Pearl in the Sand (35 page)

As she followed him, it began to sink into her benumbed brain that he didn’t want a divorce. He didn’t mean to set her aside. Relief flooded her until she grew weak with it. She loved this man beyond any limits she had set for her heart. She loved him so much that the thought of losing him hurt worse than death.

“Rahab,” Salmone began when they sat face-to-face. “What made you think I wanted to divorce you?”

“Things have been so difficult between us.”

“Yes, and part of that is my fault. But just because our relationship is difficult at present doesn’t mean that I want to end it. What I want is to work it out, make it into the marriage God intends for us to have.

“Some of our trouble is due to me. I’ve done wrong by you, Rahab. I didn’t mean to, but that doesn’t change the outcome. I placed an unreasonable prohibition on you, and I am deeply sorry for it. I should never have said that I didn’t want to be reminded of your past. It was foolish of me. I now realize that I placed you in an impossible position. What I want is to start over.”

Rahab covered her thoughts beneath lowered eyelids. What he had said on their wedding day had been a glimpse of his true feelings. He had shown her by those words that he could not bear her sins, or the sins done against her. Those words captured Salmone’s real sentiments. “I wish that were possible,” she said with slow deliberation. “But I see no way. You can’t change your heart. You can’t alter your feelings just because you want to. My past won’t disappear. How I wish it would! But it will always be between us.” Saying the words aloud made her feel more hopeless than ever.

Salmone leaned toward her. “Who says my heart can’t be changed? Didn’t God change yours? I can’t alter myself; it’s true. But God can transform me as much as He did you.”

“I’m the same as I always was. How am I altered?”

“A life lived differently shows a change in the soul. Can’t you see that your very desire for God shows how He has transformed you from the inside out? Trust God if you don’t trust yourself. You certainly don’t trust my love—I know this. You expect it to fail. To come to an end and let you down eventually like your father’s did.”

It had never occurred to Rahab that her father’s failure to love her would reflect in her relationship with her husband. Was she, as he hinted, incapable of trusting Salmone because having trusted her father she had learned all loves fail in the end? Was she punishing him for her father’s sins? She put her head in her hands and sighed.

He reached out and cupped her chin. “This is going to take more than words, I see. My little Jericho, I’ll have to be very persistent to win you to me.”

“What did you call me?” She pulled away from his hand.

“It’s my own special name for you.”

“I don’t want to be called that,” she objected in frigid tones, offended at the comparison, remembering a city decrepit in its character.

“Don’t you want to know why I call you that before you forbid me?”

“No! Yes.”

“It’s a picture God gave me. You don’t know this perhaps, but for Israel, conquering Jericho represented an impossibility. Those high walls.” He shook his head. “How were we to climb them? Smash them? In the end, God did the work. Our job was to show up, day after day, ignoring every discouragement, persisting in what He had asked us to do. Those walls came down not because of our strength, but because of God’s.

“You are that walled city, Rahab. Because of my own prejudice and hemmed-in love, at first I didn’t have the resources to win you. But God is dealing with us both. He is transforming me as much as He seeks to transform you.”

“So you see yourself as the one God will use to pull down my defenses. Is that what you mean?”

“If I let Him. And if you let me.”

“It sounds painful. You forget I was there the day Jericho’s walls came down. You want me to go through that?”

“Yes, if it means you’ll be restored.”

Rahab leaned back, her heart beating fast. She drew her knees to her chest and held them tightly in the circle of her arms. “What do you mean to do?”

Salmone gazed at her, his eyes unflinching, boring into her with the precision of one of Zuph’s knives. “Whatever I must.”

Dread grabbed hold of her and she felt herself turn pale. “I don’t know if I can do this, Salmone.”

“There is nothing for you to do but learn to trust me. The One who parted the Jordan has more than enough power to heal our marriage. I don’t intend to give up. You’ll learn to believe that in time.”

There was an unrelenting resolve that clung to him like a second skin. Its force struck Rahab dumb. She had a feeling that her life was about to change permanently.

Salmone stood and stretched his hand toward her. She grasped it without thinking. He pulled her up in one swift movement, dislodging her equilibrium so that she was thrown against his chest. His arms wrapped about her for a precious moment, steadying her, and then as soon as she found her footing, he released her. The distance came as a relief to her. She needed the safety of some room between them. As though cognizant of her emotions, he did not insist on carrying her across the shallow stream this time, and forbearing comment, he let her splash in, wetting her feet.

Rahab thought with relief that he was finished for now, that his grueling program of destroying her defenses had been shielded in its scabbard at least for the rest of the evening. She found she had misconstrued his easygoing mood.

“Months ago, when you were first seeking to join us, Miriam told me about your father. He is the one who asked you to become a
zonah
, as I recall. When you were fifteen. Am I right?”

Rahab stiffened near him, almost jumping out of her flesh. Why did he have to bring that up? “Yes.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

As her husband he had every right to ask her. What would be the harm in telling him? He knew the worst, anyway. Hadn’t she been the one to insist on disclosing the facts of her life before joining Israel? Hadn’t she risked her future for the sake of honesty? So what held her back at this moment?

With Miriam, she had been in the position of disclosing only what she wanted, she realized. She had remained in control. She had spoken the truth, but painted by a broad brush. The bare-bones facts that she had disclosed didn’t reveal her inner struggles and shame. And that had been hard enough. She had felt like she had cut herself just by telling that much. But Salmone asked for more. He wanted to glimpse her soul.

She thought of her father’s decision that fateful day, the decision that had turned the tide of her future. It still made her tremble to remember it. Her own father had thought her expendable. With unexpected clarity, Rahab saw that she had learned to agree with him. Her mind held him accountable for his sin against her, held him responsible for a violation she would never have committed against a child of her own. But in her deepest heart, she realized that she believed her father’s conclusion. She
was
expendable. She was worthy of being discarded. And she feared that Salmone would realize it once he heard her story. If her own father thought her of no consequence, wouldn’t Salmone, in hearing it, come to realize this was his wife’s true worth?

As they walked through the wilderness toward Israel’s camp, she could feel the heat of his body as his arm brushed against hers, feel the solid dependability of his strength. He waited for her answer with uncharacteristic patience.

He wanted her to trust him. Even though he had confessed that his love was limited and perhaps unable to withstand the ravages of her former life, he wanted her to trust him.
No, not him. God
. He wanted her to trust God at work in him and in her.

Was this a matter of faith, then? Once, she had risked her whole
life for the sake of her faith. She had been utterly convinced that the Lord would bring down Jericho’s walls and wrest victory from Israel’s enemies. Could she not have faith that this God was big enough to conquer her heart and Salmone’s too?

Here were her choices then: to trust God or to trust the monstrous fears of her heart. And Salmone had the same choice before him. It would take both of them for this marriage to have a chance at anything like fulfillment. She could not control Salmone’s choices, but she
could
control her own.

She stopped in the middle of the path. “I will tell you, Salmone. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about my father.”

Salmone’s eyes turned liquid with softness. He drew her to a rock and they sat, shadeless in the afternoon sun, for there were no trees nearby. With slow, broken sentences, Rahab told her story. She avoided her husband’s eyes, petrified that she might find coldness or detachment in them. She spoke of her father, and of the circumstances that had forced his betrayal. She didn’t mention much about Zedek, the man who had purchased her untutored favors when she was merely fifteen, knowing that he would have his own day of reckoning. Salmone would not leave that stone unturned, she guessed. For now, however, she only had enough strength to speak of her father’s choice and her own role in the ensuing events.

Salmone listened without interrupting, except for a few exclamations. When she revealed that she had refused to join the temples though it would have made her existence so much easier, he burst out, “Even then you resisted idolatry. No wonder God set you apart for Himself.”

This was the first time she had verbalized her story to anyone. It was cathartic to tell, but other emotions besmirched the relief. Weariness. Shame. Guilt. She felt exposed and vulnerable. Holding herself stiff, she separated herself from Salmone. If she chose to withhold herself from him, it wouldn’t hurt so much as having him rebuff her.

“Stop it,” he rasped. “Stop drawing away from me.” He pulled her into his arms. “Stay with me.”

Rahab lay against his chest, her heart pounding. He hadn’t reviled her. Though he knew that she had capitulated to her father’s demands without a single plea, he hadn’t judged her. She had helped her parents plan so that they could reap the greatest financial benefit. He knew this and still held her, tenderness etched on his soft lips.

With a shy movement Rahab did the boldest thing she had yet done in her life. She reached for Salmone’s hand and held it. It cost her more courage than it had to hide Israel’s spies from the king’s men. It cost her every drop of her inner strength to make this move toward him, instead of waiting on him to reach for her.

Salmone grasped her fingers with a force that almost crushed her hand. “My brave girl,” he whispered, and kissed her. He kissed her and kissed her, not letting go of her trembling hand until she melted against him.

It was the Sabbath and Israel rested. No one cooked. No one mended. No one worked. Rahab loved the Sabbath now, though in her first days after escaping Jericho, having a full day of inactivity while so many chores remained undone felt more frustrating than restful. With time she had come to see the Sabbath as an expression of God’s concern for her. Now she kept it gladly no matter how many seemingly important things she had to ignore.

So she sat in the weak autumn sun, her legs stretched before her, quietly reciting the
Shema
, while covering her eyes with her right hand:
Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one
.

The earth moved gently. Beneath her hand Rahab raised her eyebrows. That was odd; it had never happened before when she had recited the
Shema
. Distracted, she began once more.
Hear O Israel …

The earth moved again, harder this time. Salmone’s shout as he ran from the tent made Rahab sit bolt upright. “It’s an earthquake!”

Again the earth trembled, this time unmistakably. Rahab gasped. Terror overwhelmed her senses; absently she noticed that sheep were running loose, freed from their pens by the force of the tremors. The sound of shouts grew loud around them.

Salmone dropped beside her and pulled her into his arms. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

Held in the circle of his arms, she began to feel the fear drain out of her. She knew Salmone did not have power over the earth; he couldn’t make it stop trembling. Yet irrationally, his simple presence made her feel safe. She clung to him tightly for long moments.

“I think it’s over,” Salmone said, pulling back a little. “Are you well?”

“Yes. And you?” Salmone nodded absently as he surveyed the landscape around them. “There doesn’t seem to be much damage. It was a minor quake.”

One of the neighbors’ loosed sheep nuzzled Rahab’s shoulder. She laughed, relief making her voice waver. “This one wants to go home.”

Salmone smiled and patted the white wool on top of the sheep’s head. “It will be a chore sorting this out later. Fortunately sheep know the voice of their shepherds. For now, it’s still Sabbath. Let them roam. It will harm them none. We’ll take care of them after sundown.”

“Someone should have informed the earth it was Sabbath,” Rahab said, indignant at the rude interruption of her restful prayers. “You’d think it would know better than to make such fuss on the Lord’s Day.”

Salmone’s eyes crinkled in the corners. He took Rahab back into his arms. A sense of peace washed through her. Salmone himself was a force much like an earthquake, dislodging her world. Yet astonishingly no one made her feel so protected as her husband.