Where Yesterday Lives (45 page)

Dear Reader,

Thank you for traveling with me through the hallways of Ellen Barrett’s past. My guess is that the journey will have taken you back to your own yesterdays as well.

Scripture says, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past” (Isaiah 43:18). Certainly there can be no growth for today and tomorrow by remaining where yesterday lives. Still, the Lord gave us our ability to remember. He provided us with the ability to capture scenes and log them in a storehouse to be brought out and played again when the occasion allows. I hope
Where Yesterday Lives
provided such an occasion.

If so, it is my prayer that by remembering, by visiting once more that place where faith and family and love are born, you were convicted again of the truth that Jesus Christ is our only hope. Unless the foundation is built on him, it is merely shifting sand.

However, if Ellen’s journey led you on one that was painful, filled with memories of a life devoid of Christ’s love, then there is no time like the present to begin the greatest journey of all. By putting your faith in Christ today, you will start a trail of yesterdays that will one day conjure up beautiful memories.

Faithfully yours in Christ,

W
AITING FOR
M
ORNING—
Book One
A drunk driver…a deadly accident…a dream destroyed. When Hannah Ryan loses her husband and oldest daughter to a drunk driver, she is consumed with hate and revenge. Ultimately, it is a kind prosecutor, a wise widow, and her husband’s dying words that bring her the peace that will set her free and let her live again.

A M
OMENT OF
W
EAKNESS—
Book Two
When childhood friends Jade and Tanner reunite as adults, they share their hearts, souls, and dreams of forever—until a fateful decision tears them apart. Now, nearly a decade later, Jade’s unfaithful husband wants to destroy her in a custody battle that is about to send shock waves across the United States. Only one man can help Jade in her darkest hour. And only one old woman knows the truth that can set them all free.

H
ALFWAY TO
F
OREVER—
Book Three
Matt and Hannah…Jade and Tanner—after already surviving much, these couples now face the greatest struggles of their lives: Parental losses and life-threatening illness threaten to derail their faith and sideline their futures. Can Hannah survive the loss of an adopted daughter? Will Tanner come through decades of loneliness only to face losing Jade one final time?

Karen Kingsbury is an award-winning author and former reporter for the
Los Angeles Times
and
Los Angeles Daily News.
She is also a recognized author with the Women of Faith Fiction Club. Kingsbury lives with her husband and six children in Washington.

W
HERE
Y
ESTERDAY
L
IVES
In the wake of her father’s sudden death, Ellen Barrett must journey back to the small town where she grew up and spend a week with antagonistic siblings. In the process, she must reckon with a man who once meant everything to her.

W
HEN
J
OY
C
AME TO
S
TAY
Maggie Stovall is trapped inside a person she’s spent years carefully crafting. Now the truth about who she is—and what she’s done—is revealed, sending Maggie into a spiral of despair. Will Maggie walk away from her marriage and her foster child in her desperation to escape the mantle of depression cloaking her? Or will she allow God to take her to a place of ultimate honesty before it’s too late?

O
N
E
VERY
S
IDE
Jordan Riley, an embittered lawyer, sues his hometown to have a public statue of Jesus removed. The conflict causes him to cross paths with a spirited young newscaster named Faith, who opposes Jordan’s suit in surprising ways. Perhaps most amazing of all is how Faith begins to disassemble the walls around Jordan’s heart. Will love be enough when the battle rages on every side?

I am in torment within, and in my heart I am disturbed
.

L
AMENTATIONS
1:20
A

Sunday Evening

They were late and that bothered her.

She had been through a list of likely explanations, any one of which was possible. They’d stopped for ice cream; they’d forgotten something back at the campsite; they’d gotten a later start than usual.

Still Hannah Ryan was uneasy Horrific images, tragic possibilities threatened to take up residence in her mind, and she struggled fiercely to keep them out.

The afternoon was cooling, so she flipped off the air conditioning and opened windows at either end of the house. A hint of jasmine wafted inside and mingled pleasantly with the pungent scent of Pine-Sol and the warm smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

Minutes passed. Hannah folded two loads of whites, straightened the teal, plaid quilts on both girls’ beds again, and wiped down the Formica kitchen countertop for the third time. Determined to fight the fear welling within her, she wrung the worn, pink sponge and angled it against the tiled wall. More air that way, less mildew. She rearranged the cookies on a pretty crystal platter, straightened a stack of floral napkins nearby, and rehearsed once more the plans for dinner.

The house was too quiet.

Praise music. That’s what she needed. She sorted through a stack of compact discs until she found one by
David Jeremiah. Good. David Jeremiah would be nice. Calming. Upbeat. Soothing songs that would consume the time, make the waiting more bearable.

She hated it when they were late. Always had. Her family had been gone three days and she missed them, even missed the noise and commotion and constant mess they made.

That was all this was…just a terrible case of missing them.

David Jeremiah’s voice filled the house, singing about when the Lord comes and wanting to be there to see it. She drifted back across the living room to the kitchen.
Come on, guys. Get home.

She stared out the window and willed them back, willed the navy blue Ford Explorer around the corner, where it would move slowly into the driveway, leaking laughter and worn-out teenage girls. Willed her family home where they belonged.

But there was no Explorer, no movement at all save the subtle sway of branches in the aging elm trees that lined the cul-de-sac.

Hannah Ryan sighed, and for just a moment she considered the possibilities. Like all mothers, she was no stranger to the tragedies of others. She had two teenage daughters, after all, and more than once she had read a newspaper article that hit close to home. Once it was a teenager who had, in a moment of silliness, stood in the back of a pickup truck as the driver took off. That unfortunate teen had been catapulted to the roadway, his head shattered, death instant. Another time it was the report of an obsessive boy who stalked some promising young girl and gunned her down in the doorway of her home.

When Hannah’s girls were little, other tragedies had jumped off the newspaper pages. The baby in San Diego
who found his mother’s button and choked to death while she chatted on the phone with her sister. The toddler who wandered out the back gate and was found hours later at the bottom of a neighbor’s murky pool.

It was always the same. Hannah would absorb the story reading each word intently and then, for a moment, she would imagine such a thing happening to her family. Better, she thought, to think it through. Play it out so that if she were ever the devastated mother in the sea of heartache that spilled from the morning news, she would be ready. There would be an initial shock, of course, but Hannah usually skimmed past that detail. How could one ever imagine a way to handle such news? But then there would be the reality of a funeral, comforting friends, and ultimately, life would go on. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord; wasn’t that what they said? She knew this because of her faith.

No, she would not be without hope, no matter the tragedy.

Of course, these thoughts of Hannah’s usually happened in less time than it took her to fold the newspaper and toss it in the recycling bin. They were morbid thoughts, she knew. But she was a mother, and there was no getting around the fact that somewhere in the world other mothers were being forced to deal with tragedy.

Other mothers.

That was the key Eventually even as she turned from the worn bin of yesterday’s news and faced her day, Hannah rel-ished the truth that those tragedies always happened to other mothers. They did not happen to people she knew—and certainly they would not happen to her.

She prayed then, as she did at the end of every such session, thanking God for a devoted, handsome husband with whom she was still very much in love, and for two
beautiful daughters strong in their beliefs and on the brink of sweet-sixteen parties and winter dances, graduation and college. She was sorry for those to whom tragedy struck, but at the same time, she was thankful that such things had never happened to her.

Just to be sure, she usually concluded the entire process with a quick and sincere plea, asking God to never let happen to her and hers what had happened to them and theirs.

In that way, Hannah Ryan had been able to live a fairly worry-free life. Tragedy simply did not happen to her. Would not. She had already prayed about it. Scripture taught that the Lord never gave more than one could bear. So Hannah believed God had protected her from tragedy or loss of any kind because he knew she couldn’t possibly bear it.

Still, despite all this assurance, tragic thoughts haunted her now as they never had before.

David Jeremiah sang on about holding ground, standing, even when everything in life was falling apart. Hannah listened to the words, and a sudden wave of anxiety caused her heart to skip a beat. She didn’t want to stand. She wanted to run into the streets and find them.

She remembered a story her grandmother once told about a day in the early seventies when she was strangely worried about her only son, Hannah’s uncle. All day her grandmother had paced and fretted and prayed….

Late that evening she got the call. She knew immediately of course. Her son had been shot that morning, killed by a Viet Cong bullet. A sixth sense, she called it later. Something only a mother could understand.

Hannah felt that way now, and she hated herself for it. As if by letting herself be anxious she would, in some way, be responsible if something happened to her family.

She reminded herself to breathe. Motionless, hands braced on the edge of the kitchen sink, shoulders tense, she stared out the window. Time slipped away, and David Jeremiah sang out the last of his ten songs. Lyrics floated around her, speaking of the Lord’s loving arms and begging him not to let go, not to allow a fall.

Hannah swallowed and noticed her throat was thick and dry. Two minutes passed. The song ended and there was silence. Deafening silence.

The sunlight was changing now, and shadows formed as evening drew near. In all ways that would matter to two teenage girls coming home from a mountain camping trip with their father, it couldn’t have been a nicer day in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Bright and warm, a sweet, gentle breeze sifted through the still full trees. Puffy clouds hung suspended in a clear blue sky, ripe with memories of lazy days and starry nights.

It was the last day of a golden summer break.

What could possibly go wrong on a day like this?