Page 82 of When We Were Young
He had to find Olivia, had to know what they did with her. And where was Aiden? He untangled his legs and pushed his feet to the floor. As he did, a shock shot through his body.
The scratchy carpet was gone. This was the wood floor, the one in his bedroom before...
He looked around. The walls and windows. The sky outside. This wasn’t his apartment!
His heart started to beat faster, and suddenly the truth came into focus. This was his old bedroom! Not the place where he’d lived for the past two decades. This was hisrealroom. The one he had shared with Emily before he moved out.
“God... what’s happening?” He ran to the window. Through the pouring rain he saw the most wonderful sight. His front yard! Just like it had been before he moved away. He put his hands to his head. His hair was full and soft, completely different than it had been just a few minutes ago.
What year was it? Where was Aiden? The two of them had just been together and the paramedics were telling him the news. And Noah was facedown in the dirt because he couldn’t bear to look. And he was asking God to give him back the years or take his life. And Livi was gone... his Livi was gone.
But now...
He ran to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. What he saw made him grab hard on to the edge of the counter. This wasn’t the aging man without a hope, the defeated shell of himself who had destroyed Emily and their children and everything good about their lives.
Noah blinked and stared at his reflection. His fingers made their way over his smooth face. He was young again. The floor was cold beneath his feet and in the bedroom behind him the awful carpet was gone. Definitely this was his home.
So what had happened? He was gasping for breath now, trying to get his mind around it. Was it a miracle? Or maybe this was a dream and he wasn’t really home? Was this God’s way of showing him what he had lost? He patted his arms and legs. Everything felt real.
But so had the dirt beneath his face a few minutes ago. This must be a dream, that had to be it. None of this could possibly be real. He had missed every chance to love his wife and kids. All of life was behind him.
Or was it?
His heart was beating so hard it echoed through the bathroom. A chill passed over him from his head to his toes.
“What year is it?” Noah whispered the words, his breathing uneven. He ran from his room through the once familiar kitchen and living room to the kids’ playroom. “God... what are you doing?” The toys were picked up, stacked in bins and on the shelves. Just like they’d been the night before he left home. Aiden’s Noah’s Ark play set was in the corner, too. And there in the middle of the floor was Olivia’s furry rocking horse. All the way he remembered it that long-ago time.
Noah was shaking so bad he almost couldn’t move, couldn’t take himself to the kids’ bedroom. But he had to do it, had to figure out what was happening. With an energy he hadn’t felt in decades, he ran to their bedroom.
Their beds were there, Aiden’s and Olivia’s. Her baby doll and blanket were on her pillow and Aiden’s bunny was on his covers. Noah dropped to the edge of his son’s bed. His shaking was worse now, but a feeling had taken root in his soul. Something he hadn’t felt in longer than he could remember.
The feeling was hope.
His mind tried to make sense of everything that had happened. He was suffering late effects from his concussions. Clearly. His head had been hurting for most of the last twenty years. And huge gaps of time were missing. But when he lay down, when he went to sleep, all he could think about were the good times from their early years.
He clasped his hands. Maybe that’s what this was. He was dreaming again. This was the next part of the story, right? The part where he stopped knowing how to love Emily and he rented an apartment? That’s what this was.
The day he was going to move out.Lord, what’s happening to me? If this is only a dream, take me out of it. I can’t relive it again.
This was how the house had looked, how the playroom and the kids’ bedroom had looked the day before he moved out.
But he was different.
Because now he knew what life looked like three and eleven and sixteen years from this moment. The lonely apartment and scratchy carpet. The pitiful drugstore Christmas tree. Missing his kids’ recitals and games. Watching Emily disappear from his life, and knowing how he would have given anything to hold her hand again, to feel her in his arms. To dance with her and kiss her. But none of those terrible thoughts had crossed his mind onthisday the last time he was here. The day before he left his family. A lifetime ago. If only this weren’t a dream. If he had known then what he understood so painfully now, he never would have moved out.
I can’t bear to walk out on them again. Please, God... take me from this place. I can’t bear to—
Noah Carter.A gentle voice stopped his prayer short.My precious son, don’t you know? My mercies are new every morning.
Noah slid off the bed to the floor. The voice was firm and marked with authority. “Who... who said that?” His hands and legs trembled. Where had the voice come from? Now he was hearing things. He looked up and then to the window. He was alone in the kids’ bedroom. No one else was in the house.
Then it hit him. “God... is that you?”
The voice came again, strong and kind.
Noah... I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses... now choose life... so your children might live.
The words were a Bible verse! It was one Ryan and Kari Taylor had shared at the first Bible study he and Emily attended.
