16.
Number 7,483

“You and Ben really need to get this worked out so that I can throw you an engagement party,” Piper said over coffee at my house.

It was Saturday evening, the day after I promised Joe lightning-speed productivity in completing what we both hoped would be my fourth bestseller. Sadly, the writer’s block that I had so feared was lurking down a dark alley—not a corner, heaven forbid—had jumped out, flashed its knife, and stolen my wallet.

“That was a horrible metaphor,” Piper uttered honestly and sympathetically when I’d spoken the thought aloud.

See? Writer’s block.

“Engagement party? Ha! I don’t even know if we’re still engaged.”

I don’t know if it was the pressure of Joe’s statement about undoing the damage I had done or the pressure he was placing on me to get it done quickly, but something had stolen every ounce of creativity and passion that had been propelling me forward. I’d hung up the phone the day before, returned to my laptop, and then . . . nothing. I had a problem with that. A big problem. When my sadness and fear and depression, not to mention love and desire, weren’t able to be expressed vicariously through the lives of my fictional characters, they were left to churn within me once again, and I didn’t handle that well.

“Of course you’re still engaged, dummy!” Piper smiled, but I couldn’t return the smile. “Has either one of you told the other that the engagement is off?”

“We haven’t told each other anything!”

“Well, then, there you go. It’s not off unless someone says it’s off.” She reached over and placed her hand on mine as I started crying for the 7,482nd time in the forty-five minutes she had been there. “This isn’t some insignificant relationship that just suddenly ends. You know that, he knows that. And most importantly, I know that. Therefore, we’re going to plan your engagement party, you and I. Do you have a pen and paper?”

She stood up and started looking around my kitchen, lifting things up from the counter to look under them.

“Piper, that’s ridiculous. We are not going to plan a party right now.”

Her search continued, undeterred. “You’re a writer, woman! How do you not have any paper?”

I couldn’t help but giggle a little as she looked under everything, including the refrigerator.

“I don’t use a quill pen and parchment, you know.”

Finally she found a pad of sticky notes and a pencil, and decided that would be good enough for the moment. It was easy to see her determination to plan a party as what it really was, and I appreciated it. I didn’t, however, believe it was going to do any good. She wanted to cheer me up, obviously, but she also wanted to help me through my writer’s block by getting me focused on the potential of things to come.

My fictional characters had followed, largely, the path that Ben and I had been on. Things began in a blaze of glory, only to settle into a God-given and God-driven passion. And then, for two weeks, I had written through their darkness as a way of dealing with my own. They had their own version of the tithing controversy, and their own personal Tom Isaacs. They also had a Laura. But through it all, there could be no doubt that eventually it would all work out. Eventually the world would no longer be able to stand in the way of something so powerful it had rendered defenseless the barriers built by two people so previously beaten and battered by what love had done to their hearts. This was not a book that called into question whether or not our lovebirds would end up together. Of course they would. From the opening line, through all of the ups and downs, there could never be any doubt that there would be a happily ever after.

But what sort of people would they become before they reached the finish line? Some scars would be healed, sure, but some new injuries were just as certain. It was all about the journey, not the inevitable outcome. But you see, I had already written most of the journey. For two weeks, I had written the journey. It was time for them to come out on the other side and face their glorious future together, and I didn’t know how to do that. There was no point of reference, and I feared that perhaps I had been a fool to assume that I knew how the love story would end.

“Originally I was thinking an open house sort of thing, but would you rather have a nice sit-down dinner for a select few?”

My lip quivered as I tried to hold it in.

“I like that idea,” Piper continued. “What do you think? Just twenty people or so? Oh wait, Ben has a pretty big family, doesn’t he? What, two brothers? Do they have kids? Should we even allow kids or do you want it to be more formal than that? Oh, wait. That was stupid. I forgot about Maddie.” She laughed as she erased “Adults Only?”

She looked up with a smile, which quickly faded as she saw my despair reach a new, unparalleled depth. “Oh, honey.” She set the pencil down, scooted her chair next to mine, and wrapped her arms around me. She held me and let me sob. The first 7,482 times I had cried, it had been relatively manageable, but I had been holding back. For two weeks I had been holding back.

Number 7,483 was one for the ages.

“I just can’t believe he hasn’t even called,” Piper said as I cried. “It may not be fair, but I can’t help but hold him to a higher standard. As my best friend’s fiancé it’s despicable, but as my pastor? Unforgivable.” I wailed further and buried my tear-covered face in her shoulder. “Actually, it’s the other way around,” she said softly as she rested her head on mine.

Once I finally gathered enough composure to sit up, I thought it only right that I clear Ben’s name in one regard. “It’s not that he hasn’t called,” I said with a sniff.

“What, sweetie?” Piper leaned in to try and decipher whatever words were attempting to make their way through the treacherous peaks and valleys of the land of despair and heartbreak.

“It’s not that he hasn’t called,” I repeated a little more audibly. “He’s left me a million messages.” My exasperated eye roll quickly turned back into a trembling pout.

Piper cleared her throat, clearly trying to understand. “I’m sorry, he’s called you?” I nodded my head. “Multiple times?” More nodding. “And yet you haven’t spoken to him in two weeks, why?”

Wasn’t it obvious? “I don’t know what to say!”

Piper stood up in a frenzy, accidentally knocking her chair over as she did. She began to pick it up but realized she could make her point more dramatically if she left it right where it was.

“Sarah Hollenbeck, I don’t even know what to say right now I’m so frustrated with you!”

I didn’t understand what was happening. Just a moment prior my best friend had been my greatest comforter and a shoulder to cry on. All of a sudden, I found her to be just a tad bit terrifying.

“What did I say? What did I just say about this not being some insignificant relationship? This isn’t junior high, Sarah. This man loves you and has invited you into his life and his daughter’s life. He has put aside the ever-so-slightly tawdry fact that you are known worldwide as the woman who put sex in the kitchen in the forefront of culture and has been prepared to proudly defend you at the church where he is the pastor.” She was storming all around my kitchen, arms flailing and guns ablaze. “And in case that’s not enough, please don’t forget about Maddie. She is his link to Christa and the symbol of the love they shared. He has raised that little girl without a mommy, and he’s done an amazing job. He has protected her and loved her and shielded her from all the pain that he knows all too well exists in abundance in this world, and yet from day one he has shared her with you.”

I sniffed again. “Not day one,” I protested weakly, feeling my defense slip away.

“Only because you ran away!” she shouted. “Good grief, Sarah! Call him.” I shook my head. “Call him!” She picked up the phone and handed it to me. “Call him now.”

I took the phone, but I didn’t dial. “I don’t know what to say, Piper! I’ve never—”

“What?” she interrupted me, not unkindly, but very emphatically. “Never had to be an adult? Never been with a man who cares enough to listen to what you have to say? Never had someone love you enough to not give up on you? Well, you’ve got it now. He’s not going to stop trying, and he’s not going to stop calling. But why are you making him prove that?”

7,484.

“I love you. You know that, right?” Piper sighed as she knelt down next to me. I cried, and though she did it silently, I knew she was praying. “All you have to do is agree to stay in the fight, Sarah.” She lifted her head and looked up at me from her position on my kitchen floor. “You don’t have to have the answers. You don’t even have to know what to say to him. Just stay in the fight and let him love you.”

I knew she was talking about Ben, but I couldn’t help but think that she also meant God. I mean, it’s Piper, so I’m sure she did. Why was I making it so difficult? Why did I always make it so difficult?

I think that sometimes I forgot that I’d only been a Christ-follower for a matter of months at that point. Literally falling into your future husband, who happens to be the pastor, on your very first Sunday after salvation can tend to elevate your faith pretty quickly. My relationship with God was very similar to my relationship with Ben in many ways, when you really think about it. For both of them I had fallen fast and I had fallen hard. And with both of them, the beginning was easy. Everything was exciting and awe-inspiring, and it was easy to forget my past life and everything that I’d been desperate to escape. But then what?

“The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”

Piper recited those words from Romans 8 to me, and I couldn’t help but laugh when she explained to me that “Abba” was Aramaic for “Father” and that the apostle Paul hadn’t actually been in the mood for a little “Dancing Queen.”

“You don’t know that he wasn’t.” I smiled. “You don’t know that he and Timothy, or Barnabas, didn’t occasionally release a little tension among the Corinthians by belting out ‘Super Trouper.’”

She laughed as she stood and walked to the front door and slipped on her shoes.

“Where are you going?” I was feeling better, but I wasn’t sure I was feeling better enough for her to leave.

“You have a phone call to make.” She winked.

I looked at the clock—9:34. “I really shouldn’t. Maddie’s already in bed, and he’s probably putting the finishing touches on his sermon . . .”

I trailed off in response to the glare on her face, which once again scared me.

“Okay,” I whispered.

She ran over to me and gave me a hug. “Just let him know you’re still in the fight. That’s all you need to do.”

I held on to her for dear life, once again so grateful for her. “And what if I’m too late?”

She pulled away enough to look at me. “Not a chance,” she said, very seriously. She walked to the door again, and as she picked up her purse, she called out, “I’m picking you up for church in the morning. Be ready.”

I scowled. “Now, that seems a little premature, Piper.”

“Actually, it seems a little past due, Sarah. Besides,” she said sternly as she crossed her arms, “do you go to church to worship Jesus, or do you go to worship Ben Delaney?”

Ouch.

I smiled sheepishly. “Coffee first?”

“Of course! Now, make that phone call. If for no other reason than church will be much less awkward tomorrow if you’ve already broken the ice.”

“Oh! You manipulative little—” I laughed as I looked around for something to throw at her.

“Love you!” she shouted with a giggle as she shut the door behind her.

I waited until I heard her pull away before I picked up the phone. Dear Lord, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. Help me. I tried to remember Romans 8:15 and recite it in my head as I dialed, knowing that the part about not living in fear would be helpful, but I just couldn’t get rid of mental images of Paul in platform shoes and spandex.

“Sarah.”

That was how he answered the phone. He didn’t say “hello” and he didn’t put a question mark after my name. It was said with relief.

“Hi, Ben,” I said softly.

I still had no idea what to say, but there could be no doubt that just hearing him say my name had presented a certain peace. Where do I begin? I prayed.

“I’m glad, I mean, thank you for . . . it’s good to hear your voice,” he said, sounding as awkward as I felt.

“There once was a girl who was sickly and poor throughout her entire childhood,” I stammered, not having a clue why these words were coming out of my mouth. “She had no one and nothing, except for the ability to sing beautiful songs. Night after night, day after day, she lay in her bed, shivering from the cold and nearly starving to death, singing with all her might. The song was her only friend and her only warmth. The song was the only thing in her life of value . . .”

I told him the fable, word for word. I don’t know why, but it was what I felt led to do.

“‘She’s dead,’ the townspeople cried, somewhat thankfully. For they knew she was not fit to marry a prince.”

I was in tears as I concluded, wondering why I had told him that, and why I had let the stupid thing nag at me for thirty years. I felt like an idiot and was trying to figure out something I could say that would somehow make the fable somewhat relevant, but he spoke first.

“Why’d you stop?” he asked gently.

I grabbed a tissue and softly blew my nose. “That’s the end.”

“No, it’s not.”

I thought back through the entire story, making sure I had covered it all. Sickly girl? Check. Beautiful song? Check. Trader, jester, prince? Check, check, check. Death? Yep. I’d covered it all.

“Yes, it is,” I insisted. “My mother told it to me countless times when I was a little girl. I know it as well as I know my name.”

“Well,” he said with a sigh, “my mother used to tell it to me too, and I hate to break it to you, but your mother left off the ending. She wasn’t really dead.”

He might as well have told me that King Tut wasn’t really dead.

“I’m sorry, what? What do you mean she wasn’t really dead? You can’t just say it like that!” I exclaimed. “You have to tell me the story!”

I heard him chuckle just a bit. “Okay, let me see if I can remember. What was your last line again?”

“‘She’s dead,’ the townspeople cried, somewhat thankfully. For they knew she was not fit to marry a prince.”

“Oh yeah, okay. First of all, it’s not that she wasn’t fit to marry a prince. She wasn’t fit enough. As in, she wouldn’t have survived the excitement. Anyway, after the prince had left to return to the palace, the townspeople went to their homes and changed into their mourning clothes . . . Sorry, I don’t tell it as well as you do.”

“No, no.” I shook my head even though he couldn’t see it over the phone. “Go on. Please.” I was in disbelief and could hardly stand the anticipation as I waited to find out how it actually ended.

“Okay, so they changed into their mourning clothes and cried out in despair. They’d all spent so long protecting her. That’s why they refused to let people see her. They were protecting her, but suddenly she was gone. But they went into her hut, or whatever, and she wasn’t dead at all. She was sitting there healthy and smiling. I think that was it.”

What? “Okay, that sucks,” I exclaimed, extremely disappointed. “That’s even worse than my ending.”

Ben laughed, and in spite of everything and the two weeks of darkness that were still very much in the forefront of my mind, I felt my breath catch in my throat.

“No, it’s not. Okay, I probably didn’t tell it right, but don’t you see? She sang because that was all she had. The song was her only friend, she thought, but it wasn’t really. She didn’t have to sing anymore. The townspeople were willing to sacrifice their happiness in order to protect her, so they were her friends.”

Thirty years. For thirty years I had tried to put together a jigsaw puzzle, and I had unknowingly been missing the corner pieces. Finally I had all of the pieces, and they didn’t fit.

“No, they weren’t! They weren’t willing to sacrifice their happiness. They were willing to sacrifice her happiness!”

Ben was silent for a few seconds. “Yeah, you have a point.”

“At least in my version they’re just awful people. But if they’re supposed to be her friends? That’s so much worse.”

“You’re right. I must have told something wrong. Really wrong.”

“I kind of hope so.” I laughed.

“So, um . . . why are we talking about this?” I started laughing harder, and he chuckled as he continued, “Don’t get me wrong, you can call to ask me the time if you want. I’m just curious.”

I thought for a moment before realizing I didn’t have a good answer. Which just made me laugh even more. “I have no idea!”

“Well, the time is now 9:43 p.m., Central Standard Time,” he replied. Then he took a deep breath and softly added, “Any other random things we should discuss?”

It didn’t feel normal, and we were both supremely aware of the discussion we needed to have, but at least the ice was broken. Thank you, Jesus. Even if that was the only purpose of that stupid fable, thank you.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked, the simplicity of the question not at all doing justice to the complexity of the situation.

“Mad at you? No. Not exactly. More frustrated with you, I guess. Confused. Hurt. And, yeah, okay, maybe there has been some anger mixed in here and there.”

I knew I deserved all of that.

“Look, Ben—”

“I love you,” he whispered.

I grabbed my tissue as the relief flooded my soul and the tears flooded my face. “I love you too. And I just need to say—”

“I love you,” he said again.

Wow, he knew how to make an apology difficult. “I love you too, but listen—”

“I love you,” he said once more, and the third time I heard the smile in his voice.

I got it. I understood. He wasn’t shutting me out, and he wasn’t saying we didn’t have things we needed to discuss. He wasn’t acting like everything was fixed and that neither of us had apologies to make. We did, and we would. But he was telling me that he loved me, and nothing mattered more than that. All I’d had to do was show him I was still in the fight.

His confidence in our relationship, and in me, was staggering. There was no question and there was no doubt. When I asked him—trying to keep it light but also desperately needing to know the answer—if we were still engaged, he said only, “Unless you’ve gotten a better offer.”

I laughed, confirmed that I had not, and continued on with the conversation. It wasn’t until we were about to hang up the phone that he addressed it with a tad more seriousness.

“You didn’t really think our engagement would be off, did you?” he asked, by then sounding so sleepy and groggy, and a tad hoarse.

Once again Roma and Stevie were present on my shoulders, but this time Stevie’s delightfully expressionless twirling was no match for Roma’s “Don’t tell him what you think best protects you. The best protection is the truth.”

“I really didn’t know.” I sighed. “Honestly—oh gosh, please hear me out on this—I think there was a part of me that hoped so.”

He was completely alert once more upon hearing that. “Okay. Ready to hear you out.”

I went on to explain my insecurities regarding, well . . . everything! I explained that the idea of failing at another relationship was almost easier to reconcile in my mind than the constant pressure I felt when trying to hold it all together. Most importantly, I explained that to me he represented all things good and godly. That’s not to say that I thought he was perfect. I thought he was better than other men, but I was never under any delusion that Ben Delaney was anything other than a man. It wasn’t what he was, it was what he represented.

On the other hand, my insecurities, temptations, and shortcomings were all represented by my failed first marriage. Yes, Patrick was a loser with the moral integrity of a prairie dog, but there had always been a part of me that believed a better woman might have changed him.

“This isn’t about me wishing I could have made things work out with Patrick. You know that, right?” I said five minutes into my ranting. Once I’d decided to really display all of the crazy, out in the open for Ben to see, there was no stopping me.

“Of course I know that,” he said. “Okay, I hate to do this . . .”

I looked at the clock once more. “Oh, yikes. I’m so sorry. You need to get to bed.”

He laughed and said, “Are you serious? You are finally opening up to me. You are finally telling me the things I don’t think you’ve even wanted to tell yourself. How in the world can you think I would be like, ‘Hey, gotta run,’ at a moment like this?” He paused, I think waiting for an answer, but I didn’t want to give him one.

Ultimately, I didn’t need to.

He sighed. “Because that’s what Patrick would do. Okay, listen to me. What I was going to say was ‘I hate to do this, but I’m going to go into pastor mode for a minute,’ and then I was going to talk about how difficult divorce is, especially for Christ-followers. But there’s something more important that I think I need to make you understand. Sarah, I’m not Patrick.”

“Ben, I know that—”

“I know you know that. But now it’s time for you to know that. And you need to know why. I have three things he never had, and it’s these three things that ensure I will never be like him.”

I couldn’t help it as my mind ran away with me, trying to predict which three he was referring to. In my mind, Ben had a million things Patrick didn’t have.

“Number one, I have a relationship with Christ,” he began. “And that relationship shapes who I am and what I value and who I try to be. I struggle, and I have moments of extreme weakness.” He lowered his voice as he said, “Talking to you in the middle of the night, wishing you were lying here next to me instead of on the other end of a phone call, brings those weaknesses to light, believe me. But that relationship is the most important in my life, and it’s not based on some stupid, self-centered desire to look holy. It’s based on the complete understanding and acceptance that I will never even be worthy, much less holy, and yet the God of the universe knows my name. So that’s number one.

“Number two, I have Maddie. I’m sorry that you experienced the pain of being denied motherhood, but truthfully I have thanked God every day that you don’t have to share a child with that man, and I think it’s time that you start looking at it that way too. God has a plan. A perfect, bigger, and better than anything we can ever imagine sort of plan.”

Ah, the baby topic. Of all the topics I could ever discuss, nothing was more gut-wrenching and devastating than that. Ben and I hadn’t discussed any of that since the very first time, over sushi. Until that moment, there on the phone, I think it had been the one thing he kept off the table because he didn’t want to hurt me. It wasn’t that we couldn’t discuss it, but what good would it do? For him, I felt the same way about discussing Christa’s death. Apparently this conversation was one in which everything—everything—was on the table. I figured I had probably heard it all—every pep talk that was meant to be encouraging but was actually just patronizing. I grabbed a tissue, bracing myself for whatever he would say next, but I couldn’t have possibly been prepared.

“I know it’s selfish of me, but if you’d had kids with him, he’d be in your life. Our lives. And I don’t think that could have possibly been good for you, or us, or any poor little McDermotts who had to have him as a father. I know we’d have made it work, and those kids would have been blessings just like Maddie, but I just . . . gosh, Sarah, I don’t how to say it except to just say it. Once we’re married, I intend to knock you up absolutely every chance I get.”

“Well, it’s the first time anyone’s ever given me this pep talk,” I said with a laugh.

He chuckled. “I hope so.” He took a deep breath. “I consider it my God-given gift to be able to be the one you raise a family with. I know what that love is like—that love for your child that is unlike any other—and you and I are going to share that. So, there you go. That’s number two.”

I didn’t know if I could handle more, but I still asked, “And number three?”

“Well, that one should be obvious. Number three, I have you.”

I didn’t really know where he was going with number three, but I was intrigued. “Well, so did he. For a time.”

“No, he didn’t. Not really. He was a placeholder. God gave him a chance, and he blew it. I’m the one who gets to really know you and understand all of the miraculous things about you.” He exhaled and I somehow knew that it was his turn to brace himself. “I couldn’t have loved Christa any more than I did, Sarah. I loved that woman with everything I was and everything I had, and I still thank God every day for letting me share that time with her. When she died, I thought that was it. My heart was done. But God had a plan—a perfect, bigger, and better than anything I ever could have imagined sort of plan. The love I’d known and the love you’d been denied . . . they were God’s preparation for this. Right now. You and me. This is the plan.”

When Piper showed up early the next morning to pick me up, I was a new person. I wasn’t even just back to my old self. I was new. Ben and I finally hung up the phone at 2:15 a.m. after I had promised to make paper airplanes out of my bulletin and throw them at him if he started to drift away while delivering his sermon.

As I got Piper all caught up in the car and over coffee, I marveled at how God had worked throughout my entire conversation with Ben.

“Wow” was all Piper said as I concluded my rehash of all of the highlights of the conversation. Her cheek was resting on her hand and she was staring at me as if she were a little girl listening to a fairy tale.

I finished off my coffee and then smiled and said, “I know.”

As we walked out to her car and climbed in, her phone rang. She quickly said, “By the way, if you die, I have dibs on him,” and then answered her phone as I laughed and buckled my seat belt.

“Oh, hey Ben,” she said.

“Hey! You don’t get him until I die!” I said, not even trying to keep my voice down, certain she was faking the phone call.

“Oh my goodness, are you serious?” she asked as she quickly fastened her seat belt and then pulled out of the parking lot in a chorus of squealing tires, revving motor, and gravel kicking out behind us. “Yeah, she’s with me. Tell me what to do.”