Chapter 17
Marjorie looked around the room, happy and sad and torn.
It was almost Christmas, and usually this was a time to celebrate, but with Gilbert, who sat in a recliner with Marissa on his lap while Robert played at his feet and Lucas stood in a corner with his gaze fixed on the floor, losing his wife, it was hard to feel festive. And then, everything that was happening with Isadora just made it all worse.
She hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Isadora much, and she figured that Isadora was probably ashamed.
Marjorie had been pretty hard on her back when she had decided that she was going to be with Clyde. Marjorie had seen the train wreck coming from the very first second and had done what any rational parent would do—tried as hard as she could to keep her child out of danger. And from getting hurt.
Maybe she’d come on too strong. Maybe she had overwhelmed Isadora to the point where she felt like her only choice was to be with Clyde. But she didn’t really think so. Isadora had told her that she knew it was wrong, but she was going to do it anyway.
She didn’t think that there were any other words that could break a mother’s heart faster or harder than those. All the years of teaching. All the years of raising her to do right. All the years of watching as she grew and praying that she would do the right thing, all those years, all that effort, all that time, totally wasted as Isadora put her nose in the air and determined that she was going to be with someone who was absolutely not God’s will for her .
And the only reason Marjorie knew that was because the man wasn’t saved. He might have been a good man, and Marjorie had told her that, but she also knew it didn’t matter how good the man was. If he wasn’t saved, Isadora had no business with him.
Isadora wouldn’t listen. It was kind of like the people who were surrounding Noah when he was building the ark. Noah knew what was going to happen, and he tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen. So many times, God’s people wouldn’t listen.
The situation with Isadora had made Marjorie take stock of her own life. Were there times when she wasn’t listening?
Regardless, it was too late to do anything about it now. Clyde was gone, Isadora was a mess, and her two babies needed help.
Marjorie had told Amy to go on when she had gotten home and seen that the kids were napping. She was a little bit old to be watching five children. Although, she’d do whatever it took to help her kids out. That’s just the way things went when you were a mom. At least for her.
Still, she thought Terry and Judd might have some good news for them. They had been talking and smiling at each other, and Marjorie was happy for them. Judd was a good man, and Terry deserved someone just like him.
She loved what he’d been doing with kids on Sundays, bringing them to church in his wagon.
The church had brought plenty of food in. Someone had brought a vegetable tray, and Marjorie knew that her kids loved the dill pickle dip with their vegetables, along with the ranch dip that had been provided. So, she went over to the refrigerator and checked to see if she had the ingredients. It was extremely simple, and she got the dill pickles out, intending to chop them up. She liked them in small pieces, small enough to be picked up easily when a person dipped their veggie sticks in.
The door opened, and her head came up. Wilson .
He’d gotten lost in the shuffle, and she wondered what was going on with him. They hadn’t had a chat for a while, and she didn’t really know what was happening in his life. She smiled though, when she saw he had brought his guitar.
Fond memories of when the kids were little and they used to sing together filled her heart and mind, and she hoped that they would sing some tonight. Singing was a balm to the soul, and she knew that even in the deepest trials, God still wanted to hear them praise Him.
Her kids had never sung anything except for praise to the Lord, and she knew those were the kinds of songs that would help them now.
“Can I give you a hand, Mom?” Terry said, coming around the counter and standing beside her.
“I’m making dill pickle dip, and you can help if you’d like. But you can just stand there and chat if you want.” She smiled at her daughter. She knew Terry was so happy to be home. She wanted to be able to help, and it had killed her when she had been away so long.
“I’m glad I’m back. There are so many things happening, and I would be dying if I weren’t here.” She spoke as she opened the refrigerator and got out the cream cheese and sour cream.
“You know the Lord works these things out. Things were pretty smooth sailing while you were gone. Other than the debacle with Isadora, but you’re here now to see the fallout from that, so that’s something.”
“I wonder if I’d been here if I could have gotten her to listen to me.”
“Maybe. You’re her oldest sister, and I know she respected you. But I think her mind was made up. Sometimes I wonder if maybe the devil gets a hold of us and we don’t even realize it. Do we open our minds in some way to him so that he has a foothold there? I know we have a spiritual war going on that we can’t see. But... I wouldn’t hold yourself accountable, because my head says it wouldn’t have made a difference.”
“Thanks. I know that makes things a little bit easier for me. I just feel so terrible for her, and what can you do?”
“I know. There’s nothing you can say, nothing you can do, other than sit there and listen when she wants to talk, and just hold her—”
“Watch her kids, so that she can try to come to grips with the pain.”
“Yeah. I think right now she really wants him back. Even though he’s cheated, and she has to hate him too.” Marjorie felt bad saying that, but she thought it was true.
“Yeah. I hate him. That’s for sure. If she wants him back, I’m not the person to talk to, because I would be more likely to talk about how to dissect his eyeballs or something.”
“Oh goodness. I’d say that’s the doctor in you coming out, but I’m afraid...it might be Mr. Hyde.”
It was a joke that not a whole lot of people would get, but Terry did, and she laughed. That was one of the best things about being with family and, in particular, with her children. She’d homeschooled them all for their first eighteen years, and they had so many shared experiences, they could tell inside jokes all day long.
The door opened, and Amy and Jones came in.
“Oh, they must be done feeding the dogs,” Terry said as she put the beaters in the mixer. “I’m so glad to see them here.”
“Me too,” Marjorie said, smiling at Amy and Jones and how they were bantering, even as they came in the door. They toned it down, out of respect for the fact that Gilbert was probably here, and they were correct.
The Christmas lights, the few that she’d gotten up, twinkled in the tree, where it sat half decorated, and still lent a sort of festivity to the place. She’d gotten the lights on with the kids, but she hadn’t been able to go get the bulbs and the other decorations. There had been too much going on. Too many things happening, too much that needed her attention. Children and grandchildren that needed her, and the Christmas decorations would just have to wait. She had plenty of years with beautiful decorations, and this was not going to be one of them. And she was not going to get upset or huffy about it. Some years were good, some years weren’t, and that was the way life went.
“Hey, Mom!” Amy called from where she and Jones were taking their coats and hats off and hanging them up. The kids had come running over, and Marissa had her arms around Amy’s waist while Lucas was excitedly talking to Jones about something that he and Judd had done the other day. It was like the kids hadn’t seen them earlier.
Amy and Jones would make such a great couple, but they never seemed to notice that, although there did seem to be something different about them tonight. Marjorie narrowed her eyes. If there was, she knew that Amy wasn’t going to keep it from her. Some of her children might not talk to her as much as others, but Amy was one that always cared about how she felt and what she thought, and while Amy did not necessarily hesitate to do things, she definitely always took her mother’s opinion to heart.
She had been a great child.
She scraped the pickles that she had chopped into a bowl. They didn’t measure too much, usually just eyeballed things, and she decided that maybe one more would be sufficient.
Terry had the mixer started, and that muted the conversation for a bit, as Marjorie thought back to happier times, which was pretty much every other year, other than the year they had to deal with Isadora.
Roland was a bit of a wild card too, but he seemed to be coming around.
Lord, it would be nice to get some happy news tonight. Just something encouraging.
She couldn’t even think of what might be encouraging. Just something so they weren’t focused on grief and the funeral they would soon be attending. Gilbert probably needed that, especially.
To her surprise, the door opened just as Marjorie shut the mixer off, and Isadora slipped in.
Amy and Jones had gone over to Gilbert who was sitting in the recliner, and Marjorie didn’t think that they saw Isadora come in.
“I’m going to go over and greet her,” she said to Terry.
“I’m coming with,” Terry said, setting the mixer down and wiping her hands on a dish towel.
They went around the counter, and both of them hugged Isadora from opposite sides as she turned from hanging up her coat.
“I’m so glad you were able to come. I was worried about you.”
“I’m fine, Mom. Just...tired, sad, you know. All the things.”
“I know. We’re here to help you. And you’re welcome to just hang out here if you want to.”
“I appreciate you all watching my children,” she said as she looked around the room, seeing Jasper playing on the floor and Landon in a high chair in the kitchen where Marjorie had been working.
He had Cheerios on the tray in front of him, and as she looked, he saw her and started hitting his tray and happily saying, “Mama! Mama!”
“They miss you, but they’re happy when you’re not here. They’d be happier with you.” Marjorie hoped she was saying the right thing. She didn’t want Isadora to think that her kids didn’t care, but she also didn’t want her to worry about them, because she would take good care of them until Isadora was able to do it herself. She understood how debilitating heartbreak could be. She had experienced it once herself. Of course, in different circumstances, but still.
“I know you don’t understand— ”
“I lost your dad. I know how I felt then. I just wanted to get in bed and never get out. Maybe that’s not the way you feel—”
“It’s exactly how I feel,” Isadora said, but her eyes dropped, and then she said, “but my pain was avoidable. I didn’t listen. I just wanted you to know I’m sorry.”
“And I want you to know that that is water under the bridge and I don’t care. It’s too late to do anything about it.” She didn’t want Isadora to think that she wasn’t going to let it go. They could talk about it if she wanted to, and sometimes Marjorie did wonder if there was something she could have done. Something that would have convinced her to not do wrong, but then again, Isadora would have missed this, and maybe this was the growing experience that she needed to understand how to become a strong Christian without her mother there pushing her in the right direction.
Although, Marjorie didn’t think there was anything at all wrong with parents pushing their children to do right. As they grew older, they could learn from the pain of others, and not their own pain, if they allowed themselves to be spared from it. If they didn’t, they were the warning for other people.
“Come on in. Terry and I are making dill pickle dip, and we have plenty of food.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I was not hungry after Dad died either.” She paused, weighing her words, and then she said, “But I wasn’t pregnant.”
Isadora’s mouth flattened, and then she grimaced. “Good point, Mom. Thanks. You always have good advice. I just don’t always listen.” She tilted her head and met her mom’s eyes, and Marjorie’s heart just broke. There was so much pain and sadness and regret in Isadora’s face that she could hardly stand it.
“God takes people’s messes, and He makes beautiful things out of them. We just have to trust Him and hold on tight. And I think your repentance, your apology, your admittance that you did wrong, is the first step. God loves humility. ”
“I can hear you saying that as a child, and it resonates as an adult even louder.” Isadora reached and gave her another hug. “I love you, Mom.”
Her words made Marjorie’s chest feel warm and soft, even though there was still a tight ball of pain right in the middle of it. How she had longed to hear those words back when Isadora had determined that she was not going to listen but was going to do things her own way. She had wanted so much to know that Isadora loved her and would do the right thing, and she had had to wait for years, but it had finally happened.
Thank you, Lord, for bringing my lost sheep home.
She heard a few strums of the guitar, and then Wilson began singing.
He started with “Amazing Grace,” which was not Marjorie’s favorite. She’d heard it at so many funerals that it brought more sadness than anything. In fact, even as she listened, her eyes filled with tears. This would be the first Christmas in more than a decade that Sally wasn’t with them. They were going to have to go to her funeral and celebrate her life, then bury her, as the season of happiness and joy went on around them.
She hoped Gilbert was up for the task. She knew she was happy that she hadn’t lost her husband over the holidays. That would have made it twice as difficult. And then every year after that, the holidays would have been sad and depressing. Unless she could have allowed God to show her the way to get out of that pit.
She knew He had the ability to make the holidays a happy time, but she just didn’t know if she was strong enough to do what it took to make it happen.
And she wasn’t sure if she would have had the willpower to do it either. It was so much easier to wallow in grief, misery and memories. As much as she didn’t want to admit it.
The entire family had started singing, other than she and Terry who had gone back to the kitchen to finish up the pickle dip. Terry scraped the cream cheese mixture in, they added a couple other ingredients, and Marjorie got the vegetables out of the refrigerator and set them on the counter, in case people wanted to eat. They weren’t having a sit-down meal, it was just feed yourself when you were hungry.
Isadora had gotten Landon out of his high chair, and she’d gone in and sat down on the floor beside Jasper, who seemed thrilled to have his mother and brother beside him again.
Wilson sang all the verses of “Amazing Grace,” and Marjorie was again astounded at her son’s memory. He knew all the words to every song in the hymnbook. At least the ones he’d sung. Somehow, he just had a knack for it. He could play the chords on the guitar to accompany them as well. He’d always been the leader when they sang, once he was old enough. And she appreciated it, since she wasn’t very good.
He began another hymn, one that maybe seemed out of season, but one that spoke to her heart more than any other, probably her favorite hymn. “How Great Thou Art.”
She listened to the verses, as her children sang in harmony, and then smiled as the music swelled on the chorus.
That was the song of her heart. That God was great, no matter what was going on in her life. She listened to her children singing, listened to the harmony, saw the generations sitting on the floor, and thought about her husband.
He hadn’t been around much, and maybe that was for the best. Her thoughts turned next to the Lord. It was because of God that her children were sitting there, singing praises to Him in harmony, and holding their kids, supporting each other, and doing what they could to get along. God had been so very, very good to her, and no matter how their Christmas turned out, this was the best gift her children, or the Lord, could give her .
As her heart swelled and her eyes filled with tears, her gaze roved around the room, and she spotted the gifts underneath the Christmas tree.
When did they come? She hadn’t brought any gifts. She hadn’t even thought about gifts. She didn’t have a single gift bought, and she wasn’t sure she was going to get anything at this point. Especially if she was going to be watching five children for the foreseeable future. She was sure that everyone would understand, and gifts had not even crossed her mind.
Except, there were gifts under her tree.
She looked around the room, trying to figure out who wasn’t there. All of her kids were, and Jones sat with Amy.
Terry was with her in the kitchen, and... Judd was gone.
Casually, Marjorie walked down the hall and slipped into one of the bedrooms, looking outside.
At first, there was a cloud over the moon, and she couldn’t see anything, but as her eyes adjusted to the light, and she continued to look, she saw a dark figure, one that looked suspiciously like Judd, with a bag over his shoulder, walking up the steps of the back porch. He would come in the door right by the tree, and if he came in quietly, no one in the living room would see because the tree would block the view. If she was working in the kitchen with her back to it, or even if she were looking into the living room, she would miss him.
She watched as he finished walking up the steps and slipped in the door.
She walked quietly back down the hall and stood in the doorway, just in the shadows, watching as he carefully pulled gifts out of the bag and set them up quickly around the tree before retreating back out the door.
He didn’t even look to see if anyone was looking. He just did it quickly, and maybe he thought that that would be the saving grace.
So fast that no one noticed .
She thought about the articles that she’d read on social media. She hadn’t seen them all, because who had time? But she’d seen a few. Written by Terry. Of all people.
Judd was the Secret Saint. She would almost bet on it.
Did Terry know Judd was the Secret Saint that she wrote about?
Surely she had to.
She’d seen them talking quietly together several times, and there seemed to be something between them.
She smiled. Pleased at how quickly God had answered her prayer. Sometimes a person had to wait a long time for an answer.
I needed some good news, Lord, and You came through, better than I could even have thought. Wow. Whether Judd is the Secret Saint or not, thank you for sending him to be with our family at this time. I know that the kids are going to be over-the-moon excited.
They had never done Santa Claus when her kids were little, and her kids had continued that non-tradition. She didn’t judge people who did, but she just wanted to keep Christmas about Jesus. Making things look pretty, creating their own traditions, and knowing that God giving Jesus as His gift to mankind was the reason that they exchanged gifts with each other.
She set the meat and rolls out, along with condiments, in case someone wanted to make a sandwich, and then slipped into the living room, sitting down in the opening so that she could catch Landon if he thought to crawl out.
Isadora saw her and smiled her thanks.
“Excuse me,” Judd said over her shoulder as he stepped into the living room.
“Of course,” she said, trying not to smile any bigger at him than she normally would have.
It looked like he had just gone to the restroom, but she knew better. Although she didn’t say anything .
“Before we sing something else, I wanted to make an announcement,” Terry said, standing up and waiting for Judd to reach her side.
He stopped beside and put his arm around her, and she leaned into him, like...they were a couple.
Lord? More good news?
Marjorie could hardly contain herself. If this was what she thought it was, God had really outdone Himself.
Terry looked at Judd, and there seemed to be some kind of silent messaging going on between them before he nodded.
“I’ve asked Terry to marry me, and she said yes.”
Conversation and cheers erupted in the living room as Terry’s siblings congratulated her and showed their surprise.
Amy didn’t look overly shocked, and Marjorie wondered if maybe Amy had known beforehand.
Amy and Jones were looking kind of cozy, but Amy didn’t stand up with her own announcement.
“Now, for the really shocking news,” Terry said, and the family groaned. What could be more shocking than that?
Marjorie held her breath. This could go either way. Good news or bad.
She would be happy about a baby, but she would be more happy if they were already married. It was just the way she felt about sin, but she wasn’t going to rain on anyone’s parade by giving a lecture on morality when an announcement about a new grandchild had been made.
The lectures on morality that she had given to her children were over and done with.
It was up to them to make their decisions about their lives and go to her for advice if they wanted it. She tried not to offer it unsolicited.
“Are you gonna tell us or not?” Roland asked, raising his voice to be heard above everyone else .
“Of course. So, Judd and I decided that we weren’t going to sit around waiting with a long engagement. We’re already in the same house, and it’s not really set up like a duplex, and it makes both of us a little bit uncomfortable, so we decided to go Monday morning to get a license, and we’re planning on getting married that evening around six o’clock at the church.”
There was stunned silence.
Marjorie almost laughed. If she wanted to, she couldn’t get her kids to be this quiet, and now all of a sudden, no one could think of anything to say. Not until Marissa said, “Does that mean Mr. Judd’s going to be my uncle?”
“It sure does, sweetheart. Yours, Lucas’s, Robert’s, Landon’s, and Jasper’s.” Marjorie named all five of her grandchildren. How had she become a grandmother? She felt like she was still in her twenties in her heart, although her body felt more her age.
But still, grandchildren? Lord, You’ve been too good to me. She looked around the room again, her heart full. Sure, there were hard times. Lots of them. But there were good, wonderful, amazing times, too. So, so many more.
“Do you have any other bombs to drop on us?” Wilson asked, sounding a little gruff, but he didn’t fool anyone. He was happy for his sister.
“I think that’s pretty much it for me, for us.” They looked at each other, and Judd gave Terry such a look of love and admiration that Marjorie couldn’t help but be excited. It would be a bit of a change, but not much. Although, Terry had come back thinking that she was going to help a lot around the house, but if she were in a new relationship, in a new marriage, she probably would want to focus on that, as well she should. Still, Marjorie figured she would see her around a lot more than she had when she’d been working two and a half hours away in Richmond.
There was more laughter, more good-natured teasing, and then the singing started again. This time, Marjorie joined in, playing with the children that came over to her and grateful that she was still young enough that she could get down on the floor with them.
She remembered her mom playing with her children when they were young, but at that time, her mom had been older and had not wanted to get down on the floor for fear that she couldn’t get up. Marjorie had tried to stay active because she didn’t want to have that problem with her own grandchildren.
She figured great-grandchildren might be a different story, but for now, God had given her the health that she needed to be able to help her children when they needed it. And that was all she could ask for.