Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
“ H ey, Mom,” Wilson said as he stepped into his mother’s kitchen. It was one of those rare times where the kitchen was actually quiet.
“Hey there. I wasn’t expecting to see you today,” his mother said, looking up from where she was pulling a mincemeat pie out of the oven. The whole house smelled like mincemeat, and Wilson tried not to cringe. Mincemeat was not his favorite.
“I know. I’ve been…working on a couple of things, and I have a favor to ask of you.”
She set the pie on the counter, closed the oven door, and took the mitts off, setting them back in the drawer. She came over to the other side of the bar and faced him across it.
“You know I’m always ready to help you with anything you need me to. What is it?”
“I want you to watch the children so my fiancée and I can go down to the courthouse and get a marriage license.”
His mother stared at him. Maybe he should have worded that slightly differently. He didn’t seem to be any good at breaking this gently to people. But it wasn’t really happening in a gentle way, it was happening lickety-split, and maybe that’s the way he needed to break it to people.
“So do you want to back up and start the story from the beginning?” his mother said, calmly, and then she grabbed her coffee from the counter, pulled out a stool, and sat down.
He laughed a little, pulled out a stool on his side of the bar, and sat down facing her.
“Do you need coffee?” his mother asked, knowing that he didn’t drink it.
“No thank you. It hasn’t gotten that bad yet.”
She laughed. But the concerned expression on her face did not waver. “I’m waiting,” she said with a tight smile.
He figured she was probably bracing herself.
She had so much bad news this year, and he didn’t want to be the bearer of more bad tidings, but he didn’t figure that she would be overly happy with what he had done.
Although, he knew that he could tell her that he felt like it was what God wanted him to do, and while she might not accept that, might ask if he had questioned it, he was pretty sure that if he could convince her that he was one-hundred-percent sure it was what the Lord wanted him to do, she would be okay with it.
Not that a person’s weird actions could be excused anytime they said it was God’s plan.
But it did have a tendency to make things go better with his mom anyway.
And it was the truth.
“Well, I’ve been doing some work this year, and I started to notice a woman in our town, you know her, Charity Ames, and her five children.”
“Charity is a really sweet woman. I’ve noticed her as well and have done a few things for her also. She definitely can use any help that she can get,” his mother said, and then she pressed her lips together almost as though she were deliberately not saying anything more.
He almost smiled but managed to keep his face serious.
“I wanted to try and figure out if there was more that I could do for her. She has five children, her husband has left her, he’s not wanting custody, not wanting anything, and…
” He didn’t want to say that he knew that she was behind on her bills and that her mortgage was six months overdue.
That she was trying to scrape it together as best she could but hadn’t been able to.
There were some things that he knew because of his work as the Secret Saint that normal people didn’t know.
And he didn’t want to spread that information around.
“I just know that she’s in financial difficulty, she’s struggling, and as I was thinking back, I felt like the Lord was nudging me to marry her.”
“Really?” his mom said. It was just one word, but it was said in that tone that had all kinds of doubt and questions in it. She was questioning whether or not he was truly hearing from the Lord. And he couldn’t really blame her.
“That seems like a really weird thing for the Lord to do, doesn’t it?”
“It sure does,” she said with not a little bit of sarcasm.
“I suppose Hosea felt the same way.”
His mom pressed her lips together once more and nodded at the same time. That was her signal that he just outmaneuvered her.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said, although this time, there was more humor in her tone than sarcasm.
“I’m pretty sure I am.” He didn’t mean to rub it in, but that’s what he had thought about when he thought that God was being ridiculous—God seemed to work and move in the area that humans considered ridiculous.
“All right. So… What else?”
“So, I prayed about it, thought about it, and talked to the pastor about it, and decided that I might as well talk to her. Maybe she would turn me down. It’s kind of out there.”
“To say the least.”
“Exactly. And I guess there’s a part of me that thinks maybe if I keep waiting, I’ll find someone. The same way Terry and Amy have.”
“I’d really like for that to happen. I kind of thought that Bergen was the one.”
“Trust me. I did too. She seemed perfect in every way, except in the way that she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life with me.”
“Yeah.” His mom held a ton of apology and sorrow in that word.
She was upset with him for not being able to keep her.
She was more upset with Bergen for leading him on for so long and not telling him that she had no intentions of getting married until she had traveled the world.
She was just staying in one spot, making enough money to fund her travels.
“So I went today and talked to Charity.”
“With the kids there?”
“I think I saw five. Is that all she has?” He was pretty sure about that. He’d been involved in the Secret Saint work that had gotten her children Christmas gifts. He hadn’t done it all himself though, so maybe he was missing one.
“That’s the number she has. That makes sense, since school is out today. All of them would have been there.”
“Yeah. Well, it was chaos.”
“That’ll be the way it is every day. It’s the way five kids are.”
His mom would know. She had raised six.
“Well, not to say I was expecting it to be easy, and after today, I know it’s not going to be, but more than ever, I’m sure that’s what God wants me to do. I just know it in my heart.”
“Our hearts are ‘deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.’”
“I’m sure of it in my soul,” he corrected himself, since his mom had not argued with him but quoted a Bible verse. No one could do that better than his mom.
“If you’re sure, I’m behind you. I certainly don’t think God would tell me what He’s expecting out of you. You’re a grown man, and He’s going to talk to you directly, and I trust you to know what He’s saying.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Wilson couldn’t tell her how much that meant to him.
And he doubted that his mom had said all that was in her heart.
She had high hopes for him. After all, he was the one who had created a multimillion-dollar company while he was still in college and then came home and bought a farm and made it successful as well.
They were probably expecting more out of him than to marry a woman and take on the raising of another man’s five children.
Especially when he hadn’t dated that woman and wasn’t claiming to love her.
It flew in the face of everything that pretty much everyone in the United States, including Christians, believed.
But he felt like it was the right thing, and he didn’t see anything in the Bible prohibiting it.
In fact, he could point to more Bible for it than for falling in love.
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, and I know you love God. Whatever He tells you to do, you do, and I’ll help you as much as I can.”
“Well, we need to go down to the courthouse today and get a license, and I was hoping you would watch her children. Probably at her house. I didn’t talk to her about bringing them here.”
“It’s always nicer to watch them in your own house, but it’s probably about naptime for little ones, and they don’t know me, so her house is most likely the best place.”
“I’ll talk to her about bringing them here if we need you again.”
“I appreciate that. But if it’s not okay with her, I’ll watch them anywhere. I guess I’m going to have five new grandchildren for Christmas. God is pretty awesome when He gives gifts, isn’t He?”
His heart swelled. Did anyone in the world have a better mom than he did? “I love you, Mom.”
“And I love you too, Wilson. And I’m excited about this new chapter in your life. If God is orchestrating it, you know it’s going to be good.”
“I know it’s going to be good, I just hope I’m up to the challenge.”
“I know you are. God doesn’t call you without giving you everything you need in order to answer that call.” She laughed a little. “Sometimes you don’t get what you need until the very second you need it, though.”
He laughed, but he supposed that he was going to remember those words in the days ahead.