by Sheila Walsh
After all these years seeking God, it amazed her to realize just how vaguely she could see Him. Emma had such a limited vision of what was happening around her, and still she trusted. Wasn’t that exactly how they were supposed to live their lives—with the faith of a child?
She remembered a verse in Job that she’d recited with confidence as if she fully understood it. But the verse held a meaning she’d never known before.
“I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.” — Job 42:5–6
Thirty-Two
THE SIGN TO HER MOTEL GLOWED WITH A HALOED LIGHT THROUGH misty night. Drizzling rain came down in long angled sheets and an occasional gust of wind rocked the car.
The old Lonesome Motel was a welcome sight as the weariness of the past few days settled over her on the drive from Clancy’s house.
As she pulled into the parking lot, her lights flashed across the front of the hotel lobby. A man rose from a couch and peered out the window, bending to look toward the car. Ava knew that shape, the way he leaned forward, the mannerism.
What was he doing here, she wondered, with a great sense of relief flooding her.
Ava pulled into a parking space and watched Dane run through the rain toward her. She opened her door.
“Hello,” he said with a slight smile on his face, still a few feet away. Ava felt love well up within her in a way she hadn’t felt in decades. A shy excitement washed over her. Her tongue felt tied.
“You’re getting wet,” she said, biting her lip and feeling the longing to touch him. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”
“I’ve missed you.” He took her in his arms and spun her around.
“How did you know where I was?”
“I’m kind of smart that way,” he said in a thick Southern accent that made her laugh.
“I have no choice but to agree.”
“It helps that your brother actually answered his phone. But what I can’t believe is that you took Old Dutch out,” he said with a laugh. They were both getting wet, and Ava took a quick peek at Emma asleep in her car seat.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You need me, and more than you care to admit. But then, I most certainly need you. I need you, and I want you.”
She actually blushed as he pulled her tighter against him. His body sent shivers through her own.
“We have a baby with us,” she muttered.
“That didn’t stop us when the kids were small. And I got us a room with two queen-sized beds.”
“Aren’t you proactive? What if I wasn’t a sure thing?”
“You aren’t a sure thing. But you can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“Well, that guy might just get everything he’s hoping for, and much more.” She laughed at herself. She was shamelessly flirting with her husband.
“Let’s get inside. First thing I want to do is meet that little baby.”
Ava beamed with a pride that could only be found in a mother’s love.
The streetlight streamed through the curtains. Emma slept soundly on her back on the bed across from them. Their legs were woven together with the sheet and blanket from the bed.
“You want to sleep with her, don’t you?” Dane said. Ava’s head rested on his chest.
“Why would you say that? I’m in perfect bliss right now. Why don’t we get away more often together?”
“I don’t know. I guess we get caught up in everything else and forget that we actually like one another.” Dane tightened his arms around her.
“I didn’t forget,” she said, leaning up to kiss his neck.
“I didn’t either, but it feels different right now.”
“Different how?”
“I guess God has worked in me in ways that only God can. He’s made me see everything in a new way when all the while I thought I had it right.”
Ava propped her chin on his solid chest. “That’s quite a true statement—and I can relate. We have some stories to swap.”
Ava glanced again toward Emma sleeping with her arms stretched out, surrounded by pillows.
“What are we going to do with her?” Ava asked with a lump forming in her chest.
“What do you want to do with her?”
“I want her to have a good family and a good life.”
“She can have that with us.”
Ava stiffened and leaned up on one elbow to see Dane’s face. He’d said for years that he only wanted two children. Ava had long since moved beyond the question. She’d agreed that two was perfect—one girl and one boy.
She tucked the sheet beneath her arm. A forty-eight-year-old body wasn’t the same as it once was.
Dane tugged it down.
“Stop,” she said with a tease in her tone, pulling the covers back up. “But seriously, I am concerned that Jessie would try to get her if we found her someone outside the family.”
“Seems to me she’s supposed to be ours.”
Emma puckered her lips together and moaned sweetly in her sleep.
“She’s all alone over there,” Dane said.
“She might be cold.” Ava gazed up at Dane with a smile.
“Do we bring her here or go there?”
“Let’s go there so she doesn’t wake up.”
They untangled from the sheets and got up. Ava snuck off to the bathroom with her pajamas and toothbrush. When she returned Dane rested on his side, gazing down at Emma.
“What will the kids think of this?”
“Think of what?”
“Having another sibling, of course.”
Ava laughed and the baby jumped. Dane placed his palm against Emma’s chest and one finger into her open palm. Her fingers wrapped around his as she settled back to sleep.
Was there anything more attractive than a man curled up next to a baby?
“We might need to sneak back to the other bed if you don’t stop that,” Ava said, sitting on the edge.
“What do you mean?” Dane said innocently with his most mischievous grin.
“I’m giving you all of myself. All that a human can give another human.”
Dane’s face grew serious, touched by her words, and she was glad he understood what she was saying.
“You have my heart, soul, and body as well.” Now she smiled, and again felt her face flush.
He leaned down and kissed Emma’s cheek. “We’ll be back in a while.”
Thirty-Three
AVA OPENED THE DOOR TO SOMEONE HOLDING A PILE OF GIFTS. She recognized his hands and the “Ho, ho, ho.”
“You made it! Everyone is already here,” she said, taking several presents to reveal her brother’s face.
Ava ushered Clancy inside with her eye catching on the For Sale sign stuck into their front lawn. They were downsizing, and Ava had reached the point of letting go of anything that came between her family and peace.
She set the gifts under the tree, announcing Clancy’s arrival to a host of subdued cheers since Emma was taking her afternoon nap in the playpen in the den. Cheerful Christmas music played in the background.
With a sly expression, Sienna motioned to Ava toward the scene of Kayanne and Clancy chatting as if they were old friends . . . or perhaps as if they were something more. Ava studied her best friend, then her brother, and her best friend again. There was certainly something there—she could see it on both faces. She hadn’t dared really hope it might work out.
After Thanksgiving dinner, Clancy and Kayanne had been talking, but Kayanne wasn’t saying much about it. It sparked Ava’s curiosity, especially since Kayanne was taking a break from her online dating sites.
The timer on the stove sounded and Kayanne pulled herself away from Clancy, following Ava to the kitchen.
“Did I tell you that Corrine Bledshoe is leaving the church?” Kayanne asked as she opened the oven and removed a tray of stuffed potatoes.
; “Why?” Ava asked, strangely saddened by the news. Corrine had removed herself from the Bible study Ava led and her involvement with Broken Hearts. Ava guessed Corrine may have decided that her strange behavior was proof she wasn’t on Corrine’s list of approved acquaintances.
“She told Pastor Randy that she’s looking for a more old-school church.”
“That’s too bad,” Ava said, and meant it. She wondered what kind of a path Corrine had ahead of her.
“Mom, you have to come out here,” Jason said, bursting into the living room from the backyard, the French door slamming against the jamb and back open.
Emma’s frightened wail sounded from the den down the hall and over the baby monitor.
“Sorry, I forgot again,” Jason said, standing awkwardly with the door open behind him.
Dane strode down the hall and returned a moment later with an already subdued Emma bouncing on his shoulder.
“What is it?”
“Out by the willow tree.”
“You mean where the willow tree once stood before my mountain woman hacked it down with an ax?” Dane had teased her to no end about that. He’d laughed till he nearly turned blue when he saw the jagged cuts she’d made all over the tree trunk and the healing blisters that covered her hand.
“Can you show us after we eat?” Ava asked, but Jason immediately shook his head.
“You just need to come out here. I’m not saying more. You have to see for yourself.”
Ava was about to insist she’d go see whatever it was after they ate Christmas dinner, but the earnest expression on her son’s face changed her mind.
“All right, what it is?”
“Everyone should come too,” Jason said, leading the way.
They gathered around the stump of the willow tree. Rising out of the white wood was a sprig growing straight toward the sky.
“Is that . . . It can’t be. It’s winter. Nothing sprouts in the dead of winter.”
“Apparently this does,” Dane said, holding Emma wrapped in a blanket.
“It’s not dead, even after I chopped it down?” Ava said in amazement.
“It came back—remember how the nursery guy said it might? Something in the old tree made this one grow.” Jason bent down next to the sprig of willow tree.
They all headed back inside, but Ava stayed behind. She couldn’t believe it. The willow tree would grow again. As Jason had said, something in the old had given life to something new.
Ava was filled with an overwhelming sense of God’s hand working through all of it. Faces scrolled through her mind, from Bethany and her father to Corrine and the families she helped through Broken Hearts. Faces of grief and faces of loss, faces of pain . . . all of them had broken hearts.
But something beautiful grew from there.
Ava could see her family through the windows of the house as she walked to join them. Her daughter peered into the oven, checking the pies, and seemed more radiant than she could remember seeing her. Clancy was surely teasing his niece and Kayanne as he tiptoed around the kitchen bar stealing bites of food. Jason and Dane played with Emma, her teenage son reduced to a boy as he made silly faces and laughed at the baby’s exuberant response.
They were the new, grown up from the loss.
Ava thought of Bethany and the children being raised out at Grannie’s old place. What kind of Christmas were they having, she wondered. She’d find a way to help them—she wasn’t sure how, but in whatever ways God opened up.
As Ava went to join them inside, Jason opened the door, her phone in his hand.
“I think the woman is crying,” Jason said with a concerned look.
Ava took the phone, glancing at the number, an area code she didn’t recognize. She moved inside and down the hallway away from the cheerful banter and Emma’s happy squeals.
“I’m so glad you’re there. This is Nancy Branson—something just awful has happened, on today of all days.”
Ava recognized the voice of a woman from her favorite boutique in town.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s my best friend. Her son.” Nancy covered the phone, but Ava could hear her sobs. “Her son overdosed last night. I would be there, but I’m visiting my sister in Maine, and I can’t get a flight out until this storm passes. You told me about that service or volunteer work or whatever it is you do that helps people. I know it’s Christmas, but if someone could be there for her. She’s divorced and her family is all far away . . .”
Ava bit the edge of her lip, running through her mind’s list of the women who might be able to help today. “We’ll get someone out there right away. Give me the information, and your friend’s number.”
Ava turned and met Jason with a pen and paper in his hand. The rest of the family had crowded near to hear what the urgent call was about.
“I’ll go,” Kayanne said as Ava ended the call.
“Why don’t you and I go together?” Dane said to Ava.
“We can’t,” she said, glancing at the faces around her, but feeling the tug of the woman’s grief in her heart.
“The baby and I will watch a Christmas video and maybe sneak a peek at the gifts,” Sienna said, taking Emma from Dane’s arms.
“We’ll wrap up dinner and have a late one when you get back,” Clancy said with a wink.
“Go, Mom. It’s important, and we’ll be together when you get back,” Jason said.
Ava and Dane quickly gathered up their coats, and Ava asked everyone again if they didn’t mind.
“It kind of seems like this is what Christmas should be like,” Jason said, and Ava kissed him good-bye.
As they drove away from the house, Ava glanced back at the cars on the driveway and the blinking Christmas lights on the eaves of the house. She didn’t know what the future held, but God knew and He was carrying them along in His arms, healing their broken places and taking them on new adventures.
“Do you have the directions?” Dane asked.
Ava smiled to herself as she answered, “I sure do.”
Reading Group Guide
1. In the novel, Ava’s comfortable life suddenly spins out of control. How have you experienced such times, and what did it feel like?
2. Though Ava built a new life separate from her past, she reaches a time when the past returned to her. If there are painful places from your past that continue to bubble to the surface, do you think God is trying to heal you or something else?
3. When bad things happen, do you tend to blame God or draw closer to Him? How does your reaction affect you and the people in your life?
4. Does every person experience brokenness of some kind at some point in his or her life journey? Why or why not?
5. In the novel, Ava constantly tried to “keep all her ducks in a row.” Do you think a person can try controlling too much of their life and of their families? Too little? What is the balance between making life our own and living in faith?
6. Do you think the church should do more to care for the brokenhearted? What can they do to provide such care?
7. Ava had learned through her ministry that when people are hurting, there are times to talk and times to be silent, times to quietly help in the background and times to step up and actively contribute. Discuss times that you experienced this or when someone hurt you because of their good intended words and actions.
8. Though God can heal our lives, why can’t we fully outrun the past?
9. Do you believe God is the source of suffering in the world?
10. Can God heal every broken heart?
11. Do you think God is ever brokenhearted?
12. How can God transform our broken hearts into something of beauty?
13. Write down five ways God has helped bring healing to your life (directly, through surprising circumstances, or from other people in your life).
14. How has God shocked you by opening a door that you never expected?
Acknowledgments
SHEILA WOULD LIKE TO THANK
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br /> THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE:
The Nelson Fiction team who intentionally pursue excellence in everything they do.
Huge thanks to Cindy who is creative and kind, a true soul-sister.
CINDY WOULD LIKE TO THANK
THE FOLLOWING PEOPLE:
I have been blessed with an amazing group of people who have been a song to my broken heart and who bring me renewed joy every day.
My parents, Richard and Gail McCormick—parenting never ends, does it? Thank you for the constant little things you both do to be such great parents. And Mom, thank you for “Grandma Wednesdays” with Lily so I can keep putting down words.
Ruby Duvall—your laughter and joy are infectious; I’m blessed to have a grandmother who is a great woman of strength and heart.
Amanda Darrah—our friendship spans the best and worst of times, and in both, it’s amazing to know you are always there (and THANK YOU for Hawaii!).
My sister, Jennifer Harman—sister power! No other words needed, right?
“My Kate” Martinusen—third grade and onward! Thank you for faithful friendship and prayers.
My sons, Cody and Weston Martinusen, bring daily laughter and life to my world. I’m glad God let me be your mom.
Madelyn Martinusen—it’s amazing to have a daughter grow up and become such a wonderful, close friend. I truly cherish you.
My sweet Lily Jane—since your birth, you’ve brought enormous joy to my every moment and to our entire family.
Nieldon Coloma—the joining of our lives provided healing and newness, and I’m excited for all that stretches before us. It’s wonderful to share life with you.
And to so many other people, I hope you know how much you mean to me.
About the Authors
SHEILA WALSH, Women of Faith® speaker, is the author of the award-winning Gigi, God’s Little Princess® series, The Shelter of God’s Promises, and the novel Sweet Sanctuary. Sheila lives in Texas with her husband, Barry, and son, Christian.
CINDY MARTINUSEN COLOMA is the best-selling author of several novels including The Salt Garden, Beautiful, and Orchid House.