Shelly stood still, hoping her welcoming smile was making up for her sudden loss of words.
Jonathan pulled off his gloves, and with his rough right hand, he reached over and gently touched her hair, slowly smoothing it to the very ends. His cool hand returned to cradle her cheek and draw warmth from her flushed face.
Shelly kept her gaze on his lips, waiting for them to move and bring her the words she needed to hear.
Slipping his hand beneath her hair and holding the back of her neck, Jonathan moved closer. Before Shelly could convince her eyes to close, Jonathan kissed her with a kiss that was not like any kiss Jonathan the teenaged boyfriend had ever given her. This was a kiss that pledged undying devotion to his first love, a kiss that took Shelly’s breath away and threatened never to return it.
They pulled away slowly. Shelly tried to breathe. She opened her eyes and saw that Jonathan seemed to be having the same difficulty. They smiled and wrapped their arms around each other.
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear.
It’s likely that the birds were singing in the forest the entire time Shelly had been standing there, but she didn’t notice them until this minute. Under this enchanting canopy of praise, Jonathan and Shelly held each other for a long time.
“So, if Meredith brought you here, where is she now?” Jonathan said, slowly pulling away.
“Here I am,” a voice perked up from the shadows of the forest.
Shelly jumped. “Meredith!”
Jonathan laughed. “Once the sneaky little sister, always the sneaky little sister.”
“I couldn’t leave and not know what was going to happen! That slide down the rope was very impressive, Jonathan. I actually started to cry. You guys make the most romantic, adorable couple I’ve ever seen.”
Jonathan and Shelly exchanged glances and both shook their heads at Meredith’s exuberance. Without planning it, they each reached for the other’s hand and gave it a squeeze.
“I suppose we should head over to the hospital,” Jonathan said. “I want to ask my boss for the rest of the day off.”
They walked back to the car, hand in hand, with Meredith leading the way down the trail. “I wasn’t trying to be nosy, you guys. You know that, don’t you? I mean, I just wanted to know everything worked out okay.”
“It did,” Jonathan said.
Shelly gave his hand a squeeze. It felt good to be back with him again, side by side, hand in hand, and to feel free, with nothing to hide. They walked through the forest, their stride matching the other’s step. Shelly looked down and noticed a tiny glimmer of brilliant blue along the trail. Letting go of Jonathan’s hand for a moment, she stooped to pick up the treasure. It was a tattered feather, long and spindly and of bright blue hues.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said, showing her find to Jonathan, who was smiling his approval.
“Yes, beautiful,” he agreed. He wasn’t looking at the feather. He was gazing at her.
Shelly felt as if the glowing inside her heart must surely have reached the outer layers of her skin by now. Her face had to be a rosy tint. She didn’t care. She loved it. She loved being here with her beloved and feeling his gaze of approval on her.
Jonathan opened his arms, and she again happily fell into his embrace. “My Shelly Bean,” he murmured into her hair. “Don’t ever let go.”
“I won’t,” she whispered back.
Never were more sacred vows spoken in this hushed forest.
“Hey!” Meredith called from down the trail. “Are you guys coming or what?”
“Or what,” Shelly and Jonathan both stated at the same time and then laughed. They slid their arms around each other’s waists and walked together.
Meredith drove her Explorer to the hospital, and Shelly and Jonathan followed in his truck. He explained that it was actually Kyle’s truck.
“How did you end up here in Glenbrooke?” Shelly asked.
“A college student named Bill came over during Christmas break. He told me about this millionaire in Oregon who wanted to start an orphanage in Mexico and a camp in Oregon. I was curious about the camp, and then the next day, Elena gave me her Dear John letter.”
Shelly was about to tease him and say, “Wasn’t it a Dear Johnny letter?” But she bit her tongue and listened.
“I guess I should tell you right up front that I cared deeply for Elena. It didn’t surprise me as much as it should have when Tony showed up, though. She talked about him all the time. The thing was, she and Tony had been high school sweethearts, just like we were. She had gone off to college and then decided to go out on the mission field. The Belgium outreach program we were with was recommended to her by her youth pastor.”
“You don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want to,” Shelly said.
“No, I want you to know. It’s important. I saw in Elena her desire to grow and to travel and to be all that God wanted her to be. That was the first time I understood why you needed to take off and do your own thing after high school. When my parents married, it was so different.”
“Mine, too,” Shelly agreed.
“My mom never even went to college. She found her fulfillment in marrying my dad and making a home for him. She molded her life around his.”
“That’s not always such a bad thing,” Shelly said. Her mind had been filling with all the ideas she had of how she could easily mold her life around Jonathan’s at this new camp. She would have an area of specialty in which she could use her gifts, yet they would be together, working side by side. The arrangement was completely different from the way things would have been for them five years ago.
“You’re right,” Jonathan agreed. “Sometimes it’s a good thing, when it’s a partnership. Elena and I had a partnership in youth ministry, but we were more linked in our common purpose than we were in the heart. That’s why it was easy for her to go back to Tony. He had a piece of her life and heart that would never be mine to share with her.”
Shelly wondered if it was harder for Jonathan to talk about this than he made it seem.
“What I learned in all this was that you and I had something unique and very special. I wanted to call you immediately and beg you to come to me.” Jonathan had pulled onto the main road, and the bumps had smoothed out. Shelly took off her seat belt and moved next to him on the bench seat.
“So why didn’t you call me?”
Jonathan put his arm around her. “I had what I would call a shakedown by God. During New Year’s I spent three days on a personal retreat at a monastery. It was the most profound experience of my life. I didn’t speak to anyone for three days and ate only bread and water. All day and night I just prayed. God was so real to me. He made it very clear that I was to leave Belgium and that I wasn’t supposed to call you. He would work that out.”
Shelly was amazed, thinking of how God had been drawing them back together even when she had no idea what was going on. If Jonathan had called in January, she didn’t know how she would have responded. It’s possible her reaction would have been quite different.
“Then everything started to happen at once,” Jonathan went on. “The military base in Belgium cut back on personnel, the other guy on staff resigned, Elena was already gone, and so it was just me. I called Kyle and asked about the camp.”
“Kyle’s a millionaire?”
“Apparently so,” Jonathan said. “He and Jessica have been unbelievably kind to me. They flew me out here in January for a few days to see what I thought of the camp plans. We hit it off immediately and spent some time praying through everything.”
“Kyle and Jessica are Christians, aren’t they,” Shelly said.
Jonathan nodded.
She had never liked it when people labeled others as Christians and non-Christians because she always thought that was up to God to determine. But she had sensed something different about Kyle and Jessica even in all the frenzy. She suspected that Lauren and Kenton also lived out a relationship with God.
“I
flew back to Belgium, packed my bags, and arrived here two weeks ago.”
Shelly tried to remember what had been happening in her life two weeks ago.
“I knew right where you were,” Jonathan said. “I called your parents, but I asked them not to say anything.”
Shelly was amazed. “They didn’t. Of course, I haven’t seen them in a few weeks. It probably made it easier on my mom not to have me around, if she had to keep a secret.”
“I was going to come for you,” he said with a chuckle. “I even found a guy on Whidbey who had a white horse. I was going to rent it from him and come riding up to your Tulip Cottage and take you away.”
Shelly giggled at the thought. “Why didn’t you?”
“Aside from your parents never knowing when you were home, as I prayed about it, it seemed the Lord was telling me to wait. I didn’t know why until today.” He squeezed her shoulder and pulled her close.
They were at the hospital now. Jonathan parked the truck. He turned to Shelly with that unstoppable grin on his face. “You’re beautiful, you know.”
Shelly felt herself blushing.
“I will never forget that morning at the flower stall. You have no idea what you did to my heart.”
“I know, Jonathan,” Shelly said with a sigh.
Meredith tapped on the truck’s window and cheerfully waved for them to come into the hospital with her.
“Go ahead,” Shelly called out. “We’ll be there in a minute.” She turned her attention back to Jonathan. “I wanted to apologize to you for that. It must have been miserable for you with my clinging all over you and here you were about to announce your engagement.”
He reached over and touched her silky, brown hair. “You weren’t clinging to me at all. That’s what made it so hard. You were just there. You didn’t ask for anything or try to change anything. I didn’t know how to deal with that. I guess I wanted you to tell me you hated me or tell me you loved me. Anything! But you didn’t say anything.”
Shelly swallowed hard, tilting her chin toward the roof of the truck. She suddenly remembered the last time they had been in a borrowed truck together and how awful that moment had been. This was their redeemed time.
“Jonathan, I held all those feelings too tightly in my heart. When I saw you, I wanted to run into your arms and never let you go. I didn’t know how to express that because I’d buried my true feelings for so long.”
He touched her cheek softly as she spoke.
“I don’t know that I could have done or said the right things six months ago,” she continued. “Some amazing things have happened to me since then, and I feel as if, for the first time in my life, I really know what love is.”
Jonathan pulled back slightly, his eyebrows raising. “You’re not going to tell me you met somebody, are you?”
Shelly laughed softly, “Actually, I did. I met God. Really met him. I know him differently than I ever did as a child. A deeper realm of love has been opening up to me. I didn’t have that six months ago. I also started working part-time at Camp Autumn Brook. My position at the airline has all but dried up. It’s as if God was making you wait so that he could do all these transformations in my life.”
Jonathan’s eyes were fixed on Shelly’s. He prayed aloud, “Father God, thank you. Thank you for giving us back our first love—for you and for each other.”
Shelly smiled. “I love you, Jonathan Charles Renfield. I’ve always loved you, and I always will.”
“And you know that I love you. I always have, and I always will.”
“I know,” Shelly whispered.
Jonathan was leaning forward, about to kiss her, when another tap on the window interrupted their perfect moment. It was Kyle, grinning from ear to ear and looking as if he had had too much caffeine. “Open the door,” he called out, motioning with his hands.
When Jonathan did, they could see Meredith next to Jessica who was in a wheelchair, holding a little bundle in her arms.
“Come see my boy,” Kyle said, his face beaming.
Jonathan and Shelly quickly slid across the seat and gathered around Jessica. She lifted the soft white receiving blanket, and there was the most precious, tiny face Shelly had ever seen.
“Oh, he’s beautiful!” Shelly cooed.
“Handsome,” Kyle corrected her.
They all laughed, and Kyle reached over to give his wife’s shoulder a loving squeeze.
“You two are welcome to come over,” Jessica said.
Shelly and Jonathan looked at each other. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “We might be by later. Right now we have some plans to make.”
“So Meredith tells us,” Kyle said.
Jessica smiled at Shelly and gave her a wink that sealed their friendship. “I hope your plans involve Glenbrooke,” she said.
“I would say there’s a pretty good chance of that,” Shelly said, flashing her smile at Jonathan.
Kyle tucked Jessica’s coat around her and said, “We’ll see you later on at home then. You are taking the rest of the day off, aren’t you, Jonathan?”
“If you insist,” Jonathan said.
Meredith gave a wave to Shelly and said, “See you guys.” One of her contagious giggles spilled over as she said, “I am so happy you’re back together!”
Jonathan opened the cab door for Shelly, and she slid over to the middle of the seat. He got in and started the engine.
“Well? We have a full tank of gas and the rest of the day to ourselves. Where should we go?”
Shelly knew the years of her restless journey had come to an end. God had performed some miracles she never would have expected. The rest of their lives now spread before them like a field of clouds, fluffy and white, without a single footprint to mar the welcoming vastness. Planting a kiss on Jonathan’s ruddy cheek, she answered with a full heart, “Anywhere at all in this whole wide world, my love. As long as we go there together.”
Dear Reader,
As I write this, five crumpled autumn leaves watch me from the corner of my desk. When I gathered these small treasures, they were vivid shades of topaz, amber, and ruby. Now their frail, thin arms are curled up and they’ve turned a dull shade of brown. All the fire and life has gone from them.
What were the words from Robert Herrick’s poem? “This same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.”
I collected these leaves last fall from some intriguing places. One came from a cobblestone path surrounding Heidelberg castle. Another was waiting for me on the steps of a church built in 1509. And my favorite, a deep burgundy leaf, fluttered my way in a shadowy, moss-scented wood leading to St. Annakapella.
For months these leaves have silently sat here, reminding me of those sweet, adventure-filled days in Germany. And now they’re crumbling into dust.
I thought of these leaves when I wrote the section in Clouds in which Shelly confronts her spiritual struggles. I thought of Adam and Eve and how they stitched together thick green leaves in an attempt to cover themselves in God’s presence. I thought of how quickly the once-green leaves must have shriveled, proving themselves inadequate for the task.
Just like Adam and Eve and Shelly, I’m learning that we can never cover up or hide anything from God. He’s right here. Always. He’s relentless in His pursuit of us. Everywhere we go, He’s already waiting for us. We are His first love and He’s not about to give us up.
This kind of love is beyond my understanding. It’s vast and unchanging. It’s quiet and intimate. It’s demanding and precise. It’s God.
Oh, that we might come out of hiding, put aside all our inadequate “leaves” and surrender to His love! Then we can freely “sing to God, sing praises to His name; lift up a song to Him who rides upon the clouds.”
Always,
CLOUDS RECIPES
Do you remember reading these lines from chapter three?
“Baking was Shelly’s comfort. If she ever felt that things were out of control, she could whip up a batch of
oatmeal chocolate chip cookies or her favorite cinnamon sweet Snickerdoodles, and everything would be fine again.”
Have you ever felt that way?
I have. Especially on rainy days when the kids are about to come home from school and everything is in disarray around me. It doesn’t matter how many other things I should be doing. Sometimes I just need to whip up a batch of cookies.
When I do, everything seems to fall back in order. My home smells warm and welcoming, and there’s a plate of cookies waiting on the kitchen counter when that front door opens and two of my favorite voices say, “Mom! We’re home!”
Here are Shelly’s two favorite cookie recipes:
Oatmeal Chocolate Chippers
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
2 cups oats, quick-cooking or regular, uncooked
1 cup chocolate chips
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
Cream butter and sugars together. Add eggs; beat until light and fluffy. Stir in dry ingredients and mix well. Add oats, chocolate chips and vanilla extract.
Dough will be crumbly. Drop by teaspoonfuls on greased cookie sheets and bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes. Makes 11 dozen cookies.
Shelly’s Snickerdoodles
1 cup butter
1½ cups sugar
2 eggs
2 ¾ cups flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon soda
½ teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons sugar
Cream butter and the 1½ cups sugar until smooth. Add eggs and beat thoroughly. Combine flour, cream of tartar, soda and salt. Gradually blend dry ingredients into creamed mixture. Chill dough at least one hour. Roll into walnut-size balls. Mix together the cinnamon and 3 tablespoons of sugar in shallow bowl. Roll balls in cinnamon/sugar mixture. Place balls about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 375 for 12 minutes, or until lightly browned. Cookies will puff up at first, then flatten out with crinkled tops. Makes 5 dozen.