I'll Be Home for Christmas and One Golden Christmas. Lenora Worth

      “I’d really like to know…and to understand.”

      When she didn’t answer immediately, he said, “Look, I’ll take my medicine, and I promise I’ll eat my soup. Sit down in that chair over there and talk to me.”

      Myla hesitated only a minute. Wanting him to see that he, too, could find his strength in faith, she sat down and watched as he diligently took two pills with a glass of juice; then, his eyes on her, he dutifully ate his soup.

      Satisfied that he’d finish the soup, she leaned back for a minute. “You see, at one time, I thought God had abandoned me.”

      Surprised, he stopped eating. Funny, he’d thought that very thing himself, right after burying his father. “Why would you think that? You seem so sure about all this religious stuff.”

      She lowered her head, her hands wringing together, her eyes misty with memories. “I wasn’t so sure for a while. Because of something I did, or rather, something I didn’t do—and I’d rather not talk about it. It took me a long time to see that God hadn’t abandoned me. It was the other way around.”

      “You mean, you abandoned Him?”

      She nodded. “I gave up on Him. I didn’t think I was worthy of His love.”

      “Why would you think a thing like that?”

      “I had it drummed into me enough,” she said, then gasped. “Oh, never mind. I shouldn’t have said that.”

      “Well, you did. What do you mean?”

      When she didn’t speak, Nick sat up to stare across at her. “Does this have something to do with your husband?”

      Her silence told him everything he needed to know. And brought out all the protective instincts he’d tried so hard to ignore. “Myla, did your husband do something to hurt you?”

      Myla didn’t want to cry. She’d learned not to cry. But now, after she’d heard Nick voice the truth, her worst secrets floated up to the surface of her consciousness, causing the tears to roll down her cheeks like a torrent of rain coming from a black cloud. Holding her eyes tightly shut, she tried to block out the painful memories. She couldn’t let him see her like this. Lifting out of the chair, she said, “I need to get back to work.”

      Nick moved his tray away with a clatter and stood up. “Myla, did you and he…was it a good marriage?”

      She bit her bottom lip, then gave him a soul-weary look. “In the beginning, yes. But, it turned ugly after a few years.”

      Nick closed his eyes, then opened them to look at her with dread. “Did he…did he abuse you?”

      She brought her hands up to her face and cried softly.

      Nick pulled her hands away, his eyes searching her face. “Did he?”

      “No, not physically,” she said, her hands automatically gripping his. “Nick, please don’t make me talk about this now.” She didn’t want the bond they had developed to be destroyed, not yet.

      “I want…I need to know,” he said, his voice husky, his words gentle. “I won’t judge you, Myla.”

      But she was afraid he would, just as so many others had. “I’m…not ready to tell you everything.”

      The pain in her green eyes stopped Nick from pushing her any further. Instead, he said, “What can I do, to help you?”

      She looked up at him, unable to ask for his help, unable to ask for his understanding.

      But Nick knew instinctively that she needed both. So before she could bolt, he tugged her into his arms and rocked her gently, as if she were a child who needed reassuring. “No more questions,” he promised. “But if you want to cry, you go right ahead.”

      Myla did cry. Shutting her eyes tightly closed, she let him hold her for a while, thankful that he didn’t press her any further about her marriage. Just to be held, unconditionally, that was comfort enough for now.

      “All right,” he said after a while, letting go to pat her shoulder. “Feel better now?” At her silent nod, he added, “You can’t keep this inside. Lydia knows people, therapists and counselors, who can help you. And…I want to help, too.”

      She lifted her head, then wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, resolve settling back over her like a protective winter cloak. With a shaky smile, she said, “You’re a fine one to be giving me advice. I am a lot better now, though, really.”

      He looked doubtful. “How can you say that?”

      “I told you, I found my faith again—alone, on a dark cold night. I was huddled in the car with the children, with nothing left…nothing. In the moonlight, I saw my worn Bible lying on the dashboard. I hadn’t read it in months. I did that night, though, with a flashlight. While my children slept in the cold, I found my faith again in that single beam of light, and I cried long and hard, and I prayed, really prayed, for the first time in a very long time.”

      Nick swallowed back the lump forming in his throat. “What did you find there in that light, that helped you?”

      She sniffed, then lifted her head. “He said He would not leave me comfortless, but I had forgotten that promise. In First Corinthians, chapter thirteen, verse thirteen, the Bible says, ‘And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three: but the greatest of these is love’.”

      Nick stood there, his heart trembling. Love. The one thing he’d been so afraid of since his father’s breakdown and death. “How did that verse sustain you?”

      She smiled then. “I knew that no matter what, I had my children with me and I loved them above all else, except the Lord. They were my gift, and no matter what kind of life I’d had with their father, they were my responsibility. Love, Nick. Love is the greatest gift of all. It gives us our strength. It gives us a reason to go on living, even when we’d rather curl up and sleep. I realized that God gave us unconditional love when He sent His son to save us from our sins. I realized that God hadn’t abandoned me. He was reaching out to me on that dark night.”

      Nick sighed, his own fears cresting in the midst of her eloquent story. “But…unconditional love is so hard to give and so very hard to expect. To love so completely, you have to give up so much control. How can you trust something that abstract, something that can make you seem so weak?”

      “That’s the whole point,” she said, her expression changing from sorrowful to hopeful. “Love doesn’t make us weak, Nick. Love gives us the strength to go on. That night, alone and afraid, I remembered God’s unconditional love for me. I’d lost that, as well as my trust. I’d been emotionally stripped of that love and that trust, by a man who didn’t know how to give either.”

      “Your husband.”

      She nodded, then stepped back. “I’m all right now. I won’t be afraid of the dark, ever again. I made a promise to take care of my children. They don’t deserve to have to live like this—they didn’t do anything wrong.”

      “Neither did you. You seem so brave. Is that for your children’s sake?”

      “I have to be strong, for them.”

      Nick felt his heart melting in half. He’d never seen such a fierce defense of love, or heard such a strong testimony. She had come to him with nothing, yet she had more to give than any woman he’d ever known. “Is there anything I can do?”

      Unable to look at him, Myla couldn’t speak about her pain. Leaning close, she whispered, “Just hold me again.”

      He did, for a long while, his arms wrapping her in what little protection he could offer. Finally, he brought a hand up to her chin so he could wipe her tears away. Gazing down at her, Nick wanted badly to kiss her.

      But Myla stood back, her voice clear once again. “You’d better rest. And I’d better get away from you. I don’t have time