On Shifting Sand (53 page)

“Nobody goes back to Oklahoma, Russ.” Only my husband could see beauty in such a place, and the fact that he loves it so much gives me hope that he can still love me.

“All the more reason. There has to be somebody there by choice. I need to be where I’m needed.”

“I need you.”

Just then, as if orchestrated to prove my point, I begin to step off the curb and into the street, only to have Russ pull me back to a safe-enough distance to let a car go by without drowning us in the wave created when its tire hits a puddle. He’s brought me close to him, his arms wrapped around me, and when I turn in his embrace, he is all I see. He is my home—not my escape, but my only shelter. Suddenly, my fear of returning to Oklahoma is eclipsed by the terrifying possibility that he might not see me as the same.

I allow the slightest dropping of my shoulder, just enough to create a space between us, and to my utter disappointment, he releases me. Drops my hand in favor of taking a pinch of my slicker’s sleeve and leads me across the street, where we resume our walking.

My last words,
“I need you,”
hang between us, begging a reply. Still, there remains nothing but a constant, fluid silence until the church, its pristine stained-glass windows glowing with welcoming warmth, beckons us with shelter.

I slow my steps.

“Darling.” The rain has intensified, something close to a downpour, and he reaches for me again. “We’ll talk about this later. At home.”

“You can’t leave me again.”

He looks puzzled, his face performing mini contortions with each splashing drop. “What do you mean?”

“If you were going to leave me, you should have done it last year. After I told you . . . what I told you. And I know you’ve forgiven me. You say so, and I believe you. But you haven’t—we haven’t . . .” The rain provides a valiant escort for my tears, so neither of us truly knows if I’m crying because I’m terrified, or wounded, or angry. In the end, it doesn’t matter, because in the next breath I am in my husband’s arms, an embrace that knocks the hat off my head, and my scalp comes alive with cool, clean washing.

“Nola, how could you think such a thing? Of course—of course we’ll
go back together. As a family. We’ll start over, as a family. Us and the kids. We’ll find a new home, or build one.”

“But here—”

“
Here
is an escape. A place of refuge. But we can’t stay.”

“I’ll go anywhere.” I reach up, touch his face, thrill to the warmth of it. “I’m just so thankful that you want me with you. I didn’t think you ever would again.”

There’s a new surge in the storm, and through its pounding I hear congregants shouting to us, teasingly, that we don’t have the sense to come in out of the rain. They don’t know the extent of our drought, the dryness of our hearts and skin.

“I’ve been a fool,” he says. It’s the same curse I’ve pronounced against myself too often.

“No, I—”

But there are no more words. No more confessions, or apologies. His lips touch mine, and in that moment, regrets wash away beneath our boots.

It has been a lifetime since he’s kissed me, a passing of far too many seasons. This moment holds the familiarity of every kiss we’ve ever shared. Russ pulls me closer, and we search each other, working to bring to light all the darkness of this past year, bathing one another in forgiveness. When I try to pull away, just for breath, he follows, trailing his lips across my cheeks, and when he kisses me again, brings traces of salt, and I wonder if his tears are intermingled with mine.

Beyond the curtain of the rain, good-natured calls continue from our flock, beckoning us to come inside, and I feel him smile against me.

“We really should go in,” I say, suddenly shy at our display.

He kisses me one more time—brief, but full of promise—and takes my hand to lead me across the sodden lawn and into the cloakroom off the vestibule. It smells like wet rubber and wool, and we shake our heads, sending tiny showers into the air around us. Some complain about the damp, the aches in their bones, and the mud that will be tracked on the carpets. Russ and I smile, sharing the secret of this bounty.

The gathering of a Sunday evening is smaller than what we see in the mornings, and the rain has cut us in half again, so that the crowd assembled in the warm, dry sanctuary fits easily within half a dozen pews.

We sing:

Marvelous grace of our loving Lord,

Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt!

Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured,

There where the blood of the Lamb was spilled.

Russ himself leads the hymn, directing us with a hand that moves without any musical direction. None of us hold a songbook as the chorus builds.

Grace, grace, God’s grace,

Grace that will pardon and cleanse within;

Grace, grace, God’s grace,

Grace that is greater than all our sin!

I sing with the knowledge of God’s cleansing, feeling the gift of his rain and the forgiveness of my husband. All of it swirling together. Our eyes meet and my heart leaps the way it did the first time I saw him. As we sing about our sin, as cold as the sea, and the cleansing blood of Christ, I feel a part of me washing away with the tiny rivulets of rain trickling down my flesh. The song promises the brightness of snow, but I am more taken by the cleansing power of the rain. I think of how it bathed our kiss, restoring us to each other.

When we bow for prayer, my collar sits damp against my skin; tendrils of hair, dark with wet and cold, graze my cheek. Through the darkness, I hear my husband’s voice, thanking God for this deluge, remembering the way he once brought a flood up from the ground to cleanse the earth.

“You, O Lord, are our place of refuge,” he prays. “Your mercy is the ark that brings us safely home.”

I know I shouldn’t, but I open my eyes, only to find he has done the same. Our gaze wraps itself around his prayer, bringing it to silence before he says, definitively, “Amen.”

It is not until I open my mouth to echo that I realize how tightly I’ve been clenching my jaw, and in this moment my teeth begin to chatter. My body is racked with uncontrollable chills, my legs shaking against the unforgiving bench beneath me. It feels like my bones are snapping within my skin, and I clutch my arms about me, willing myself to still. With a whispered excuse, Russ is at my side, enveloping me in his embrace. He covers both of my hands with one of his, and slowly his warmth seeps through, overpowering the chill within.

“I should get you home.” He speaks directly into my ear. “Into a hot bath before you take cold.”

“Don’t be silly.” My words are loose. “I’m fine.”

And I am.

More than that, I am restored. Strong enough to return to Oklahoma. So thoroughly saturated with rain, I have no fear of drought.

A
N
OTE
FROM
THE
A
UTHOR

S
OME OF YOU MAY BE
thinking this book is a departure from my previous works. I like to think of it more as a product of growth. I’ve written a lot of stories about courtship and love, and most of those stories end before the wedding. Other than the Sister Wife series, I haven’t had a story that centered around a marriage. (And the marriage in those books is hardly a healthy, viable one!)

Many stories use the sin of adultery as an automatic end to a marriage. I wanted to show it as a storm to survive. Marriage, in both life and literature, is multidimensional. It’s a road trip, with two people stuck together, even if they aren’t moving in the same direction.

At the same time Nola and Russ’s journey began to evolve in my imagination, a fascination with the Dust Bowl was also spinning around in my mind, given its place in history following the rich decade of the Roaring Twenties, which formed the backdrop for my last series. Then, as with all my books, I delved into the impact the environment had on women—how the inability to fulfill the traditional roles of homemaker, mother, and nurturer could destroy a woman’s sense of self-worth.

That’s when the two ideas clicked together. A woman who cannot appreciate her worth is easy prey for this particular sin. And the dust serves as a powerful metaphor for sin—inescapable, ever present. It is unbidden and unhidden. It is filth and thirst and drought. It is death,
and no life can flourish in the midst of it. Sin does that to a marriage—to any relationship. The dust could only be overcome by the rain, and the rain brought a promise of new life.

I also wanted to explore the idea of what it means to be a “real” Christian. We are often quick to judge someone who behaves as Nola does, concluding that the person can’t possibly be saved. But what does it mean to be a “real” Christian? It simply means believing that Jesus Christ died to save us from our sin and rose from the dead to give us new life. At the same time, our belief in Christ does not keep us from sinning—not even from engaging in fully realized, willful sin. Nola enters into the act of adultery through her own free will and through willful denial of the truth. She is drawn to it by her own desires and hides it out of a very real sense of self-preservation. (Jim isn’t to blame for Nola’s sin; he’s just an opportunist. And one who will be held accountable for his own choices, though that was outside the scope of this story.)

And once we’ve sinned, knowingly and willingly, then what? Belief in Christ does not take away our ability—or our desire—to sin, nor does it provide automatic absolution for the sins we may commit. That comes only with confession and repentance, whenever the Holy Spirit convicts us.

Nola knows this. She believes it is true (though she doesn’t always feel it). Her sin cannot negate her salvation, but like any sin, it separates her from a healthy relationship with Christ—just as it precludes a healthy relationship with her husband. For a time, at least. For a season. Her shame makes her feel unworthy to accept forgiveness from Christ or to expect forgiveness from her husband. But yes, she is a real Christian—a sinner saved by grace.

Writing this story in first person, present tense was something new for me, but it seemed the best choice. Nola is what’s known as an unreliable narrator. To put it bluntly, she’s a liar, and from page one until her confession to Russ, we can be suspicious of almost everything she says. She promises herself (and, de facto, the reader) that she will confess to Russ. She doesn’t. She refuses to confront her motives, and that wall
of dishonesty is what keeps her from fully embracing God’s forgiveness. I wanted to write a story that lived in the intentions of the character, to show how frail and insubstantial our relationships can be without true confession and repentance. When we lie to ourselves—and God—in the moment, we believe it.

I make the point in the story that Russ loved Nola first, and that he loves her more. It’s my personal philosophy that no two people can ever love each other absolutely equally. In this case, that gives me hope for them to have a happy ending—maybe not in the final pages of the book, but in the months and years to come. Russ understands forgiveness. He is spiritually healthy enough to forgive Nola, even though he’s human enough to need some time before full restoration. Chances are, it will take even longer for Nola to come to the place where she fully
feels
forgiven—but not for any lack of assurance on Russ’s part.

May you find the strength to believe in the love of Christ and those people he has placed in your life, even when you feel that you’ve done something unforgivable. As Nola learned as a child, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

D
ISCUSSION
Q
UESTIONS

1. The Oklahoma Dust Bowl forms the backdrop and sets the tone for this novel. How much did you know about the Dust Bowl before you read the book? Has anyone in your family passed down firsthand stories of what it was like?
   
2. Nola’s mother died when she was ten years old. In some ways, the loss of a parent at a young age is something one never gets over. What elements of Nola’s current outlook can be attributed to this devastating loss? Who are some of the other women in her life who help to fill the mother role in small ways? Is there a situation in your life where the Lord has provided nontraditional sources of love and nurture or met some other need in an unusual way?
   
3. Nola’s father is an unkind, bitter person. What do you think made him that way? How has his behavior affected his son and daughter? How have you seen patterns like this play out in your extended family?
   
4. In chapter 12, Nola’s father calls her by her full name: “We need to be mindful of what our sin brings back to haunt us, Denola Grace.” Who do you suppose gave her the middle name Grace, her mother or her father? How is grace evident in Nola’s life, even though she has a hard time seeing it herself?
   
5. In chapter 13, Nola remembers learning about God’s forgiveness as a child, and she can even quote 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” And yet her father’s suspicious nature and disapproval made it hard for her to trust in God’s grace. She says, “I always felt dirty, and Pa made me believe that I was.” Why is it often easier to trust what people say about us than to believe what God says in the Bible? In what areas of your life have you struggled with this?
   
6. In chapter 17, Nola receives and accepts Christ’s forgiveness for her sin of adultery, but she stops short of confessing to Russ. “I know I must also confess to my husband, but to do so now would destroy my assurance of grace.” Why do you think she feels this way? Is she right, or is this just one more excuse to help her avoid confessing? Can you think of a time in your own life when you needed to confess to a loved one or do something else that was difficult, and you came up with a way to talk yourself out of doing it? What were the results?
   
7. In chapter 19, Nola once again tries to confess to Russ, but instead he asks her forgiveness for not realizing how difficult Jim was making things for her. Nola again backs off, reasoning that she is doing Russ a favor by not burdening him with any more regret. “This will be the price of my freedom—yet another lie to carry. But like any burden, I’ve grown used to the weight, and I take it on.” Does her self-deception here seem logical to you? Why or why not? What are some other ways we turn things around like this, making wrong seem right and right seem wrong? Why do we sometimes find that so easy to do?
   
8. In chapter 20, Russ and Nola discuss the fact that they married because Nola was pregnant. Russ says, “Sin or not—you made me feel like a man. Like I was fulfilling what God wanted me to be. Like Solomon, or David.” What do you think of Russ’s statement here? In what way does he feel like he is fulfilling God’s plan for him? In what way is he falling short of God’s plan? Do you think Russ—like many in our culture today—overemphasizes the importance of a person’s sexuality? Why or why not?
   
9. When Nola finally confesses to Russ in chapter 32, he says he still loves her as much as ever. Does that seem realistic, or is it something that would only happen in a novel? Have you ever been in Russ’s position—betrayed and deeply hurt by someone you love? How did you respond, or how do you hope you would respond if this were to happen?
   
10. While Russ assures Nola of his continued love, there is a distance between them that lasts for a year or more. What finally bridges the gap? How does it make Nola feel? How realistically does this reflect real life?
    
11. Throughout most of her life, Nola has a hard time feeling God’s love for her—or anyone’s love, for that matter. Have you ever had this experience? How important is it for a Christian to feel God’s love? What are some things we can we do when our faith in God isn’t emotionally gratifying?
    
12. At the end of the book, Russ announces his intentions to return to Oklahoma, and Nola—finally restored to both God and her husband—feels ready to face it. Do you think this is the right choice for their family? How do you imagine each of them will adjust to returning home? How might Ronnie and Ariel respond?