More Than This: Contemporary Christian Romance Novel (38 page)

He smiled very softly. “Yes. I do. Would you like to tell me what’s really bad for you?”

Until that moment, she had thought she could do this, but now she wasn’t so sure. Ducking to get the tears to stop, she sniffed them back and swiped at her nose. This wasn’t what she had in mind at all. Falling apart? He was going to think she was idiot.

“I know,” he said, his voice sounding like Heaven on a summer’s day, “man, life can take some awful tough swings at you sometimes, can’t it?”

She nodded, bobbing her head even though all he could see was the top of it. Sniffing once really hard, she gathered her courage up by the throat. “I did something... something I’m not proud of, something I’d like to go back and change.”

His face and manner registered only patience. “Is this something you
can
go back and change?”

Ache ripped through her heart as she shook her head, and more tears tumbled from her eyes that were now squeezed shut.

“I see. Did this something happen recently?”

She sniffed again, trying to get a handle on her overwhelming emotions. “Three years ago.”

He heaved a sigh. “Okay. Look, Liz, I’m not here to judge you. God knows I’m in no position to judge anybody. I just want to help you, to give you some hope that God knows all about you too, and He’s ready to forgive you.”

“That’s just it.” Her gaze swung up to his. “I think God probably has forgiven me. I mean I’ve asked Him to and all, but I just... I can’t forgive myself. I can’t. What I did...”

“... was too bad to ever forgive,” he finished for her, and she nodded, wondering how he knew the end of that sentence.             

Standing, he came around the desk and sat on top of it. “Let me ask you this, are you holding onto this thing because you think if you let it go, that will somehow mean you think it was okay?”

She could almost hear the ripping of the tears up from the surface of her heart. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.” He nodded, paused, and let out a breath. “And do you think that moving on from that decision will make people think you really didn’t care about it? That maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal to you?”

Again, she nodded, feeling like the world might fall in on top of her at any moment.

“Tell you what, let me explain something about God that might help.” He slid off the desk and walked over to the door before turning. “God is not about condemning you, so if you’re feeling condemned, that’s Satan, not God. Our God, our Father, loves you more than you can know, and it has nothing to do with anything you’ve ever done— good or bad. He has put inside of each of us a conscience that helps us know right from wrong, and when we do wrong, our conscience lets us know it.

“Let me ask you this:  have you ever been around a hot stove or a pan?”

She liked this, it felt like getting away from the center of her story, like maybe she wouldn’t have to confess what she had done. Lifting her gaze, she nodded. “Yes.”

“And why don’t you touch that hot surface?”

“Because you’ll get burned.”

“Exactly. Now some of us had parents who warned us about the hot stove, and we took them at their word and didn’t touch the thing. Others of us didn’t have those kinds of parents and had to learn about the hot stove the hard way. We touched it, got burned, felt the pain, and decided, ‘That was
not
a good idea.’”

Liz almost laughed through her tears.

“Right?” He smiled at her. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

She smiled again and nodded.

“And then there are some of us who had the good kind of parent, who told us not to touch the stove, but we had to see for ourselves. So we waltzed right up to the stove and smack!” He slapped his hand on the desk, causing her to jump. Then his eyes got wide, and he yanked his hand back and shook it. “OW!  That’s hot!”

This time, she really did laugh at his theatrics.

“Right? You’ve been there then? Testing the stove, and you found out— that it’s hot. It hurts when I do that.”

Now she was beginning to see just a bit clearer.

“So why did God spell out all of those commandments? So He could punish us when we did something wrong, or was it Him telling us, ‘Don’t touch the hot stove. It will hurt you’?”

Her spirit felt as if it had been scalded repeatedly by that stove.

“The thing is, when we feel the pain, it’s a signal that something is not right. Something is hurting and we need to take our hand off the stove.” He sat back down on the desk. “You get it now, don’t you? You get it that when God said, ‘Liz, that stove is hot. Don’t touch it,’ He wasn’t fooling around. He wasn’t trying to take away your fun. The stove really was hot, and it really did hurt.”

She nodded. Yes, it really did hurt. Physically but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually as well.

“Good. Then the first thing you’ve got to do is take your hand off the stove.”

A question went through her mind and her eyes.

“See, you’re holding your hand on that stove, bound and determined to keep yourself in that pain because you disobeyed and did what God told you not to do. And God’s right here saying, ‘Liz, take your hand off the stove, Child. You’ve been keeping yourself in this pain for too long.’”

She shook her head. “But how do you do that? How do you let it go?”

His eyes grew even kinder and gentler. “Sometimes it’s really hard. Sometimes it’s so hard that you can’t even do it.”

Oh, that’s comforting
. The words shot through her being, but she yanked them back before they came from her mouth.

“But there’s something I’ve learned. When things are the hardest, when what God is asking us to do is so hard that you know you can’t do it,
that’s
when you’ve got to ask for His help. Not to fix the situation if it can’t be fixed, but to help us to forgive ourselves. We have to ask Him to help us to be willing to give the same forgiveness to ourselves that He’s already given us— to be willing to take our hand off the stove.”

She cringed at the thought. “And then what? Forgive and forget?”

“Ah.” The pastor smiled a mysterious smile. “Let me ask you a question.”

It was odd how he could go zipping down a different path so easily. “What’s that?”

“When Jesus came back from the dead and saw His disciples, how did they know it was Him?”

Strange question in the midst of this particular discussion, but okay...
“Well, He showed them the nail marks in His hands. At least He did Thomas.”

“That’s right. He showed them His scars. The Bible calls them ‘nail prints,’ but the more accurate term is ‘scars.’  He showed them His scars to prove to them that He was, in fact, Jesus Christ the One Who was crucified. So let me ask you this. After that, He ascended body and soul into Heaven, so what happened to the scars?”

“What do you mean, what happened to them?”

The preacher’s eyes began glinting with glee. “What happened to them? Are they gone now, or does He still have them?”

Again, a weird question that had nothing to do with anything. “I don’t know. I guess He still has them, but...”

“Wait. One more question, do you believe that if He so chose, he could remove those scars from His body?”

Annoyance was creeping into her spirit. “Well, He cured a blind man and healed a paralytic, so I don’t see why not.”

“Exactly. He could have. He could have healed His own scars, but the Lord of Glory
chose
to keep those scars. Why?”

Good question.
She didn’t answer— some because she didn’t know it, and some because some small part of the answer whispered hope she hadn’t expected to ever see again.

“Have you ever read Paul?” The preacher leaned back and grabbed a Bible from the corner of the desk.

“Uh, some. I guess.”

“But you know St. Paul, right? Wrote like half of the New Testament, went all over preaching about Jesus. He had to be a pretty together guy— no scars on him, right?”

Liz wasn’t really following anymore.

The preacher flipped through the Bible. “Ah, here it is. 2 Corinthians starting at verse 7. ‘Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me— to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord
three times
that it might leave me. And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” The pastor closed the Bible. “Hm. Sounds like Paul had some issues too, sounds like maybe even he had some scars. But what was his answer to them?”

“That God take them away.” It would have been her first choice as well.

“And God said...?”

“No.”

“Why?”

She searched her spirit. “Because Paul was learning the hard way that God could be strong for him in the places where he was the weakest.”

“Exactly.”

“So when you take your hand off the stove, you don’t forget that it hurt, you don’t forget what the pain felt like, but you let those scars remind you that God was right all along,” she said now beginning to understand. “That the stove was hot, and you touched it anyway, but He’s forgiven you for insisting that you learn the hard way.”

He nodded. “And then you use that knowledge to help others avoid the stove.”

Liz sat, absorbing it all. Then she knew what she had to do. It was time to take her hand off of the stove. “About three years ago, I got pregnant.”

There was no surprise anywhere on the pastor’s face, only a gentle knowing.

“I had just started college, and I didn’t think I could handle having a baby and going to school too.” She let out a long sigh. “My parents would have had a fit, and I was... I was just a mess. So my boyfriend at the time said he would take care of it.” The memory was still there, but the guilt had softened to a gentle understanding that yes, she had made a mistake, and she was truly, truly sorry for it, but God no longer required her to be in anguish to try to make up for it. “And he did.” She nodded three times to get the next sentence out of her mouth. “I had an abortion. I closed my heart to that child and made my life more important than hers.”

“Hers?”

Liz shrugged although she barely moved. “I always kind of thought it was a girl. I really don’t know. I didn’t want to know.” She blew out a breath. “I was so selfish about all of it. I wanted the parties and the boys. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, and no one was going to tell me any different.”

“And what did you learn?”

She almost laughed. “That that stove really is very,
very
hot.”

After leaving the pastor’s office, Liz went down to the little park. She found a bench and sat down. It was cold, too cold for many people to be out. That was all right. Alone time sounded very good right about now, so she simply sat and thought and prayed. When she stood up an hour later, peace had finally begun to make its home in her heart, and finally, the wounds began to become scars.

~*~

How long she sat there, she did not know. All she knew was that the emotional anguish had finally begun to relinquish its hold on her. She didn’t know how or exactly what His plan was, but she knew God had something in mind for her— a way to use her scars. Maybe she should have felt lighter, but all she really felt was tired. Worn out from the day’s events— or maybe from the events from three years before to this very moment, she couldn’t clearly tell.

Still, she needed to get to work. Josh, the kid she was working with now, would be there soon, and she didn’t want to be late. Hurrying her steps, she thought about Josh and then about Jake. He had weathered so much. How he had kept going through it all, she wasn’t sure. She really admired that about him, and it crossed her mind that she should tell him that when she got the chance.

~*~

“Well, hello there, beautiful.” Jake wrapped his arm around Liz as she sat at one of the Learning Center desks filling out a form, and it was a feeling he could get used to.

She looked up, and happiness went all the way down to the bottom of her eyes. “Hey! You’re early.”

“Yeah.” He stood and checked his watch. “I was hoping I could catch Mrs. McLaughlin.”

Concern went through her eyes.

“No,” he said with a laugh, “I’m not dropping out. It’s about Kasen.”

Her face fell further into puzzlement. “Kasen?”

“Arnold’s son. They’re wanting to try out the program. Maybe. If I can get him the information.” It was so strange to him how very different all of this felt now. When he stopped focusing on himself long enough to see the pain this problem was causing others, he’d found a mission worthy of his time and effort.

“Oh. I think she’s in her office.”