Page 67 of The Cowboy Who Looked Again

She leaned in close to hear him, then turned her mouth toward him. “Maybe she could send him her notes.”

“She doesn’t speak from notes.”

No wonder she was so good, and Misty focused on her again. “Maybe we could send him some notes,” she whispered.

Link nodded, and Misty stayed cuddled close to his chest. She liked how warm and strong he made her feel. How loved and cherished. No one before him had ever given her such a sense of safety and security—not that she’d let anyone try.

“But one hairpin curve is not what life is entirely,” Willa said now. “One sudden drop doesn’t mean you get to stay down forever. And yes, I know it can feel like all God has dealt you is bad cards. A losing hand. A curve here, and another there, and then a steep drop-off, and then an impossible hike back to the top. Oh, do I know that.”

She stopped there, and the last note in her voice spoke of hurt and pain and difficult past times. Misty didn’t know all of them in Willa’s life, but in that moment, she realized that everyone—absolutely everyone—needed the master physician at some point. Probably a lot of points. Continually.

“There is no better friend than the Lord Jesus Christ,” Willa said, and Misty pulled in a sharp breath. The words could’ve come from her in that moment, as the realizations continued to spiral through her. “He has suffered for all you’re going through. For all I’m going through. For all I’ve been through; for all you’ve been through. For each one of us. Not only the things we’ve done wrong and need to repent for, but for the pain.”

Again, that tone of understanding, of pure agony, rang in Willa’s voice on the last word. She paused again, and Misty understood she needed a moment to solidify her emotions. Misty’s felt like wobbling gelatin that had sat too close to a boiling hot burner. The fire flickered too close, and she was about to lose all composure and let everything she felt blubber from her.

She took another breath, trying to hitch things back where they belonged.

“For the disease and discomforts in your physical body,” Willa said now, her voice quiet. “For the emotional and mental hurt others inflict upon you. For the burdens you carry.” She seemed to look right at Misty then, and her head cocked. She too had reddish-blonde hair, and perhaps that was why Misty had always felt such a strong connection to her.

Either way, Willa smiled softly then. “Jesus has already carried those burdens, my friends. Perhaps it’s time you set them down. Put them at His feet, where they belong. Don’t carry them with you anymore.” She drew a breath and switched her gaze to somewhere else in the church.

Misty felt utterly exposed, like every eye from every congregant had suddenly zeroed in on her. She even glanced around as if to throw off their gazes. No one had looked her way.

But she felt perfectly seen by God.

“Have the long view,” Willa said. “Expand your perspective. If you don’t know how, kneel down tonight, and ask God to help you see the bigger picture, and where you belong inside it. For my brothers and sisters, we all belong inside the family of God.”

She might as well have invited Misty to move to Three Rivers permanently, marry Link, and become a Glover. That alone would provide such a sense of safety and belonging—two things Misty had given up on over two decades ago. But to belong to the family of God too?

It felt incomprehensible, and yet, perfectly right at the same time.

Her mind took off on a different path then, and Misty started discarding some of the bigger loads she’d been carrying for so long. It was never her responsibility to make sure her mother was comforted, or got to work on time, or paid the rent. She’d done those things, but she didn’t have to carry the guilt that she hadn’t done it well enough.

She shouldn’t have had to raise her brother. While she had, she’d done the best job she could’ve possibly done as a ten-year-old. She didn’t have to shoulder the responsibility of his incarceration any longer.

Perhaps she’d gone too far in the opposite direction by refusing to date, assuming all men would be as horrible as the previous ones she’d had in her life. But she didn’t even have to keep packing those feelings, or that worry, guilt, or shame.

She truly could lay all of it down, for Jesus had already carried these troubles, trials, and turmoils for her.

By the time they rose to their feet to sing the closing hymn, Misty did so without thousands of pounds of her past burdening her. Link looked over to her and blinked. “Hey, are you all right?”

“Why?” she asked as the organ and piano began to play together. “Do I not look all right?”

“You look…different,” he said.

Misty smiled at him, experiencing a true miracle—one where her Lord and Savior had done what He’d always promised to do. He’d walked with her. “I feel different.”

Then she faced the front and sang along with everyone as they lifted their voices in praises—for the good, the bad, the evil, the pain, the heartache, the mental anguish, and the absolute saving power of God the Father and his son Jesus Christ.

She grinned as she stepped into Link’s arms afterward, the congregation breaking ranks and streaming up and down the aisles. “All right, baby,” she said, noting how his face lit up with her term of endearment. Today was a day of revelations, because Misty realized in that moment how very much Link needed to be told how amazing he was.

Her memory fired at her, reminding her that he often felt overlooked in his family, and she had the power to make him feel seen. Make him feel appreciated. Make him feel loved.

“You promised me an amazing dance.”

“That I did,” he whispered as he pulled her close and hugged her. “Let’s hope we don’t melt before those fireflies swarm us.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

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