Page 111 of At Her Will

She drew her hand back. “I appreciate that, Rev. I’ve tried various ways to reconcile with them, but when I burned that symbolic bridge, I was done being rejected. I got the message and moved on, just as Cyn said. You ready for lunch?”

He gazed at her but nodded. She pulled away from the house. “Anywhere in particular you’d like to go?”

“I like breakfast for lunch.”

“Me too. Let’s go to Mother’s. They serve it all day.”

“Sounds good.”

It wasn’t far from his old home. She found a parking spot near Mother’s, but when they stopped, she didn’t immediately exit the car.

“I’ve been through countless rounds of guilt and pointless what-ifs, Rev,” she said. “I’ve accepted that sometimes it takes more than exerting my will to achieve a desired outcome.”

When they left her car and began to walk together, he slid his arm around her, his hand overlapping her hip. "You can exert your will where it's welcome. I'm very welcoming of it.”

Her tight lips eased into a smile. “Noted.”

They headed toward the diner’s open door. From the outside, the old brick building didn’t look like much, but the cooking smells wafting into the street could get the stomach rumbling.

“When someone not ready to let the Word in, you have to do what the Lord say,” Rev said abruptly. “You shake the dust off your feet and move on, but you've given them the message, the offered hand, and that don't go away. They can come get it when and if they ready. Till then you just keep your heart open. I think it maybe like that with your family.”

Vera pressed her lips together. "I had to shake the dust from my feet, but it didn’t leave my heart. And I still deal with so much anger over it. What do I do with that?”

“Forgive every day. Like Jesus say. Not seven times, but seven times seventy. His way of saying do it as long as it take.” He tilted his head to look down at her. “Want to come to service tomorrow? I'll sing a song you like. Just tell me which one and I'll put it in the lineup."

"Highway to Hell, AC/DC?"

He laughed out loud. It turned heads in their direction, because Goddess, laughing was just another form of singing, and his voice had that mesmerizing quality for both. "Tisha’s eyes would pop right out of her head."

“Will the Beatles scandalize her? How about 'Here Comes the Sun?' Do you normally take requests?"

"No, but if it's right, that song will come up." His hand tightened on her. “And I have a feeling it will be just right.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

She preferred to sit in the back of his church, not like a student trying to avoid the teacher’s notice, but because it offered the best view of him when his singing propelled him into the nave, toward someone who needed extra attention.

She considered whether forgiveness needed to be asked for strategically positioning herself so she claimed the best view of him, but the Lord and Lady would understand.

You created him, after all. Every fine inch.

Today, he was drawn toward a couple struggling over their relationship with an estranged relative. If it had been anyone but Rev, she would say he did it deliberately, to point a finger toward their conversation the day before. But the Powers-That-Be were multi-taskers; they put information out there that addressed more than one person’s problems.

“The people we love are the hardest to understand,” Rev told the couple. “They can hurt us the deepest. But God love us. That’s all of it. Beginning and end. You don’t have to figure out more than that. Don’t have to control or direct anything.

“When you look at your grandma, you look at her with your heart, not your worries or your head. She a good and lovingperson. She don’t think the way you do. She don’t think the way I do. She don’t need to. We all get to be petals on a sunflower, all of us grouped around the same sun. No matter what we call it, we connected to that light and to each other, you understand? He know her heart, which means you do, too, deep down.

“What’s that song? ‘Here comes the sun.’” His gaze shifted to Vera before coming back to them. They were holding his hands, three sets overlapping. Clutching.

“It going to be all right. We let that warmth in, there it is, just waiting for us to let it in. Open that door, all right. It just starts with this. You go find her, you go where she is, sit down and hold her hand. Just be quiet and still, let God see that and let the sun come out in all of you…”

He rose, singing a line or two of the song before coming back to the point. “We all got someone like that. Your neighbor, a friend who’s not so close to us anymore, a coworker. Someone is upsetting you, and you haven’t told them or talked it out. You go to them and you say, you can help me, brother, sister. I don't know how to feel better about this, but I don't want to have anything in my heart but love for you. It makes me heart sick to know this poison is between us. So help me. Help me understand. Help me get rid of it. Help me let the sun in again. LetHimin.”

He spread out his arms, gesturing toward the cross. “Here comes the Son.”

Calls of praise came from the parishioners. Rev had been singing pieces of the song in between his spoken words, but now he started singing the whole tune. Vera saw lips moving, the congregation singing with him, but it was soft, the murmur of the ocean on a peaceful day. They wanted to hear him. Though it had no problem reaching every person in the congregation, he sang it in a softer tone, as it was meant to be sung, filled with hope and a tender optimism.

Only when the choir joined into the chorus with joyous enthusiasm did the audience volume increase.

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