The Art of Losing Yourself (38 page)

Yes, God, more than You
.

The realization collapsed what was left. I crumbled. But Ben caught me. He cradled me against his chest as I cried tears long overdue. I grieved a grief that turned me inside out. I grieved for the ways I hoped our life would go, but didn’t. I grieved for the six babies that took root in my womb but would not stay. I grieved the easy road that so many traveled not even realizing they traveled it—getting married and having babies and watching those babies grow. And when I was wrung dry and the tears were no more, I sat in the stillness and listened to the steady thrum of Ben’s heart.

I sniffed and wiped at my tears. “Why does it have to be so hard?”

“I don’t know.”

“We did everything right.” But even as the oft-repeated words escaped, they sounded paltry. Right according to whom? I knew the Bible. Did I really believe that God somehow owed me one for good behavior? Somewhere along the line, I made a bargain with the Lord that He never made with me. I’d love Him, I’d do what He said, so long as He gave me what I wanted. I reduced Him to nothing more than my personal genie. “Ben, what if we never have kids?”

“Then God will give us the grace we need to live with that.”

They were scary words. Uncertain words. Words that came unattached to a promise. Words without a clear ending. Words that required everything and nothing but trust in a sovereign God who was wholly good, despite the circumstances of the moment that might say otherwise. I wasn’t sure I was there yet.

“Carmen, I think we should go back to Dr. Rafferty.”

“Once Sandy gets wind of my meltdown, we probably won’t have a choice.”

“Not for the adoption. For us.”

My gut reaction was no. We didn’t need counseling. We needed a child.
But I was so weary of needing something that might not ever come. I was so sick of being in a constant state of longing. Perhaps it was time to set it down and attend to what I had in front of me, instead of what I didn’t. Right now, I had Ben. At one time in my life, that hadn’t been just enough; it had been everything. Maybe if we could find a way back to each other, stronger than we were before, then maybe there was grace to be found in this after all. “Okay.”

He cupped my face with his hands and wiped my tears with his thumbs.

“I think I lost my job today,” I said.

“And if you didn’t?”

I’d like to hang up my Carmen Hart Channel Three News persona for good. “I want to resign.”

C
ARMEN

I walked inside Pine Ridge, a strange mixture of frightened and free. When I signed in as a guest, I avoided eye contact with the gal behind the desk and made my way to Aunt Ingrid’s room on the second floor. I’d stopped hoping to find her in the dining hall weeks ago. The closer I got, the louder the ruckus. It appeared that Dorothy had turned her TV volume to the max. Her hacking cough mixed with the TV noise, as did Rayanna’s calm, southern drawl, politely yet firmly insisting Dorothy turn the volume down.

“But I can’t hear it if I turn it down. What’s the point of having a TV if I can’t hear it?”

“Now Miss Dorothy, every single person in Pensacola can hear that TV.”

I stepped inside Ingrid’s room and found her in a familiar position—sitting in the rocking chair facing the window, her arthritic hands resting on top of the Bible in her lap. A gust of wind swayed the trees outside and set the barren bird feeders to swaying.

I cleared my throat and knocked on her opened bedroom door to announce myself, wondering who I would be today. A stranger. Evelyn. Myself? Confusion and recognition went to battle in the brown of her irises. I rooted for recognition to win, but confusion came out victorious.

“Hello,” I said from my spot in the doorway.

“Hello,” she said back. “Have you seen the sky?”

I nodded.

“It looks like a storm is coming.” She smiled at the dark, swollen clouds blowing in from the south. “I like storms.”

Even though she didn’t recognize me, she was in a pleasant mood. Most days, her forgetfulness, her inability to remember, her constant state of confusion agitated her. Today was not one of those days. It was a small sort of victory, I guess.

“Do you mind if I visit for a while?” I asked.

“That would be nice.”

I took a seat on the edge of her bed as another gust of wind swept through Pine Ridge’s lawn below. They had several wind chimes hanging in their courtyard. I could almost hear the loud tinkling notes they made as they knocked together.

Aunt Ingrid rocked back and forth.

“I got fired today,” I said, still unable to fully believe it.

Ingrid raised her sparse eyebrows at my confession. “What kind of job did you have?”

“I’m a meteorologist.”

This seemed to delight Aunt Ingrid. “On the news?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know all about the storm that’s coming.”

In theory.

“Why were you fired?”

“I made too many mistakes.” Or more like two big ones. They’d extended grace back in August. This time there was no grace to be had. Not when I broke down on air and then walked out of the station, leaving them high and dry.

“Do you know what you will do now?”

I shook my head, because I had no idea. Would I work at The Treasure Chest? Would Ben and I sell our home and move into one of the upstairs apartments? Would Gracie join us? I wished I could tell my aunt about all we’d done with the place. I wished I could ask for advice, but she was lost in a world where The Treasure Chest did not exist.

Ingrid rocked a little longer while the wind blew outside, then picked up the Bible from her lap. “Would you mind reading to me? The words get all jumbled in my mind when I try.”

I leaned away from her offering. I told God I didn’t believe in Him, yet it was like He had me by the scruff of the neck and wouldn’t let go. She held her Bible out farther, giving me no choice but to take it. So I did. I opened it up to her bookmark and found Job. The two most depressing books of the Bible had to be a toss-up between Lamentations and Job. It figured she’d ask for one of them.

I began reading, disturbed by all the suffering. I glanced at Aunt Ingrid a time or two, worried the story might disturb her as well. But she rested her head
against the back of the rocker, eyes closed, listening with a serene expression on her face.

“ ‘Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The L
ORD
gave, and the L
ORD
has taken away; blessed be the name of the L
ORD
.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.’ ”

Aunt Ingrid had underlined the passage in blue ink and scrawled a familiar date in the margin. It was the day Gerald died of a heart attack. I blinked down at the note, overwhelmed by all my aunt had lost. Her parents, every one of her siblings, and her husband too. As if that weren’t enough, now she’d lost herself. Dementia had stolen her memories. Her relationships. Her wits.

But it had not stolen her faith.

The thought struck me, profound in its truth. That was the one thing dementia had been unable to steal. And even if it did, even if she ended up forgetting every word she underlined, she couldn’t really lose it. Ingrid was sealed. She was secure. This world could take every last thing from her, yet God would not let her be plucked from His hand. It was a promise straight from the book I held in my lap.

“The L
ORD
gave, and the L
ORD
has taken away; blessed be the name of the L
ORD
.”

Inside Aunt Ingrid’s room at the Pine Ridge Retirement Facility, a place where age won every battle, I came face to face with the fact that He was God. Who was I to say He couldn’t take away what He had given? Who was I to think He owed me anything? Especially when He already had given me everything—on that cross and in that empty tomb, He’d given it all. Anything else—my marriage to Ben, my friendship with Natalie, my budding relationship with Gracie—was extra.

The realization of it all unearthed a seed in my heart—a seed of entitlement and bitterness. A seed that had sown nothing but death. I didn’t want to let the seed remain, but after all this time, I wasn’t sure how to pluck it out.

“Knock, knock! It’s time for dinner.” Rayanna stood in the doorway.

“Is it dinnertime already?” Ingrid asked. “I’m not even hungry.”

The news came as a jolt. I looked at the clock on Ingrid’s nightstand. Gracie’s academic bowl started in ten minutes. I’d come much too close to
forgetting. Leaving the Bible on the bed, I said good-bye and hurried out to my car. With light traffic, the commute from Pensacola to Bay Breeze took fifteen minutes. I was trying to get there during rush hour, with dark-as-night clouds swirling overhead.

Taking the route least traveled, hoping to avoid as many stoplights as possible, I picked up my phone. I needed to call Gracie and let her know that even though I was running a little late, I’d be there. I promised I’d be there, and I was not going to break that promise. But when I tried powering up my phone, there was no power to be had.

Between not charging it last night and the copious phone calls coming in today, the battery had died. I tapped the wheel, glancing at the clock, muttering, “Come on, come on, come on!” the entire way. Then I reached the Pensacola Bay Bridge and my stomach dropped. Traffic was at a complete standstill. I tried craning my neck to figure out why, as if the why might get it moving again. All I could see was a long line of bumper-to-bumper cars. The bridge was gridlocked.

Forget late. I’d be lucky to make it at all.

G
RACIE

I squinted into the auditorium from the back of the stage, scanning the audience row by row. So far, no Carmen. Behind me, my teammates went over last-minute notes. Every single one of them had somebody visit backstage—Malik’s parents, Fred’s older brothers, Veronica’s new boyfriend. The only person who didn’t have anyone visit? Me.

Malik called me over to the group.

My stomach cramped with nerves.

“All right, today’s victory depends on quick hands. Coral Gables is lightning fast with the buzzer. We can’t let them lock us out.” There was no poetic vernacular today. This was showtime. Whoever won would move on to the national academic bowl in Chicago. Last year, it was held in St. Louis. The team made it all the way into the quarterfinals. This year, Malik thought we had a shot at becoming national champs. “Don’t forget your area of expertise. If we zero in on the topics we’ve been studying, we should be fine. Our next stop will be Chi-town.”

My nerves switched into panic mode.

“Hands in the middle. On the count of three,
focus
. One…two…three…”

Malik, Veronica, and Fred lifted their hands and shouted the word. I lifted my hand too, but the dryness in my throat kept me silent.

Bay Breeze’s principal wished us good luck and shuffled us onto the stage. The crowd applauded. There were even a few hoots and hollers. The moderator—a severe-looking woman who was all sharp points and bony edges—introduced us one by one and invited us to take our places behind a long table. Across the stage, our opponents sat at a table like ours, wearing matching red shirts with
Cavaliers
stitched in gray on the front. There was a buzzer and a desktop microphone in front of every seat.

I twisted my mood ring around my sweaty finger. The stone was a bluish green, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I was not feeling at all calm or
relaxed. The moderator explained the rules of the game for the audience’s sake, not ours. I spotted Elias sitting in the center of the auditorium, a few aisles back. Chanelle sat beside him. No Ben. No Mom. And for all her talk about being proud, about being there front and center with bells on, no Carmen either.

I tried shaking out my hands beneath the table, as if the movement might get blood flowing into them again. They were freezing cold. The moderator told us to move into position. We each placed one palm flat in front of our buzzers and our opposing hands behind us.

“For ten points,” the moderator said from behind her podium, “identify the metric equivalent of the U.S. unit of horse—”

Veronica slapped the buzzer and leaned toward her microphone. “Watt.”

“That is correct.”

The audience cheered. Malik and Fred gave Veronica an encouraging pat on the back.

I thought about my mother, lying on the couch in our dark living room, surrounded by cheap wine boxes. I couldn’t count on her. But I had counted on Carmen. I’d trusted her when she promised to be here.

“For ten points, which eleven-letter adjective is used before the word
mark
to refer to—”

Malik and a pudgy kid from Coral Gables hit their buzzer with Malik ahead by what could only be a fraction of a second.

“Diacritical.”

“That is correct.”

More cheering. More encouraging back pats.

One of the doors at the back of the auditorium opened. I peered through the dark, attempting to bring substance to the person walking down the aisle. Was it Carmen? Or Ben?

“For ten points, which philosopher argued against innate ideas, holding that the mind is a tabula rasa—”

I lifted my hand off the table, but not quickly enough. A team member from Coral Gables had already buzzed. “John Locke.”

“Correct.”

My teammates stirred beside me, because that was my topic. I was supposed to know that answer, yet I hadn’t even hit the buzzer. I couldn’t relax. I
couldn’t focus. As the questions continued, I kept glancing into the crowd, waiting for Carmen to materialize. I didn’t understand how she could forget. I reminded her last night. She said she’d be here.

We entered into the next round, where questions were worth twenty points instead of ten.

“The masculine half of this deity is known as Purusha, while this figure’s female form is called Satrap.”

Malik shifted his weight and gave me a slight nudge, as if to say,
Here’s mythology. Your turn, Gracie Fisher
. But my brain had become a tabula rasa.

“Among the objects is his arms are a water jug—”

Veronica slapped the buzzer too late. Someone on the other team had already locked us out. “Brahma.”

Twenty points to them.

My confidence wilted.

I may have fooled Elias and my teammates and Pastor Zeke, but I never fooled myself. I didn’t belong up here, in this position where others depended on me. I wasn’t sure how I let myself get up here at all. Veronica made eye contact, a question in her eyes, as if to ask whether or not I was okay. No, I wanted to say. I wasn’t. I needed to get off the stage. I needed everyone to stop staring at me.

“During World War II, his nickname was ‘Old Blood and—’ ”

Fred buzzed in and won our team twenty points with George S. Patton. The second round melted into the final. Still no Carmen. The points were neck and neck. Malik, Veronica, and Fred fulfilled their roles. They answered the questions they were supposed to answer. I, however, kept messing up. Every time an RMP question arose, I was either distracted with movement in the audience, too slow to the buzzer, or unable to think of the correct answer. Malik came to my rescue with some of the religious questions, but I was supposed to have mythology and philosophy covered. By the time we reached the end of the match, we were up by ten and everyone in the audience had come to the edge of their seat.

Behind the podium, the moderator flipped to the last question.

I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed it did not belong to me.

“The blood of this deity created a plant that could be turned into an ointment that gave its wearer invincibility.”

My palm broke free from the table and slammed the buzzer, because the question was mythology and mythology was mine. I needed to answer this question if we were going to advance to nationals.
Come on, Gracie
—
invincibility. You read about this two nights ago
. I knew this answer. It was lodged somewhere inside my brain. The moderator looked at me. My teammates looked at me. Everybody in the audience looked at me.

Absolutely nothing came.

“I’m sorry, you have run out of time.” The moderator turned to Coral Gables, and the same team member who knew the Brahma question leaned toward her microphone.

“Prometheus?”

“That is correct.”

His team went nuts. They fell into a huddled-up hug, jumping in unison while their small cheering section cheered and the rest of the audience clapped politely. I stood there feeling sick. I lost the match. I lost the match and Carmen never showed. I thought she cared. I thought I mattered to her. But once again, I misread the cues. She didn’t care about me, at least not as much as she cared about getting a baby. That was her obsession. That was all that mattered. For all her talk, I was still an afterthought.

Unable to face the teammates I’d failed, I hurried off the stage. I grabbed my backpack and made a mad dash toward an obscure exit backstage when somebody grabbed my arm. “Gracie, wait.”

It was Elias.

We hadn’t spoken in nearly two weeks. I still didn’t know why he stopped by the house last Saturday. I never asked and he never offered. Seeing him now, knowing he witnessed my failure while Chanelle most likely held on to his arm, set my entire face on fire.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Not really.” I pulled one strap of my bag over my shoulder and pushed open the door.

“Hey, do you want to grab something to eat?”

I shook my head. No, I didn’t want to grab something to eat. “I need to be alone right now.” Away from anyone and everyone who knew me.

If only I could get away from myself.

Strong waves curled up onto white sand. The clouds were dark purple bruises that stretched to the horizon and met the white-capped sea. Unlike the dock where Elias and I used to sit, there was nothing hemming this body of water in. No shore across the bay. No hotel lights glittering on a stretch of island in the distance. It was a vastness that seemed to stretch into eternity—miles and miles of angry ocean and injured sky.

I came to The Treasure Chest to think and somehow ended up on the shore. A gust of wind rocked me back onto my heels. I closed my eyes against the invisible force, pictures forming a confusing kaleidoscope in my mind. My mother with a hangover. Carmen chopping green peppers with a catatonic expression on her face. Chanelle in her choir robe, singing
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”
Elias’s youth group raising their hands high, whatever problems they had melting away as they lost themselves in the music. Pastor Zeke dunking full-grown adults into a tub of water, then lifting them out while an entire church celebrated. My mother walking into the creek. The canvas hanging in my room.

Behold, I make all things new
.

Standing there on that beach, I only knew one thing with certainty. I didn’t want to be Gracie Fisher anymore. I was done being the inconvenience, the burden, the screwup. Even when I tried my hardest, I still wasn’t enough. If tonight’s match proved anything, it was that. I had studied harder for that match than I’d ever studied in my life, and yet when it came down to it, all I did was mess up. Another gust of wind knocked into me. A wave reached the toes of my boots. The air smelled like rain. Like Elias. And his question came with the wind, the one he asked in the parking lot of The Cross.

“Who do you say Jesus is, Gracie Fisher?”

I didn’t know. Not really. But I knew who I wanted Him to be. And I knew who I didn’t want to be. I took off my boots. Left them in the sand. And walked out into the water.

Make me new. Please, make me new
.