​Chapter Sixteen
Rochelle

I didn’t die.

That’s the thing that I remember when I wake up every morning. You’re here, and your limbs work, and God’s talking to you. So get out of bed, lazy bones. Go make something of the day.

My heart rolls its eyes.

No, I didn’t die, but I almost did. I did surgery and chemo and upchucked what felt like my stomach lining and lost a little bit of my soul. Not to mention my breasts (I had the option to reconstruct them, an option Glenn leaned heavily towards. And I’m ashamed to say maybe that’s why I went the other route. Spite and whatnot).

My friends kept sending me Bible verses and baked goods and pictures of bald women hunched over with Jesus at their backs, touching them on their shoulders. And all of that was great but never made me feel any better. Because Wren was having her faith ripped away from her.

Natalie never said as much, but I saw what her eyes did when I told her Wren asked to be baptized.

It was a flash of something that wasn’t her.

I left. I went back to Texarkana. I battled cancer and won. I battled Glenn and didn’t.

Glenn was cheating on me. I knew it for a while, the whole time I was recovering, but I did something I’ve gotten pretty good at over the years: I compartmentalized. I put it back inside a little closet where my spine meets the back of my head, where memories of Dennis linger and that time my whole life was changed on some stranger’s lawn.

My friends were concerned. I think my friend, Ann, was angry, but she didn’t put it into words. Not at me, of course. I think at the whole idea of looking at a train wreck and not being given clearance to go clean it up. She spent a lot of time telling me the Lord is the only one I need to trust.

When I thought about it, I realized He was the only one I ever could.

But that didn’t change the fact that Glenn was sleeping around. I was in bed watching Hallmark reruns, trying to fight off hot flashes from the chemo, and he was scoping out my replacement.

And now? He’s started dating a twenty-two-year-old named Kimber(no -ly) who he found tending bar a few months ago at some karaoke place the firm takes their clients.

Nothing really surprises me anymore.

I took it to Jesus. I told Him I get it. All those years ago, He had given me a gift, my Mack. And I tended to him with one hand while the other was searching violently for another existence. Another circumstance. Because I didn’t want to live in the now.

Which is really the only place you can.

Currently, I’m fully in the now. I’ve staked my claim on it, my fingers clawing into the soil. I went for a check up. Routine. Cancer’s back. I wasn’t surprised though. Because this is how a story always goes. You get time on the page and then God writes your ending.

But my heart’s stopped rolling its eyes because God’s now given me a few sentences to author. He’s prompting me, I can feel it. The only person I see when I close my eyes is Wren. Something’s wrong, and He needs me to revise it.

And I’m not going to disappoint Him.

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