May you have warm words on a cold evening,
A full moon on a dark night,
And the road downhill all the way to your door.
As the plane landed in Portland, Erin wondered if she should call Delores to let her know where she was. Opting to get on the road before she called again, she picked up her suitcase at baggage claim and followed the signs to the car rental shuttle.
The air felt icy and damp when Erin exited the shuttle at the rental lot and made her way down the row of cars to space B-15, where she found her red compact. The trunk was nice and roomy, and the car had only 1,783 miles on it, so the new-car scent lingered.
As soon as Erin entered her destination into the GPS on the dashboard, hail pinged across her windshield. She wanted to retrace her steps to the airport shuttle and take the first flight home to her comfortable surroundings in sunny California.
For the first five or so miles, the traffic inched along as the hail turned to slush and came at her small car on great gusts of wild wind. Erin couldn’t believe anyone would want to live in a place like this. The fog closed in around her as she headed south, and the traffic systematically siphoned off at each subsequent off-ramp.
She pulled out her cell phone, dialed Mike’s number, set the phone on speaker, and placed it on the dashboard.
“I was just about to call you,” Mike said when he answered. “How was the flight?”
“Fine. No problems. The weather is horrible here, though. Hail and sleet. It’s freezing. I’m so glad I brought my old ski jacket. This is really terrible weather for driving.”
“Do you need to stay there in Portland for the night?”
“No, I’m okay. I’m going to take it nice and slow.”
“I don’t want to distract you while you’re driving. Why don’t you call me back when it’s easier for you to talk?”
Erin agreed and continued down the freeway past towering evergreens whose tops were now obscured by the brooding gray clouds. She fiddled with the radio dial and listened to classical music for nearly an hour as she tried to think through what she would say and do once she was with her dad and Delores. During the flight, her feelings of wishing she hadn’t come slowly gave way to a quieting of her soul. Like her mother, she wanted to find the hidden agenda God most likely had tucked into this trip. Secretly, she hoped the gem she was supposed to search for had nothing to do with Delores. She hoped the treasure would be in her reconnecting with her dad. More than anything, she prayed he would be okay.
For a long stretch, the view on either side of the freeway was of open fields partially obscured under a blanket of fog. By the time she turned off the freeway and headed west for the coast, she felt it was safe enough to put her phone on speaker and call Mike back.
“How’s the traffic?” His familiar voice filled the car and instantly gave her a sense of comfort.
“No more traffic now. I’m out in the country.”
“How much farther do you have to drive?”
“According to this GPS system, the distance to my destination is sixty-two miles.”
“That’s farther than I thought.”
“Me too. It’ll probably take me at least two more hours to get there since I’m driving so slowly. I’ve never driven in weather like this.”
“Should I let you go so you can concentrate on the road?”
“No, don’t go. I can use the company. I’m not distracted. Just talk to me. How was your day?”
Mike gave her a rundown of his less-than-exciting day full of meetings and phone calls at Pure Sight, a company in Irvine that manufactured contact lens solution. For the past seven years Mike had been an associate VP in the Research and Development Department. He told her about the strawberry cheesecake they had in the lunchroom that day for one of the employees’ birthdays and chatted about other random office news.
Erin drove through what was now a fine mist and peered out at hills heavy with timber. She tried to describe the surroundings to Mike just as the fog broke in the west and allowed the last streaks of silvery winter light to illuminate the world around her.
“You should see this, Mike. It’s like Narnia. I’m driving through the forest primeval, and the light is hitting the trees just right. Every branch looks as if it has been decorated with strings of crystal beads. It’s extraordinary.”
“I’d like to see that part of the country someday.”
“This is really beautiful.”
Within a few minutes the last trace of sunlight was gone and so was the glittery ice that clung to the branches. “It’s dark now,” Erin told Mike. “All the enchantment is gone.”
“I’m glad you got to enjoy it while it was still light. I hope you don’t have too far to go in the dark. Are you going to stop for some dinner?”
“No, I’m not hungry. What about you? Have you had dinner yet? I don’t think we have much in the refrigerator.”
They talked another ten minutes before signing off with their usual “Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Erin drove on through the darkness, thinking about how great things were between Mike and her. She loved him more than ever.
Their relationship hadn’t always been like this. Nearly fifteen years ago Mike had gone into a lingering depression after the sudden death of his twin brother followed by being laid off. For at least three years Mike struggled uphill every day to work through the losses. Many days Erin felt like a single mom, as she raised their three sons without hands-on support from Mike. He found a new job, but that one lasted only five months, and then he was laid off, which dipped him into an even deeper depression.
Erin’s closest girlfriend back in that season of life had watched her go through the tough time day after day, month after month, and finally spoke her mind. “You should leave him. He’s not going to change. You’re doing everything for him and for the boys. It’s like you’re a single mom to four children.”
Erin found it easy to let her friend feel sorry for her. She spent more than one lonely night contemplating her friend’s advice, which unfolded along the lines of “I’m not saying divorce him right away. You could just move out and file for a separation. At least that way Mike will know he has to shake off this depression and take responsibility if he wants to see the boys. And if he wants you back, let him fight for you.”
Erin knew Mike had no fight left in his bones. But she also found she had little life left in her spirit. She wanted someone to take care of her for a change.
In a brave move, Erin put aside her pride and went to her mother, seeking some heart-healing advice. She and her mom had always gotten along well. But they weren’t confidants during Erin’s early married years. Because of a variety of normal tiffs most mothers and daughters have over how to keep a house or raise children, Erin had pulled back from sharing anything with her mother more personal than the everyday surface topics.
When Erin went to her mother with all the broken pieces of her marriage, she didn’t hold back. She confided the depth of her exhaustion in her seemingly hopeless, loveless relationship with Mike. Then she admitted that she had been contemplating a separation. Her justification was that it would give them space to work through the difficult time.
Her mother’s poignant words returned as Erin drove through the dark night on her way to the wild Oregon coast. “There are no shortcuts in committed love. This is your path. No matter how long or lonely it may be right now, to experience the fullness of love, you must go the distance. Only the strongest and bravest stay on the path. And you, my darling girl, have been given everything you need to be among the strongest and bravest.”
That defining conversation marked the moment that Erin and her mother bonded as two women who breathed in the same mercy every morning and prayed under the same canopy of peace every evening. Erin’s mother became her best friend as well as her faithful prayer partner.
Now that Erin and Mike were in such a strong season of closeness and contentment, she found it hard to remember exactly how Mike had emerged from his dark season. She knew the prayers had had a powerful effect. Perhaps part of their effect had been in changing her heart and her view of Mike and their marriage. Grace became a whispered byword that kept her calm and steady when she normally would want to accuse or go into inner isolation.
She vividly remembered the afternoon when it became clear something had changed. Mike was driving all of them to the beach for a family outing. She looked over at his profile and could tell that something was different. All three boys were buckled up safely in the backseat, and for the moment, they weren’t fighting. Their dog, Bo, was curled up contentedly next to the ice chest and beach towels. It was a Norman Rockwell sort of moment of family bliss.
What Erin noticed next was that the sadness lines, which had been etching their way deeper into Mike’s forehead each day, were no longer there. The corners of his mouth were turned up. He looked over at Erin, gave her a grin, and focused back on the road with his chin lifted. It was as if Mike had remembered who he was and where he was going. And now all five of them were going there together.
From that day forward their relationship wove itself back together. Mike found a good job and immersed himself in their sons’ lives just as their eldest was starting junior high. Erin restructured her days. She found her pace, a sweeter, calmer pace. She pursued her passion and obtained a job as a wedding coordinator at a resort hotel in Newport Beach. By the time their three sons had galloped through high school and had moved out of the house, Erin and Mike found themselves entwined in a love deeper than either would have thought possible.
Everything Erin’s mother had told her was coming true. Erin was experiencing the reward of committed love and was so grateful she had stayed on the path.
Now she was on a new path. Or, more specifically, a road. A literal winding road through the woods to the Oregon coast. This was another difficult path she would not have chosen on her own. Her father needed her to extend an added measure of grace eighteen months ago when he had made the decisions that brought him to this place. And now he needed even more grace.
Erin put her thoughts on pause. She passed a road sign indicating the distance to Moss Cove. Her GPS told her that she had only eight miles to go. Erin pressed Delores’s name on the lit screen of her phone. She waited for three rings before her call was answered.
“Hi, Delores. I thought I would let you know I’m almost there.”
“Okay. Well, we’re here waiting. I left the light on above the garage, as I told you. Remember, it’s a gravel driveway, and it comes up pretty quickly. It’s a sharp turn off the highway.”
Even with Delores’s warning, when Erin hit the steep gravel road twenty minutes later, she knew she was going too fast. The road was narrow and led down into a protected cove below the main road. The tires spun the tiny rocks up against the side windows as she drove toward a strong light at the end of the private road. She had no idea what else was around her because all that could be seen was a cleared turnaround area ahead to the left and a narrow garage door under the bright, blue-tinted light. As soon as she stopped the car, Erin felt her heart pounding.
She wished she hadn’t come. She wished her father hadn’t had a stroke. She wished Mike were with her. Most of all she wished it would be her mother’s face that greeted her at the door of this cottage by the sea in the darkness of the night.
Unlatching her seat belt, Erin reached for her purse just as a tapping sounded on the closed passenger’s window. When Erin looked up, she felt an involuntary twitch as she saw Delores’s oval face peering into the car. Delores was neither smiling nor frowning. A chilling blue shadow from the light above the garage highlighted her broad nose and plump lips. A knit cap covered her short, dark hair.
“Hi!” Erin waved and tried to give a convincing smile. She told her apprehensions to go away.
You did the right thing in coming. It’s a good thing you’re here. Don’t overreact. Be calm. You have everything you need to be among the strongest and bravest daughters.