A Blessed Life

It would surely require a prayer for forgiveness, but he’d been thankful when he’d learned she was divorced. It should have made him want to step back from her, but it didn’t.

Pushing those dangerous thoughts away, Andrew pulled the monthly youth calendar up on his computer screen. Immediately, he felt tired. In theory, it was great to keep the youth too occupied in the summer to get into trouble, but all of those activities required chaperoning. The finger for that job pointed right back at him.

Trips to the Detroit Zoo and Michigan’s Adventure Park in Muskegon, plus pizza night—that would be enough without tonight’s youth lock-in. That was all he needed—spending twelve hours in a house full of adolescents. Eating too much junk food. Getting no sleep. Even with reliable fellow chaperones Robert and Diana Lidstrom and Charlene Lowe, it would be a harrowing night.

He walked to the window and stared out across the field to the older farmhouse that served as both his home and the temporary Family Life Center. The deacons had been fortunate that the prior owner had been ready to retire to Florida when they’d searched for property on which to build a new center.

Architects were already planning the shiny, modern structure that would stand there after the house was razed, but as he looked at the existing building—majestic in its own utilitarian way—he wished they’d just leave it alone. It had such character. Such history. The house spoke to a time when Milford had been a farming area instead of a bedroom community for Detroit.

Twirling the blind control, Andrew darkened the room and returned to his desk, wondering why the old house was so important to him. No one had promised him a permanent job in Milford. He was still only in the “hope” phase. But if he could prove himself indispensable to the deacons here, maybe he could finally convince the naysayers in his life that he was at least a little worthwhile.

And maybe he could convince himself.

Another image of that willowy brunette became a castaway in his thoughts, making him more uncomfortable than he cared to admit. Even if this wasn’t a true doctor-patient situation where he needed to avoid personal involvement. Obviously, it had been too long since he’d had a real date, if he was allowing their conversation to take on this much significance. He had to get out more. But a feeling deep in his gut made him wonder if he’d still be having these same unsettling feelings even if he’d had a month’s worth of interesting dates.

The phone rang and saved him from the uncertain implications of his thoughts. He didn’t need or want the complications of an involvement now. Especially not with a troubled woman. She had as many problems as he did.

“Hickory Ridge Church, this is Andrew Westin. May I help you?”

“Andrew, this is Charlene.” She spoke in that heavy New Jersey accent that made her identification unnecessary. “Got bad news. My mom’s having emergency gall bladder surgery. I hate to bail out on you, but…”

“Of course, Char, you have to be with your mom. Don’t worry a bit about us. I’ll find someone else to fill in. Let your mother know we’ll be praying for her.”

He lowered the phone to the receiver, feeling a new weight on his shoulders. Did he know anyone who was crazy enough—or naive enough, to agree to chaperone a youth all-nighter with less than eight hours’ notice? A few faces flickered in his mind and disappeared, but one unlikely image showed up and refused to fade.

Chapter Two

Still digesting that unsettling meeting with Andrew Westin, Serena pulled her Ford Taurus station wagon to the curb. Their conversation wasn’t going down easily. She needed more time to ponder it, but, as always, other needs came first.

“Hi Mommy,” Tessa chimed, stepping cautiously down the front steps of their next-door neighbor’s home with Mrs. Nelson at her heels. “We made chocolate chip cookies.”

As if that wasn’t obvious from the ingredients pasted to the front of her formerly pink T-shirt. “I bet that was a lot of fun. Thank you, Mrs. Nelson. For everything.”

The feisty retiree rolled her lips inward to stifle a laugh. Despite the added laundry challenge, Serena was grateful her neighbor with an overbooked social calendar had been available to sit. Her appointment, and the resulting panicked search for child care, had reminded her how important it was to find a regular sitter.

“Can we go to the park, Mommy? Please?”

That pleading head tilt was the one that often worked on Serena. She was being played like a song, and she didn’t mind the melody. A glance at her watch told her there was enough time to play awhile and have lunch before Tessa’s nap.

“Okay, but let’s change your shirt first.”

Only fifteen minutes after their arrival at Central Park and its special playground, River Bend Playscape, Serena wondered why she’d even changed Tessa’s clothes. She looked as if she’d lost a fight with a dust storm, but that impish grin showed she was an excellent loser. She sat wide-legged in the sandbox, having traded the cleaner play of digging with the permanent bulldozer contraption for the joy of sinking her bare feet in the sand.

Serena felt as happy as her daughter looked, here in this moment of no sickness, no visible pain. If she were honest with herself, she’d have to admit that she’d felt lighter ever since leaving Andrew’s office—even if she was having a difficult time figuring out what to do with that weightlessness. His words had shown her a flash of light at the end of the dark tunnel that was her life.

“‘Nobody gets out of here free.”’ She repeated his words under her breath and grinned. If he’d said that to her two years ago, she would have laughed out loud at his bleak predictions. How had he come to know so much? He looked to be only a few years older than she was.

But somehow, talking to him had made her feel less alone in her misery. Did the comfort come from realizing everyone had pain, or from knowing that Andrew cared about hers? Answering that question would force her to analyze several of today’s wayward thoughts, so she drew no conclusion.

Even if she were ready to consider a relationship again—which she wasn’t—Andrew wouldn’t have been her choice. He was a youth minister. In her wildest imaginings for the future, she’d never once pictured herself as a minister’s wife. Those women wore buns in their hair and played church organs.

“What’s so funny, Mommy?”

Serena looked at her sand sculpture of a daughter, embarrassed to have been caught in her musings. “I remembered a funny joke, honey.”

Tessa raised a quizzical eyebrow in an expression destined in her teen years to be perfected into a smirk. “Can I play on the slides?”

Swallowing the knot of anxiety in her throat, Serena reminded herself that the doctors wanted Tessa to remain active. They promised Tessa would set her own limits, based on the pain, and Serena hoped they were right. “Which one do you want to try first?”

She need not have worried. Tessa was timid enough for the both of them. Serena took her position at the bottom of the play structure, watching her child amble instead of run across the polyvinyl-coated bridge toward the curly tube slide.

Serena caught her at the bottom. “Here, jump to the ground.”

Tessa shook her head and lifted her arms. Serena’s throat felt dry, and her eyes burned. But she would not cry. She couldn’t allow that. She lifted her frail child, wondering if that fearless toddler, the one who had once scaled monkey bars and jumped off front porch steps instead of walking down, still existed. She had to be hidden in there somewhere. The same way Tessa’s puffy cheeks and swollen belly—side effects of her steroid medications—merely covered the healthy child beneath.

Serena shook away her sadness over their losses. Mourning didn’t do a bit of good. Besides, there was so much to be thankful for. Tessa’s skin no longer carried that ghostly pallor of anemia, meaning the medication was doing something. And the new medicine had helped so many other children. Hopefully it would have the same success with Tessa’s condition.

When her child crawled up in her lap as she sat on the bench, Serena knew it was time to go home. Exhaustion often hit hard, making daily naps necessary. She fastened Tessa into her car seat and drove home for what was always the hardest part of the day. “Quiet time” left Serena with too many minutes alone with her thoughts. Like usual, she’d spend most of it feeling sorry for herself.

She barely had time to tuck Tessa into bed and kiss her the pre-ordered three times, before the phone rang. A freelance career wasn’t always what it was marketed to be. What sounded like freedom often turned into career captivity when your home was your office. Sometimes she wished she could turn off the phone and hide until she was ready to do business again, but she couldn’t afford to lose any clients, especially now that she was a single parent. Her freelance income paid the rent.

“Serena Jacobs. May I help you?” It was a funny way to answer her home phone, but lately, her calls were more often business than personal.

“Hi, Serena. It’s Andrew Westin.”

She swallowed hard. What if he’d reconsidered his advice this morning and wanted to suggest that she seek counseling as soon as possible? “Hello, Andrew…” Not sure what to say, she hoped he would fill in the gap.

“It was good meeting you today.”

“Nice meeting you, too,” she mumbled, her nervousness growing exponentially.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about your situation, being down in the dumps.”

She took a deep breath. Here it comes. Maybe he was going to suggest something even worse, like she wasn’t stable enough to care for Tessa. When he hesitated longer than she could handle, she prompted, “Yes?”

“One way to get out of depression is to get involved in helping someone else.”

She smiled into the receiver, feeling silly over her worries. “And just who did you have in mind?”

“Me.” Andrew paused. “And about thirty of my closest friends.”

Trying hard not to be flattered, she waded through his words, searching for some deeper meaning. Was this his roundabout way of asking her out? If it were, what would she answer?

“Are you still there? I just asked if you’d ever worked with kids.”

Serena brushed her hand back through her wind-tangled hair and blushed, glad he couldn’t see her. Obviously, she was letting her imagination get the best of her.

“I taught toddler Sunday School for about a year after I graduated.” Why did she feel like she was being hooked here like a bad act in a variety show—only she was being dragged out onto the stage, not off.