30 

Kyle sat at the kitchen table gazing out the back window. The clock above the stove ticked loudly in the quiet room. She had been home for over an hour, and still she had not managed to take off her coat.

She glanced at the phone on the cabinet wall and knew she should call Kenneth. But she could not seem to find the strength to rise. Crossing the floor and picking up the phone and forming the words to tell him—it was all too difficult. She could see him now, rushing back, listening to the news, and then sweeping her up in his arms. But she could not start the process in motion.

“It can’t be,” she whispered for the hundredth time. “It just can’t be true.”

But even as she fought against it, inwardly she knew it was true. Even without the doctor’s confirmation, she knew.

The whispers kept coming, the quiet little protests. “But how can we have another child? Not after . . .”

Fear gripped her heart. What if it happened again? What if she bore another child with a damaged heart? What if she lost another baby?

The thought stabbed at her heart with lances of fear. She could not go through it again.

Kyle caught the faintest hint of another voice—a still, quiet voice, one almost lost amid her inner storm. Straining to hear the soft words brought her a first ray of hope. “He is here, Kyle—He is here,” she heard as she remembered her husband’s declaration.

Kyle yearned to accept the truth, but her mind shouted back, God allowed my first baby to die.

She found herself listening to the first voice. And yet He was there. I survived.

“I didn’t want to. For months I didn’t want to,” she argued aloud.

But I did. And over the past few weeks, since she and Kenneth had come back to each other, she had discovered a new strength of faith.

But would she be strong enough to face the loss of another baby?

Kyle knotted her hands together in her lap and bowed her head. The words seemed to rise up from the deepest part of her being, forcing their way through the storm in her mind. “Lord, I need your help. I need you,” Kyle whispered. “I’m so frightened. I don’t want to go through what I went through before. If another baby is on the way, you will have to walk with me the whole way, Lord. I must lean on you. Help me to trust you completely—whatever happens.”

Kyle heard little paws tap their way lightly across the kitchen floor. She felt the nuzzling of Goldie’s wet nose against her leg. Instinctively her hand patted the small dog’s head. A soft whine started somewhere deep within the spaniel’s chest, and she pressed closer to Kyle’s skirt.

Kyle opened her eyes and stroked the fur around Goldie’s ears. “I wish I could trust as simply as you can,” she whispered. “My Master is far more trustworthy than your mistress is. I need to let go of my concerns and let God take care of me. And of the baby.”

She found herself listening to the words as though they were being spoken by someone else. “What has happened in the past has no bearing on the promises of the future. He has said He will be with me. That is a promise. He never breaks His promises. Even if it means . . .”

Yes, it was true. She could trust. She would have to trust. And though Kyle inwardly trembled when thinking of the future, she felt a gentle assurance that indeed she could lean on her Lord.

Kyle lifted the puppy to her lap. The little dog responded by nuzzling her delightedly. She smiled, rose and tucked Goldie under her arm, and crossed the kitchen to the phone. She picked up the receiver and dialed Kenneth’s number.

He would be so overjoyed.