CHAPTER 12
1187 Words
CHAPTER 12
“So tell me, Scott, have you gotten back in touch with your friend in Washington?” Sandy pulled Tupperware out of the fridge while Woong set the table.
Scott sat across from his pastor and stared at the Lazy Susan in front of him. “No, haven’t heard anything.” He didn’t like the way his voice sounded so flat, didn’t like the sense of finality he heard in his own words.
Sandy clucked her tongue. “Well, maybe it’s all for the best. God’s got his plans. We know that much.”
Scott nodded absently. Carl and Sandy had followed his unorthodox romance from the beginning, starting with that first phone call. Of course, he and Susannah hadn’t talked about any sort of relationship at the time, but Scott spent the entire next week trying and failing to get her out of his mind. He couldn’t talk to anyone at the Kingdom Builders home office. There weren’t specific rules against falling in love with potential recruits, but he doubted he’d be encouraged to pursue anything with Susannah on account of her age if nothing else.
He’d met lots of girls over the years. Bible college was full of them, and he’d had a few casual relationships that never seemed to go anywhere. Some potential dates ended up intimidated by his single-minded focus for world missions. It sounded exciting, traveling forty-eight weeks out of every year and ministering to missionaries across the globe, but when it came right down to it, most girls he met were interested in a more traditional way of life. Steady job, two kids, nice house in the suburbs, a dog or two thrown in for good measure.
During his first few years on the field, Scott felt uneasy, unsettled. Asking God when his time would come to meet the woman he could spend the rest of his life with. Finally, he grew to accept and even appreciate the single lifestyle. He meditated often on Paul’s words, how an unmarried Christian can remain focused and devoted to the Lord instead of always worrying about pleasing their spouse.
He could have remained contentedly single for the rest of his life.
Until he met Susannah.
She wasn’t on social media. Her family was conservative by just about every definition of the word, and she was still so young. He hadn’t even known what she looked like when he stumbled through that first awkward confession.
Two months after their initial phone interview, two months of daily emails and nearly daily conversations by phone, and Scott finally had to tell her the truth. Tell her that he was falling in love with her. That he wanted to meet her.
She hadn’t said that she loved him back, and he didn’t ask her to. Her mom was strict. Cautious about her daughter’s long-distance relationship with someone she’d never met. Scott wasn’t supposed to know, but her mom had called one of his supervisors at work to make sure that Susannah hadn’t been talking to a serial killer or s*x offender or pathological liar.
Even once it become known around the home office that Scott was in some sort of unofficial relationship with one of the summer internship recruits, it was Carl and Sandy he talked to most.
“I’ve never met another woman like her,” Scott had said, and Carl never once brought up the fact that technically he still hadn’t met her.
At some point after his confession, he and Susannah started exchanging snail mail in addition to the daily emails and phone calls. That’s when he finally received his first picture of her.
He’d carried it to Carl and Sandy’s house to proudly display. Nobody at the home office told him to give up on his relationship with Susannah, but his well-meaning co-workers didn’t understand. Didn’t get how two people who’d never seen each other could know each other that deeply.
Could love each other that sincerely.
Susannah had mailed him a copy of her senior photo. She had written a verse from Psalms on the back: My soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord. Sandy had gushed over it. Had fawned over those large, brown eyes, the long, golden hair. Carl patted him on the back and congratulated him. Scott was no longer in love with just a voice.
His angel now had a face.
It was just a month or two later that he called her mom to ask if he could fly out to visit. Mrs. Peters was getting ready for her own wedding, said the timing was wrong, asked him to wait patiently, reminded him that she still wanted her daughter to keep from giving away her heart.
As if someone as loving and compassionate as Susannah could withhold her affection.
He’d tried again over Easter break. Things had settled down. Susannah’s mom was married, and they’d all moved in with her new husband. Now that she didn’t have the stress of planning a wedding on her shoulders, Susannah’s mom was warm and hospitable when she invited him out for a visit.
It would have been perfect if the Kremlin hadn’t tightened their anti-proselytizing laws and sent everyone from the Russian field into a dizzying tailspin. Scott was needed in Moscow, then Petersburg.
The Washington trip was postponed again.
And again.
He should have realized it was God’s hand all along, but he was too stubborn. Maybe if he had backed off earlier, he wouldn’t be hurting so much right now.
Just five days before he was due to fly out last August, Susannah’s mom was killed in a car crash. At first, he tried to change his ticket so he could leave immediately. Stay by Susannah’s side during those first tumultuous, grief-stricken days. But she told him she needed time with her family, so he stuck to the original plan.
And then, just twelve hours before his flight was scheduled to take off, she called him. He could tell from her voice she’d been crying. His arms ached with the longing to wrap her up and shield her from her pain and trauma. He was ready to comfort her. Ready to pour out all his love on her. To walk through this tragedy by her side.
But she told him to wait. Said something about her sister not doing well. Telling him it wasn’t a good time for him to come visit after all.
He should have gone. Even now, he wondered what might have changed if he’d followed his gut, the part of him that knew she longed to be with him as much as he yearned to be with her.
But he figured they’d already waited so long. What could a few more days hurt?
And then she’d called the afternoon of her mom’s funeral. He was so blinded by his own foolish dreams. Otherwise he might have been prepared.
“I can’t see you,” she’d said.
At first, he thought maybe her stepdad was the problem. It wasn’t like Derek had played any major role in her life. They’d only shared a house for a few months at the time of her mother’s death.
But it wasn’t Derek.
“I made my mom a promise,” she explained.
He should have seen it coming. Instead, her words rattled him as much as a three-hundred-foot drop on a trans-Atlantic flight.
That was the last time he’d spoken with Susannah Wesley Peters, the woman he loved.
The woman whose engagement ring still sat in a box on his nightstand.
The woman he’d planned to propose to.
- Writer
