Find a Christian store

<< Go Back

Grace in the Desert

By Christine Dillon

Order Now!

He’d always considered himself a strong man. Physically strong. Emotionally strong. Spiritually strong.
But he’d been naïve. Proud. Never considering that some things are capable of overwhelming even the strongest men.
Like the accident that day. A drawn-out spinning, screeching, crashing, and then silence.
Silence.
Silence, except for the sound of his own laboured breaths. Laboured breaths, that ever since had formed the backing track to his nightmares.
Silence. The silence that meant an absence of life.
There were many days in the weeks following the accident when he’d have welcomed death. But somehow his heart went on beating. Laughing at him. Torturing him with its robust health. His body went on waking each morning, regardless of how much or how little sleep he’d had the night before.
Work gave him a full month off. For recovery. Recuperation. The funeral. Perhaps he should have gone back to work immediately, because home had become an empty shell, echoing with loneliness. Populated with ghosts and memories of ghosts.
He’d closed the doors on most of the rooms. Anything to avoid the cheerful clutter of their contents. Anything to avoid sorting and giving away possessions that had been bought with such delight and expectation. A pair of tiny shoes, a handmade dress, a book to be read over and over.
He’d reached into his wardrobe, dragged out his clothes, and transferred everything to the spare room. He couldn’t sleep in the master bedroom. The bed was too big, too cold, too wide. And he could still hear his wife’s giggle in the darkness. Feel the warmth of her breath on his cheek.
Days passed without his noting the precise time or day of the week. Food had no taste. He chewed it out of habit and shed eight kilos in a month. Weight he couldn’t afford to lose.
Thirty days, and he was still living the event daily—and nightly. No drugs in the world could obliterate the squeal of brakes and the shriek of twisting metal. Or worse, the silence that had followed.
He shook his head. God, can you not give me rest? Peace?
There was no answer, as there had been none for the last thirty days. Thirty days he never wanted to endure again. Thirty days of grey nothingness. Thirty days of emotional wipeout. 
God?
The doorbell rang, jerking him back to life in an ordinary suburban house. They’d moved to Fremantle to have more peace, but the doorbell hadn’t rung in two weeks. No phone calls, no visitors, no invitations.
In the first two weeks, various friends and church folk had dropped in with fruit and meals. They’d shuffled their feet and ummed and aahed and offered him platitudes he hadn’t heard.
Once his parents went home after the funeral, he’d erected a personal Berlin Wall, bristling with barbed wire and threatening warning notices. Soon, no one had been determined enough to scale the necessary heights, and he’d been too tired to care.
The bell rang again. Whoever they were, they were persistent.
He staggered to his feet, slapped his face to wake himself, and ran his hand through his dishevelled hair. Not worth the effort if it were only someone trying to sell him an overpriced vacuum cleaner.
He walked down the hall, his bare feet slapping against the floorboards. The door stuck, and he pulled it hard. It bounced off his shin, and his eyes watered.
Standing on the front step was the last person he expected to see. His mouth dropped open, but only a strangled sound emerged.
“Son,” the man standing outside said. “I’ve lost the rest of my family. I’m not going to lose you too.”

Order Now!

<< Go Back


Developed by Camna, LLC

This is a service provided by ACFW, but does not in any way endorse any publisher, author, or work herein.