Finally & Forever (19 page)

Her blissful thoughts were radically altered when she thought of how different the nights would be going to bed in a mud hut in a village. Katie had always considered herself a no-fuss, low-maintenance kind of gal. She didn’t need much to get by. She didn’t mind being dirty and roughing it. At a moment like this, though, she certainly did like her bathtub and her bed.

Katie thought back to several months ago when she and Christy had gone to Newport Beach and had to share a large bed at the home of Christy’s aunt Marti and uncle Bob. At the time, Katie had been contemplating what it must be like for Christy and Todd to sleep next to each other every night. In the middle of those thoughts about how great Christy and Todd were for each other, Katie had realized that she and Rick weren’t knit together at the heart the way Christy and Todd were.

And that was the night Katie decided to break up with Rick.

She let her thoughts float back to the day she broke up with Michael. She hadn’t practiced what she was going to say, but she had decided she would tell him in the school parking lot at the end of the day so she could hop into her old car, Baby Hummer, and drive away before she changed her mind. They didn’t make it to the parking lot. Michael was waiting for her by her locker, and she blurted her
announcement out with heartless precision. “I am breaking up with you, and there is nothing you can say or do to change my mind.”

Michael was right. I did owe him an apology
.

She hadn’t said good-bye to Michael when they left the village, either. At the time, Katie was too numb from Eli’s announcement to give Michael a final good-bye. She wished now that she had. In spite of Michael’s impetuousness, he deserved better.

Katie thought about Eli being with Michael and the other videographer in a new village tonight. No doubt they were once again stretched out on a tarp under the stars. What did guys talk about on “sleepovers” like that? Would they talk about her? Katie didn’t like that possibility. She wondered how Eli would handle Michael’s brazen and direct ways.

Closing her eyes and pulling the blankets up over her shoulders, Katie gave herself a final hakuna matata mandate and turned on her side, eager to sleep deep and dream sweet.

She woke when it was still dark. Her eyes opened wide in the shadowed surroundings. Her heart pounded. She had been dreaming of her childhood. Memories of things that had really happened seemed to have inspired a hodgepodge sort of dream in which she was watching herself as a young girl.

Rolling over in bed, she listened to the still sounds of the night: a distant chortle of a frog, the steady ticking of the alarm clock she had picked up at the Sharing Closet. In the comfort and safety of the darkness, she let her thoughts roll back to her childhood, paying attention to the trigger points that had remained with her from the dream.

She recalled a moment when she was no more than four or five and had impulsively burst through the front door of the house and found her parents in a heated argument. Instead of running to her room as usual, Katie had marched into the fray with her hands on her hips and spouted something she had heard the day before on a sitcom.

“You two need to go rent a room!”

She had no idea what it meant, but on TV the actors had laughed.

In real life, her parents stopped fighting and looked at her, and for a moment they seemed to have forgotten what they were angry about. Her dad sort of smiled at her. “Where did you come up with that?”

Delighting in having their attention, Katie imitated another scene she had seen on an old rerun. With a funny little wobble of her head, she said, “I’ve got a million of ‘em.”

That’s when her mother laughed, and it was the sweetest sound Katie could remember hearing from her mother’s lips.

Capping her moment in the spotlight, Katie remembered waving as she had seen funny people do a number of times on shows and saying, “Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.”

That got both her parents laughing and looking at her with a curious mix of appreciation and wonder. She remembered how their expressions made her feel. She also recalled the directive that seemed to have been written on stone in her heart that day.
To get my parents to love me — or at least to like me—I need to make them laugh
.

Katie sat up in bed and drew in a deep breath. She was so tired. Was her subconscious trying to put together the Eli puzzle for her in her sleep? Had she cut and pasted those childhood beliefs into her life as an adult?

To get Eli to like me—no, to love me—I need to always …

She stopped herself before filling in the blank. She didn’t want to write any more false truths for herself. That belief system was then. It had been dismantled. This was now. When she boarded that airplane in San Diego and came to Kenya, she did it as an act of faith. In some ways it could be considered an act of obedience.

Katie knew that she didn’t want the kind of life in which she rattled off a platitude about God being in control while in her heart she was trying to manipulate the circumstances to ensure the outcome was what she wanted. What was true, genuine, and lasting had to be that she believed God, really believed him, with all her heart, soul, strength, and mind. If she believed he knew what was best and was working everything out for a purpose, then she could live each day with confidence and hope.

“Because my hope is in God,” Katie murmured in the darkness. “And he has never abandoned me nor stopped loving me.”

With that verbal declaration, Katie hunkered down, pulled up the blankets, and thought about Christy’s advice to enjoy the “what ifs” in Katie’s unfolding relationship with Eli and to experience the mystery of riding along inside the unknown.

Then Katie cried just a little because her exhausted spirit didn’t know what else to do.

T
he next morning, Katie volunteered to watched Callie and Evan’s three youngest children. She took them out into the largest open area of the conference center and had fun making up games for them to play on the grass. They knew some games from the children in the village where they lived, and Katie tried to teach them the game she had learned earlier that week in the village she had visited. After all of them had worked up a thirst, Katie gathered them close and asked who wanted to go to the Lion’s Den with her to get something cold to drink.

Three hands shot up. They were such cute kids. So well-behaved. She could easily picture Eli being in a group like this little flock while he was growing up in a village the same way they had. For them, climbing trees and playing games with small rocks and twigs was normal.

On their trot over to the Lion’s Den, the littlest chick in Katie’s brood said, “Do you know what we got last night, Katie?”

“No, what?”

“Guess.”

“Okay, give me a clue.”

“It was a treat. A yummy treat.”

Her sister said, “You’re giving too many hints.”

“Try to guess,” the little doll asked again.

“Was it a new toy?”

“No.”

“A DVD?”

All three children looked at each other as if they weren’t sure what that was.

“Do you mean a movie?”

“Yes, a movie,” Katie said. “Did you get a new movie?”

“No.”

“I give up.”

“It was apples! We each had our own apple to eat before we went to bed. Apples are my favorite. I had a whole apple for myself.”

The simplicity and sweetness of that little girl’s jubilee hit Katie in a profound way. She thought of all the times growing up when her school lunch came with an apple on the tray and she glibly threw it away. It was just an apple. A stupid apple. Not a cookie or an ice cream bar. An apple. Yet to a child who had grown up with very little, having an entire apple was better than a new toy or DVD.

When Katie entered the Lion’s Den with her entourage, no one was working behind the counter. “You guys order whatever you want,” Katie said. “I’ll make it for you.” She went behind the counter and washed up as Adam read the menu to his sisters and they decided what they wanted.

“Two orange juices and one milk, coming right up,” Katie said after they placed their order. She set them up at one of the tables and pulled her laptop out of her shoulder bag.

“Are you working?” Adam asked.

“Sort of. I’m checking my emails.”

“Can we send an email to our dad?” Adam asked.

“I have a better idea,” Katie said. “Why don’t you guys make pictures for him?”

She remembered seeing a box of colored pencils and some paper in the drawer of a table by the fireplace. Katie scooted off to retrieve the items, and when she returned, she passed them out to the kids and told them she was sure their pictures would make their dad happy.

With the three of them busy drawing, Katie pulled up her emails. The first one she opened was from Nicole. In her sweet way, Nicole gave Katie an overview of how she and Rick arrived at their decision to marry in October. Rick and Nicole were offered the opportunity to renovate a restaurant in New York City. As Nicole described it, since Rick and his brother had already sold their other cafés, the timing was perfect for Rick and Nicole to take on this new endeavor.

Nicole also made it clear that she wanted to tell Katie all this but hadn’t been able to connect with her before their good news was announced. The end of Nicole’s email read:

Katie leaned back and checked on her little artists. They were still busy coloring. She let Nicole’s email settle on her. Parts of it felt a little awkward and uncomfortable. That was mostly because Nicole’s words pulled up images of her and Rick cuddled up together, so in love, so eager to dream together about their future and move ahead with those dreams. Katie felt as if she and Eli were on pause. She told herself that
was okay. That’s where they were for the moment. They wouldn’t be on pause forever.

I guess it’s easy for some couples to figure out what’s next and to make the commitment to each other effortlessly, like Rick and Nicole. Eli and I aren’t that couple
.

Katie couldn’t identify exactly what sort of couple they were, but then she decided she didn’t need to make any declarations to Nicole, even though she had asked for details. Katie liked keeping Nicole and Rick’s impressions as they were — that Eli and she were happy and that coming here was the right decision for her.

Katie tapped out her reply to Nicole, keeping it short and wishing Nicole and Rick all the best that God had dreamed up for them. Her concluding line was simply,
I’ll tell Eli you said hi, and I’ll keep you updated
.

She left the details of her love life at that. Katie knew that she and Nicole could never be the same midnight whispering girlfriends they had been in college. That season of their friendship was over. It would always be Nicole and Rick from here on out, just as the relationship dynamic with Christy had changed when she and Todd married. Katie and Christy managed to adjust. She hoped she and Nicole would be able to adjust as well.

Katie went through the rest of her emails quickly and found herself smiling when she came to one from Christy. She read the update about how Todd’s dad had met a woman he was serious about and how great that was since his parents had split soon after Todd was born. Now Todd’s dad was getting a second chance at love.

Christy’s email went on to say:

Katie stared out the Lion’s Den window. The possibility of Todd and Christy coming to Kenya was a delicious thought, and she savored it a moment until her next thought turned her spirit sour.
Even Todd’s dad is about to get married. I don’t think I can read any more emails about people who are having easy, breezy times with their relationships. Everything is making me miss Eli even more. This is torture
.

She closed the laptop and said to the kids, “Let’s see your fabulous artwork.”

The children held up their pictures for her to admire. She tried to make all the right sort of affirming sounds and nods as each of them went into detail explaining what they had drawn and why.

Adam had chosen a box-style car with five round faces. None of the faces had smiles. On the top of the car was a stick figure of a person sitting, and behind the car he had drawn stick figures of people raising their arms.

“They’re yelling for us to leave,” he explained.

In the bottom right-hand corner, he drew a small bed and another stick figure lying in the bed.

“Is that your dad?” Katie asked.

“Yes. He’s getting better now. But he has to stay in bed and rest first.”

“And who is that on top of the car?” Katie asked.

All three of the children looked at her as if surprised that she didn’t know the answer. “Our guardian angel, of course.”

“Of course.”

Katie thought about guardian angels again later that week when she was walking to the office after lunch. She had heard that Evan was being released from the hospital that day and would be brought to Brockhurst to convalesce and to be with Callie and their four children. One of the women who was at the table with Katie at lunch had said that God had protected Evan, and his being alive would have a powerful effect on the people in the village where they had been serving.

It seemed to Katie that in Kenya the lines were narrow and the veils were thin. Danger did lurk in the corners of this beautiful country, but the veil between the eternal and the temporal seemed to be made of something much more vaporous than Katie had experienced in California. Maybe her senses were more heightened to those things than before. She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that God seemed closer in Africa. His work was being accomplished in ways that seemed more visible and immediate than she was used to seeing.

Watching God at work was having a deep effect on Katie. It was increasing her faith.

She entered the office four days after they had returned from the village and saw that Jim was moving a folding table over to the valentine wall. “Look what I hunted up,” he said. “It’s not much of a desk for you, but it’s a start.”

“Nice!” Katie pulled out her laptop and placed it in the center. “Now all I need is a name plaque, and I’ll look official.”

“We heard from Eli,” Jim said.

Katie’s heart did a little flutter. “You did? How is he doing? Any idea when he’ll be back?”

“He’s doing okay. It looks like he’ll be catching a ride back to Brockhurst a week from tomorrow.”

Katie waited for more details. “Was that it? Did he email you?”

“No. He called about twenty minutes ago. He’s with the well-digging crew now, and they were driving through an area that had phone service, so he took the opportunity to call. He said the film crew left yesterday.”

With Jim’s basic sentences, Katie tried to fill in the blanks. Eli was on his way to another village. He wasn’t with Michael anymore. He would be back in eight days.

“A week from tomorrow, huh?”

Jim nodded. “You know, I have to admit something, Katie. I wasn’t in favor of Eli taking on this role of being onsite in the villages, but I may have spoken too soon. He’s accomplished a lot in only a few days. We needed to negotiate clearance on some land before
the team could move forward in the village where Eli was yesterday. Apparently he did it. Single-handedly. I didn’t think he had enough of a command of Swahili to do it. I guess Cheryl is right. I may have underestimated my son.”

An onslaught of mixed feelings came over Katie. On one hand, what Jim was now expressing was the sort of respect and understanding she had hoped would develop in their father/son relationship. She wanted Jim to see the same leadership abilities she had seen in Eli, and now he did. It was great that Jim and Cheryl were seeing Eli as the capable man Katie knew he was.

What twisted her emotions around was that it sounded as if Eli was finding his place out on the road doing fieldwork. The chance of his being content to settle in at Brockhurst and work with her in the office was narrowing.

To complicate that even more, Katie’s enthusiasm for working on the fund-raising hadn’t diminished. Her latest idea was to put together a fund-raising packet for potential groups. Cheryl, Jim, and she had gone over the list of needed materials to include in the packet, and Katie was working next to create the master documents. She also had a good running start on compiling a list of potential schools and churches.

Her productive pace slowed on a cloudy morning five days before Eli was supposed to return to Brockhurst. A large group of Christian writers and publishers was holding a conference on the grounds, and this was their last day. Katie had enjoyed the conversations she’d had with many of them over meals.

This morning, however, she skipped breakfast because she wanted to get to the office before anyone else. She had a number of personal emails she wanted to send before the day started to roll along.

The first email went to Christy. The two forever friends had been keeping up a back-and-forth email correspondence ever since Katie wrote Christy after the time in the village and spilled the details about Michael, Eli, the fund-raising position, and how it seemed that Jim
and Cheryl had embraced her as one of their team, part of the big Brockhurst family.

Katie even told Christy about the valentine wall and the passionate kiss. Katie added the details about Jim’s comment that “you could make a baby with a kiss like that.” And then, of course, Katie told Christy about Eli’s decision to venture off on a nomadic trip to other villages. That was the latest topic the two of them had been emailing about, which was why Katie didn’t want anyone peering over her shoulder in the small office and reading their emails.

This morning Christy’s email started with:

Katie felt her throat tighten. It was true. She hadn’t seen the trail this clearly before. It was like Cheryl had said: everything has a purpose. One step of obedience led to the opportunity for the light to shine on the next step and so on.

Christy’s email continued.