“A testimony. A come-to-Jesus story. Take you, for example. I don’t know a lot about you, since I don’t keep up with celebrities, but by your own admission, you used to live a fast life. I imagine that means women. Parties. Maybe drugs, I don’t know.” She shrugged, but gathered the nerve to continue. To be honest. “But then you came to Jesus and He changed your life. You were living one way, had all these experiences, and now have a story about overcoming. You can relate to people that have had similar struggles.”
“And you can’t?”
“I’ve always been a Christian. From as far back as I can remember, I’ve always had Jesus in my life and heart. I haven’t done anything that will cause other people to have faith in anything I say. I’ve never done drugs, smoked cigarettes, or consumed alcohol. You already know I don’t date, so that erases sexual temptations. I haven’t even been kissed!” She hadn’t realized her volume was rising until a few heads turned her way.Oh, biscuits and gravy.
She slunk down in her chair, heat crawling up her neck. She tried to hunch her shoulders and hide her face behind her hand. “How many people here do you think can speak English?”
Seth laughed. “Come on. Doing the right thing is nothing to be ashamed of.”
She scooted back up in her seat. “But don’t you see? If people don’t think I have anything in common with them, they will assume I don’t understand what they’re going through, and then how can I be there for them when they need someone to help them in the middle of their struggles?”
A shadow fell over their table, and Amber looked up. Their server placed two steaming plates of food in front of them and said something in quick German. Seth responded with a smile, and then they were left alone again.
She sighed. Couldn’t their meal have arrived a few minutes earlier and spared her from spilling her guts?
Seth offered to pray, and she accepted with a grateful heart. She was done talking for a while. Even ifkäsespätzleturned out to be disgusting, she was going to keep shoveling it in her mouth.
Chapter Nine
Early morning sunlight slanted across the football pitch. Seth pushed his chest closer to his knees, feeling the stretch in his hamstrings. He rose and lifted his palms into the air, each vertebra in his back stretching, his muscles elongating.
He tried to focus his mind on the kids. The ones that would be spilling out onto the field in less than an hour. The ones who would be looking to him for direction as a coach, as much in life as for the fundamentals of the sport.
But his thoughts kept U-turning back to Amber and their conversation the day before. It sounded cliché to say that he’d never met anyone like her before, but it was true. Growing up in the slums of London had stolen the innocence from his eyes at a young age. His past was one of the reasons he connected so well with the kids in Mila and Ben’s program. When a person saw something that no one should witness, especially as a tender youth, the images messed with their mind as well as their heart.
For him, his past had been darkened by poverty. Violence in the form of gang wars and the effects of addiction. For the refugee children in the program… He shook his head. Man had not been created to witness such destruction at another’s hand. Bombings. Cold-blooded murder. Soulless staring of a lifeless gaze—one that belonged to a father or mother, brother or sister. And some of these kids not even of an age to attend school.
But Amber…
Her eyes were a picture of what God must have had in mind when He created the world. Fresh and clean. Not contaminated by a knowledge and personal experience of death and destruction. Such a heart to help others, but afraid of her inability because, what? She hadn’t made horrible choices in her life? Did she think if she’d followed the path of the prodigal, she could be a better witness?
His stomach clenched, the wrongness of that idea causing him physical discomfort. More people needed to regain their freedom from guilt, find their way back to the light. Life’s journey brought them all through enough entrenched valleys. Amber needed to be the proverbial lighthouse on the top of a hill—guiding those in the storm to safety, not drowning alongside the rest of them.
But who was he to say that other than a gut feeling? She’d been a Christian her whole life and he a mere month. It didn’t seem his place to instruct her on any spiritual matters. Maybe if Justin were here. He’d know what to say, what Bible verses to share.
Seth shook out his arms, hoping his thoughts followed. He jogged to the equipment shed and unlocked the rusty padlock. A mesh bag full of balls hung from a nail along the wall. He unhooked it and swung the bag over his shoulder. Bending down, he scooped up a stack of orange cones from the floor, then backed out of the shed.
Ben and Mila had said to expect around twenty kids this morning and then about the same number again in the afternoon. Younger kids in the morning, older ones later. There would be some familiar faces from the last time he’d volunteered, but a new wave of asylum-seekers had settled into the area. He’d need to team together the ones who were a bit more familiar with their new homes with those still reeling from all the changes life had thrown at them.
Yasmin had offered to help as a translator, but Seth had politely declined. While it would have made things easier for some of the kids who couldn’t understand what he was saying, it would also have ostracized those who had come from regions that didn’t speak Arabic. Assimilation required they learn the language of their new country, so he’d speak German while coaching. It was good and right that they held onto the culture of their heritage, but they also needed to find their place in their new homes as well.
Two figures approached the field on the other side of the far goal posts, hesitating at the line of white paint that indicated the pitch’s boundaries. They held hands, the child on the left half the size of the other. Siblings. They immediately reminded Seth of himself and Kayla at a much younger age. How many times had he gripped her hand in his, promising to protect her as they quickly passed through a particularly unsavory part of town?
Seth waved and shouted a greeting in the most friendly, non-threatening voice he could muster. The kids took a step forward but seemed too afraid to come any closer. He approached slowly, pushing his lips up into an open smile. When he stood in front of them—an older brother, about ten years of age, and his younger sister, who seemed to be about four—he lowered onto his haunches. At this height, the boy stood over him a few inches.
He put a hand on his chest. “Mein name istSeth.” He tapped his chest again. “Seth.” Extending his hand, he pointed to the boy and raised his eyebrows.
“Orhan,” the boy whispered. He raised his hand, bringing his sister’s up with it. “Yara.”
Seth spoke slowly in German, welcoming Orhan and Yara to the center and telling them how happy he was that they were there to play football. He motioned to the black-and-white balls resting together at midfield and beckoned the kids to follow him. They trailed behind him like little ducklings, and he grinned at the small victory.
Soon other kids joined them, their faces a mixture of distrust and cautious excitement. If anything was universal, in Seth’s mind, it was football. Loved by all the world over. The sport was a language all its own, one these kids—whether from Syria or Pakistan or some other place—knew how to speak. It may be a game, but the pastime was much more than that. It was a sense of home. Of comfort and familiarity.
And it would teach them so much more than scoring goals. It would teach them to focus on what they could control, to let go of mistakes, to celebrate success no matter how small, and to be a true team player. It would teach them the value of keeping on learning. But most importantly, for some of these kids, football would give them a sense of family that war had stolen from them.
Seth surveyed the group of kids thirteen and under and frowned. When had they started to clump together in groups? He walked the perimeter, coming close to a huddle of four. They spoke together in a language he had heard before but didn’t recognize. Farsi? He rounded on another group. The cadence of their words rose and fell differently from the first.
“Sorry I’m late.” Amber jogged up the pitch from the center’s back door. Her cheeks were flushed as she pulled up beside him. “I promise it won’t happen again.”
