October Joy (Moments In Paradise 1) (2 page)

Andrew didn’t know if Tabitha had been waiting for Ryan to ask, and that’s why she had turned down other boys in the past, or if she simply hadn’t been interested in the others, but she was interested in Ryan.  Very interested.  And it reminded him of the way he and Annika had been all those years ago.  They had met when they were fifteen, began dating when they were seventeen, and were married two weeks after Annika’s nineteenth birthday.

They met at church also.  Annika’s father was a hardworking, God-fearing man who had moved from the factories and city-life of New York, where his ancestors from Scandinavia had settled in the early 1700’s, to the lush plains of Iowa at the age of twenty to try his hand at farming, and he’d done rather well at it.  People in those parts knew all about Tate Andriessen’s bountiful farmland once thought useless.  And Tate knew without a shadow of a doubt his plentiful harvests had come from the Good Lord Himself during those early years and to the present day where he was still farming in his seventies alongside his sons and grandsons.

Of Andrew’s three daughters, Tabitha reminded him the most of Annika, who had gone on to Heaven to be with Jesus five years ago now.  Losing his childhood sweetheart in a fatal car accident had been the most heart-wrenching day of his life.  She had been his sunrise every morning.  The most gracious and delightful gift he had ever received from his loving Creator.  He had seriously questioned God’s love that day, and many others since, but he had slowly accepted losing Annika as a part of God’s perfect plan for her, himself, and their five children.  It didn’t make sense to his finite, logical mind, but he had learned to rest in the reality it made sense to God, and he could believe there were countless reasons why it was best, even if he couldn’t make sense of it most of the time.

One thing he knew for sure: Losing Annika had brought him closer to his children.  He had always been there for them and knew he’d been a good father.  A loving father.  But also a busy father.  Busy with his church-life to the point of neglecting his wife and children at times.

Annika never told him that.  His children had never come to him and said, ‘I wish you would have been there more.’  But looking back, he knew it was true.  He was much closer to Tabitha and his son Tate than he had been to his three older children during their teen years.  He’d cut back on his workload so much at the church during the last few years, he was amazed anything got done, and yet the church had more than doubled in size in the last five years.  Going from a modest number of two-hundred members to over five-hundred at last count.

He had no explanation for it except God had chosen to bless them and make them a stronger light in the coastal community he and Annika had first come to nine years ago.  And they hadn’t stolen sheep from other congregations in the area.  All the other churches were mostly the same size as they’d been five years ago.  The newcomers hadn’t come from other churches, but from within the town and surrounding areas.  People who had grown sour on church for whatever reason in their younger years had realized they couldn’t live without God any longer and started coming.  Liking the message they heard, the people they met, and the good programs for their kids that were nothing fancy, but adequate, had kept them coming.

It had been good for his lonely soul.  He’d grown weary of ministry without realizing it until Annika was gone, and then it really went from being his work to his burden.  But God had taken that load from him.  His congregation had been wonderful through it all.  And his children had been amazing.  The mere thought of one of them could bring tears to his eyes.  He loved them very, very much.

He was off to a Midwest pastor’s conference for a few days, but he rarely traveled away from them.  Once earlier this year to Los Angeles, and now to Iowa.  He couldn’t believe it was October already, but it would be a lovely time to visit his Midwest roots.  There was nothing like a beautiful sunrise over a thousand-acre corn field.

***

“Are you traveling for business or pleasure?” the man sitting next to Andrew asked after the plane had reached its cruising altitude somewhere above northern California.

“Both,” he replied.  “I’m going to a conference, but I’m going to be seeing some family while I’m there.”

“In Denver?”

“No, I have a connecting flight to Des Moines after this one.”

“What business are you in?”

Andrew always loved it when strangers asked him that question.  He could usually tell how often they attended church by their initial reaction.  “I’m a pastor.”

“Oh, is that right?” the man said, giving him a genuine smile and a light chuckle.  “I had a feeling this was going to be a good day.”

“You’re a pastor too,” Andrew said without having to ask.

“Yes, that’s right,” he said, reaching out to shake his hand.   “My name’s Jerry.  Good to meet you.”

“Good to meet you,” Andrew said, shaking Jerry’s hand.

They had a good chat for the next hour about their respective ministries and lives.  Jerry was an assistant pastor at a large church in Oakland, and he didn’t say his age but Andrew supposed he was about ten years younger than him based on the ages of his children and the amount of time he had been in his current position and previous ones--all in the northern California area.  He was on his way to a conference too, only in Denver, and talking with him was refreshing.

They had three pastors at their church now besides himself and were looking to bring on another to help them meet the needs of their growing congregation, but it was nice to talk to someone on the outside about ministry matters, especially someone who was part of a larger church so he could hear how they handled various challenges Sunrise was beginning to experience.

That was partly why he decided to go this week.  He’d been to other conferences since Annika had been gone, but mostly the same ones where he felt like he heard the same things over and over.  When he’d been considering going to someplace new or where he hadn’t been for awhile, the Midwest conference in Des Moines had come to mind and stuck.  He and Annika used to go every year, spending some of the time at the conference and also with her family while they were in the area.  But he hadn’t been able to go without her.  He and the kids had been back to Iowa to see the family every summer, but this was the first time he was going alone.

He was raised in Iowa, but his parents moved out to California seven years ago and lived in Monterey now.  And his two younger brothers, Jimmy and Nate, were in Texas and Missouri.  He loved Iowa and often longed for it, but since Annika had been gone, it never seemed the same.

Before they landed in Denver, Andrew and Jerry exchanged email addresses and phone numbers.  Andrew said something about possibly offering him a job sometime, and Jerry sounded interested.  He was excited about all the good things happening at his own church, but someplace smaller going through some changes sounded appealing to him, and the areas where Andrew knew they were lacking happened to be Jerry’s specialties.

“So what’s first, the conference or seeing family?” Jerry asked.

“I’ll go to the conference this evening and out to The Farm tomorrow for part of the day.  I’ll go back and forth a few times before the week is over.  I can’t spend a whole day at The Farm or they’ll put me to work.”

“Your parents?” he asked.

“No, my wife’s family.  My late wife’s.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” Jerry said.  “I guess I never asked about your wife.”

Andrew still wore his wedding ring.  He had never been able to take it off, and it was just as well because he had no interest in getting remarried.  “She passed away a few years ago,” he said, not going into detail, and Jerry didn’t ask.  “We used to go to the conference in Iowa a lot, but--”

He didn’t finish, and Jerry didn’t say anything, but he seemed to understand this wasn’t an average conference for him.  Andrew said one last thing, hoping Jerry would take his words seriously.

“Cherish your wife, Jerry, and your kids.  Twenty-five years of ministry--that’s my best advice.”

***

The beautiful farmlands of central Iowa were a welcome sight.  Sarah didn’t know if she was doing the right thing by coming to the ministry conference, but the familiar landscape brought her comfort.  It was three months ago today Levi had suffered his fatal heart attack, leaving her a widow two weeks shy of her forty-eighth birthday.  It seemed like a long time ago, and like yesterday.

They had been coming to this particular conference for many, many years.  Levi’s first church assignment twenty-five years ago had been here in central Iowa.  They had married that same year after a two-year courtship: the absolute highlight of her life up until that point.  She’d had a pleasant childhood and fulfilled her dream of going to college, but meeting Levi Whitfield, being gently wooed by him, and marrying him at the age of twenty-three had been simply divine.

As had their marriage.  Two children and twenty-five years hadn’t changed that.  Their love had only grown and deepened into something she couldn’t describe with words.  Their souls had connected into one, and nothing could have prepared her for losing him.  There had been warning signs.   His doctor had put him on some medication, and they were discussing surgery, but she never thought he would go so quickly.  One minute he was sitting there at the dinner table, making her smile like always, and the next he was clutching his chest and on the floor.  She gave him CPR until the paramedics came and took over, whisking him away in the ambulance, but he never recovered.

“Ma’am, you need to put your seat belt on,” she heard the stewardess say.  Taking her eyes from the window, she realized the young woman was talking to her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, latching the buckle into place and wiping the tear slipping onto her cheek.  Swallowing the lump in her throat, she suddenly felt like she couldn’t do this.  She shouldn’t be here, not without Levi.  It wasn’t right.

Once inside the airport terminal, she almost went to the ticket counter to see if they had any flights going back to Minneapolis today.  But something kept her feet moving toward the entrance and the line of taxis waiting outside.  She had paid for her room at the hotel already, and she needed to get away for a few days, she supposed.  She may as well see this through, even if she did stay in her room and cry the entire time.

There were several hotels near the large city-church where the four-day conference for pastors and their wives was being held, and she had purposely chosen a different one than where she and Levi usually stayed.  She didn’t think she could enter the lobby of the Holiday Inn without him, so she had chosen another listed on the Internet as part of her flight and hotel package.

The only reason she had come was because her friend had talked her into it.  Following their years at a church here in Des Moines, Levi had been reassigned to a struggling church in their conference near Kansas City, and they had been there for ten years before moving to Minneapolis seven years ago.  But every year Levi wanted to return to this particular conference in Iowa because some of the pastor-friends he had made over the years would be here, and she had gotten to know some of their wives also.  One of them was Linda.  Linda and her husband had come to Levi’s funeral, and Linda had been calling her once a week ever since.

When she first suggested coming this week, Sarah told her no.  The conference was for pastors and their wives.  Sometimes pastors came without their wives.  She had stayed home some years when the children were young and it hadn’t been practical to leave them for an extended amount of time, but wives didn’t come without their pastor-husbands.  She thought Linda had been ridiculous to suggest such a thing.

“You might not have Levi anymore, but you’re going to be a pastor’s wife until you marry someone else with a different vocation,” Linda said.  “The women at your church are still looking at you that way, so you may as well come and get the encouragement you need to continue in that role.”

Sarah supposed she was right, although some of the women at her church had been more of a support to her recently than she was to them.  She did plan to remain in Minneapolis.  Her two children were there.  Chandler was twenty-four and married.  Her daughter-in-law, Heather, had delivered their first child seven months ago.  And Faye, her twenty-two-year-old, had gotten married last month.  She and Jamison had considered postponing the wedding, but Sarah told them to go ahead with it.  She knew Levi wouldn’t want his sudden death interfering with their wonderful plans to marry after three long years of courtship.

Getting out of the taxi in front of the more upscale hotel than she was used to staying in, Sarah took her bags from the driver and stepped toward the front entrance.  By the pictures she had seen on the computer, she knew this was a nice place, much fancier than Levi would have selected, but nothing could have prepared her for the sight when she stepped through the revolving door and saw the beautiful central atrium come into full view before her.

Chapter Two

When Grace Morgan checked her phone before lunch, she was glad to see her dad was going through with his plans.  Over the weekend he had wavered about going to the conference, but she had assured him they would be fine without him for a few days.  She would miss him and wasn’t anxious to get him out of the house, but she knew he needed some time away.

She hadn’t forgotten about taking Tabitha to the DMV today, but she texted him back and thanked him for the reminder.  Driving her younger siblings places during the last five years had become as routine as eating three meals a day.  She didn’t mind, but taking Tabby to get her driver’s license did come with a mixture of emotions.  Not having to drive her baby sister around to all of her activities would be a welcome change, but a loss as well.  Being involved in Tabitha’s life had been a joyful experience.  She couldn’t believe she was seventeen.