War Room (18 page)

“For you? No, I got stuff to do.”

Tony stared at him. Then came a big smile on Michael’s face. “I’m just playing. What’s up?”

They got their coffee and grabbed a table away from
everyone else. Tony didn’t know whether to discuss his job situation or what had happened with Elizabeth. He decided on the latter and explained what he’d seen in Elizabeth’s closet.

“It kind of freaked me out,” Tony said.

“So the whole closet was empty?” Michael said.

“Yeah, except for the papers on the wall.”

“And what did she do with her clothes?”

“Michael, I don’t know. Some other closet. Why does that matter?”

Michael sat forward. “Dude, I don’t think you understand how important this is. When was the last time you heard of a woman giving up some closet space?”

Tony frowned and shrugged.

“All I know is, you can fight against your wife, and probably hold your own, but if God is fighting for her, you can hit the gym all you want to, but it’s not looking too good for you.”

Tony stared into the distance, wondering if he should talk about the loss of his job, the marriage struggles, all the stuff that weighed him down like a thousand-pound barbell.

“Man, I wish my wife would pray for me like that,” Michael said. “Plus, I could use the closet space.”

Tony wanted to laugh, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Michael stood. “I gotta catch my shift. I’ll check with you later.”

Tony sat for a few moments thinking. All of his life had
been tied up with what he did. His identity was his job and what a good salesman he was. With that gone, how would he define himself? And if he had stayed with Brightwell for the rest of his life, would he have anything more than he had right now? He’d have a pension and some kind of retirement plan and insurance, for sure. But would he have anything of lasting value? Would he have a wife who loved him in spite of how he’d acted? Would he have a daughter who wanted to be with him?

He glanced at his watch and walked toward the gym, where Danielle and her teammates practiced. He stopped at the front desk and caught the receptionist’s attention.

“Excuse me. Can you tell Danielle I’ll be back to get her after practice?”

The girl smiled and took a scrap piece of paper from a pile. “Sure, I’ll tell her. My pleasure.”

He thanked her and drove home, the radio off. It was still and quiet when he walked in the door. Empty. It was almost as if God were showing him what life would be like if he continued living his own way. He would wind up alone, separated from the people he loved and, more importantly, from the people who really loved him.

What a fool he had been. He had told himself that he worked hard because he wanted to provide for his family. The truth was, he wanted what he wanted. He had made the decision to throw himself into his sales, and the more success he had, the more he threw himself at it. The whole thing had wrapped him up and clouded his vision.

When had he ever asked Elizabeth what she wanted? When had he ever asked if he could do something for her? What would make her life easier or better? He’d always been consumed with whatever was on his mind, whether it was work or his next trip or the big game. It was never Danielle or Elizabeth and what they were interested in or what would help them.

When had he ever prayed for his family? That thought hit him between the eyes. He had always thought of himself as a good, God-fearing person. He’d given his life to Christ years ago and read his Bible and knew that the only really satisfying life was found in living for God and following Jesus. But the inexorable draw of day-to-day living, the ebb and flow of a career, caused a slow drift away from the truth. He could see that now.

The loss of the job, the accusation of padding the numbers, and the truth of what had really happened brought him to the brick wall of himself. And the dream he had the previous night also confronted him. He would never strike his wife. He would never harm her or take out his frustration physically, but he could see that he had hurt her, that he had done the next best thing to a gut punch with every selfish choice he made.

He went to Elizabeth’s closet and sat in a small chair staring at the prayers on the wall. The verses. The requests. The people in her life. Tony didn’t even recognize some of the names and for that he was ashamed. How could his
wife be fervently praying for people when he didn’t even know who they were?

They aren’t important.

Those words came to him softly, in his heart. These people weren’t important
 
—but the people who
were
important, he remembered. He wrote down their names. He memorized them, used mnemonic devices to make sure he knew they were important. So why didn’t he do that with the woman at the community center who knew his daughter and Elizabeth?

His eyes rested on the sheet that Elizabeth had written about him, the things she was praying over his life. She prayed he would love her and Danielle, that he would be honorable in his work, that he would hate his own sin. She hadn’t even known how his life had become unraveled, hadn’t known of his sin, and this was what she was praying.

Hate his own sin.

He stared at the words. What did it mean to hate your own sin? It sounded so spiritual, so Christian. But that was really the crux of it, wasn’t it? In order for him to change, he had to see the ways he was hurting his family, the ways he was hurting his employer
 
—and those he came in contact with, like Veronica. He closed his eyes and thought of how close he’d come to throwing it all away. If he’d ordered something else on the menu, he might not have become sick. He might have gone with Veronica that night.

Or maybe it wasn’t the food that had sickened him.
Maybe it was something else, something deeper than his stomach.

He stood and moved to sit on the bed, facing a picture of Elizabeth from their wedding. She looked so happy, standing straight and tall, the white dress highlighting her dazzling smile. If he could have bottled the joy that poured out of her in that picture, he’d be a rich man. She’d been so full of hope, ready to be loved. The light on her face had grown dimmer in the past decade.

At the wedding, the pastor had talked about what it meant to love someone like Jesus loved. And he charged Tony to do that. Tony didn’t remember much of the message, the challenge, but he knew he hadn’t lived up to that ideal. Not even close.

A sadness that cut to his very core fell over him. But it was more than sadness, more than regret. It was a deep conviction. It was a verdict on his life. As he stared at the picture, he flashed to the dream where he’d been attacking his wife. Like some music stab in a movie that makes you jump, a jolt went through him and made him flinch. The wave hit him again and he was rolling beneath it, struggling for breath.

He stumbled from their room, wandering through the house he had worked so hard to buy. All the stuff, the furniture, the nicest television, the granite countertops, the expensive bookcases. What did any of this mean?

A verse flashed through his mind, something he had memorized when he was a child in one of those children’s
programs at church. It was tucked away back there in some hidden room in his mind, stored until this moment.

“What is a man benefited if he gains the whole world, yet loses or forfeits himsel
f
?
”
This wasn’t just about losing his wife and daughter. It wasn’t just about serving them and memorizing another list of names written in his notebook. It was deeper.

Elizabeth hadn’t been praying for Tony to become the husband she wanted because she was unhappy. She had been praying for him because she knew
he
was unhappy. What was that old quote?
“Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God
”
? Something like that.

He moved into Danielle’s room, looking at the pictures she displayed. She loved to color and draw. On a table near her desk was a card she had colored:
I
♥
DOUBLE DUTCH
. He picked up a picture of her smiling, looking up into the camera, sitting in a big leather chair. The innocence of childhood. The hopes and dreams that lay ahead. He stared at the picture of his little girl as a newborn. What kind of legacy was he leaving for her? Would he even be in her life a year from now? Ten years? He didn’t want her to wind up feeling abandoned like he had felt.

He had criticized her for quitting basketball. He had missed her heart. All the chances he had to spend time with her, to play a game or watch a movie or go for a walk
 
—he’d been too busy for the most important thing.

It all came together for him in that moment. His eyes watering, his heart breaking at the choices he had made,
Tony thought,
I don’t want to miss any of this. I don’t want to miss life, real life.

He had contemplated ending his life. He truly had thought that his family would be better off without him because they would get his life insurance. But looking at how much his wife and daughter loved him in spite of the way he had treated them pushed him toward a different ledge. Their life wasn’t about money and nice things and a beautiful house. It was about relationships. It was about showing and receiving love. He had missed that truth. He had worked so hard to provide something good, but he had trusted in the things he could do, the things he could possess, and they had risen up to possess him. He had missed the whole point of his marriage and his life.

The emotion became overwhelming, and he tried to shake it away but couldn’t. He wondered if there might be somebody praying right at that very moment
 
—maybe Elizabeth or Danielle, maybe Miss Clara. They were praying,
God, do something in Tony’s heart
, because he could feel it, all the way to his toes. And instead of running his car into a phone pole or finding a gun to end his life, he decided he would surrender in a different way.

He knelt slowly on the floor of Danielle’s room and bowed his head. It was the familiar posture of some holy person relating to God, but Tony knew he wasn’t holy. It took a moment to form the words, but then they came through his tears.

“Jesus, I’m not a good man. I’m selfish. I’m prideful.
And I’m hurting this family. But this is not who I wanted to be. I don’t like the man I’ve become. And I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know what to do.”

The words were heavy. It took every ounce of strength in him to get them out, to push them forward from his lips. Finally he couldn’t push anymore. He said the only words he could raise from the well.

“Forgive me, please.” He leaned over, his head on the floor now. “Forgive me, Jesus.”

It was a prayer of surrender. A prayer of a helpless heart. And he wasn’t doing this for Elizabeth or Danielle. He wasn’t doing this so he could get his job back, because he knew that wasn’t going to happen. His surrender wasn’t because he thought he could make God do what he wanted. That idea was gone. He prayed because he knew it was his last resort and that it was the first thing he should have done, long ago.

With his head on the carpet of Danielle’s room, Tony wept. He wept for all he’d done to distance himself from the people who loved him. He wept for the wasted years. Each tear was a plea for help and a desire for surrender. And when he stood, it felt like that thousand-pound barbell pushing down on his soul had been lifted. God had been spotting him all along. And for the first time in what seemed like forever, the weight had been replaced with something that felt like hope.

Elizabeth had been encouraged
by her visit with Clara. Every conversation brought out some new facet of a lesson learned and gave her hope that things could change. She just had to stay the course. Keep moving forward, holding God’s hand, and trusting Him.

She was in her car, ready to drive away, when she felt the need to pray again for Tony. There was no lightning, no fish symbol in the clouds above her, no voice that whispered some mysterious message. It was just a feeling that she needed to stop and pray.

“Lord, I don’t know if Tony is in trouble or if he’s upset about his job or if he’s just working out at the gym. But I
pray that You would draw him closer. Help him see there’s no sin so great that You aren’t ready to forgive. I pray You would give him hope. I pray You would allow him to see how much You love him and want him to come back to You. And give me the ability to love him well, through whatever we face.”

She sat there pouring out her heart to God. It was funny
 
—not long ago she would have seen prayer as wasted time. Now she looked at it as the most important thing she did.

After a few minutes she felt a peace about going ahead with her day, but she kept praying as she turned on a song about the goodness of God.

She stopped at the office and met with Mandy. She didn’t tell her everything about the situation, but enough that the woman came over and gave her a hug.

“I’m so sorry about Tony’s job,” Mandy said. “Let me see if I can find you a few more properties in the interim.”

Tony walked into the community center and stopped at the front desk. It wasn’t the younger girl this time, but a woman he recognized as a friend of Elizabeth’s. What was her name?

“I’m back for Danielle,” he said.

The woman smiled. “They’re not quite finished yet, Tony. But you can watch them from right over there. The team’s getting pretty good.”

Tony smiled. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember your name.”

“It’s Tina,” she said.

“Thank you, Tina.”

He pulled out a scrap of paper and wrote her name on it as he walked into the noisy gym. There were teams scattered around the hardwood working on their routines. He spotted Danielle and for the first time saw them practicing. Her coach was calling out instructions, and Danielle and Jennifer were in perfect sync. He’d been upset that she had quit basketball, but seeing her jumping rope with that smile brought him joy. Her footwork was impressive, and when Danielle cartwheeled into the ropes, he couldn’t believe it. Even when they missed and the ropes stopped, Danielle smiled from ear to ear and her coach clapped and praised them and then gave a few pointers.

Tony hugged her tightly when she was finished and they walked toward the car, passing the front desk.

Tina,
he said to himself.
Tina.

In the car, they pulled out of the parking lot and he instinctively wanted to fill the silence with the radio. But he didn’t turn it on. He could tell there was something more important. Tony looked in the rearview mirror at his daughter. “Hey, you know what?”

Danielle’s face was expressionless.

“I thought your jump rope routine was going to be something simple. But it wasn’t. It was pretty difficult. You were really good, Danielle. I was impressed.”

The more words he said, the more she reacted. First
in her eyes. Then her mouth. Then her whole face lit up. Just a few words was all it took to open her heart up like a flower.

“Thanks,” she said quickly, as if obeying some inner script, and a smile spread across her face. She looked at him, then back down, still smiling.

“When did you learn to do a cartwheel like that?” he said.

She told him about Coach Trish, how she helped them perfect the things they’d done in the gym to make their routine more complicated, a higher risk, just like a gymnastics routine. He got lost in the conversation, in her explanation of how she and Jennifer had practiced for hours together and how much fun they’d had. He was so absorbed that he didn’t see the car in front of his house or Elizabeth standing in the driveway until he pulled in. Rick was talking with Elizabeth and he had his clipboard out and Tony remembered what had happened at the office the day before.

“Daddy, why are they here?”

“They’ve come to get this car, Danielle.”

“Why do they need your car?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“Is that all they’re taking?” she said, a tremble in her voice.

“Now you don’t have to worry about that, sweetie,” Tony said. “We’re going to be all right, okay? Look at me.
You listen to me. Everything is going to be all right. Do you believe me?”

There was a question in her voice and in her eyes. But she said dutifully, “Yes, sir.”

She got out and walked slowly toward her mother. Tony followed. The whole scene was humiliating, but he was ready.

“Rick,” Tony said.

“Tony,” Rick said, his face showing real regret. “I’m sorry about this.”

He looked the man in the eyes and for the first time saw the hurt there. It was killing him to do this to Tony and his family. He didn’t want to fire Tony, but he’d been forced to act. Tony saw how his actions had not only affected his family but those he worked with.

“It’s not your fault,” Tony said with conviction.

Rick held out a pad with a printed sheet on top. “I need you to sign that we came for the car. And clean out any items that belong to you.”

Tony nodded and signed. “I already did.”

Rick took the paperwork and paused. “You’re a talented guy, Tony. I’m sorry to see this happen.” He took the keys from Tony. “You take care.”

Elizabeth politely nodded as Rick got in Tony’s car and drove away, followed by the other man from Brightwell Tony didn’t know. Danielle stayed close to them as they watched the cars drive away.

“Why are they taking Daddy’s car?” she said.

“We’ll talk about it later, baby, okay?” Elizabeth said. “Why don’t you go inside and knock out some chores before lunch, all right?”

“Okay.”

Danielle walked inside, leaving Tony and Elizabeth alone on the driveway. He wanted to tell her everything that had happened. He wanted to look her in the eye and apologize. Instead, he smiled sadly and held out a hand.

She took it and squeezed. “You okay?”

He nodded before he walked into the house.

Elizabeth found Danielle in her bedroom making her bed. “How did practice go?”

“Fine,” Danielle said.

Elizabeth sat on Danielle’s chair and Danielle seemed to instinctively know to stop and listen.

“Honey, I can’t explain everything right now, but I want you to know we’re going to be fine, okay?”

The look in her eyes was one of fear. “That’s what Daddy said.”

“He did?”

She nodded. “He said everything is going to be all right and to believe him. But I don’t know what is next after they take his car.”

Elizabeth hugged her and kissed her forehead. Part of loving a child was not telling her everything. Danielle didn’t need to live under the weight of a job loss. Elizabeth
had assumed this was a layoff or downsizing, but Rick’s words and Tony’s admission that it wasn’t Rick’s fault confirmed something else had happened.

“You just keep writing down what you’re feeling in your journal, okay? And you and I will keep talking about this.”

Danielle nodded. Elizabeth left the room and went downstairs to find Tony sitting in the corner chair in their bedroom, leaning over with his elbows on his knees. She wanted to encourage him and let him know she was all-in, fully on his team.

“I picked up a few more houses to sell this morning. I’ve asked Mandy to give me everything she can for the next couple months.”

“That’s good, Liz,” Tony said, looking up at her. Then he paused. “Can we talk?”

“Sure,” she said. She sat across from him on the edge of the bed and it felt like something was happening in the room. All the prayer, all the pleading with God . . . Was Tony about to tell her he was leaving? Was he choosing some other woman from Raleigh or Atlanta? Elizabeth quieted her heart and took a deep breath. She just needed to listen. Not react too strongly.

Please, God,
she prayed.
Help me to hear him and let him just say what he needs to say. Help me not be afraid.

“I just don’t understand why you’re treating me this way,” Tony said.

Because I love you,
she wanted to say.
Because I care.
But
she didn’t say it. She didn’t say anything, hoping to draw him out, let him speak.

“When I told you what happened with my job, I expected you to hit the ceiling, Liz,” Tony continued. “So in my mind, I was ready to defend myself. Except this time I can’t.”

Elizabeth listened to his words, but more than that, she listened to his heart
 
—the intangible things between the sentences. When she saw the emotion welling up in his eyes, it was all she could do to hold it together.

Tony looked out the window, then around at the room. Then he hung his head. “I hate saying this, but I deserved to get fired. I was deceiving them. And I was deceiving you. I almost cheated on you, Liz. I thought about it. I almost did it. But you know all this. And you’re still here.”

Her eyes stung. It was like watching her personal Jericho, the walls falling down right there in their bedroom.

“I see your closet,” he said. “I see the way you’re praying for me. Why would you do that when you see the type of man I’ve become?”

Her lip quivered as she watched the tears stream down his face. He was broken. He was at the end of himself. And it was a beautiful sight.

“Because I’m not done with us,” she said, the strength of her voice surprising her. It was like she was speaking to Tony and anyone else who might be listening. “I will fight for our marriage. But I’ve learned that my contentment can’t come from you. Tony, I love you. But I am His
before I’m yours. And because I love Jesus, I’m staying right here.”

The dam broke and Tony fell to his knees, weeping. He bent over, his body racked with sobs. “I’m sorry, Liz. I asked God to forgive me. But I need you to forgive me. I don’t want you to quit on me.”

His emotion became hers and the two of them wept. “I forgive you,” she said. “I forgive you.”

Tony put his head on her knees. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. She put a hand to her chest and shook her head in amazement. “Thank You, Lord,” she whispered.

Tony kissed her hand and they held each other there, crying, rejoicing, wrapped in love
 
—and not just their own. Elizabeth glanced at the door when she saw movement outside. It was Danielle, listening. It looked like perhaps she was crying too. Before Elizabeth could invite her in, she was gone, back to her room, probably. Back to put a check mark beside her own answer to prayer in her closet.