A Morning Like This (38 page)

Little by little, the surf inched closer to her creation. Little by little, water encroached. When Abby least expected it,
a shallow, gentle wave dashed itself over the edge of the moat she’d built, and filled the hollow. The castle settled into
the moat, its foundation receding. The next wave would take it down.

David, who’d been running along the beach in his Nikes, stopped behind his wife, silently surveying her handiwork. “It’s going
to fall in,” he said, sounding tentative, as if he still didn’t know how he ought to approach this woman sometimes. “Let me
move it.”

“You can’t move sand,” Abby said. “It siphons through your fingers and then it’s gone.”

“Okay,” he said. “But it’s a shame to lose all you’re building.”

“Yeah.” Abby stared at it as another wave washed in. “It’s tough.”

David knelt and began to dig the same shape in a different place. “Look. We’ll do it here. This is better. It’s solid ground.”

She hung back a moment, saying nothing, staring at his digging hands. Then, “Okay.” She whispered it again, with emphasis.
“
Okay
.”

The only sound as they worked, for the longest time, was the froth of the waves, the cries of the gulls, Braden and Sam laughing
down the way. With seashells, Abby created a tiny fence around the edges, scalloped with the soft pinks and purples and peaches
of the sea. David laid out a tiny slab of driftwood, worn smooth, for a bridge.

The children joined them once, bringing over a collection of seagull feathers to jab into the tops of the towers and use as
flags. Then as quickly as they had come, they disappeared again.

Abby focused on her fingers and the trails she was carving in the sand, suddenly realizing that her breath wouldn’t sink deep
enough into her lungs. Did she want this man beside her? Her hands froze with awkwardness. Doubt and hope, all Abby knew,
rolled in on her like waves from opposite directions, slapping together on the shore. She sat so close to him that his sandy
elbows and his sandy knees brushed hers when they moved, and Abby became keenly conscious of that slight contact.

David straightened, picked up the hand on which he had been bracing himself, and pitched a stone from his digging into the
surf. “Abby.” She began to scrub a hole in the sand with a seashell. When he leaned forward to see her face, her eyes were
full of hope. Brief and questioning, his gaze touched hers and then went far out over the ocean. “We’ve got a lot of work
ahead of us, don’t we?”

She kept scrubbing, scrubbing. “If I had to pick,” she spoke at last to the sea, “I’d fall in love with the man you are now,
David. Not with the man you used to be.”

“We go
forward
,” he said, “instead of backward.”

“I think so.”

“To have and to hold,” David recited. “From this day forward.”

“From this day forward,” she echoed. “I like that. From this
morning
forward.”

“It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Abby remembered the gift Sophie had once said she’d give.
If I could, I’d give you a morning. I think it’s the morning times that change our lives, Abby. The times we give ourselves
permission to start fresh
.

“I’m willing, Abby, if you are.”

“When would we start?”

“Maybe we already have.”

It was a fragile beginning. They had hope, but no guarantees. They had the goodness of the Lord, but that didn’t mean they’d
always be comfortable.

A long-billed curlew came stalking past on tiny knobby knees, piercing the sand like a needle with its beak. Four brown pelicans
skimmed the waves in formation, inches above the water. Abby whispered, her voice breaking, “I miss you, David. I’ve missed
you for a long time.”

He turned to her; he barely swiped her nose with his thumb. “I’ve missed you, too.”

They sat together through one long silence. Today, beside the ocean, they wouldn’t hold hands. But sometime in the not-too-distant
future, they’d be willing to touch and to need and to depend on each other. Today, as the Treasures watched, a brother and
sister raced the width of the ocean, still discovering, waves splashing in and sliding out, gilding the beach with silver.

My husband and I met each other after I had moved into his room. Not one to rest long on square footage that can be used as
an asset, Jack’s mother had turned his apartment into a rental property within three months after Jack joined the U.S. Coast
Guard.

So, I moved in. And then Jack returned.

We both give the cat full credit for our romance. When I was gone, Jack would come downstairs and take my cat so I had to
come get her when I came home from the newspaper office. When I was in my apartment, I would turn the cat loose so Jack would
have a reason to bring it down. The poor cat, Puffin, lived to be over thirteen years old. It’s a surprise she had any legs
left when she finally departed from us.

Every marriage starts with fun stories like this one, and with a lot of hope.

A Morning Like This
is a composite story of one friend’s very real, very difficult, marriage. As Christians we often make the human commitment
to grit our teeth in a relationship and get by. This story began as a simple cry from a friend’s heart after an hour of walking
by the river. “I don’t want to just survive in my marriage,” she said. “I wanted to be in love. I wanted to feel passionate
towards my husband. Don’t I have a right to ever expect that?” And so began, in my own heart, the story of David and Abby
Treasure, Braden and Samantha. This story became a journey, a responsibility, a burden, and a joy. It became, in the end,
about much more than God’s healing a marriage. It became a story about understanding the depth and the truth and the character
of God’s love.

I believe the mistake we make as we walk with Christ is that we forget to expect the full goodness, the full miracle, of what
a loving God, handed our trusting heart and our greatest sacrifices, can do with our marriages and with our lives. There is,
I believe, a beautiful straight-arrow place that exists when we both trust our Father with the reality and the expectation
of our lives.

We need to shout to the world that we don’t settle for second-best when we settle for God. Trusting Him
can
mean waiting and watching when we’re stuck in a place where we think we’ll never find enthusiasm or ardor again. But what
He gives us, when we’ll only trust Him with frank and transparent hearts, far surpasses anything we could ever have imagined
for ourselves.

May God’s love bring its sunrise of passion into your life!

Deborah Bedford

www.deborahbedfordbooks.com

P.O. Box 9175

Jackson Hole, Wyoming 83001

Discussion Questions

Many thanks to the members of the book group at Westbrook Public Library in Westbrook, Minnesota, for penning these questions during their own study time, and being willing to share them with my readers! D.B.

1. Do you think being a Christian made David’s decision to tell Abby the truth harder or somewhat easier? Why?
   
2. Abby counseled women in a shelter. Do you think her experiences at the shelter magnified her feelings about David’s betrayal? How did her childhood situation with her father affect how she responded to David?
   
3. Who was your favorite character? Why?
   
4. Do you think David would have reacted differently if Sam had not been sick?
   
5. Sophie tried to make Mike stop hitting her by being good and doing everything right. As Christians, do we sometimes think we have to do everything right in order for God to love us?
   
6. When Abby finally called and talked to her father, she was surprised to find out he wanted her number so he could call her. Then, just before she said good-bye, she said, “I’m not out to prove I’m right with this. I just… well, I think it’s worth working toward something. Not deciding who’s right and wrong. Just… finding out who we still are with each other” (pp. 301). Think about these words and discuss how they apply to your own life.
   
7. Abby felt justified in being hurt and angered by David’s betrayal, but eventually she came to terms with the situation enough to let God lead her out of the pain. How can we find our way out when we run into a wall and feel trapped by our emotions?
   
8. At Viola and Floyd’s fiftieth anniversary party, Viola told Abby, “I think of all the things I might have had, and then I look at what I
   do
   have, and… and it’s okay. It’s very good” (pp. 252–253). Do you think its okay to measure what you have against what you might have had? Why or why not?
   
9. Why do you think it was easier for Abby to forgive Susan than to forgive David?
   
10. The author started the book with Psalm 9:9–10. Read that Scripture aloud. Has there ever been a time in your life when you felt like God abandoned you? Why? With your group, search the Bible for Scriptures that show you that God does not abandon his children. Start with Deuteronomy 31:6, Proverbs 29:25, and Philippians 4:6–7. Keep a list of the Scriptures that relate to your feelings and read them aloud during your personal daily prayer time. The next time your book group meets, share any changes this may have made in your prayer life.
    

The author recommends these books to couples seeking help in restoring their marriages:

Why Should I Be First to Change?

Nancy Missler

Koinonia House Publishers

Reconcilable Differences

Andrew Christensen, Ph.D., and Neil S. Jacobsen, Ph.D.

Guilford Press

Getting the Love You Want, A Guide for Couples

Harville Hendrix, Ph.D.

Harper Perennial

Boundaries for Marriage

Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

Zondervan Publishing House

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships

John Gray, Ph.D.

HarperCollins Publishers

The Language of Love

Gary Smalley and John Trent, Ph.D.

Focus on the Family Publishing

For more information about bone marrow donation, contact:

The National Marrow Donor Program

3001 Broadway Street Northeast

Suite 100

Minneapolis, MN 55413-1753

1-800-627-7692

www.marrow.org