Tying the Knot by Susan May Warren

refuge.” The verse pulsed in his heart, something that he wished he’d said to Anne in place of his shocked silence.
    Where did a beautiful woman like Anne get emotional scars that shattered her faith in the God who had made this wondrous landscape around her? Noah sat on the beach under the glow of the Deep Haven lighthouse and listened to the storm gather, wishing he’d been there to stop the one who had assaulted Anne’s soul.
    “Noah? What are you doing out here?” Pastor Dan crunched in the rocks down the shore, holding a flashlight. Dressed in a rain slicker, he looked prepared, as usual, for the daily unpredictabilities. “I was at the nursing home and saw your bike.” He sat down, digging a place in the stony beach to hold the light. The beam flashed skyward and was devoured by the night.
    “I’m just wishing I was a different man. Wishing I had the right words.”
    Dan frowned at him.
    Noah picked up a fistful of tiny pebbles, shaking them. “I blew it tonight. That nurse I got for the camp, well . . . I sort of trapped her.”
    “What?”
    Noah grimaced. “I know it wasn’t the right thing to do, so I went to apologize to her and managed to not only scare her to death, but I also stomped all over her feelings.”
    “That doesn’t sound like you.”
    “You don’t know me that well, Dan. I’ve been accused of having the sensitivity of a porcupine.” He gave a wry smile. “She’s been . . . emotionally injured. And I—” he could barely pry the words out of his constricting chest—“laughed.”
    Dan stayed mercifully silent.
    “She was so . . . cute and frustrated, and I had no idea her issues ran bone deep.” Noah buried his face in his hands. “I don’t know what to do.”
    The waves washed on shore, growing violent. The spray landed on their boots.
    “Noah, you’ll figure out a way to make it right.”
    “No, I think I really blew it this time.” He stared at his hands, at the scar across his right palm. “I’m not sure why God picked me to do this job. I’m so unqualified. How am I supposed to reach kids’ hearts with the gospel when I can’t even encourage Anne?”
    Dan threw a handful of stones into the surf. They crackled as they hit the beach. “Well, that’s where you forget that you’re just the vessel. Remember Galatians 2:20: ‘I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So I live my life in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.’ It’s God who has to reach the kids. It’s God who will encourage Anne. God made you the way you are, and you’ll have to trust Him to mold you into the person He wants you to be. Trust Him to give you the right words for this woman.”
    Noah blew out a long, unsteady breath. “I can’t help feeling like I’m in way over my head, treading water for all I’m worth but going under fast.”
    “Hmm.” Dan reached for the flashlight, flicked it erratically toward the sky, then straight out across the lake. The beam lit the frothy peaks of waves. “It seems to me that a man who is drowning has no choice but to reach up for help.”
    Noah closed his eyes, letting Dan’s words settle deep into his soul.
    “You know,” Dan said softly, “I wonder if over your head and drowning might be exactly where God wants you to be.”
    Noah opened his eyes and pitched a rock into the swell of waves. “Perhaps. But if Anne Lundstrom doesn’t change her mind, I won’t even get a chance to get my feet wet.”

    The night toyed with his emotions. Sliding over him like a snake, slithering through his pores.
    Infecting his bones.
    He itched, shifted, struggled against the claw of the past. Voices—loud, drunk, angry. Fear, cold and thick, icing his veins.
    No! Father!
    He flinched, reeling from the blow of the memory. Fought to open his eyes. The room spun with the smell of anger—sweat, beer, iron-ore shavings.
    Then the shadows lurched over him, and the icy sting of a gun