Golden Rain [COMPLETE]

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Sav leaned back and slowly crossed her hands over her chest, the corner of her lips tilting up. With a gleam in her eye, she said, "Really?"

"Yeah, really..." I swallowed nervously.

"So... If I told you what I believe, it wouldn't make things weird between us?"

"I suppose not."

Nodding, she grabbed another fry. Then another. And then a sip of Dr. Pepper. Then she looked at me once again. "Can I?"

"Can you what?"

"Can I tell you?"

I had to blink a few times, but when I didn't see anything other than Sav's general kindness shining back at me in her eyes, I decided it wouldn't hurt... right? "I guess."

"Only if you're open to it."

"I am. It would be nice to know what makes you, you. It seems Christianity is a big part of who you are and who your family is."

She smiled. "It is."

I shifted my seating and took a drink. "Then, yeah. I'm open to it."

Her smile slowly changed, almost looking unbelieving, elated. She sat up straighter and wrapped her hands around her cup. "Okay."

I watched her as she looked out the window to my left and contemplated how she was going to start. A thought flashed across my mind but I flicked it away. Sav was a friend and I wasn't exactly sure why I'd noticed how beautiful the midmorning sunlight made her look. Not that she wasn't normally beautiful but...

I clenched my jaw to get myself to stop thinking about it.

"You've heard my story," she started, her gaze finding mine again. "So maybe that's not the best place to start but... I've found that testimony is the best way to share my faith so... that's what I'm going to do."

I waited patiently as she pieced together her thoughts.

"In that time when everything was the worst, I tried to pretend that it didn't hurt. That feeling so alone was normal. That what I was feeling wasn't that big of a deal. That what other people said didn't hurt as much as it did. But then one weekend, my parents were on a trip, my brothers all went out with friends, and I was all alone at home. I was sitting in the living room, on the couch. And the silence..." She looked down at her hands and barely shook her head. "My mind was swirling. I felt so stuck. Everything I'd ever heard someone say echoed over and over and over... I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything as I sobbed and just broke into pieces. I wasn't sure what would have happened if I didn't see our decorative family Bible sitting on our coffee table. I might have done something unthinkable.

"But when I saw that Bible, the tears just... stopped. They stopped as I stared at it, wanting so badly to pick it up but at the same time feeling unworthy to. But I did. And when I opened it to the page the ribbon was set in, my eye caught on a highlighted verse. We weren't supposed to write in our family Bible. To this day, I don't know who highlighted it. But I'll never forget it. Isaiah 43:4. 'Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.'" She rubbed her nose and hugged herself. She wasn't crying, but I could see the way that the verse affected her, even now.

"In that moment, I couldn't feel any love. Not from my family, who had all left me. Not from my nonexistent friends. Not even from God. I was so far away from him without even realizing it. But there he was, speaking directly to me. There he was saying 'I love you'... It shouldn't have made sense. But something changed in that moment. That was the moment that I decided that I didn't want to live for the approval of the world anymore. Because if God above, so holy and almighty, could love me for me, why should I want to impress anyone else? He was more than enough. And he was saying that I was more than enough, too."