Page 25 of A Cowboy's Convenient Marriage

“I wondered. You’re a good bit older than Kendra, and it didn’t seem like you would be best friends, but I didn’t know.”

“I guess that makes me wonder if you were there to ask Kendra to marry you? Did she turn you down and I’m just the next person on your list?”

“Well, you might not believe this, but Iwasthere to ask Kendra to marry me. My aunt had recommended her as someone who might be interested in a quick wedding because she had three small children and needed a spouse to give her a hand. But I don’t know whether it was because I saw you, or whether it just didn’t feel right, or a combination of both, but I ended up not asking her but tucking your name away in my head to ask my aunt about when I got home because when I saw you, I thought to myself, ‘that’s the kind of woman I want to marry.’”

Maybe he shouldn’t have admitted that. It made him a little bit vulnerable. Vulnerable to her rejection, her derision or laughter, but she just didn’t seem like the kind of person who would be unkind deliberately. Or make fun of someone after they had been humble. In fact, she seemed like she would probably do the exact opposite.

“Wow. I guess that is kind of hard to believe.”

They took a few more steps without either of them saying anything.

“Are you planning on becoming a rancher? I’m only asking because all of my siblings live and work on the ranch. Or else they come and work daily. One of my sisters-in-law is a librarian in town, but my brother, her husband, works on the ranch. I have another sister who is married to the rancher next door. We help them, and they help us. But I never really considered moving off the ranch.”

He swallowed. He figured this might be a dealbreaker, but he was going to answer honestly, not the way he thought he needed to in order to get what he wanted.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be a rancher. God called me to preach. I’ve never questioned that calling in my life. I’ve known from about the age of twelve or so. But for some reason, He took me out of the church in Virginia, the one I started. I don’t know why. And I’m here in Sweet Water selling cars. That’s not what I plan to do with the rest of my life. I guess I just assumed that God would open up a ministry for me somehow, because I’ve devoted my life to serving Him. Whatever that looks like.”

“I see. I admire someone who has completely given their life to the Lord. I’ve been trying to do that since my early teens. For now, it seems like all God wants is for me to serve my family. And help in whatever way I can. I don’t know that I have a calling to only help my family, but that’s the way it’s been so far.”

“Are you against moving off the ranch?”

“Is that what we would do if we got married?”

“I’m living with my aunt right now.” He wanted to squirm a little as he said that. He was a man in his mid-thirties. He should have a house; he should be supporting himself and living on his own. But he’d never really bought into that. “Me living with her helps her be able to stay in the house that she’s lived in for forty years. I help her with expenses, fixing things around her house, and I told her I would work in the car dealership, trying to turn it around so that it was profitable. I know that she would like for me to buy it, but I didn’t commit to that.”

“So you’re not planning on being a used-car salesman forever, but you’re planning on it for the next...year? Six months?”

“Yeah. That sounds like a good timeframe. Although, if God moves me somewhere sooner, that timeframe isn’t set in stone.”

“I see.”

“You don’t want to move away from your family,” he said. It wasn’t hard for him to figure that out. One of the first questions she had asked was about him being a rancher. It was obvious that it was important to her.

“I don’t. That’s probably one of the main things I’m thinking about right now. I want to do whatever God wants me to do. And if God wants me to marry you, then He wants me to go wherever you go. But I guess I’m not sure He wants us to marry, and the idea that I might not be with my family anymore, when I thought I would spend my life serving them, has given me a bit of a jolt. Not that the idea of moving away from my family would make me not do what God wants me to do, if that makes sense. I just feel like if I have to move away from my family, then it’s probably not God’s will for me.”

“I understand. I wish I could promise that you would stay here in Sweet Water forever, that I’ll never leave. That this is where we’ll be, and I’ll become a rancher, and we’ll find a place to live that’s close to your family.”

“There are places on the farm we could live,” she said softly.

“All right. That’s good to know. But it doesn’t really change anything. I know that I am supposed to be with my aunt. Beyond that, God hasn’t shown me anything.” He paused, unable to believe that these words were going to come out of his mouth, realizing that as he said them that they were true. “If my church decided today to ask me to come back, I think I would. That’s in Virginia. It’s where my parents are.”

Was that true? Would he really go back?

He knew he would. But the idea that came into his head as he thought that was what he wanted was to show everyone that he was right, that they had been wrong to let him go. That they couldn’t live without him, and even as he thought those things, he knew they were all wrong.

It was God who had built the church, not Cash Johnson. It was God who that church could not live without, not Cash Johnson. It was God who needed to be glorified and justified, not Cash Johnson.

“You know how you need to decrease, so God can increase?”

If she was surprised at the subject change, she didn’t show it. “Yes.”

“I think that’s one of the lessons I need to learn from this. I’m sorry, I’m kind of turning the conversation, but I was thinking about how I would go back to the church, and as I said I would, I realized it was absolutely true, but it was because of the wrong reasons. I want to be justified. I want to gloat, in a Christian way, of course, that they couldn’t live without me, that they were wrong, that they needed me. But all of that is wrong. It needs to be about God. The church needs God. And I think... I think, even if they ask me, I wouldn’t go back. They need to depend on the Lord, not on a specific man. And maybe that’s what God was thinking all along.”

“That’s a really good point. As humans, we tend to want to idolize other humans, depend on them for our safety and security, our devotion and our encouragement, and in reality, we should be getting all of those things from Jesus, but I think a lot of times, we don’t know how.”

“I was an embarrassingly old, and established, pastor before I realized that sometimes we just need to be still and know that He is God. It says it right there in the Bible, but so many times, I think my busyness, my service, the things I do, which are all important, of course, but that’s what gives me a relationship with God. But studying the Bible, knowing the characteristics of God, and then just meditating on those is much more helpful, to me anyway.”

“I’m a servant, and that hits home. I like to serve, to do things for others, to be able to list my so-called accomplishments, which are just the things that I do, but it’s really when I sit or stand, or go out in the world and think about God and His love for me, where I really develop more of a relationship with Him. When I listen and just ask Him to speak to me. To tell Him that I’m being quiet and still and waiting for Him to speak.”

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