Page 115 of Zane

Zane chuckled. “You need a portable chocolate fondue.”

“That would be great.” She put the food into her large tote bag. “I’d better get going. Gotta be there for my first appointment by seven-thirty.”

“Well, hope everything goes smoothly,” Zane said, getting to his feet. He followed her to the front door, using one crutch as he walked. “Drive safely. If you want, you could text me when you get there.”

She turned to look at him, and when she saw that he was actually serious, she nodded. “I will.”

Stepping out onto the porch, she continued to the steps leading to the decorative stone path that took her to where her car was parked. She climbed behind the wheel of her car and started it up.

As she put it in gear to pull away from the curb, she glanced at the house, surprised to see Zane still standing in the doorway, leaning a shoulder against the jamb. Kelsey lifted a hand to wave at him, which he returned, then she turned her attention to the road as she drove away.

Christian music drifted from her car’s speakers. The first time Zane had used her car, he’d tuned the radio to a Christian station. She’d just left it there, since she didn’t feel strongly enough about any genre of music to change it.

After she’d been on the road for about fifteen minutes, the radio station switched from music to a podcast.As the intro music faded, a man with a lovely mellow voice began to talk.

“Hello. My name is Jonathon Anders. Welcome toOn This Journey,a podcast where I talk to Christians from all walks of life to hear their stories and learn how God has worked in their lives. Today, I have two people with me, one of whom I have a history with that stretches back years and across continents. It is my absolute joy to have Danae and Brock Peterson with me today. Welcome.”

A woman and man responded, thanking him for having them.

“As regular listeners of this show know, I was raised as a missionary kid in Asia, and a lot of those experiences have shaped my outlook on God, faith, and the world around me. Danae was one of the people who shared some of those experiences with me. We attended the same MK boarding school, and I knew her first husband. We were all in the same grade, and William and I played on the school’s basketball team through our high school years.

“Everyone knew that Danae and William were going to get married. They were just that couple in high school, having started dating in our freshman year. A few years after graduation, I heard that they’d gotten married and had some kids. It seemed they were well on their way to their happily ever after. But Danae’s story didn’t end there.”

“No, it certainly didn’t,” Danae agreed.

“Do you want to share with us where your journey has taken you since we graduated?”

“Sure. It’s a story that never gets easier to tell, but I also feel it’s important to share and to show how God works in even themost terrible of circumstances. Like Jordan mentioned, William and I were high school sweethearts. William planned to go to college to become an engineer. My dream, however, was to be a wife and a mother. We married not long after graduation—to the dismay of our parents—though they still supported us.”

“Your parents were all friends, right?” Jordan asked.

“Yes. We were all part of the same mission, and I’d known William from when we were very young. Us getting married felt like joining two families who were already super close.”

“So your parents already had a really good idea of who their child was marrying.”

“Yep. Which was part of the reason why they hadn’t objected too strongly to us marrying so young.”

“How did those early years of marriage unfold?”

Danae softly cleared her throat. “At first, they were easy. William was in school and working, I was working part time, and the rest of the time, I was at home, trying to create an environment that I thought would make our marriage flourish. However, it wasn’t long before I got pregnant, and once I had our first child, I was determined to be a stay-at-home mom.”

Kelsey found herself totally caught up in the story the woman was sharing. In fact, she felt a bit of a knot in her stomach as the story unfolded, knowing something catastrophic must have happened because she was there with a man who wasn’t her first husband.

“By the time our third child was born, we were both overwhelmed. William had dropped out of school by that point in order to work full time and support our family. Though our marriage was struggling and parenting was taxing our ability tomodel love and patience to our children, we tried our best to hide our struggles from everyone.”

Kelsey understood why. They were failing and didn’t want people to know.

“One Saturday, William said he’d give me a break, and he took the kids out for breakfast at McDonalds. Only, they never came home. A drunk truck driver made sure of that. It was an absolutely horrible time. The grief and guilt were overwhelming, and I couldn’t understand why God had taken all of them and left me.”

As Kelsey listened to Danae share how she struggled to survive mentally and emotionally in the days, weeks, months, and years that followed, Kelsey marveled that she had made it through. The strength she’d needed to do that was incredible.

Except that Danae made it clear she hadn’t done it alone. That she believed God had been with her through that time, giving her what she needed to move forward.

Kelsey thought of her own situation. She felt a bit like she’d experienced the death of a loved one, with Zane having lost his memory of her and their marriage. Though it was possible it would return, the more time that passed without that happening, the less likely she thought it was that it would.

However, her loss was nothing compared to what Danae had experienced. And yet, even after the death of her family, Danae had found a way to keep going. From everything the couple shared about their journey, Kelsey knew that they had relied heavily on God.

Would she be able to more readily accept what had happened and move forward if she trusted in God?

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