Lessons

Copyright © 2012 Leslie Howard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4624-0056-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0055-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012931032

Printed in the United States of America

Inspiring Voices rev. date: 01/28/2012

CONTENTS

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Epilogue

About the Author

Dedication

For Phil, Lindsay, and Laura, who endured many nights of thrown-together dinners and do not disturb signals as I worked on this book. Thanks for putting up with me. I love you all.

To Dick and Mary Fran Pittman, who gave wings to my dreams. I miss you both every day.

For Peggy Hayhurst, Jane Brinson, and Cory Emberson, whose helpful suggestions and warm encouragement propelled me forward.

For all of my many students who have brightened my days, given my life purpose, and shown me that genuine concern for another human being is the greatest teaching tool of all. (Nina, a special thanks to you for letting me use an incident from your life as a model for one of the scenes in this book.)

For the good people of Mount Gilead, Ohio, who started me on my way.

For the prayers and encouragement of my friends from Life Partners fellowship class at Redwood Chapel. I appreciate knowing that you are always there to undergird me.

For the staff of Valley Christian Junior High and High School: You are like a family to me. I thank God every day for the privilege of serving with all of you for these many years.

For God the Father, Abba, my Daddy, who designed me and loved me from the beginning of time; for the Lord Jesus, whose blood paid the way for me to become a daughter of the King; and for the Holy Spirit, who allows me to realize all of the potential He has put in me. My love, gratitude, and allegiance are yours forever.

Epigraph

He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself. George Herbert, early seventeenth-century poet (1593-1633)

You must do the thing you think that you can’t do. Eleanor Roosevelt

Introduction

I wrote this book by accident. Well, not really accidentally. More unintentionally. I had signed up for a class called Write a Novel in a Month at our local junior college. I figured that it would be a how-to class. How to choose a topic. How to outline the plot. How to develop the characters. How to hook the reader. Typical stuff for aspiring authors. I arrived the first day, looking official with my laptop slung over one shoulder and a cache of pens and notebooks clutched in my free hand. I felt nonchalant about the whole thing, until the teacher announced that we would have thirty days from the next morning to complete our manuscript! Numb, I followed her instructions to set up our computers and write for the next twenty minutes.

At first, I just stared at the screen blankly. I had no plot whatsoever in mind, and the clock was ticking. Then, finally, mercifully, a sentence popped into my mind. I kid you not, after that first sentence the story unfolded on its own, and I became merely the scribe. Annie and Tom and Martha and Patrick became real people, with their own stories to tell, and I felt almost like a voyeur as I peeked behind the scenes into their lives.

It was with an increasing sense of urgency that I typed Annie’s story, because, somewhere in the process, I realized that this topic of forgiveness is so critically important for the believer to get right. Untold thousands, maybe millions, of people are stuck in a downward spiral because they can’t, or won’t, forgive someone who has committed an offense against them, and their bitterness erodes their joy and their effectiveness in every area of their lives.

As a Christian, my most fervent desire is to honor God in all that I do. My intentions may be noble, but sometimes when I am faced with the daunting task of humbling myself to forgive someone who has hurt me, I just can’t do it in my own strength. It is then that I am reminded of an incident in Corrie ten Boom’s book The Hiding Place. One day while speaking at a church many years after she was released from Ravensbrück, a German concentration camp for women, Corrie saw a former guard in the audience. This guard had been particularly cruel to her sister Betsie during their incarceration in the camp for hiding Jews during World War II. Partly because of this man’s treatment of her, Betsie had become more and more frail and ill, until she simply could not hang onto life any longer. Corrie harbored deep hatred for this man within her spirit, and when, after her presentation at the church, he approached her and held out his hand as a reconciliatory gesture, she simply could not make her arm comply with what her brain was telling it to do. It continued to hang, awkward and limp, by her side as Corrie wrestled with the command to love your enemy.

Finally, desperate to end the awkward moment, she prayed that God would love this man through her, as she was unable to love him in her own strength. Amazingly, Corrie felt a warmth surge through her body, and she watched her arm rise unbidden to grasp the man’s hand. At the same moment, she felt an overpowering sense of love and forgiveness come over her, and she was set free from the prison of her own making, that slippery slope of unforgiveness that eats at a person until there is nothing left but a fleshy shell.

In the same way Annie Culligan, the protagonist of this book, is caught in the mire of misery and blame. She is emotionally paralyzed by unforgiveness until the Word of God, always sharper than a two-edged sword, cutting between the bone and marrow of a soul, empowers her to do the one most difficult thing: to forgive unequivocally and irrevocably, before it is too late.

I pray that her story may inspire you, the reader (and me, as well), to step out in faith and obey God’s command to forgive, so that we, ourselves, may be set free to grasp the joy set before us.

Chapter 1

Annie waited behind an elderly gentleman who wore a well-tailored three-piece suit for her turn to disembark the ancient Greyhound bus, which had just pulled into the Third Street station. She impatiently shifted her grandmother’s worn leather suitcase to her right hand so she could better grip the railing as she stepped off the bus and into her new life. The man seemed to take forever, and when Annie finally took that first step out into the fresh air after ten hours of nearly continuous riding, she moved too quickly, plunging her foot ankle deep into the muddy sludge of a backed-up gutter. Cold, dirty water seeped into her shoe, saturating her stocking and creating a sucking sound as she walked. Disgusted, she shook her foot, sending her shoe flying into the bushes on the other side of the sidewalk. Hobbling to retrieve it, she nearly crashed into a boy on a motorized scooter who sailed past, as oblivious to the bus passengers as Annie was to him.

A great way to start my next big adventure, she muttered to herself. Pull yourself together, girl. She retrieved the wayward shoe and shoved it back onto her foot. She headed inside to ask directions from a young woman with mousy brown hair and too much makeup; she was riffling through a file cabinet behind a Formica counter. The contrast between the true red lipstick she wore and the girl’s pale, freckled skin made her look rather like the heroine in the vampire movie that had been playing at the theater back home all winter.

Hello. Can you tell me the way to High Street? Annie asked. The girl jumped, lost her balance, and grabbed hold of the filing cabinet to steady herself.

Sorry. I didn’t hear you come in. She shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. Glancing downward, Annie noted the precariously high-heeled leopard print shoes adorning the girl’s feet. Deep red toenails embellished with stars peeked through the open toes. Poor thing. She’s probably been on her feet all day in those horrid things, thought Annie.

The girl approached the counter and leaned over, stretching to point the way, revealing very little cleavage in the process, although her purple tee shirt was cut into a deep vee in front.

Through those doors, and turn left. Go two blocks up, then turn right. That’s High Street, she said, popping her gum as she spoke.

Annie thanked her, rounded the corner, and trudged up the hill in the indicated direction. Blinking in the bright sunlight, she continued two blocks as instructed, then turned right onto High Street. California at this time of year was certainly sunnier than back home in Ohio, where April was just an extension of winter. Here, it was almost hot outside, and flowers were beginning to push their way up through the already soft, unfrozen soil.

Her wet shoe squeaking as she walked, she progressed up High Street, passing a white church with a bona fide steeple, stained glass windows, and heavy wooden doors. The town had a certain old-fashioned charm to it, just as she hoped when it appeared on her Internet search of places offering teaching positions far from home. She wanted someplace new and different in which to begin her career as a science teacher, but not so very different that she didn’t know how to fit in. Her hometown was old-fashioned, and this nod of nostalgia—the vintage buildings, the historical plaques, and the heritage trees—seemed to fit the bill. Annie nodded in satisfaction.

It’s not that Mt. Gilead, Ohio, had been such a bad place to live. As a matter of fact, the warm, small-town mindset of the residents of Morrow County made family out of neighbors and friends just when she needed them most. They were her mentors and protectors during those terrible years after Mama had died. No, Annie wasn’t running away from her hometown. It’s just that, well, she was older now and ready to start fresh. That same small-town mindset didn’t lend itself too well to forgetting the past and moving on.

After she graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University a year ago with a degree in Geologic Science and a teaching credential in hand, Annie moved back home with Grandma Emma. She hoped to find a teaching job at the local high school and to help maintain the household, as Grandma’s arthritis and a bum knee kept her from doing many of the most basic chores herself. She was a proud woman and had a strong desire to live in her own home as long as she possibly could. She clearly needed help, yet, being the strong, stubborn German that she was, she didn’t trust just anyone to come into her home, nor into her heart, for that matter.

That was why it was so important to Annie that she be there for Grandma. After the tragedy, Grandma Emma took her in and raised her as her own. Fiercely protective of her granddaughter, Emma was especially careful about where Annie went and with whom. There were times growing up when Annie resented the fact that no one else’s parents were as strict as her grandma. But the two of them forged a strong bond over the years, and Annie learned the focused, determined, strong-minded ways of her maternal heritage. As the years went by and Annie grew into a capable and independent young woman, her admiration for her grandmother grew into deep and unwavering loyalty. She began to understand and appreciate the tremendous sacrifice that Grandma made in giving up her own life of well-deserved rest to raise Annie. Just as her friends were all starting to enjoy their retirements: travelling to exotic places, joining clubs, making new friends, and volunteering around the community, Grandma Emma reverted to attending meetings of the parent-teacher association and hosting birthday parties at the local pizza parlor. Annie knew that it hadn’t always been easy on Grandma, especially as Annie entered those tumultuous teen years and the questions had started to flow. Emma’s energy, patience, and finances were stretched so thin at times that they threatened to break, but she never gave up on the young granddaughter that she loved.

As Grandma Emma reached the sunset of her life, Annie wanted to pay back all that the old woman had invested in her for so long. And so, after graduation, she moved back into her old room, with its four-poster canopy bed and the picture window looking out into the garden, laden with sweet peas and daisies and beefsteak tomatoes in the summertime. In early January, however, it was merely covered in a blanket of snow. As she stood at the window each morning, brushing her hair one hundred strokes, a daily ritual since she was a little girl, the only contrast to the endless expanse of white was an occasional glimpse of red feathers belonging to the cardinals who came foraging for food.

Although she hoped to land a teaching job for the second semester, she realized that it was a long shot for a position to open up at the local high school before the next school year. In the meantime, she signed on as a substitute teacher, which kept her busy a few times a week, and every other weekend, she filled in as a cashier at the local drugstore on Main Street. That gave Mary, the regular weekend clerk, much-needed time off to spend at home with her new baby and her husband, Joe, who was most decidedly not a natural at diapering and feeding a squirming bundle of joy.

Annie was not offered a teaching job in September. The rotten economy, the superintendent told her, meant that they were laying off teachers and redistributing positions to those tenured individuals who were lucky enough to be kept on. Certainly no new hires would be considered for the time being. Still, Annie was not too discouraged. She felt that her life had hit a comfortable stride. She was happy to be back with Grandma, and she liked the freedom to do what she pleased between substitute teaching assignments and her weekends at the drug store. During that last year in college when she juggled student teaching and her last few classes, life was hectic and stressful, and she was happy to slow down the pace for a while. Besides, she reasoned, a job would come up eventually.

In the meantime, she simply bided her time and enjoyed the comfort of her old life until Grandma Emma took an unexpected tumble and broke her hip ten months after Annie returned to Mt. Gilead. After surgery and a three-week stay at the hospital in neighboring Marion, she was transferred to the rehabilitation unit at the county nursing home. Three weeks into her therapy there, she contracted the merciless C. diff virus, and within two weeks she was gone. The shock of it was profound. Christmas was just weeks away, but Annie