Chapter 7
“You have to make sure the chicken is all cut up into small pieces, then you add this,” Garnet said, talking to Dabney, who hung on his every word. She had shown interest in cooking and keeping house in the week or so since they had moved to Raspberry Ridge. Maybe it was because of the change in her life she needed to have some kind of grounding. Or maybe it was just her age. He wasn’t sure, but he was more than happy to work with her in the kitchen. Spending time with his daughter was his favorite activity.
“If I’d known you guys were going to take over the cooking, I would have asked you to move in years ago.” His mother spoke as she walked into the kitchen. Garnet had felt a little guilty since his dad had not had a very good morning. Helen had shooed him away when Dabney had asked if they were going to cook lunch together. He hadn’t wanted to leave his mom, but he supposed that she was used to her husband’s sour moods.
Garnet couldn’t imagine how frustrating it must be to not be able to do everything that he used to do. His dad had always been someone who enjoyed tinkering with things, who always had a project going on, or several projects. Now, he couldn’t even get out of bed without help.
If nothing else, moving to Raspberry Ridge had given him more of a burden to pray for his parents. His mom, who must be eligible for sainthood with the way she had cared for her husband, had shown him the meaning of grace and love as she worked on navigating this new reality, making him realize anew that living a life that glorified God was more important than getting and doing what he wanted.
Garnet wasn’t sure how he would react if he had a stroke and couldn’t move.
At least his dad had a wife who could take care of him. Garnet didn’t have that, although he supposed Dabney would do it. But he didn’t want her to have to care for her father. Surely she had other things she wanted to do with her life, although again, the older he got, the more he realized that it was less about what a person wanted to do and more about facing what God had given them and doing it with grace and love and kindness.
His mother grabbed a glass of water and exited the kitchen.
Garnet reached for the stove, with his mouth open to tell Dabney what to do in the next step of the rotisserie chicken with stuffing casserole they were making, when Dabney spoke.
“That woman, the one who ran away from the prayer meeting?”
Garnet froze, his hand reaching for the stove, his mouth open. He had thought that Dabney was reading and wasn’t paying attention.
“Yeah?” To his surprise, his voice came out as casually as he intended it to.
“She hasn’t been back.”
“No. She hasn’t.”
“You think you should go visit her?” Dabney’s innocent question, prompted by her love for her fellow human, even a stranger, and a desire to see everyone come to know Christ, should have made him happy, but instead it sent tendrils of fear down his spine, chilling him to the bone.
“Probably.” He didn’t know what else to say. How could he tell her, “She’s your mother, and I wanted to stay as far away from her as I could, because I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to have anything to do with us.”
He kind of understood Mertie’s position, and he definitely couldn’t argue with her. He would never be in that position. Never know how that felt. Never know what it felt like to give birth to a child and to love the being that came out of her body more than life itself. Although it was hard for him to imagine loving anyone more than he loved Dabney.
On top of all of that mess, there was the friendship that they had shared for more than a decade growing up. The things they had done together, memories and activities that floated through his mind sometimes, especially in the evenings after a long, hard day when he would sit on the porch in Raspberry Ridge and it felt exactly the same way it had twenty years ago when he’d been growing up, running around with Mertie, swimming and laughing and feeling free, without the pressure of adult life. They were precious memories, and then of course, over the years, he gradually realized that not only did he like her as a friend, but there was a deep attraction, at least on his part, that made him want to be more.
It had only taken him seeing her one time to realize that that attraction had not gone away. Not for him. But she didn’t see him like that, she was too businesslike, too driven, too determined to wrestle life and make it be what suited her.
“Maybe we should do that today,” Dabney said as he gathered himself and finished turning on the oven before he turned away to grab the next ingredient.
“This might be one I need to do myself.”
“Why? Are you afraid she’s going to curse me because she hates God, and you’re afraid that I’ll see that she hates God and decide I hate God too?”
Sometimes his daughter was too astute, and sometimes she totally missed the mark. This was one of the latter. Which he was grateful for, because he didn’t want her to know the truth.
“Well, I definitely don’t want that to happen to you. But God gives everyone free choice, and you’re free to choose to love the Lord and serve Him or to do something else with your life.”
“Sometimes I feel like I really want to, and then sometimes I feel like that’s going to be too hard. And God isn’t going to let me do what I want to do. He’s probably going to send me to Africa to be a missionary there or something.”
“I suppose that’s the first thing about being a Christian, you turn from what you were doing, it’s called repentance, and you offer your life to Jesus. It doesn’t mean that it no longer matters what you want, what you like, how you feel. That you’ll do what’s right and what God wants you to. Sometimes that means you go directly against your feelings.”
A little bit the way he had, when he had walked away from his attraction to Mertie and raised Dabney. Of course, it had taken him all of about three seconds to fall in love with Dabney, but it had been extremely difficult to give up his hopes that he and Mertie would end up together.
“Sometimes, if I’m honest, it feels like following God just means a life of getting nothing that I want. That’s not the slightest bit appealing to a teenager. I don’t want to present following God to you that way. Because He knows best. He knows what’s going to make us content, even more than we do ourselves. But more than that, He knows what’s going to grow us into better people.”
And that was absolutely the truth. Everything that had happened had caused him to grow up and become a better man. Even if he hadn’t gotten the thing that he wanted the most.
They had the casserole in the oven and were cleaning up the kitchen when his mom came in again. She collapsed in a chair and stretched her feet out in front of her.
“That was a rough morning,” she said, pushing some of her hair back away from her face. “I wonder if anyone around here would be interested in making some cookies. Cookies usually make a rough morning better.”
“I’ll make cookies! Dad taught me how to make chocolate chip. But I’d really like to know how to make snickerdoodles. Those are my favorite.”
“Really?” his mom said, her smile brightening. Seeing that smile, seeing her interact with Dabney, made Garnet feel that coming back home was the smartest decision he could make and exactly what God wanted him to do, even though it seemed counterintuitive, since he’d left a well-paying job and was candidating for a church that couldn’t even afford to pay him a full-time wage.
“I just so happen to be an expert at making snickerdoodle cookies, and I can show you all of my secrets.”
His mother put her hand on the table and pushed back away from the chair, standing up and walking over to Dabney, who put her arms around her grandmother. The sight tore at his heart. He loved watching it, but he also thought that perhaps Dabney was starved for a woman’s attention. She had to wish she had a mother. A child was hardwired to want and need both mother and father.
“Sounds like you guys are going to be busy. Can you make sure that the casserole gets taken out of the oven in time?” He waited until his mom looked up and nodded. “I think I’m going to go to the healing garden and do a little studying.”
If he was going to be a pastor, he was going to have to do a lot of studying. He had what felt like endless ideas for sermons, but doing one every single week was probably quite difficult. It was like writing an hour-long speech every week.
“You go on right ahead. Dabney and I have some cookies to make.”
He smiled once more at his mother and his daughter before he went out to the living room to grab his Bible from the chair where he usually sat in the morning doing his devotions. In the summer, like now, he was often outside on the front porch while he did them. And sometimes he even walked down to the healing garden, although he didn’t want to be interrupted by other people who might have the same idea.
But when he came home from the townwide morning Bible study, he put his Bible back at his spot by his chair.
But now, even though he loved that spot, getting out of the house almost felt imperative in order for him to make any strides in studying.
The church had an upstairs that was entirely open and a downstairs that was entirely open, other than the bathrooms and one small closet. Even the kitchen was just basically counters on one side along with an oven and a refrigerator.
There really wasn’t any place that was private for him, unless he took over the closet, which, when he peeked in, was overflowing with decades of the different things a church used throughout the seasons. Advent wreath, choir robes, old hymn books, and he even thought he saw a few puppets, along with what he assumed were bags of decorations and old Sunday school materials. He figured church women were probably among the worst hoarders in the country. If there was one page of a Sunday school booklet that hadn’t been used, there was no way any good church lady he knew was going to be throwing that booklet away.
He smiled a little to himself as he stepped out of his house. Times were changing. People didn’t even have Sunday school booklets anymore, and certainly the ladies of the current day were much different than the ladies of fifty or a hundred years ago.
Regardless of how different they were, he didn’t think any of them would be able to solve his problems. Or even give him advice. He really had no idea what to do.
Lord, You know the solutions to my problems, and I know You’re working things for my good and Your glory. I just need to have faith that You’re going to work things out.