#
Faith stuck the journal in her desk drawer.
"Why did you let me read this now, God?" she asked.
She remembered Zach's words: "You might find yourself faced with needing to forgive others besides Aaron. You might need his support, Faith. Let him love you."
"Are you trying to teach me about forgiveness?" Faith asked. "The Aaron lesson was enough, as far as I'm concerned."
"If you're going to be his ministry helpmate, you need a compassionate heart."
"So you want me to learn to love abortionists and homosexuals. Who's next? Pedophiles, adulterers, and murders?"
"I love all of those."
"So do I."
"Are you sure?"
"Well, abstractly at least. I don't personally know any people who participate in those sins."
"At least you don't think so. Now you know that you might. Your fiancé aborted his child, and your brother has homosexual tendencies."
"Did you say 'has' God? Don't you mean had?"
"What do you think?"
"I don't want to know."
"So that's why you put the journal out of sight instead of on the nightstand."
Faith opened the drawer and took the journal out and slammed it down in its usual place on the nightstand.
"There, are You satisfied?"
"Would you love Zach more if I had said that he 'had homosexual tendencies?'"
"No, but my heart wouldn't hurt so bad."
"Sometimes you have to learn to live with heartache."
"Like Daddy did?"
"Maybe you'll be more like your Mama. Your Daddy suffered more than he had to."
"Why, because he shut You out?"
"Yes. Humans forget that I've been there. I know how they're feeling. I'm the only one who has the compassion and strength to carry them through their trials."
"You could just zap the trials and make them go away."
"And what would you learn from that?"
"Probably how to be selfish and lacking in compassion."
"Probably. Those aren't the attributes you need to be Aaron's ministry partner."
"So is that it? Do you have any more heartaches in store for me?"
"I don't plan your heartaches. I just make use of them when they happen."
"So we make our own heartaches?"
"Sometimes your sins cause them. Sometimes others' sins create them for you. Sometimes bad things just happen."
"So why don't you just stop the bad things from happening?"
Faith looked expectantly upward.
"Never mind. I know, I know. You wouldn't have any tools to help mold me into the compassionate person you want me to be. Well, you know what? I think that stinks."
"Yeah, sometimes it does. I gave you guys dominion over the earth, you know, and I don't go back on My Word. A lot of times it would be easier if I did. If you humans weren't so stubborn, maybe you wouldn't have to do things the hard way."
"So now it's my stubbornness that's the cause."
Faith heard, "Love never fails." The way she heard it in her mind, it sounded like God was chuckling.
Her phone rang. It was her lawyer friend from church returning her call. He knew a local couple that was in an open adoption. The biological parents were allowed visits. The kid was six years old. He said he would check to see if the two couples were willing to talk to Teresa and Josh.
"Well, at least my compassion is good enough to help these two," Faith said aloud. "Or at least to help them explore options."
#
The next year was horrific. There are no words to adequately describe it. David retreated into himself. The chronic headaches, from which he'd suffered all of his adult life, intensified. When his head throbbed, he became a bear. The rest of us walked on eggshells, uncertain what would cause him to lash out verbally. For the first time since we'd instituted our weekly dates, David let other things interfere. Sometimes we'd go weeks without our couple's time.
Zach went weekly to his counselor. On the surface, he was his usual cheerful self, but once I heard him sobbing late at night. When I questioned him, he just said he must've been having a bad dream, that he didn't remember crying at night. He continued to date, but rarely the same girl twice. He did have a couple of close female friends that he hung out with a lot, but there was nothing romantic about those relationships. He and Josh bickered one day and were buddies the next.
Even Faith was affected. One day she crawled up in my lap and snuggled up against me. After a minute of sitting quietly, she said, "Mama, why is Daddy sad? His eyes look like Eyeor's."
Out of the mouth of babes. Eyeor, the donkey in Faith's Winnie the Pooh book, had a perpetually downcast expression. She was right; David's eyes were like Eyeor's.
I tried talking to David that evening.
"I know it helps women to talk when they are faced with overwhelming emotional problems," David said. "But men don't like hashing things out like that. They prefer to deal with them internally."
"Maybe you can deal with normal emotional upheavals that way," I said. "But this is tsunami size, David. Turning inward is not helping. If you can't talk to me, talk to someone. Get an appointment with Zach's counselor."
"I'll talk to Anya and Carl," he said. "They can pray with me."
Over the next few months, David gradually began to improve. He started playing ping-pong with the boys. He and I spent some social time with Anya and Carl, playing cards or a domino game called chicken foot. Occasionally he would joke, but I noticed that the sparkle didn't return to his eyes. He started talking to Anya on the phone about the church and the praise team. He had always despised phone conversations, but I presumed it kept his merry-go-round thoughts at bay.
I was still concerned, though. The only time I saw the sadness leave his eyes was when he was singing with the band. The kids and I had started attending the native church once a month. I felt we needed to worship together as a family, and David refused to consider returning to our church.
"My church is the only place I feel any peace," he told me, "any connection to God."
I felt the same way about our church, so we compromised. I was pleased to see that at least during worship, he seemed to forget his troubles. He would look at Anya for musical cues while they sang, and his eyes would shine. "Maybe You're getting through to him, God," I thought.
Still, I was filled with disquiet. I told myself my unease was simply a result of Zach's problems. My gut tried to tell me different, but I wasn't listening – I didn't want to know what it was trying to tell me.
After nine months, Zach's counselor told us that he'd given Zach some coping tools to deal with his attraction to men.
"I helped him learn to refocus his thoughts and to turn to God," he told us. "That's all I can do. The rest is up to Zach. He seems to want to fight his homosexual tendencies. I think he's going to be okay for now, but when he starts college and is away from your positive influence..." He left the thought unfinished. "I'd like to see him again in a year to see how he's coping and encourage him to stand firm when he gets out of high school."
Zach seemed to have benefited from the counseling sessions. That summer at youth camp, he reconnected with a girl who lived on the other side of the state. They began exchanging letters, and she became his girlfriend. Jenny came and spent a week at Thanksgiving. Zach went to their home for Christmas.
I'd made it a priority to connect with Zach. We talked frankly. I assured him that I loved him, no matter what, and that he could talk to me about anything. When I asked about his relationship with Jenny, he told me that she was one of the few girls that could arouse him. I had mixed feelings about that. I was relieved that he could have sexual feelings for a female, but I feared what would happen if he decided to act on those feelings.
"You and Jenny are young," I told him. "While it's possible that your relationship will grow and mature into marriage, it's more probable that it will end at some point. Have you thought about that?"
"I have," he said. "And don't worry, Mom. I'm not going to do anything stupid like get her pregnant."
I blushed. I didn't let my discomfort stop me, though. I needed to have this conversation with Zach.
"I didn't think you would," I said. "I'm more concerned about what happens when the relationship ends. What if you don't find another woman that you're sexually attracted to?"
"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. There's no need borrowing trouble."
"You're more likely to handle trouble positively if you've thought through the possibilities beforehand," I told him. "How would you feel about never marrying?"
"I've thought about that, Mama," he admitted. "I know that I'm going to need a partner. I'm a hugger. I need someone to hug, someone to talk to, someone to share my life with like you share yours with Daddy."
"Used to share," I thought.
"I may be able to handle celibacy, but I can't handle loneliness."
I could identify with him. I'd become lonely, even while surrounded by family. David and I no longer communicated easily. I wrote in my journal, "I miss the ease with which David and I communicated in the past. We are stiff and awkward now. We skirt issues or try to sneak up on them. Humor falls flat. I need him to hold me and let me cry, but it takes all of his strength to hold himself together."
#
Faith was glad that she knew the end of her parents' story. Her heart was raw enough dealing with the fact that Zach was gay without having to worry about whether the trauma caused a permanent breach in her parents' relationship. She had left journal number one on her desk, standing on edge with the photo of her laughing parents facing outward. She looked over at it. Her Dad's eyes sparkled. That's how she remembered him, and no words in a journal could change that.
"Nothing is going to change how I feel about Zach, either," she told her parents' likeness.
Faith went into the bathroom and refreshed her makeup. Looking at her solemn face, she forced her lips into a smile. It never reached her eyes.
"Look," she lectured herself, "Aaron and the kids are going to be here soon. You've got to get a grip, or they're going to think the worst."