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The idea of it shredded her heart.
This move would take every bit as much faith from her as it would from Kevin. Even then Helen wasn’t certain it would be enough.
Chapter Eleven
(in which blessings must be acknowledged)
Kevinpointedacrossthemeadow in front of them, up the hill to the south of the little cabin. Silently, Helen nodded at his side, and then they trekked toward the spot.
There wasn’t a marker. Nothing ceremoniously placed to remember. But he remembered nonetheless. At the base of a trio of fir, he had scattered his father’s ashes.
Helen slipped her hand back into his, and when they stopped several feet from those trees, her fingers squeezed. “You’ve been thinking about him?”
Nodding, Kevin rubbed his chin. “A lot. Especially while I was in the hospital.”
Sliding her hand from his, she wrapped his waist with her arm. “I’ve been thinking about the past so much lately too.” Tipping her chin up, she met his gaze. “Why your dad though?”
Kevin turned into her embrace and pulled her in close. “I think because of my struggle with Sadie’s death.” It didn’t make sense, not on the surface. But even though he was certain his wife didn’t follow his thoughts, she remained steady against him, willing to let him process. He curled around her warm frame, savoring the safety he always felt with her in his arms. “There’s still bitterness in me, Helen, and it cracked open when we had to watch Connor and Sadie go through that. When I had to watch our son writhe with that kind of pain, it spilled out the leftover bitterness I’ve kept all these years.”
“At God?”
He had thought and prayed over that possibility long and hard. The conviction of it wasn’t there—that wasn’t the source. Kevin shook his head. “No. Strangely, no.” He stepped back from her and faced the trees again. “The bitterness is still toward my dad.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed that. I never saw it in you, Kevin.”
It would have been easy to hide. Kevin rarely mentioned his dad. Rarely thought of him. The few times the man had ever come up, it was in reference to drinking—and that as a warning to his faltering sons. First Jackson, who had wandered into a bottle for a time after high school.
Your grandfather was an alcoholic, son. He literally drank himself to death. Is that the path you want to wander down?
It had seemed that was enough to ward Jackson off. At least at the time, as a few years later Jackson showed up with Kenzie, his new wife. The one who later, Jackson confessed, he’d married in Vegas when they’d both been too hammered to know what they were doing.
God, that story could have gone so differently. So badly.
As He had been with Kevin, God had been astonishingly merciful. Kevin couldn’t help but worship His goodness when he thought on Jackson and Kenzie’s healthy, loving marriage—a beautiful picture of redemption.
As good as those thoughts were, though, that wasn’t what he was dealing with that day. Today was about bitterness he’d allowed to linger far too long. Kevin had tried to bury the murky emotions he still owned toward his dad. But they refused to stay pushed into the depths.
Perhaps because in his dad’s story, Kevin saw no redemption.
There was such an emptiness to that. It was the same gaping space that Kevin felt as he had watched Sadie get sicker and sicker, as he had wrestled with the stark reality that this time, she would not recover. The same hollowness that he felt when he’d helplessly witnessed his son and grandson at her funeral, and the many months that followed. That void filled with ache, and, though he hadn’t wanted to admit it, with the bitterness he hadn’t owned or dealt with.
Bitterness at his dad’s unrepentant life. The unredeemed story. At the legacy his dad had pressed into Kevin—one that had nearly destroyed not only Kevin’s own life but that of Helen’s and their three older sons.
Staring at the forest floor where he had spread his dad’s ashes, Kevin swallowed and braced himself for confession. “For all these years, my dad has been this shadow lurking in the past. A man unredeemed. A man who would always stand as a threat to the life that we have now. The life that I have loved.” A tear flicked from one eye onto his cheek. He looked down at his wife, who stood with eyes shimmering, full of love and deep empathy. To say what was at the heart of his struggle was hard. But this woman had seen the worst of him more than once over the years, and she had chosen love.
She would that day as well. Kevin had no doubt.
He gathered the scraps of determination and courage he needed to finish. His words came out harsh, broken with the force of long-kept emotion. “I have never forgiven him for it.”
Helen’s lips trembled, and she blinked. The bleeding of his heart most certainly felt keenly in hers. With her free hand, she gently covered his chest, wary of the point of incision where the surgeon had gone in to bypass the blocked artery that had nearly killed him.
An appropriate picture of this bitterness problem if ever there was one. Although Kevin didn’t want a bypass on his spiritual heart. He wanted full healing. There was only One to whom he knew to turn for it.
He put honest courage to it again. Shutting his eyes, he tilted his face toward the heavens. “God . . . forgive me. For all the years of stored bitterness. Forgive me. For the secret corner of doubt I’ve kept in my heart—the one that has questioned Your goodness. Forgive me. And for not choosing gratitude over anger when I think on my father. Forgive me.”
That last one, it might have been the hardest. In his anger and resentment toward his dad, he had maintained that there was nothing to be grateful for—except perhaps for the narrow escape from the man’s legacy of addiction.
Kevin looked back down at Helen, feeling that the truth needed to be spoken out loud. That way he would be less prone to forget it.
