Snowbound With The Best Man

Carly flopped over on her bed like a five-year-old heap of drama. “I wanna go to Lulu’s church and make Valentine’s cookies.”

The Almighty wasn’t fighting fair, bringing frosting into this. “You have to sit still a lot during church. Do you remember?” The fact that he had to ask pinched at his conscience.

“I can sit still just fine. I wanna go. Lulu says it’s lots of fun.”

For you, maybe, he thought, trying to envision himself sitting in a church pew again.

“We won’t know anybody there except Kelly and Lulu.” Even as the words left his mouth, they felt like a weak argument. Besides, if almost no one knew him, then maybe no one could do that super-supportive “we want to be here for you” thing that made him cringe.

He looked at Carly’s pleading eyes, aware he was losing this argument. Bruce Lohan had delivered firefighters into blazing mountainsides and pulled rescue victims from raging waters, but evidently he was no match for his daughter’s pout, or God wielding cookies.

And so it wasn’t that much of a surprise that at 9:50 a.m. Bruce found himself standing at the door of Matrimony Valley Community Church, dragging his feet up the steps behind Carly’s insistent pulling.

“Carly!” Lulu greeted happily as they hung their coats on the set of racks just inside the door. “Come sit with us!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kelly said, clearly giving Bruce an out if he wanted one.

Bruce actually couldn’t decide which was worse—sitting with Kelly and Lulu or enduring the church service alone. He’d gone to a handful of services after Sandy’s passing, and once Carly skipped off to children’s church he’d felt excruciatingly solitary sitting in the pew alone.

Carly decided for him. “I do. C’mon, Dad.” And with that, she trotted off into the sanctuary holding hands with Lulu as if it were the easiest thing in the world. His daughter had no idea that just walking into the space set a lump of ice into Bruce’s gut that threatened to send him running for the door.

“We don’t bite,” Kelly said. “Well, except maybe cookies.”

“Ha,” he said drily, too tense to appreciate the attempt at humor.

“Consider it a test run for the wedding, then,” she said, starting to follow the girls to a pew that was way too close to the front for his taste. He’d have preferred the far corner of the last pew, but it wasn’t going to happen. “This way, the ceremony won’t be your first time in here. Familiar spaces are always easier, and the day will be tough enough already.”

At least Kelly got how hard this wedding was going to be for him. Other people got it, sort of, but Bruce knew they couldn’t really understand the painful happiness Tina and Darren’s wedding represented for him. Everyone else was caught up—and rightly so—in the happiness that weddings ought to be. He’d been ecstatic on his wedding day, still a tiny bit unbelieving that he’d landed this beauty who seemed so far out of his league. Stunned that the woman who’d left him dumbstruck at their first meeting had actually fallen for the likes of him, just a normal guy.

A normal guy. Funny how “normal” looked so appealing. Something still beyond his reach. And yet, without the weight of his history driving people to smother him with concern, he could almost feel something close to normal here.

Why? Because it was different? Free from the soaking of memory that usually caught him up short? He’d tried to return to church back in Kinston, he really had. But the place just could never be anything but where they held Sandy’s funeral. Kelly talked as if she drew hope and encouragement from her church, but he wasn’t there yet. He wondered if he ever would be again.

Bruce took his seat in the small pew, he and Kelly flanking the girls on either side. He tried to discount the weirdly family-ish feeling sitting in a pew with these three people gave him, finding it ridiculous. He’d known two of them for one day. Just because Carly made instant friendships didn’t mean he had to. Be nice, yes, but get close? No.

Rather than look in Kelly’s direction, Bruce scanned the small sanctuary. Maybe his strange sense of comfort came from the fact that this place looked nothing like the large and fancy church back home. It was a bright and simple space. Peaceful. With the character that came from years and history. Neat but not fancy. Perfect for the kind of wedding Tina and Darren wanted.

Not that sitting here was effortless. More than once one of them had to “shush” the excited girls. Kids were such naturals at instant friendships. Carly’s smiles and stifled giggles were worth a prickly hour in a strange sanctuary, weren’t they?

Except sitting through the service didn’t actually feel that strange. Did he still have a bone to pick with the Almighty? Sure, that wasn’t going to disappear after the mountain of pain he’d been climbing over the past two years. But church itself? Church was different from God, even though he couldn’t quite say why. Church was people. Back home in Kinston, it was nosy, prodding, pitying people with concerned faces and endless hugs. People who said “How are you?” with such an invasive persistence. Church with a bunch of people he didn’t know ended up a lot easier than church with all those he did. The unfamiliarity gave him space to just be, somehow. Was it a deep, spiritual experience? No. But it wasn’t nearly as awful as he’d expected it to be.

Sure, it felt awkward when Carly and Lulu raced off down the hallway with the other children, leaving a gaping space in the pew he and Kelly occupied. He watched Kelly fidget and take pains not to look his way, so he knew she felt it, as well. An uncomfortable awareness threatened to distract him from the service, and he fought to keep his attention on Pastor Mitchell’s message about the true nature of love.

He was relieved no one quoted the “love is patient, love is kind” verse Sandy’s sister had read at their wedding. The message instead focused on the strength love brought to the world. How love stood up against the darkness with God’s relentless care for His people. How love transformed and redeemed. How God’s love could do things that human love so often failed to do: find the good, grow the hope, see the true value. He liked the pastor’s idea that love was a constant outside of human relationships. It helped him think there could and would be love left in the world despite the huge chunk of it that had been ripped from his life. Maybe he wasn’t ready to see that love now, but perhaps he could again someday.

“The best thing about God’s love is that you don’t have to reach for it,” Pastor Mitchell said. “It reaches for you. Sometimes even before you want it or feel ready for it. Wherever you go, there it is. All God asks of you is to turn and see it. Let it in.”

People were always quick to tell him what he needed to do to move on. Join this support group, read this book, do this, stop doing that. Mitchell’s sermon was the first message he’d heard that told him to just be, and maybe crack himself the tiniest bit open. Maybe struggling to escape the fog wasn’t the answer. Maybe he just had to wait for the fog to lift on its own.

And wasn’t that an uncomfortable notion. Waiting? Getting—what had the pastor called it—expectantly still? The very thought made every inch of his insides itch.

When the girls returned for the final hymn, each bearing a generously frosted giant heart cookie wrapped in pink sparkly cellophane, Bruce couldn’t decide if he wanted to stick around or run.

The girls, of course, were busy making plans to spend the entire day together. “Can Lulu come to lunch with us?” Carly asked.

“Well, now...” he hedged, not wanting to be rude, but needing some space after the jumble of his reactions this morning.

Clearly he hadn’t hid it well, because Kelly stepped in. “The grown-ups decided we’d each do lunch on our own.”

They hadn’t, of course, but he was grateful for the out she gave him. “You just spent a whole hour with each other. I think you can live through being separated for lunch.”

A chorus of little-girl moans erupted until Kelly held both hands up. “Enough of that. Carly, we’ll see you at one o’clock.” She turned to Bruce. “Thank you for coming to church with us. I hope you got something out of it.”

He did—he just couldn’t exactly say what.

Chapter Four (#u0abc4b59-3864-5ec3-bce2-d22786e69675)

“Do you think Carly and Mr. Bruce liked our church, Mom?” Lulu asked as they loaded the dishwasher from Sunday lunch.

“I can’t say for sure, sweetheart.” She’d been surprised that Bruce and Carly had shown for church, but he’d looked unsettled during most of the service, and hadn’t spoken much afterward.

The man was impossible to read. Had he been irritated by the country congregation, or just needed some time to process his reaction?

“Carly’s fun. I really like her.”

I can’t really say the same for her father, Kelly thought. “She seems like a nice friend to have.” She handed a glass to Lulu.

“Carly said our church is tons more fun than the one she used to go to when her mom was alive.”

Kelly felt her heart pinch the way it always did when young Lulu talked about a parent dying in such a matter-of-fact way. It shouldn’t ever be normal, not to any child. And yet Carly’s remark told her a lot about Bruce, didn’t it? He’d been part of a church community, and then cut himself off—for whatever reason—after his wife’s death.

Why? Kelly couldn’t imagine how she’d have gotten through the dark days after Mark’s death without the support of MVCC. The congregation had held her up, prayed her through, even fed her. Though her own parents were far away in Texas, she’d never been alone, but had multiple invitations to choose from on those crushing first holidays and birthdays. How could anyone do it alone like he seemed to have? She wondered if the bruised nature of his soul—and he surely appeared to be a wounded soul to her—had come from that isolation. It made her sad and wary at the same time. Whatever small connection she felt with the man or his adorable daughter had to be tempered by the fact that he was a long way from healing.

“How much longer till they get here?” Lulu whined.

“Oh, just enough time for you to get your math worksheet done,” Kelly said, pointing to Lulu’s backpack on its hook by the door.

“Mom, it’s Sunday. Pastor says it’s rest day,” Lulu retorted, one cocky hand on her slim hips.

“Then maybe you’ll need a nap to pass the time,” Kelly teased.

Lulu rolled her eyes. “Fine. Math is better than naps. But not by much.” She pulled a folder out of her backpack and flopped down on the kitchen counter with a dramatic sigh. “Third grade is hard.”

Thirty-one is harder, Kelly moaned in the silence of her heart. And lately, for a host of reasons, thirty-one alone felt extra hard.

When the doorbell rang twenty minutes later, Lulu scampered off her seat and made it to the door before Kelly even put down the magazine she was reading.

“It took forever!” Carly announced once Lulu mentioned how long the wait had seemed.