Chapter 31
31
Saoirse sat in the church service, trying desperately—and failing miserably—not to stare at the back of Owen’s head from the Sheridans’ pew two rows behind his. Father Cunningham called the congregation to prayer, and Saoirse bowed her head and closed her eyes, wincing at the burning as she did. She’d hardly slept a wink the last two nights. She couldn’t stop thinking about the conversation she’d overheard between Owen and Aileen Friday afternoon.
One thing he’d said had echoed in her mind over and over again. “There’s nothing to fight for.”
“Amen.”
The united declaration at the end of the prayer jolted Saoirse back to reality—more from the way it punctuated Owen’s point than from the sound of the congregation all speaking together.
As the sermon began, Saoirse’s gaze drifted back to Owen. He sat in his customary seat, with Aileen on his right. New to the row, however, was Hugh, who sat on Aileen’s other side. A smile tickled the corner of Saoirse’s mouth, but like a magnet, her eyes and mind pulled her attention back to Owen. She could see the line in his hair from his flatcap, which she knew now rested on his knee. Brown waves with the occasional strand of silver curled at the nape of his neck, and his shoulders slowly rose and fell as he breathed. He shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. Saoirse’s cheeks warmed as the guilt of eavesdropping the other day rose in her chest again. But she couldn’t help it. Once she’d heard her name, she was desperate to know what Owen had had to say about her.
And Saoirse couldn’t blame him for feeling as though there was nothing between them to fight for. But it still stung. As much as it pained her to admit, a part of her wanted him to throw caution to the wind, to tell her that it was utter nonsense and that the only devastation that would befall him would be if he couldn’t have her by his side. Her mind drifted back to their conversation under the tree. Maybe in his own way, he had told her that. But she couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that another disaster would be unleashed on him and his household should she stay.
This is how I’m fighting. This is what I deserve.
Perhaps this was her penance. Her sentence. To suffer the bitterness of a love unfulfilled in order to pay the price for her carelessness.
Movement caught her eye, and she managed to tear her gaze from Owen’s head in order to follow the glint that had stolen her attention. The clouds were moving outside and, for a moment, the sun peeked out. Its light streamed through the windows, setting the marble walls aglow and landing on the cross at the front of the sanctuary. It almost appeared to glow, and Saoirse squinted at its brightness. Then, just as quickly as it had come out, the sun slipped once again under its blanket, dimming the interior. But Saoirse’s eyes remained on the cross, and her ears became attuned to what the priest was saying.
“Let us read from His Word:
For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ: Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.
“My friends, don’t you see?” Father Cunningham continued, “Our Lord paid the price for all of our wrongdoings. All our mistakes and shortcomings. He paid our debts on the cross—one time, for all time—so you and I might be free from the chains that come from those missteps and shortfalls. So, while we must often still experience the consequences of our sin, we no longer have to pay the debt for it.”
Saoirse’s pulse quickened and sweat prickled the palms of her hands.
“If you speak ill of your neighbor, you may have to work to repair that relationship, but our loving Father will not send you a new punishment to repay that sin, for that debt has already been paid.” He paused and slowly scanned the congregation. When his eyes locked on Saoirse, they seemed to linger for a long while before moving on. When he spoke again, she felt like his gaze stayed trained on her, though in truth it hadn’t. “I fear some of you are still living in bondage, trying desperately to make up for past mistakes. Or perhaps living in fear that God’s judgment is just around the corner.”
Father Cunningham smiled and held his arms out wide. “Breathe free, my dear friends. That burden is no longer yours to bear.”
Saoirse’s vision blurred behind fresh tears. Could it be that simple? Had Bridie been right—was all the devastation that had befallen Saoirse and those she’d grown to love merely happenstance and not reparation for her mistakes? It seemed too good to be true.
****
Once home, Owen set the kettle on and restoked the fire. Aileen had stayed in the village to visit with some of the ladies and make a plan with Hugh to help get the school cleaned out the next day. Owen settled into his chair by the fire with his cup of tea and tried to rest, but his mind was as agitated as the Atlantic on a stormy day.
He thought back to that morning’s church service. Owen had resisted the urge to turn around and look at Saoirse to see if she was heeding the vicar’s words and letting her heart be set free from the burden that had been weighing so heavily on it. In truth, Owen himself had struggled to focus on spiritual matters and the homily. He could feel Saoirse behind him. His neck tingled just knowing she was back there, so near, and yet she might as well have been ten miles away. But each time his mind had wandered, he uttered a silent prayer to help him attend to what was being said. And when he finally attended to the message, his chest burned at its timeliness—not just for Saoirse but for himself as well.
How many times of late had the word from Father Cunningham been the exact message Owen needed? His gaze drifted to the floor between his feet as he recounted how the intensity of his seeking the Lord had grown with each passing day, which then begged the question of why. Why was he seeking the Lord so much more intently the last several weeks? A list ticked off in his mind. Haggerty’s first attack. Saoirse arriving. Haggerty nearly killing Owen and Stout. The increased tweed order. Many sheep stolen. The storm. The list rolled on and on. And as the calamity increased, so did Owen’s pursuit of God and His guidance. Why did Owen not have such fervor in his faith and prayers before? Could he have grown too complacent? Could God have allowed these recent hardships in order to draw Owen back to Himself?
Owen’s thoughts went round and round like a whirlpool, blurring together in a dizzying array. He pinched the bridge of his nose as the ache for simpler times filled his chest. It didn’t seem like faith should be this much work. Surely if he was godlier, he’d have less pain. Wouldn’t he?
Be strong and courageous.
Owen blinked hard at the thought. Where had that come from? And what did it have to do with all he’d been thinking before?
He thought back to the end of the service. When Father Cunningham invited everyone to join in the closing hymn, Owen had nearly heaved a sigh of relief, grateful for an es cape from his dizzying thoughts. And when it had turned out to be the same song they’d sung last week, Owen could only laugh. Barely a sennight had passed since he’d made that fresh commitment to let God be the vision and focus of his life. And here he was, already honing back in on the doubts and worries rather than on the One who could guide him through them.
Owen chuckled and shook his head at the seeming coincidence of it all. He shifted in his seat, struggling to get comfortable. Unbuttoning his waistcoat, he stood to let it slip from his shoulders. He then stepped over to the peg near his bed but paused before hanging it up. His thumb rubbed over the rough tweed, and he lifted it closer to inspect the pattern. To the untrained eye, it likely appeared to have no pattern at all, but nothing could be further from the truth. Hours of meticulous thought and planning had gone into every single stitch—knowing when to change the color on the shuttle or the pattern of the heddles was a painstaking decision-making process. And it dawned on him. Owen wanted his life, his faith, and the fruit thereof to be like his tweed. With weaving, he was able to control nearly every single element. When he tied on a spool of weft that was the color of the heather on the hills and wove it into the gray warp, he knew precisely what he was going to get before he even threw the shuttle for the first pass. But faith wasn’t turning out to be like that at all.
He hung his vest in its place and made his way back to his seat, but before he could sit down, something else caught his eye. A weaving of another sort sat in pride of place on the mantel. A charming, rustic image of a thatched cottage—the very one in which Owen found himself now—was bordered by a stitched phrase about the comforts of home. The whole fabric was stretched across a backless, makeshift frame cobbled together with beechwood sticks. His mother had embroidered it when he was just a wee lad. He lifted the frame from its place and ran his fingers over the image, smiling at the memories that flooded his mind as he did so. When he set it back on the rough wooden mantelpiece, it fell forward, and Owen caught it just before it clattered to the ground. As he did, the back of the tapestry caught his eye, and he held it closer to the light of the fire. A tangled web of threads crisscrossed the fabric without rhyme or reason. Knots plagued many of the threads, and the whole thing looked more like an exercise in how not to embroider than the work of a master craftsman.
Owen’s breath caught in his chest. He flipped the frame over to look at the front, then again turned to the back. Returning it to its place, he glanced at the waistcoat once more. No matter how much he wanted to control what happened in this world or in his circumstances, faith, it seemed, was nothing like tweed but much more like a tapestry. To look at the back of it—where the artist had begun each stitch—one might think it nothing more than a tangled mess. But the scrambled crisscrossing of threads and knots behind the scenes were the very things that allowed the beautiful design and image to shine through for others to see.
Owen had been trying to orchestrate his own life and manipulate it like he did his work on the loom, rather than let the Great Artist work through the mess and tangle to create beauty like only He could. It was why those battle plans Owen had read about seemed so crazy, if not a mite foolish. Those plans were the back of the tapestry. Had Gideon or Joshua or any of the others refused, the beauty of God’s design would not have been shown. Owen now knew he had to be strong and courageous enough to release control. He needed to choose once and for all to trust the One with the pattern to take this mangled, jumbled mess in which he found himself and use it to create something that would declare His goodness, power, and beauty to all who would look upon it.