Evidence of Mercy (41 page)

“I
will
start driving again, sooner or later. But when I do, I won't want to drive that.” He hadn't realized that he felt that way until the words were already out of his mouth.

She was quiet again. He knew that this was as awkward for her as it was for him. He was paying her off, in a sense, or at least it seemed that way—as if the Porsche were a bribe to accept him as her son again. But that was all right. It was a start.

“All right,” she said. “I'll take it.”

He smiled and restrained the urge to laugh. “Okay, Mama. I can either send you a plane ticket, and you can drive it back, or I can sell it here myself and send you the money.”

She thought about it for a moment. “I'll come there and get it. Who knows? I might like to drive it a while.”

His eyes welled deeper. “Good. I'd like to see you.”

“I'm not being greedy, you know,” she said quickly. “I'm thinkin' of this as punitive damages. For all the grief you've given me. And all the years I gave to you before you threw them back in my face. Do you understand that?”

“If I didn't, I wouldn't have made the offer.”

“You're not gonna back out now, are you?”

“No, Mama,” he said. “I'll have the ticket delivered to you tomorrow. One way. Maybe you can stay awhile, on me. I have someone here I'd like for you to meet.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY

S
ince she'd dropped Jake off at the hospital that morning, Lynda had been praying. She had pled with God, arguing how vital it was that Jake walk again, that he needed a miracle to nudge him along, that he needed to see God working in his life, that he needed to know he had a future.

But as she drove back to the hospital at ten to be there when he tried to take his steps, she realized that God was aware of all of that already. Jake was in God's hands, and God knew much better than she what he needed.

Still, she held her breath as she made her way to the rehab room, where a dozen patients worked on several levels of therapy, each deeply engrossed in the torture required to make one tiny bit of progress.

Jake wasn't in sight.

She looked around for Allie or Buzz but didn't see either of them.

“Excuse me,” she said, catching a therapist as he passed. “I was supposed to meet Jake Stevens here. Have you seen him?”

“Yeah, he was here,” he said. “I don't know where he went.”

“Well, where are Allie and Buzz?”

“In a meeting, I think. Jake probably took a break.”

Lynda was confused. Wasn't ten o'clock supposed to have been his big moment? Had they changed his schedule at the last minute? She went back into the corridor. Jake was nowhere in sight.

Maybe he'd gone to say hello to the nurses in orthopedics. Or maybe his morning therapy hadn't gone well; maybe he'd gotten discouraged and had decided not to make the attempt to walk today. Maybe the doctor had stepped in to postpone the attempt for some reason. Maybe something was wrong.

She had worked up a fair amount of anxiety by the time she decided to go to the fourth floor to see if he'd gone to say hello to his nurses. Abby, the nurse who had cared for him in ICU, was waiting for the elevator when the doors opened.

“Abby, have you seen Jake?”

Abby set her hands on her hips, as though offended. “That's it? No hello? No nothing?”

Lynda laughed softly and hugged her. “I'm sorry. It's good to see you.”

Abby pointed up the hall. “He's in the chapel, baby.”

Lynda glanced toward the prayer room then brought her troubled eyes back to Abby's. “Is everything all right?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I just caught a glimpse of him goin' in. He didn't speak to anybody up here. Just rolled right to that room.”

Lynda started toward the prayer room, but Abby stopped her. “Lynda, he's doin' okay, isn't he?”

Lynda didn't know how to answer that. “I don't know, Abby. We'll see.”

She hesitated outside the chapel door, bracing herself for whatever she might find inside. Slowly she opened it and stepped into the dark room lit only with candles.

Jake was sitting in his chair near the front row, looking up at the cross on the wall behind the small pulpit.

When she approached him, she saw that his face was tearstained. “Jake, what's wrong?”

His smile was heavy with emotion. “Nothing's wrong,” he whispered.

“Then why are you in here? I thought you were going to the parallel bars at ten. I thought—”

“I lied to you,” he said quietly. “I didn't want you to see me fail. I've already been there.”

Compassion for his disappointment washed through her, and she sank down on the end of a pew. “Jake, I'm so sorry. But it was just the first try.”

He started to laugh then, and she frowned, confused.

“What is it?”

“I did it,” he whispered. “I walked.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “You did?”

But Jake's smile twisted at the corners as a new wave of emotion came over him; new tears welled in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. “Four steps, Lynda. I took four steps!”

“Four steps?”

“Yes,” he said. “They said I'll be able to get around with a walker soon. Then crutches . . .”

“Oh, Jake,” she whispered and reached out for him.

He accepted her embrace and clung to her tightly, laughing softly into her ear as his tears wet her hair.

“But why did you come in here? You looked so sad when I came in.”

He drew in a long, shaky breath and looked at that cross again. “I had somebody to thank,” he whispered.

She pulled back to look at him, afraid to make any assumptions, yet hoping. . . .

“It wasn't just the walking,” he told her. “I'm grateful for that. But it's the other things.”

“What other things?”

“The way he reached out and chose me and worked on me and even broke me, just to get me to the place where I could start really living.” He wiped the wetness on his face and moved his wet, red eyes to hers. “And for his forgiveness that didn't cost me anything—not even a Porsche.”

As he smiled through his tears, she leaned back into the pew, weakened by her glad amazement over what she was hearing.

“And I had to thank him for you,” he whispered.

He pulled her against him again, and this time they wept together, for joy, for sadness, for the future, for the past.

It was a while before Jake could speak again. “Do you think God really spared me because he had a plan for me?”

She felt as certain of that as she'd ever been of anything in her life. “I know he did.”

His arms tightened around her, and as he looked back at the cross, he laid his head on hers. “If it was just to give me one moment like this, it would all have been worth it.”

And though Lynda closed her eyes and thanked God, too, for this very moment, she knew in her heart that there was much more in store for them.

So much more.

AFTERWORD

A year or so before I wrote this book, I became convicted that my Christian walk had been useless. I had never been available to God, though I had called on him often to get me through my crises (usually self-inflicted). My problem was trust. I thought I believed, I said I believed—but I did nothing to put the belief into action. I was neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, and absolutely fruitless. One day, someone called to my attention something that Jesus had said: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'” (Matthew 7:21–23).

These words startled me. Was I one of those whom Jesus didn't really know? I finally realized it was only through my knowing him that he would know me as one of his own. And to know him, I needed an ongoing, active, intimate relationship with him—the kind of relationship I would have with anyone important to me. I don't ignore the people I love, and I don't neglect them, and I don't forget them. I talk to them every day, and care about pleasing them, and work hard to be the person they need me to be. If Jesus Christ is real to me, then I have to treat him as a real person.

Once I recommitted myself to making Christ the center of my life, I decided to make myself available to him in every area of my life. That's when the idea for this book came to me. The characters interested me because their own spiritual battles were so much like my own: Lynda, a lukewarm Christian who would let someone die without witnessing to him; Jake, an agnostic who couldn't give up the pilot's seat in his life until it was taken from him; and Paige, a spiritual infant on the verge of belief, who lacked the faith to make the final plunge. I was interested in their awakenings, their spiritual growth, their lessons, and I hoped their struggles might be something others could relate to.

Fortunately, I've finally begun to learn from the lessons God has taught me. I've learned that true Christianity is about going to him on my knees and asking him to fill up all the empty places inside me with his Holy Spirit. It's about asking him to forgive me and cleanse me of all the things that will destroy me—things like greed, apathy, anger, bitterness, fear, malice, and selfishness—so those places can be filled with him, too. It's about deciding what I
really believe
, then relying on it, totally, completely, in every area of my life. This, I discovered, has little to do with sitting in God's house on Sunday mornings. It has everything to do with
being
God's house, every day of the week.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Terri Blackstock is an award-winning novelist who has written for several major publishers including HarperCollins, Dell, Harlequin, and Silhouette. Published under two pseudonyms, her books have sold over 5 million copies worldwide.

With her success in secular publishing at its peak, Blackstock had what she calls “a spiritual awakening.” A Christian since the age of fourteen, she realized she had not been using her gift as God intended. It was at that point that she recommitted her life to Christ, gave up her secular career, and made the decision to write only books that would point her readers to him.

“I wanted to be able to tell the truth in my stories,” she said, “and not just be politically correct. It doesn't matter how many readers I have if I can't tell them what I know about the roots of their problems and the solutions that have literally saved my own life.”

Her books are about flawed Christians in crisis and God's provisions for their mistakes and wrong choices. She claims to be extremely qualified to write such books, since she's had years of personal experience.

A native of nowhere, since she was raised in the Air Force, Blackstock makes Mississippi her home. She and her husband are the parents of three children—a blended family which she considers one more of God's provisions.

THE FIRST BOOK IN THE CAPE REFUGE SERIES

Cape Refuge

T
he air conditioner was broken at City Hall, and the smell of warm salt air drifted through the windows from the beach across the street. Morgan Cleary fanned herself and wished she hadn't dressed up. She might have known that no one else would. The mayor sat in shorts and a T-shirt that advertised his favorite brand of beer. One of the city councilmen wore a Panama hat and flip-flops. Sarah Williford, the newest member of the Cape Refuge City Council, looked as if she'd come in from a day of surfing and hadn't even bothered to stop by the shower. She wore a Spandex top that looked like a bathing suit and a pair of cut-off jeans. Her long hair could have used a brush.

The council members sat with relaxed arrogance, rocking back and forth in the executive chairs they'd spent too much money on. Their critics—which included almost everyone in town—thought they should have used that money to fix the potholes in the roads that threaded through the island. But Morgan was glad the council was comfortable. She didn't want them irritable when her parents spoke.

The mayor's nasal drone moved to the next item on the agenda. “I was going to suggest jellyfish warning signs at some of the more popular sites on the beach, but Doc Spencer tells me he ain't seen too many patients from stings in the last week or so—”

“Wait, Fred,” Sarah interrupted without the microphone. “Just because they're not stinging this week doesn't mean they won't be stinging next week. My sign shop would give the city a good price on a design for a logo of some kind to put up on all the beaches, warning people of possible jellyfish attacks—”

“Jellyfish don't attack,” the mayor said, his amplified voice giving everyone a start.

“Well, I can see you never got stung by one.”