Sisterchicks in Gondolas! (18 page)

“It’s so easy for us to make assumptions about people,” Sam went on. “We need to tell each other our stories. We need to be heard, and we need to hear ourselves.” He looked at me over the top rim of his glasses. “I would like to hear your story, Jenna. What happened after you left Europe that summer?”

I didn’t feel as if Sam were putting me on the spot to
divulge my entire personal history. Rather I felt an invitation had been extended. An invitation simply to tell my story. For some reason that was different than launching into a confession of a long series of life choices.

I drew in a clarifying breath of warm afternoon air. “Three significant experiences happened to me since I last saw you. I married, I had a daughter, and I divorced.”

The telling of my story was brief. It was humbling and at the same time liberating to tell both these men about how I returned to Minnesota at the age of twenty-two, ready to take on the world. I intended to return to Europe to work full-time with the same ministry Sergei now headed. But then I met Gerry. I made an impulsive decision and married him right away. We had two rough years together before Callie was born. Our daughter was only three months old when Gerry moved in with his long-time girlfriend. They had had a child together before I met Gerry, but I didn’t know that at the time. I fought the divorce. I fasted and prayed. But when Gerry and his girlfriend were expecting their second child, I finally signed the divorce papers. I was twenty-six years old, and nothing during that intense season of my life had gone the way I had thought it would.

To my surprise, neither of the men changed expressions during the telling of my story. Neither of them appeared to judge me. I was met with acceptance and understanding. I couldn’t remember feeling that way before whenever I’d talked about my past.

The sensation that washed over me in the afternoon sunlight was,
So this is what grace feels like
.

I don’t think I had ever felt I had been shown grace before. Now I knew grace was being extended to me. What made it different this time was that I was ready to reach out and take hold of the grace being offered.

“And here you are,” Sam said.

“Yes, here I am.” I felt new. I felt absolved and free. Unshackled. The shame was off me. I can’t explain how it happened, but the shame was off, and the grace was on.

“So, Jenna,” Sam said, “I have a question for you. What is the Lord asking you to do now?”

“I honestly don’t know.” I looked at Sergei and then back at Sam. Both of them seemed attentive to my response.

“All I know is that I’m in a new season. A time of beginnings. I’m available. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Sam looked at me and said, “Feed His lambs, Jenna.”

“Yes,” Sergei immediately agreed. “Feed His sheep.”

They popped out their admonitions so quickly and in sync that it seemed they had practiced the lines ahead of time. I could tell they hadn’t premeditated their words, though, by the way they turned to each other with mutual looks of surprise.

“Do you see how much you have to offer to so many women?” Sam asked.

I shook my head. What did I have to offer? I didn’t do
anything particularly well. I couldn’t play the piano or sing like Sue. I wasn’t a teacher. I’d never been told I was a good counselor. Or a good cook. Or a good anything, for that matter.

Truth be told, I didn’t know what my spiritual gift was. A year ago a woman at church asked if I wanted to take a spiritual gift test. I declined. I secretly was afraid I would flunk the test. The policy at our church already limited areas where I could serve because I was divorced. If I flunked a spiritual gift test, they really wouldn’t know what to do with me.

“I’m not sure how I can help other women.”

“Jenna, don’t you see how God has uniquely prepared you?” Sam asked. “You have been to dark places. You know what it is to lose hope. You know what it is to live with something you cannot change. Yet you have taken grace and filled your life with it. Now you have more than enough to give others.”

I still didn’t know how those attributes could benefit other women.

“You are a courier, Jenna,” Sergei added with one of his near-grins that seemed to slip through his teeth and press his lips upward. “You can now smuggle truth and hope into places where it has not been for a long time.”

“How?”

“Show up,” Sam said with a gleam in his eyes.

I remembered every word those two men spoke over
me on that balcony. I’m sure I will remember every word for the rest of my life. They blessed me and empowered me to “go,” even though I still didn’t know where I was supposed to go or exactly what I was supposed to do.

The beautiful part was that I didn’t need to know those specifics yet. What I did know was that I was free. I, at long last, had put on the grace God had given me. It was real. Very real. And I had a feeling it looked even better on me than my swishy new skirt.

When the three of us finally came in from the balcony, I went to the kitchen to check on Netareena, as I had promised Sue I would. The eagerly chirping bird ruffled her feathers and tried to leave the confining box. Everything in me wanted to scoop her up and hold her out the open window and say, “Fly! Be free!” But she wasn’t quite ready.

I made sure she had more water and bread crumbs, and I whispered, “Almost, Netareena. Keep getting stronger. You’ll fly soon.”

At five o’clock that evening, the art club returned. They were weary but talkative about the wonders they had seen that day. Sue and I could have launched into a deep, long conversation; we had many things to discuss. Instead we spent what was left of the day pouring ourselves into cooking and organizing. A sweet peace covered us. It had been a good day.

It struck me, as I pulled my nightclothes out of my
suitcase, that perhaps 90 percent of what a woman is supposed to do when she enters the next season of life is to simply “show up.” If she can do that without packing a lot of shame, regret, or guilt into her baggage, it certainly makes for a lighter, more liberating, and enjoyable journey.

When Sue and I retreated to our rooftop loft, she brought the bird with her in its cushy box. I told Sue I thought Netareena would be ready to fly away soon. I expected her to make an attempt once we got her up on the open rooftop.

Instead, she nested down in her waxed green bean box for the night. Sue and I followed her lead and got comfy.

“Tell me about the museum this afternoon,” I said.

“It was amazing. But before I tell you about it, we need to talk about something else.”

“Okay.”

“Jenna, I need to apologize to you.”

“For what?”

“I need to apologize for judging you.”

“Judging me? For what?”

“For being divorced.”

“Oh.”

“Jenna, I’m sorry. We lost so many years when we would have been close like we are now. I never gave you a chance. I judged you wrongly.”

“It’s okay, Sue. Really. It’s all in the past.”

“I know, but I realized something today. When my life and Jack’s life went into what I guess you could call a ‘valley of the shadow of death,’ you came close to us. You weren’t afraid. I mean, you even moved to Dallas.”

“That was different. I moved to Dallas because I could. I had space in my life to do that. I wanted to be near you guys.”

“I know. And I’m so glad you came. I don’t know what I would have done without you. The thing is, when you went through your worst ‘valley of the shadow’ time all those years ago, I wasn’t there for you. I never was there for Callie.”

“Oh, Sue, you don’t have to go back there and blame yourself for anything.”

She propped herself up on an elbow and looked at me. “I just want to say I’m sorry, Jenna. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. That was wrong of me.”

My sister-in-law’s honest words, spoken under the watchful eyes of the Venetian stars, were like fragrant, healing oil poured out over that painful season of my life. She had no idea how her loving apology covered all the snubbing I had received from so many others. “Sue—”

“I know what you’re going to say now. You’re going to say ‘shame off me,’ and you’re right. The shame is off me now that I told you. I just had to say it.”

“Actually, I was going to say something else.” I leaned closer. “Grace on you, Sue.”

She took it, smiled, and lay back down. “Grace on you, too, Jenna.”

“Yes,” I echoed. “Grace on both of us.”

S
ome nights in my life
I have slept for ten hours and not dreamed at all. I’ve awakened from those nights exhausted and restless.

But that night in Venice, when Sue and I fell asleep under a blanket of grace, I slept for only four hours. However, I dreamed the whole night. I dreamed while staring at the stars, I dreamed while watching the moon rise with a fuller-lipped smile than the one she wore the night we arrived. I dreamed in whispers as I prayed. I dreamed in my sleep. And I woke refreshed and energized.

Sue woke in her usual, “How can it be morning already?” mode, but then she remembered the little bird. “How are you today, little one? Any better? Are you hungry?”

The bread crumbs Sue had left in the nest the night before appeared untouched.

“She’s still breathing.” Sue leaned close but didn’t touch the bird so as not to frighten it.

“Give her another day,” I suggested. “She might be building up her strength by sleeping a lot.”

“Today is the last day the men are here, right?”

“Yes. I told Sam we would prepare a large breakfast before they all left. We should get going to the panetteria.”

“I’ll go with you,” Sue said. “Maybe the gondolier will be back today, and I can watch him flirt with you.”

“Don’t count on it.”

My words turned out prophetic. No gondoliers lined up at the bakery.

Lucia cheerfully greeted us and held up a round loaf of bread with a nice brown crust.

“Si,” I said, not knowing what type of bread it was but feeling confident it would be delicious. We bought nearly as much bread as we had the day before since the men had eaten every crumb.

I paid Lucia and wished I knew how to tell her that this was the last day we would be buying for an army. Piecing together an awkward sentence with the few Italian words I knew, I said to Lucia, “Domani, solo due. No nove. Si? Solo due.”

Lucia nodded and said “ciao.” I hoped she understood because I didn’t want her to fire up the oven the next day for an extra large batch of daily bread.

Sue and I took off once again looking like the neighborhood
bakery bandits, our shopping bags stuffed to overflowing.

A block away we were greeted by an aging Italian woman wearing a scarf over her head and pulling a wheeled shopping tote. Inside the squeaky-wheeled shopping tote was a stuffed gunnysack tied at the top with rope. She stopped walking and eyed Sue and me expectantly.

“
Uvas
?” she asked.

Sue and I smiled and nodded slightly in an attempt to be polite. She seemed too nicely groomed to be a beggar. We would have gone around her, but she was blocking the walkway.

“Due?” She tilted her head and added a string of other Italian words.

We recognized the Italian word for “two,” and I nodded again that, yes, there were two of us.

“Are you tracking with this woman?” Sue asked.

“Not yet.”

“Due uvas?” she asked.

I tentatively said, “Si?”

The woman responded with a look of satisfaction and a nod.

“Does she want money?” Sue asked.

“I don’t think so.”

The woman reached into the gunnysack and the bundle of something inside rustled around. Sue and I exchanged confused expressions and took a step back. The sound of a
chicken cackling caused us to reach for each other at the same time and nearly drop our shopping bags bulging with bread.

“Ah!” The woman extracted her hand and jubilantly offered us an undeniably fresh egg. She placed it in Sue’s hand.

Sue looked as stunned as I felt. “Jenna, it’s still warm. Creepy warm.”

“Don’t drop it, whatever you do,” I muttered back to her.

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Just hold it and keep smiling.”

The woman again reached into her bag of chicken tricks, and with only a funny squawk to once again prepare us for the glad event, another warm brown egg magically appeared. This one was handed to me.

“I think I’m supposed to pay her,” I said, not sure how I was going to pull out my wallet while juggling the bags of bread and the fresh egg.

“Here,” I said to Sue, rolling the egg into her hand, as if we were playing some sort of mixer game. “Hold this for me, will you?”

“Jenna!”

“Hang on.” I put down one of the bags of bread and pulled out some coins. I had no idea what the going street value was in Venice for two hot eggs.

The woman was now fiddling with a cardboard box
under the wiggling gunnysack. She lifted up the box to me and opened the lid, as if seeking my approval for the contents.

The box contained more eggs. At least twenty. All brown and stacked neatly so as not to break.