Chapter 9
“N o, ma’am, it’s my first time in North Dakota,” Cash said to Alaska, Ezra’s wife, who sat across the table from him.
He probably should have gone outside, but at heart, he was a people person. He wanted to get to know these folks. Especially if Ada was going to consider his proposal. They would be his family.
Before Alaska could say anything else, or before one of the children could interject, the study door opened.
He had chosen his seat at the kitchen table strategically so he could look through the living room and see the door.
He wiped his hands on his jeans, more to get the sweat off than the playdough.
He tried to keep his heart from hammering in his chest as he watched as Ezra walked to the kitchen doorway, Ada following behind.
“She’s willing to talk with you. It might be better, more private, for you to go outside.”
Cash couldn’t believe the relief that seemed to make his chest want to float up in the air like a hot-air balloon.
But this was just the first hurdle.
“Now, I said she’s just willing to talk. She hasn’t agreed to anything. But she does know about your proposal, letter, and the time line.”
Cash nodded. He was expecting Ezra to talk about some of that, as well as explain some of his background, so it was nice to know that he had.
He stood up, and the protests of the children registered, but he didn’t acknowledge them as he walked around the table and put his hand out.
“Hi, Ada. I’m Cash. It’s nice to meet you.”
He felt like he ought to give some kind of nod to their unusual circumstances, and typically he didn’t get too tongue-tied, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.
“It’s nice to meet you, Cash,” Ada said, and she sounded self-assured and confident, and not awkward or weird, like he might have thought an unmarried woman in her mid-thirties might.
Was there a reason she wasn’t married? Was there something he had been missing? Her brother had given her an excellent recommendation, but his opinion was most certainly biased.
“Is it okay if we walk outside for a bit?” he asked, his voice gentling without his conscious desire. She...brought out the best in him without him even thinking about it.
He always recommended to his congregation that when they were looking for their lifetime partner, they should look for someone who made them better. The idea flitted through his head as he thought about how without even trying, Ada had gentled his voice and made him considerate.
“Yes. It’s a nice evening out. I don’t think we even need a jacket.”
He nodded, smiling a bit, and then looked over at Ezra, nodding his head in thanks.
Ezra’s face was serious, giving away nothing of his thoughts as he nodded back.
The children continued to talk as they walked out.
“I know this is kind of crazy,” he said as they stepped out on the porch together.
“It definitely is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever heard,” Ada agreed, taking a deep breath of the evening air and waiting, without making it obvious, to see what direction he would lead.
He liked that, a lot. She was obviously not a shrinking violet, but she also was not the kind of woman who felt like she should be in charge of everything.
“Sometimes I wonder if I made the right decision to even give the letter any credence at all. Maybe I should just throw it away. This doesn’t seem like the best way to go about getting married.” That had to be what she was thinking, and he felt like he just voiced what both of them thought.
“I don’t know. It seems like marriages were arranged in a large part of the world for thousands of years, and those marriages worked out just fine. I understand that women didn’t always have recourse, but I think nowadays we end up getting divorced just because we can’t get along and not for any Biblical reason, like adultery.”
“That’s true.” He’d seen plenty of marriages in his church disintegrate because each person in the marriage was too prideful to give up their way. They insisted that they were right and their partner was wrong, and they couldn’t even conceive of trying to find a compromise or solution for the long-term. It was sad to see two Christians be unable to live basic Christianity in their marriage, being kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, living with joy, looking for the positive things about their spouse. Just basic Christianity. It seemed like Ada was saying the same thing.
“But I have to admit I never expected that I would be considering marriage like this. I thought I would do it the way the rest of society does.”
They had stepped off the porch and onto the driveway. It was long enough that they couldn’t see the road, and they started strolling slowly down.
“I imagine Ezra already told you that I was engaged, and I was definitely doing things the way the rest of the world thought I should.”
“I’ve never been engaged,” Ada said. “And I know that some people look at me and see that I’m in my mid-thirties and I’m not married, and they wonder what’s wrong with me. I wish I could answer that question for you, but I guess you’ll just have to try to figure it out yourself. All I know is that with the guys that have come around, I haven’t felt like they were what God wanted for me, and so when they showed interest, I told them no.”
“That’s admirable. I knew some women who would do anything to be married, no matter what. And they’d certainly not let a little thing like whether or not she thinks God wants her to stop her.”
She chuckled a bit, and then they lapsed into silence.
He felt awkward. Where did he start? What did they talk about? They had such a short amount of time, and it felt like they should talk about serious things, but maybe he should just try to break the ice by being casual. After all, it wasn’t like they had to make a decision tonight, and he assumed that she wouldn’t be.
“I don’t know what all Ezra told you, so I’ll just assume that you don’t know much of anything about me. I sell used cars here. But I used to be a pastor in Virginia.” He knew that Ezra had told her what had happened. “So one of the things I really love to do is to study the Bible. I find it endlessly fascinating.” He let out a breath. “I’ve been told I’m exceptionally boring because of that. Normal people don’t answer the question ‘what are your hobbies?’ by saying that one of the things they love to do is to unearth new and precious information from God’s Word.”
“I can imagine you’ve taken some flak for that over the years.” She didn’t say what she thought of it, which was really what he was interested in.
“What do you like to do?”
“I pretty much would have to say that my hobbies are my family. I love being with them, cooking for them, cleaning with them, doing anything on the farm with them, from working with cattle to putting up fence to just hanging out. I watch my nieces and nephews a good bit for my siblings, and I guess one of the things I do in my spare time, which I consider more of a ministry than a hobby, is offer free babysitting for the ladies in the church and in Sweet Water. That’s what I was doing last night when you saw me.”
“I wondered. You’re a good bit older than Kendra, and it didn’t seem like you would be best friends, but I didn’t know.”
“I guess that makes me wonder if you were there to ask Kendra to marry you? Did she turn you down and I’m just the next person on your list?”
“Well, you might not believe this, but I was there to ask Kendra to marry me. My aunt had recommended her as someone who might be interested in a quick wedding because she had three small children and needed a spouse to give her a hand. But I don’t know whether it was because I saw you, or whether it just didn’t feel right, or a combination of both, but I ended up not asking her but tucking your name away in my head to ask my aunt about when I got home because when I saw you, I thought to myself, ‘that’s the kind of woman I want to marry.’”
Maybe he shouldn’t have admitted that. It made him a little bit vulnerable. Vulnerable to her rejection, her derision or laughter, but she just didn’t seem like the kind of person who would be unkind deliberately. Or make fun of someone after they had been humble. In fact, she seemed like she would probably do the exact opposite.
“Wow. I guess that is kind of hard to believe.”
They took a few more steps without either of them saying anything.
“Are you planning on becoming a rancher? I’m only asking because all of my siblings live and work on the ranch. Or else they come and work daily. One of my sisters-in-law is a librarian in town, but my brother, her husband, works on the ranch. I have another sister who is married to the rancher next door. We help them, and they help us. But I never really considered moving off the ranch.”
He swallowed. He figured this might be a dealbreaker, but he was going to answer honestly, not the way he thought he needed to in order to get what he wanted.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be a rancher. God called me to preach. I’ve never questioned that calling in my life. I’ve known from about the age of twelve or so. But for some reason, He took me out of the church in Virginia, the one I started. I don’t know why. And I’m here in Sweet Water selling cars. That’s not what I plan to do with the rest of my life. I guess I just assumed that God would open up a ministry for me somehow, because I’ve devoted my life to serving Him. Whatever that looks like.”
“I see. I admire someone who has completely given their life to the Lord. I’ve been trying to do that since my early teens. For now, it seems like all God wants is for me to serve my family. And help in whatever way I can. I don’t know that I have a calling to only help my family, but that’s the way it’s been so far.”
“Are you against moving off the ranch?”
“Is that what we would do if we got married?”
“I’m living with my aunt right now.” He wanted to squirm a little as he said that. He was a man in his mid-thirties. He should have a house; he should be supporting himself and living on his own. But he’d never really bought into that. “Me living with her helps her be able to stay in the house that she’s lived in for forty years. I help her with expenses, fixing things around her house, and I told her I would work in the car dealership, trying to turn it around so that it was profitable. I know that she would like for me to buy it, but I didn’t commit to that.”
“So you’re not planning on being a used-car salesman forever, but you’re planning on it for the next...year? Six months?”
“Yeah. That sounds like a good timeframe. Although, if God moves me somewhere sooner, that timeframe isn’t set in stone.”
“I see.”
“You don’t want to move away from your family,” he said. It wasn’t hard for him to figure that out. One of the first questions she had asked was about him being a rancher. It was obvious that it was important to her.
“I don’t. That’s probably one of the main things I’m thinking about right now. I want to do whatever God wants me to do. And if God wants me to marry you, then He wants me to go wherever you go. But I guess I’m not sure He wants us to marry, and the idea that I might not be with my family anymore, when I thought I would spend my life serving them, has given me a bit of a jolt. Not that the idea of moving away from my family would make me not do what God wants me to do, if that makes sense. I just feel like if I have to move away from my family, then it’s probably not God’s will for me.”
“I understand. I wish I could promise that you would stay here in Sweet Water forever, that I’ll never leave. That this is where we’ll be, and I’ll become a rancher, and we’ll find a place to live that’s close to your family.”
“There are places on the farm we could live,” she said softly.
“All right. That’s good to know. But it doesn’t really change anything. I know that I am supposed to be with my aunt. Beyond that, God hasn’t shown me anything.” He paused, unable to believe that these words were going to come out of his mouth, realizing that as he said them that they were true. “If my church decided today to ask me to come back, I think I would. That’s in Virginia. It’s where my parents are.”
Was that true? Would he really go back?
He knew he would. But the idea that came into his head as he thought that was what he wanted was to show everyone that he was right, that they had been wrong to let him go. That they couldn’t live without him, and even as he thought those things, he knew they were all wrong.
It was God who had built the church, not Cash Johnson. It was God who that church could not live without, not Cash Johnson. It was God who needed to be glorified and justified, not Cash Johnson.
“You know how you need to decrease, so God can increase?”
If she was surprised at the subject change, she didn’t show it. “Yes.”
“I think that’s one of the lessons I need to learn from this. I’m sorry, I’m kind of turning the conversation, but I was thinking about how I would go back to the church, and as I said I would, I realized it was absolutely true, but it was because of the wrong reasons. I want to be justified. I want to gloat, in a Christian way, of course, that they couldn’t live without me, that they were wrong, that they needed me. But all of that is wrong. It needs to be about God. The church needs God. And I think... I think, even if they ask me, I wouldn’t go back. They need to depend on the Lord, not on a specific man. And maybe that’s what God was thinking all along.”
“That’s a really good point. As humans, we tend to want to idolize other humans, depend on them for our safety and security, our devotion and our encouragement, and in reality, we should be getting all of those things from Jesus, but I think a lot of times, we don’t know how.”
“I was an embarrassingly old, and established, pastor before I realized that sometimes we just need to be still and know that He is God. It says it right there in the Bible, but so many times, I think my busyness, my service, the things I do, which are all important, of course, but that’s what gives me a relationship with God. But studying the Bible, knowing the characteristics of God, and then just meditating on those is much more helpful, to me anyway.”
“I’m a servant, and that hits home. I like to serve, to do things for others, to be able to list my so-called accomplishments, which are just the things that I do, but it’s really when I sit or stand, or go out in the world and think about God and His love for me, where I really develop more of a relationship with Him. When I listen and just ask Him to speak to me. To tell Him that I’m being quiet and still and waiting for Him to speak.”
“I don’t think a lot of people ever do that. We think that what we say is really important. We go to God and maybe give Him a little bit of praise and glory in our prayer, but we usually have a whole list of things that we’re praying for and asking Him for, situations that we hope He’ll change, people we hope He’ll heal, marriages that need to be restored, and in my recent case, asking Him why He allowed certain things to happen and asking Him to change them. Rather than just shutting my big mouth, and searching for why He might be doing the things that He is doing, and then just accepting them. Whether I understand or not.”
“Why do we as humans think we know better than God? Isn’t that what we’re doing when we do that? We’re saying, ‘God, You’re not allowing this to unfold the proper way, so You need to change it.’”
“Exactly. And yet He commands us to pray. He commands us to bring our burdens to Him.”
“Maybe that’s just so He can carry them for us, and not so that, at least a lot of times, not so that He can change anything.”
“The older I get, the more I seem to pray for God’s will to be done and less and less for mine. But I guess I forgot that over the last few months.”