, one she had been waiting for by one of her favorite authors.

  Taking her purchases to the counter, she had to wait for the cashier while she took a call. Scanning the items displayed on the counter, something caught her eye. An assortment of silver novelty rings were marked as being on clearance. Most of them had either words or symbols etched into the metal. She had never been much of a jewelry girl. Her cross necklace and earrings were about all she ever wore.

  But one of the rings had the word HOPE engraved all around the band. Something compelled her to reach out and take it from the foam. Noticing its small size, she thought it might actually fit her slender fingers and slipped it onto her right hand. The ring fit perfectly and something stirred deep within her.

  Don’t give up, Lily. Hope in Me. I have someone for you.

  She left the ring in place and told the woman she wanted it also. After paying for her purchases, Lily left the store with her heart racing. Had God spoken to her as clearly as she thought, or had her imagination run away with her?

  She didn’t think so.

  An immediate hope like she had never felt before had entered her heart. A feeling that the man God had for her could be just around the corner. In a way she felt like she had already met him. Had she? If so, who was God talking about?

  Lily managed to get back to her normal life for the next two weeks. She became the diligent, focused aide for Max once again, spending her days teaching him new things and helping him reach the goals laid out for him. She helped Rose with some wedding plans, going with her to look for dresses, choosing invitations one Saturday, and helping her find a photographer and florist the next.

  She continued to enjoy teaching the girls’ Bible study on Wednesday nights, going to church on Sunday morning and to youth group in the evening. On Valentine’s Day she went to a dinner party the leaders of the singles’ group hosted at their home in Sellwood, a community south of Downtown. It was an informal, no-date-required event. Josie and Mark were there, along with many of the other friends she had made during the last few years.

  Sitting in the living room beside the fire toward the end of the evening, Lily heard the murmur of voices around her but wasn’t listening to any particular conversation. Josie had needed to pick up Tommy before it got too late, and she and Mark had left about twenty minutes ago.

  That feeling of being alone that she had welcomed for the past two weeks slowly began to feel uncomfortable once again. The last two months of her life had come and gone so quickly she wasn’t certain it had happened at all. Why had Marty, Devin, and Peter come into her life in the same week instead of being spread out over the course of several months or years? She had always lived by the principle that God had a reason for everything. But this didn’t make any sense to her. Instead of the well-planned, everything-in-its-own-time view she’d always held of God, she suddenly felt like she didn’t know Him at all.

  Glancing at the silver ring on her finger that she had been wearing since slipping it on at the bookstore, she wondered if she had imagined God speaking to her after all. Who knew what her shaky emotions could have led her to perceive as reality on that day?

  Not liking the uncomfortable feeling welling up within her, Lily decided to leave. Not expecting anyone to notice, she went to find her coat and planned to slip quietly away.

  “Are you leaving, Lily?” Corrinne asked as she emerged from the bedroom where she had located her coat. Corrinne and her husband, Ted, had been leading this group for the past year or so, and she had gotten to know them fairly well.

  “Yes. Thanks for everything,” she said, clutching the strap of her purse in her hands. “This was nice.”

  They chatted for a few minutes about her job and Corrinne’s kids. Everyone was finally well in her house after a string of colds had kept her homebound for a few weeks, and she was relieved.

  “I heard about your big decision,” Corrinne said, taking her by surprise. “Are you doing okay?”

  Lily wanted to brush her off, but something about the way Corrinne asked made her be more truthful.

  “I think reality is starting to hit me,” she admitted, hearing her voice falter a bit. She didn’t want to cry and forced a smile.

  Corrinne wasn’t buying it. “Come here,” she said, putting her arm around her and steering her toward the stairs. Corrinne led the way to the second floor of the house and down the hall into the master bedroom, closing the door behind them.

  “Tell me about it,” she said sitting on the edge of the bed and offering her a space beside her.

  Corrinne’s open invitation made her start talking. She hadn’t talked with her about this at all, so she started at the beginning and told her everything. She didn’t break into tears until she recounted the scene when she had told Marty her reasons for saying no.

  “Are you more upset about losing Marty or about being alone again?”

  “Both,” she replied, wiping her nose on the tissue Corrinne offered her. “I loved Marty with all my heart once, and I’ve missed him ever since our first break-up. I know I made the right decision then and now, but I keep thinking about the way he kissed me that first night at my apartment. It felt so good and right, and I almost told him yes right there and then.”

  “I’m not sure if this is the same thing or not,” Corrinne said. “I married my first love, so I’m certainly no expert on getting over a broken heart, but I have a close friend that I’m convinced God brought into my life for a short time, even though we’ve lived apart from each other since.

  “I met her when I went to work at a summer camp when I was seventeen. We spent three months together and were the best of friends. I had dreams of us being college roommates and going through those years together. But then it never happened. She chose to go back home, I went to school here in Portland. Eventually we both got married and started having kids. We’ve kept in touch,
but we’ve never spent any significant amount of time together since.

  “Last year she had her third child and was really sick the whole time and then continued to be sick afterwards. I wanted to help her, but I was two hundred miles away. I’ve often asked God why we couldn’t have lived near each other all these years. Other than Ted, I’ve never had a friend like her.”

  “That sounds like what I had with Marty,” Lily said. “It was like--perfect. We never had a fight. We wanted to be together, but our circumstances kept us apart.”

  “I don’t know the answer to why some people are close to our hearts but God has them far away. Maybe we need those kinds of relationships as much as we need to have relationships with those we live and breathe with.”

  Lily pondered that thought for a moment and told Corrinne something she had considered in the last few days but had never voiced to anyone--even herself.

  “You know, in some strange way, I think I needed Marty to come back into my life for a brief time so I could move on. I think he’s held my heart all these years without me even realizing it.”

  “Maybe the right guy is just around the corner,” Corrinne said, “but God knew you needed to let Marty go first.”

  Lily stared at her for a moment. The words Corrinne spoke were too close to the same ones she had felt God speaking to her at the bookstore for her to let them slip by. Glancing at the ring on her finger once again, she told Corrinne about her encounter with Jesus that day, feeling foolish as she spoke the words.

  Corrinne smiled and rose from the bed. Going to her dresser, she opened a decorative box beside some perfume bottles and took out a faded white envelope. Coming back to the bed, she took out a single sheet of folded, plain paper. She didn’t offer to let her read it, but Lily saw Corrinne’s name written on the outside.

  “Ted and I dated during our freshman year of college, and I fell in love with him so fast, it scared me. I felt like I wanted to marry him that summer, but I had vowed that I would finish school before I got married, and I was determined to stick to my plan.”

  Lily smiled, knowing that had not happened. Corrinne and Ted were only a couple of years older than her, and they had a nine-year-old. “What changed your mind?”

  “This letter. The day before I was planning to break up with him, I asked God to give me a sign if I was doing the right thing or not. The next day we went on our date as planned, and I was going to tell him I wasn’t ready to get serious with anyone and only wanted to be friends. We hadn’t talked about getting married at all, and I figured he’d let me go. I certainly didn’t expect him to have fallen in love with me so fast either.”

  “Did Ted write that?” she asked, pointing to the letter in Corrinne’s hands.

  “Yes. He gave it to me after we’d had a picnic lunch together on campus. I had no idea what he would be writing to me. At first I thought it might be a poem or a song because I knew he played guitar and wrote music sometimes.”

  “Was it?”

  “No. It was a letter telling me that he was in love with me and that he wanted us to get married that summer. As soon as I read those exact words that I had been thinking to myself, I knew it had to be from God. That was the only explanation.”

  “Did you get married that summer, just like that?”

  Corrinne laughed and spoke her next words with absolute joy.

  “Just like that,” she said. “My friends thought we were crazy. My parents liked Ted but encouraged us to wait another year. And if it would have been one of my friends that was getting married at nineteen, I would have given her the same advice. But for me, I knew it was right. No one else understood the significance of this letter and the words Ted wrote to me, but I did.”

  “Have you ever regretted getting married so young?”

  “It hasn’t always been easy. Ted finished school over the course of six years instead of four. I never finished,” she said, getting up and putting the letter back in its treasured place.

  Lily waited for her to continue. Ted and Corrinne seemed happy, but she wondered if they’d had some difficult years.

  Corrinne came back to her side and smiled. “But no. I’ve never regretted it. I knew it was right then, and I feel the same way looking back now. I think there are times we ask things of God that He doesn’t allow us to have, but when He tells us He’s going to do something, we can believe Him. Ted may have been the one to write that letter to me, but God used it to speak to my heart, to tell me it was okay to fall in love at nineteen and get married. And if you believe He spoke to you when you put that ring on, Lily, then I’m sure He did. Don’t toss it aside. Cling to Him. Cling to the hope He gave you that day.”

  Lily knew Corrinne was right. Her study with the high school girls this week had been about not just believing in God but believing Him. She knew God’s voice. She knew what He had told her. She had to believe it.

  “Do you think that by ‘around the corner,’ God could mean two or three years from now?”

  Corrinne smiled. “I’ve given up on trying to guess when God is going to do something I truly believe He’s going to do. But I’d be on the lookout if I were you. Ted and I met in January and were married by July. God may not have something like that in mind for you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if He did.”

  Lily thought of Devin. She had been avoiding him at school somewhat because she didn’t want to go running into his arms on the rebound, but maybe letting him in on her decision and seeing where that led wasn’t something she should be afraid of.

  “Thanks for talking,” she said, rising from the bed and giving Corrinne a hug. “I needed this. I needed to hear that story.”

  They left the room and headed for the stairs. Corrinne brought up the subject of long-distance friendships again.

  “You know, one of the things I love most about the long-distance relationship I have with my friend is the letters we write to one another. We don’t hold anything back. I pour my heart out to her on those pages, and I think she does the same in return. If we actually lived near one another, we might not be as open.”

  “Do you think I should write Marty?”

  “If you feel like you need to, I don’t think there’s any harm in that. God may have given both of you this special relationship because He knows you need it, even if you aren’t meant to be husband and wife. Being a missionary is a difficult and often lonely calling. Maybe a letter every few months from you is what God had in mind for Marty when He brought the two of you together.”

  Lily did have his address but hadn’t decided if she would ever contact him or not. She thought writing him might be more upsetting to him than anything, but perhaps Corrinne was right. Marty wasn’t meant to be her husband, but that didn’t have to stop her from being an encouraging friend; a friendly voice from the other side of the world to remind him he had people praying for him and loving him across the miles.

  God had told her to let him go, but perhaps not entirely.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The following Saturday Lily had a date with Devin. She had talked to him earlier in the week, letting him know about her decision. He hadn’t wasted any time in asking if she was interested in picking up where they had left off.

  She told him she was, but with the understanding she wasn’t looking for anything serious right away. Just as she had needed to get to know Marty again, that’s what she wanted to do with him. For two years she had been fantasizing about being with him and building him up as this perfect guy in her mind. She needed to get to know the real Devin.

  They went to dinner and then to a movie. Devin said good night to her at the door with a simple kiss on the back of her hand. She had asked him to refrain from any displays of affection beyond hand-holding for now, and he respected her wishes.

  She saw him again on Monday. They didn’t have school because of President’s Day, and they decided to go skiing at Mount Hood. They left early in the morning, skied for two hours, had a leisurely lunch in the lodge, and then we
nt back out for the afternoon. They were equally matched skill-wise and enjoyed the same slopes. Lily found herself having a good time and tried not to think about what the future may hold for them but to simply enjoy this day.

  Riding the chair-lift for the final run of the day, Lily took her eyes from the scenic white wonderland and looked at Devin when he placed his arm around her.

  “This has been a nice day,” he said. “I had no idea you knew how to ski like this.”

  “I think there are a lot of things you don’t know about me.”

  “I’m looking forward to finding them out.”

  She smiled.

  “Is the mountain your favorite place to go for a getaway?”

  “During the winter,” she said. “After March or so, I like the beach.”

  “Me too,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have to do that some Saturday, or maybe during Spring Break.”

  “I’d like that,” she said. “Where do you like to go?”

  “Cannon Beach,” he said.

  She smiled. They reached the getting-off point and glided down the slope to the beginning of the run. She didn’t get a chance to tell him that was one of her favorite places too.

  On the way down the hill, Lily thought about the day she had spent with Devin and the other times they’d had together thus far. Being with him wasn’t exactly like she had envisioned, but he certainly wasn’t disappointing her. Devin was easy to be with and made her feel good about herself, and apparently he enjoyed being with her. On the hour-long drive back to Portland, she shared more about Marty with him. She hadn’t wanted to do that on their date on Saturday and may not have done so now either, except that he asked.

  It wasn’t that late when they arrived at her apartment, and she invited him to come in. She made them some coffee and set out some chocolate-chip cookies she had made the previous afternoon. Devin ate about five or six of them, and she made a mental note to bake him some cookies sometime in the next week and leave them in his classroom as a little thinking of you gift.