"Heavenly Father, I'm suffering," I began. Both adults promptly folded their arms and closed their eyes in respect for my prayer. "I'm suffering because I feel torn in two. I have a girl that loves me, that I'm in love with, but she's not a part of Your Church. I'm afraid..." I choked up and began to cry silently. "I'm afraid that if I go on this mission, I'm going to come back and learn that she's gone. Two years is a long time to wait for someone, and she won't understand how important a mission is. At the same time, I know that You need us to go out and spread the fulness of the Gospel to the people who haven't heard.
"I don't know what to do. I don't want to lose Zoe, but I don't want to lose my father, either. Help me. Guide me, please. I ask you this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen."
It was a long moment before I opened my eyes. I don't know what I was expecting -- some sort of inspiration, I suppose. Nothing came, and after a long minute, I turned and walked away. Neither man tried to stop me.
I walked for a long time -- several hours. I walked up the beach, past Seul Choix lighthouse, almost all the way to my home on the beach in Gulliver. I couldn't stop my brain, and I couldn't stop my feet. Dusk fell while I was walking, and even after I had to stop and sit on the dunes, my brain wouldn't stop. I rocked back and forth and watched the silver sliver of the moon rise over the lake, my legs a quivering wreck and my emotional state no better.
I wish I could say that I had some sort of divine intervention -- that I saw an angel, or even that the Holy Spirit that the Church assured me was my 'constant companion' reassured me -- but I didn't. In all likelihood, I was too self-absorbed to open myself to the Spirit, and even knowing that it was happening, I couldn't break free.
God is love -- that's what the Apostle had told me at BYU. But if God is love, wouldn't God want me to seek love? If God is love, why would He want me to leave the person that I loved, knowing it was almost impossible that she would still be there when I came back? But then I thought ‘if God is love, maybe love would wait for me.’
I wished that I understood better what Zoe was thinking. I had talked to her about the fact that I was expected to go on a mission, but she had always simply ignored it, as if it would go away. She never agreed to wait for me, but she never asked me not to go, either. What would she do if I went?
What would my family do if I didn't go? What would the Church do? I knew you couldn't be excommunicated or anything just for not going on a mission, but I also knew that the Church could develop a very healthy scorn of people who denied the duties that God and the Church laid out for them. As I thought about it, I could hear Maggie Marie's story echoing in the back of my mind. Everything had worked out for her...would it work out for me?
Around and around, the thoughts chased one another, eating at their own tails like an ouroboros. I helplessly watched, feeling trapped in my body, as the crescent moon rose, crossed the sky, and sank. The thoughts themselves almost seemed to melt into a single incoherent question mark, the top arc of which was drawn by the moon as it crossed the celestial sphere.
The dewdrops glistened on the wild rose hips as the dawn began to rise over the dunes...and after an entire night of silent contemplation, I finally had the insight I had been looking for. I knew what I was going to do next.
It was the single hardest decision I'd had to make up until that point in my life. Everything I'd been taught about God and duty and life told me one thing -- but my heart wanted something different, in the purest way. Everything I'd been taught about the Church told me that good Mormons put the good of the Church ahead of their own desires, and that to do anything else was sheerest hubris. But my personal understanding of God was that he wanted us to be happy, and I honestly didn't believe that I would be happy without Zoe.
I struggled to my feet, and I finished the last half-mile walk home.
When I walked in, my mother ran up and wrapped her arms around me, in tears. "He's home! He's OK!" she shouted. The smell of buttermilk pancakes and sausage -- my favorite breakfast -- hit me, and all of the exhaustion hit me at the same time. I drooled a little bit, and fell asleep right there on my mother's shoulder.
Chapter 8: A Matter of Trust
July 2000: New Kowloon City, Hong Kong: LDS Stake Center
I shook the bishop's hand and bowed, having introduced myself to the ward that would be my home for the next several months as I did my duties as a missionary. I straightened my tie and double-checked my nametag as I turned away and headed toward the other two missionaries that were stationed here. I had come straight here from Kai Tak airport, and I still had my luggage waiting in the car.
From what limited amount I'd seen of Hong Kong, it was just as well-appointed as any American city. After some of the horror stories I'd heard from other missionaries who had to pee into trenches and drink cow's blood mixed with milk as a delicacy, I was pretty glad, all things considered. The food was delicious, the signs were mostly in English, and a quarter of the ward populace was either British or American.
The next few days were pretty busy, but when I got a little bit of personal time, I penned a letter to Zoe.
Dear Zoe,
Thank you. I know I've said it a dozen times, but I can't help but feel like the luckiest fool on the entire planet. I wish I saw in myself whatever it is you see in me...whatever reason you're willing to put your love life on hold for two more years while I take care of my duties. I know I said I'd call you, but they haven't given me my phone card yet. I suspect I'll be able to call you before you get this letter, but I can't keep these thoughts to myself.
I don't know how long I've been in love with you. It may have even started back in Journalism class -- but it's been a long time. I know that I'm not a 'normal' boy like all of the hot guys I'm sure you had hitting on you at college. It has to be hard, to like someone like me when your family is so much more...relaxed about things like sex and marriage than mine. Looking at the other girls and boys our age, it seems impossible that you're willing to just...not have someone in your life for so long. Two years seems like forever.
Hong Kong is crazy. Most people here aren't terribly religious -- but a surprising amount are superstitious. There are Taoist charms hanging everywhere to ward off evil spirits, but people laugh when you ask them about God. People take yearly pilgrimages to sacred graveyards to honor their ancestors, but when I ask them if they're worried about the fact that their ancestor's souls have yet to be saved, they have no concept of what I mean. The food is good, though.
I miss you. I'm trying not to be jealous of all of the cute boys in your classes who get to stare are you all day while I'm here. Trust me, Chinese girls may be cute, but they're cute like babies or kittens are cute...not at all like you.
I'll call you when I get that card. Hope you're doing OK. I'd love it if you wrote me back.
Pierce
I suppose this is the place where I should explain myself. It's really quite simple. All of my thinking and worrying and fear that night on the dunes of Lake Michigan boiled down to a single, simple question; if you could believe in Santa Claus, why wouldn't you?
That might seem a little irrelevant, so let me explain. I'd been told for my entire life that I was special -- because I was a Mormon, and a member of the Aaronic Priesthood, I had a unique gift handed down from Jesus himself; the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. I'd been told that the Holy Ghost would be there to guide me through all of the toughest times of my life, if only I'd listen.
The Holy Ghost never spoke to me -- not before that night, not during that night, and not after that night. I've felt what we call 'the spirit' -- the energizing feeling that comes from being awash in the faith -- but I've never felt any kind of inspiration or direction like so many others claim to have felt. I realize that for a lot of people, that fact would be enough, and they would walk away.
But I realized, that night, that it was like Santa Claus. If a kid believing in Santa Claus makes his life better, and it doesn't actually hurt anyone for h
im to believe in Santa Claus, then isn't that belief actually actively good, even if it may not be right?
I made my decision -- the decision to trust God to make my life better -- because even if the Holy Spirit hadn't ever spoken to me, I knew that my belief in God and Jesus and the Plan of Salvation was good. Intellectually, I have to admit to myself that I only sometimes believe that it's right -- but I also don't know that I care.
Essentially, choosing to not believe in Santa Claus just because you don't believe that a sleigh can move that quickly through Earth's atmosphere is missing the point so entirely that it's laughable. It doesn't matter that Santa's workshop has never been found -- what matters is that believing that there's a fat happy old man somewhere who loves you enough to find out what you want and give it to you makes you happy. It makes your life better.
If you could choose to be happy, why wouldn't you?
But what about Zoe? Wasn't my big worry that being without her would make me unhappy? Yes. That was my big worry -- but that night, on the dunes, I realized that I'd be unhappy if I stopped trusting God. I might have Zoe, but having Zoe and having no faith would be just as bad as having faith and no Zoe. And Zoe might be willing and able to wait for me -- but if I turned my back on my faith, I don't think it would ever come back.
It was fragile enough, that night, as it was.
Today, however, things are different. I chose to believe that I could have my faith and the girl I loved, and I chose to trust God to make sure that it happened. Now, it's just a question of time. I had rolled the dice and given God the credit -- or the blame. I knew in my heart that if I got home and Zoe wasn't waiting for me, I'd be devastated. Crushed utterly, and I'd probably quit church on the spot. On the other hand, if she was waiting, I will have won.
And in the end, I decided that I'm not the kind of person who will settle for one or the other if there's a chance to have both. It's just not in my nature.
Chapter 9: Pierce’s Return
September, 2002: Terre Haute, Indiana: Zoe's Apartment
I was a wreck. My mouth was dry, but I had to pee so badly I could hardly stand. I had Zoe's apartment number on an index card, but my hand was shaking so badly that I could hardly read it. Zoe had no idea that I was back yet -- I wanted to surprise her -- but as I was walking up to her apartment, I saw an extraordinarily good-looking man, maybe three or five years older than me, walk inside like he owned the place.
I paused. Suddenly, the enormity of everything came crashing down on me, and I was sitting on the dunes again, staring up at the moon. I recalled something...something that I'd forgotten for the better part of three years. I had prayed at some point during that night. I don't remember any of what I said, specifically -- but suddenly the feeling of the sand under my knees as I looked up and mumbled toward the moon came back to me hard.
It all came down to this, didn't it? I was about to put my faith to the test. I chose the Church over Zoe, and I had asked her to keep herself apart -- to keep herself for me, while I was away not being there for her. After two years of being confident in my choice, performing my missionary duties with what I hoped was an obvious faith, I was suddenly feeling something that I had never anticipated… guilt.
Here I was worried about hubris from the perspective of the church -- what about from Zoe's perspective? What kind of arrogance does it take for a man to tell a woman, 'You're not allowed to have a boyfriend for two whole years while I'm off in a foreign country?' I felt like the worst prick in the entire world. How could I have done this to the girl I claimed to love?
It served me right if the man that I saw was in there right now, doing things to her that I had told her I would only do if she married me.
...except he just came back out.
...pushing a dolly with a refrigerator on it.
...out to a Sears truck waiting by the curb.
My heart began to beat again. Then, as the gentleman swapped a new fridge onto the dolly and began to wheel it toward Zoe's apartment, she came out. She saw me, and the next thing I knew, she was in my arms.
Crying. And smiling.
Chapter 10: A Simple yet Elegant Celebration
June, 2003: Terra Haute, Indiana
"I do," Zoe said, and I kissed her.
The crowd applauded, my father perhaps loudest of all. Sure, we hadn't been married in the Temple -- and to be honest, I doubted we ever would; Zoe wasn't ever going to convert and by now we all accepted that fact. But I knew in my heart that God wasn't going to take Zoe away from me because of a detail like that. After all, He had seen fit to inspire her to wait for me for...oh wow…it had been almost seven years now since I first noticed her. Surely He didn't keep her heart true to me for that long only to give up on that in the afterlife just because we were never formally sealed?
The reception began promptly after the ceremony, and I was a tiny bit worried. My father had insisted that if the Danfields were going to define the ceremony, he was going to be in charge of the reception. For some reason, I had an image of the Tabernacle Choir singing hallelujahs and a bunch of stuffy men in suit jackets and nametags dancing like overdressed nutcrackers.
What happened next blew my mind: a live DJ introduced himself, and started off the reception with "Bring Me To Life", by Evanescence -- the latest #1 hit on the Billboard, and exactly the kind of thing I never would have expected my father to allow at any event he was running. Zoe -- Zoe Evans, now -- flashed me a fierce grin and yanked me onto the floor for the first official dance. It was a strange song to dance to, I'll grant you, but somehow, it seemed appropriate.
All this time I can't believe I couldn't see
Kept in the dark but you were there in front of me
I’ve been sleeping a thousand years it seems
Got to open my eyes to everything
Without a thought, without a voice, without a soul
Don't let me die here
There must be something more
Bring me to life
I wasn't sure if I was bringing Zoe to life, or the other way around -- but I knew without a doubt that I had never felt more alive.
Epilogue
August 30, 2007: Detroit, Michigan: Sinai-Grace Hospital
"Mr. Evans, we're going to have to do something serious, and we're going to have to do it right now. She's been awake for too long. Her blood pressure is starting to destabilize, and it might endanger the life of the baby."
Zoe...she hadn't wanted to have a baby this soon. She wasn't ready to give up that kind of time, she had told me. She was selfish, she had told me. Even with an IUD in, though, she had managed to get pregnant -- and I told her it was clearly what God wanted, even if we didn't feel ready.
Now, I was wondering. Zoe and her mother had absolutely insisted that she was going to have this baby with minimal medical interference -- no drugs, no vaccines, just a woman and her baby the way humans had been doing it for thousands of years. But she'd been in labor for nearly eighty hours, and she hadn't slept the entire time. She was literally hallucinating, yammering nonsense to people who weren't there, and the doctors were starting to get nervous.
I wanted to honor Zoe's request to do it herself -- but I'd be damned if I was going to let the woman I loved kill herself or my baby because she wasn't a fan of modern medicine. "What's the best option?"
The doctor nodded firmly. "If we give her an epidural, it'll ease the pain enough that she should be able to sleep. The baby won't come out while she's sleeping, but as long as it stabilizes her system, he should be fine in there for another several hours."
My baby -- I still didn't know what gender it was; Zoe was all about being surprised like that -- was more than two weeks overdue. I suppose another half-day wouldn't hurt.
"Do it," I said, "But don't let me sleep until she does." I'd been up for at least 36 hours myself, doing everything I could to keep Zoe comfortable. I'd massaged her back until my arms were numb, and emptied her bedpan more than a few times -- but I'd keep it up unt
il she was comfortably out.
The doctor moved swiftly and certainly, finding a nurse or two and setting up Zoe to have the anesthetic injected into her spine. I paced back and forth across the room; I refused to let them take me out into the waiting room. I was going to be here for the whole thing no matter how it went down.
Mercifully, everything seemed to go without a hitch. Zoe slowly collapsed onto her bed, and within a few minutes, she was snoring. I shakily took out my cellphone and dialed up her mom. "Mrs. Danfield…Mom," I stumbled through, "They had to give her an epidural. They said her blood pressure...was threatening the baby. She's OK now, though. She's asleep...and I'm going to sleep for a little while, too."
"That's OK, Pierce. She said all along she was OK with things like that if there was an emergency. It sounds like there was – so I don't think she'll be at all upset. Get some sleep, honey. She'll need you even more in the morning."
I thanked her, and slumped onto the miniscule, fold-up bed that was the hospital's concession to fathers. I was asleep before I even hung up the phone.
I slept so deeply that I didn't even hear the beeping of the pulse monitor. I didn't even hear it as it started to emit a long, single tone…
That, however, is another story.
Thank you for reading this short story about Pierce and Zoe. I truly hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned for the sequel due out in June 2014 as we check in on how married life is treating them. In the meantime, you may email me at
[email protected] with any feedback you may have and/or suggestions for future books you would like me to create.
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