God's Gift

  She didn’t want to talk about the possibility of this pain being a permanent reality. She still believed it would fade with time. He was no longer sure.

  The only thing he was certain of was that he could not burden her with it.

  It was dawn. Rae looked out her office window to see the clouds turn pink on the horizon, slowly glow as the sun touched them.

  She looked down at the list of her day’s priorities and slowly curled her hand around the pen she held. Had it been a pencil, it would have cracked under the pressure.

  There was too much to do and not enough time to do it.

  It was no longer a matter of delegation, of prioritization, of managing her time better, of controlling interruptions. She was in over her head, and she had two options. She could throw away everything outside of work that was important in her life to deal exclusively with delivering the kind of investment returns her clients had the right to expect, or she could sell the business. A partnership was not going to happen. Richardson had regretfully declined last week, Walters had called her last night.

  Rae looked at the list of items to be done, looked around her office, quietly closed the schedule book.

  God, I’ve been thinking about Psalm 37 for months now. Verse 23 says the steps of a man are from the Lord. We’ve been talking about this decision for a long time. It’s time, isn’t it?

  Rae was surprised at the peace she felt.

  She was selling the business.

  The demons liked to come in the middle of the night. His personal ones. Doubt. Anger. Frustration. The clock beside his bed showed 2:00 a.m. The pain had ensured he had yet to fall asleep.

  God, I am so angry at this pain! Why, God? Why me? Why show me a future I would love to have and then cripple me so I can’t have it?

  It’s not fair.

  I love Rae. I can’t do this to her. I can’t so limit her life to this level.

  I know what marriage demands of people. Why put love in my heart and deny me the health I need to enjoy it? For years I have accepted being single as one of the costs to pay for serving on the mission field. Is this how You reward that sacrifice? Why, God? I don’t understand.

  How do I explain this to Rae? She’s not going to understand and I don’t have the words. She’s going to see the things I can’t do—mow the yard, take out the trash, carry a sack of groceries, that long list of daily obstacles I am dealing with—as minor things. But they are not. They are the tip of that iceberg of energy and responsibility necessary for a marriage to work. It can’t be such a one-sided equation that she is put in a position of constantly having to give. The marriage would never survive.

  Oh, God, why does the pain not leave? What caused this relapse to be stronger and more persistent than the others? Is there anything else I can do that will help? Anything else the doctors have not tried? Just lying here in bed is making my muscles burn. I can feel the joints stiffening. I know morning is going to be another adventure in agony. I am so tired of it, Lord. There is no relief. I am dreading where this is heading.

  How do I tell the lady I love that I can’t marry her?

  Chapter Eleven

  “Because I’ve got energy and you don’t, you’re dumping me.”

  He couldn’t let this disease end up affecting her health as well. And it was. Rae was burning out trying to manage the new account and make time to help him. He refused to let it happen. Today, hearing yet another cautious verdict from his doctor, he had finally realized he no longer had the luxury of assuming his health was going to improve.

  James was exhausted, in more pain than he could ever remember, and she had left work to come help him do laundry. She reluctantly admitted when directly asked that she was going to have to go back to work for a few more hours when they were done. He could see the fatigue etched in her face. He knew she had her own long list of errands and tasks to do; he knew she had ceased to work on a book that was very important to her in order to be there to help him. He wanted her in his life, but he was no longer willing to have her life limited by his. It wasn’t fair to her, and it was not something he could accept. It was too high a price.

  “Rae, I thought I would be getting better. I’m not. It’s crazy to go on with a relationship that can’t go any further.”

  “Did you ever think I might simply like you? That I might like being with you? James, I could care less what we actually do.”

  “Rae, it’s hard to accept help.”

  “Well it’s hard to see you in pain, too.” She paced, frustrated. “If I help you, you get mad, and if I don’t, I feel horrible. It’s a no-win situation.”

  “Which is exactly my point. Rae, we tried. It just won’t work. You’ve got your job and the time demands of it, I’ve got this disease and the implications of it. You don’t have time for a relationship and I don’t have the energy for one. Let’s face the facts and let it go. We’ll still be friends.”

  She was crying. “James, I don’t want us to just be friends.”

  He closed his eyes at the plea in her voice. “Rae, I’m sorry, but that is all we can be.”

  She didn’t know where to direct the anger. At James? At God? At herself?

  Rae drove, not caring where she went. Her heart was too broken to know how to process the hurt.

  The napkin from the morning’s fast-food restaurant coffee was tucked in her hand, wadded up, too wet to absorb any more tears. She let the rest run unchecked down her face as she drove.

  Friends.

  She didn’t want to be just friends.

  Lord, why? Why tonight of all nights?

  The paperwork was beside her, the contracts to sell the business. She and James had been planning to go to dinner and she had planned to tell him about the deal after dinner. She had known he would be against the idea, would feel as if she were sacrificing her business on his account. She had known they would need time to talk it through.

  It was a good offer.

  For the good of their future, it had been the right decision for her to make.

  They didn’t have a future anymore.

  Her home was up ahead, dark, quiet. Rae pulled the car into the drive, wiping away the tears. Already her eyes were burning from the salt, feeling gritty and swollen. Her headache was intense. She left the car, feeling the cold strike her wet face.

  Lace was in New York. Dave was in Dallas. She wanted her friends—needed them. Knew even if they were here, they couldn’t fix the problem.

  A scampering puppy met her at the door. Justin had become a permanent resident. Normally she would have scooped him up and spent thirty minutes playing with him, but tonight she greeted him, rubbed his coat and put him back down.

  She went outside to the deck and tossed the contract pages onto the grill.

  One strike of a match and the contract flared into a bright ball of heat, curled black and turned to ash.

  She had her work and her book. She didn’t have what she really wanted.

  She watched the flames burn until the contract was entirely ash.

  God, I let him get close, and I got hurt.

  I’m tired of getting hurt.

  Next time, remind me to say no when I get asked for a date.

  Rae went downstairs at 1:00 a.m. to answer the doorbell. Tired of lying in bed fighting the tears, she had finally gotten up and settled in the recliner with one of her mom’s books, trying to bury the pain in the old familiar words of a children’s fantasy.

  It was hard to read when you were crying.

  Dave. He had been in Dallas. He had called her from there expecting to hear she had told James about the deal. Instead, he had heard a carefully edited explanation of the evening. He must have chartered a flight. Rae blinked against the tears.

  He stepped inside.

  She had never been so glad to see someone.

  “You look like you could use a hug,” her friend said quietly, opening his arms.

  She buried herself in his strong protective arms, letting the pain fin
ally come out. Her dreams had died tonight. It was a pain that went deeper than any loss she had ever felt before. Leo had not made a choice to leave her. James had. It stung. Deep inside her soul, it stung.

  Dave held her for a very, very long time.

  “He’s a jerk.”

  “No, he’s not, Lace. He did what he thought was best.”

  Rae didn’t feel the forgiveness she expressed, but said the words again anyway. She had said them a lot in the past week, Lace was like a lioness ready to take James apart. Rae was no longer angry. She was sad, tired, licking her wounds in private. Anger was a luxury of energy she didn’t have to spend.

  The funny thing was, she honestly did understand his actions. His back against the wall, not able to deal with the demands the relationship required while in such physical pain, he had ended it as gently as he could. She had been ready to do the exact same thing with her business, admit she couldn’t carry the weight, sell out. Thank God she had not actually signed the pages.

  “Lace, I love your company, I appreciate the lunch, but…”

  “…let me get back to work,” Lace finished for her, getting to her feet.

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  Lace leaned her hands on the desk. “It’s okay. As long as you come over tonight, watch a movie, eat popcorn, forget about work for at least three hours.”

  Rae grimaced. “Can I call you?”

  Lace shook her head. “Come. That’s an order from your friend. You haven’t left this office for the past week.”

  “I’ll try to be there by eight.”

  “If you’re not, I’ll kidnap you.”

  It was the first smile Rae had felt and meant in days. “I’ll be there, Lace.”

  James had expected a reaction from Dave and Lace. He hadn’t expected the ice.

  It began to thaw slightly as they watched him carefully set down his coffee mug, before he dropped it. The pain was intense tonight. Had it not been for the slight chance he’d see Rae, he would have passed on the get-together.

  Rae hadn’t come.

  Lace, across from him, asked about his family. She didn’t approve of what he had done, that was obvious, but she was at least being polite.

  It seemed that Dave had not taken sides.

  James wanted to ask how Rae was doing, wanted to hear anything about her, but neither Dave or Lace were willing to mention her name. During the past week, James had picked up the phone several times to call her, but always reluctantly replaced it. He hoped she would eventually forgive him.

  Chapter Twelve

  “James, she’s taking it pretty hard. She doesn’t let many people inside her shell and she did you,” Lace told him. “She doesn’t understand.”

  Lace, knowing how badly he missed her, had finally relented, begun to call him, tell him what she knew.

  Almost two weeks without seeing Rae. It was crushing him. James felt as if he had lost his right arm, so deep was the void where their friendship had been.

  Christmas was drawing near and Rae was pleading the pressure of end of year work to avoid him. She had skipped the party tonight, and he had come for only one reason, to see how she was doing, to give her an early Christmas gift. He had never meant to hurt her, not this way.

  They couldn’t have a future together; it was for her own good that he had pulled back. But he was miserable and it didn’t help to know she was also as miserable. This was for the best. It had to be. No matter how many times he stopped to consider the options, it always came down to a simple fact that he didn’t have the energy for a marriage, to provide for a wife, let alone the energy to raise a family. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take away her dreams of a family, her dreams of writing, just to make his life easier. She would wear out caring for him.

  He was no longer a nice, patient, optimistic man to be around. The pain had removed that pair of rose-colored glasses. The pain had taught him that he wouldn’t be able to have everything he wanted. It felt like a cruel lesson, and he hated the reality, but he couldn’t change it. He couldn’t make the pain go away.

  He wanted so badly to be well, to be fit enough to ask Rae to marry him, to build a home with her, to raise a family with her. But reality and what he wanted were a long way apart. It took energy to be in a relationship. It meant being able to at least take walks with her, carry out the trash, repair things that broke, mow the lawn, be there to take care of her when she got a cold. In the shape he was in, she would be constantly having to take care of him. He hated that reality.

  But he had never meant for her to get hurt.

  He needed to see her, to explain again as best he could why it had to be this way. She was still at the office, Dave had told him that. Since she was avoiding him, he would need to go to her.

  He looked at the clock. There was no better time than tonight.

  Dave had given him the key to the office suite, and for the first time he walked through the rooms to find them quiet, dark, silent. Her office door was open, the light spilling out into the research room.

  She sat at her desk, her head in her hand, the droop of her shoulders weary, as if she felt the weight of the world pressing her down. She was walking a pen down a spreadsheet of numbers, deep in thought. Two weeks. He looked at her and wanted so badly for things to be different. He loved her so much.

  “Hey, lady,” he said softly, “it’s awful late.”

  She looked up.

  Her face lit up momentarily when she saw him, then clouded again. “James. What are you doing here?”

  “May I come in?”

  She nodded to the chairs in front of her desk, then out of consideration, moved from the chair behind the desk to one of the group in front of the desk. Not the one beside his.

  “How are you?” she asked quietly.

  “Four out of ten,” he replied in the shorthand they had used for a long time. He studied her face, missing her, hoping something could be done to restore at least their friendship. “You look tired.” It was an understatement. He hated what he saw, but knew he had contributed to it.

  She grimaced. “There’s been a lot of work to do,” she replied.

  He reached in his pocket and retrieved the gift he had hoped to give her tonight at the party. “I brought you something.”

  She hesitated before accepting the envelope, opening it.

  He loved the smile he saw for he had the feeling she had not smiled in the past two weeks.

  “Tickets to the Bulls game?”

  “You need an evening away. If it turns out to be a bad day for me, Dave volunteered to take you,” James said with a slight smile.

  “Dave will help you have a bad day so he can go in your place,” Rae replied, amused.

  “Will you come?”

  James watched her bite her bottom lip.

  “Rae, it’s a simple question.”

  She shook her head and handed back the tickets. “Thank you, James, but no.”

  He felt the rejection cut deep into his heart. He did his best not to show it. He deserved it. “What if Dave is the one who takes you?” he asked quietly.

  She shook her head.

  “Rae, you need a break.”

  “I’ve got one. I’ve been working on the book in the evenings.”

  “When are you sleeping?”

  She didn’t like him pushing; he could see it so clearly in her expression. It was buried alongside an enormous pool of hurt. He had never meant to leave her with that.

  She got to her feet. “James, I’m okay. Honestly. But I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  He could hear the unsaid goodbye in her actions.

  He hated this, hated this death of a friendship. “I’m sorry, Rae. I don’t want it to end this way.”

  “Neither do I. But it has to be this way.” There were tears in her eyes as she moved back to her desk.

  James had never felt more helpless. “Will you call me if you change your mind about the game?”

  She nodded. “Take care of yourself, Ja
mes,” she whispered.

  “You too, Rae.”

  He left, feeling his heart break. He walked to his car, the tears flowing down his face, hating the disease which had cost him what he most wanted in life.

  Rae tried to concentrate on her book, tried to pick up where she had left off in the story, but the page blurred and the words ran together. She wasn’t going to cry anymore. She wasn’t!

  The tears slipped down onto the page anyway.

  James had looked so tired tonight, in so much pain. She desperately wanted the right to be with him on nights like this; to be his wife, have the right to hold him, help him, be with him. Instead, she sat alone in her home, trying to distract herself with a story that would probably never be finished, let alone be published.

  God, why?

  It was a prayer whispered around choking sobs. She hurt so badly.

  He was the man she loved, the man she so hoped would become her husband, and he had instead simply said, “I can’t.” Nothing in her life had ever hurt this bad. Not the death of her parents, not the death of her grandmother, not even the death of Leo.

  God, why?

  “James, are you sure I can’t get you something?”

  James reached up and softly squeezed the hand that rested on his shoulder. “Thank you, Patricia. But I’m okay.”

  His sister didn’t believe him. James couldn’t blame her. He looked and felt like something that had been flattened by a semi. “You ought to be off your feet,” he cautioned.

  “I’m fine.”

  James tugged her to a chair with a smile. “Sit.”

  She reluctantly did as ordered. “I feel like a beached whale.”

  “You look beautiful pregnant. Enjoy it.”

  “You’re not the one who gets to feel Junior kick for the fun of it.”

  James laughed. The sound was rusty; he hadn’t had reason to laugh for a while. “Still sure it’s a boy?”

  “I don’t know. Emily was like this, too, active. I guess I’m willing to wait for the surprise.” His sister rubbed her aching back. “You saw the doctor this morning?”