Page 83 of When We Were Young
His mercies were new every morning.Each word rang through his soul like a beacon of the brightest light. They played again and again in his mind. I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses... now choose life... so your children might live.
So Olivia wouldn’t be lying dead on a trash pile under the interstate.
Noah hurried to his feet. He was still shaking, still barely able to breathe. But he was certain of one thing. The words had come from God. Definitely.
He looked from the door to the window and back again. “I don’t know where You are, God. But I hear You.”
Maybe everything he’d been through in the last twenty years was all just one terrible nightmare? An aftereffect of his concussions? What if time hadn’t marched on, taking his family from him? Destroying them, one year at a time?
Was that what God was trying to tell him?
Noah didn’t hesitate. He ran to the living room and looked at the wall. There they were, the photos of Aiden and Olivia. Four and two. And the kitchen... Noah ran there next. He opened the refrigerator, and there was his leftover burger from last night.
The one he’d gotten on the way back from the cemetery.
That gave him another idea. He raced back to his bedroom and there on the floor were his work pants. Inside out and crumpled in a heap. The ones he’d worn to see Clara’s tombstone. The knees should be muddy. He grabbed them and struggled to turn them right-side out again.
Please let the knees be muddy, please, God.
His hands couldn’t move fast enough, but finally he could see the dirt. Mud caked across both knees. He dropped the pants and ran to his closet. It was empty. Nothing here.
He stopped cold.
Of course it was empty. He looked across the room and there were his suitcases. All of them packed full of his clothes. Because today was the day he was moving.
He was here and he was alive and awake. And in an hour he was supposed to pack up his truck and drive to his new home.
The apartment from his nightmare. With the scratchy carpet.
If this was real, if it wasn’t too late, then God had done the impossible. And maybe He really had! Noah was breathing faster again. Was this a miracle? Yes, that’s what had happened. God had given him a miracle!
He zipped open his suitcase and grabbed a pair of jeans and a thermal shirt. Never in all his life had he gotten dressed so fast. Then at the last minute he grabbed his old blue flannel jacket. Something warm to stop his body from shaking.
Wherever Emily and the kids were, he had to find them. Noah raced down the hall and grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter. But as he did he saw something fall to the floor. A note with Emily’s handwriting.
“What’s this?” He picked it up and read it.
I took the kids to Ryan and Kari Taylor’s house. Please go. None of us need to see you drive away.
“No!” He shook his head. No, he wasn’t driving away. He couldn’t ever drive away. Noah dropped the note and it fluttered to the floor as he ran outside to his truck. The rain soaked his hair and back, but he didn’t care. “Please, God...” He was still shivering as he started the engine. “Please don’t let it be too late.”
He was a street away from the Taylor house when he remembered God’s words.My mercies are new every morning.Wasn’t that part of a Bible verse? Part of a song. It was something they had sung at church when they used to go.
God’s mercies were new every morning, right? The song said so.Great is thy faithfulness.Yes, that was it. Noah gripped the steering wheel. He could only hope that on this day, in the minutes to come, God’s promises really would be true. That Emily would give him mercy. Because the morning was definitely new. And God was faithful.
If all of this wasn’t a dream.
Noah stepped on the gas. In two minutes he was going to see the girl he loved. The one he missed with every fiber in his being, every heartbeat. The one he had almost lost.
His precious Emily.
•••
EMILY WAS SUREof one thing. Aiden knew what was happening. That was the hardest part. Emily sat with Kari at her kitchen table while the kids played with a bucket of Lincoln Logs on the living room floor. Jana Alayra sang from a video playing on the television. Aiden sang along.
Kari had made coffee for both of them again. Then she handed Emily a document, stapled together. “This is for you.”
If it was some marriage Bible study tool, Emily wanted to tell Kari not to bother. It was too late. No matter how much she wished that wasn’t true. Emily looked at the front page.
