Pieces on Earth Read online

  Now Chesney's eyes turned sorrowful. "Yeah, but it already feels like a year."

  Liv ducked her head before her daughter could see the quick tears that had gathered in her own eyes. "Yes, it does."

  "And Daddy might not come back."

  Her head snapped up. "What do you mean?"

  "A.J. told me that sometimes soldiers die in war."

  Her throat constricted. What could she say to alleviate a fear in her daughter that also resided in the depths of her own soul?

  "Mommy, why does God let the devil keep lying to people and making them mess up?"

  Liv shifted her weight. How could she say this in a way Chesney could understand? "Well, first of all, we're the ones who decide to listen to the lies and act on them. Yes, the devil lies to us, but we have the choice to do the right thing. Secondly, God sometimes lets the devil tell us lies as a sort of test."

  "Where we either pass or fail?" A horrific expression took up residence on her daughter's face. "Oh no! I'll never be good enough."

  Liv hugged her tight to bring comfort. "None of us are good enough or will ever be good enough. But it's not a pass or fail test. It's more like a test to see if we'll do the right thing. A test to take the bad stuff out of us and make us more like Jesus." She paused to collect her thoughts. "With every good choice we make--to not listen to the lies and end up with another broken piece--God makes us more like Jesus and uses us to help others."

  "With their broken pieces?"

  "Exactly." As Liv tucked her daughter in and kissed her goodnight, one thought alone churned in her mind. How like God to use His Word and her daughter's innocent words to prod her in the direction she'd needed to go all day long.

  With her heart in her throat, but resolve in her spirit, she moved to the living room, picked up her phone, and called Debbie.

  Chapter Eight

  The next day Liv dropped Chesney off at school, then drove to Debbie's as she had promised her the night before. All the way, she thought and prayed through possible words to say, but by the time she reached her friend's house, she still felt at a loss of what to say or do.

  With her knees quivering, Liv made her way to the front door and rang the doorbell.

  Footsteps and then the deadbolt clicking sounded from within. The door swung open to reveal a very different Debbie.

  Liv did all she knew to do, and that was to engulf Debbie in her arms as her friend broke into sobs, clinging to Liv as if her life depended on it. Once her tears were spent, she backed away, head lowered, dabbing her face with her palms.

  "I know you're not used to seeing me like this." Debbie looked at her through puffy red eyes, her face still moist with tears.

  Liv smiled. "You're right. But you know what? Now you seem real."

  A surprising chuckle sounded from Debbie. She brought both hands into the air and swung them down both sides of her body. "This is as real as I get." Then she swiveled and motioned for Liv to follow her. "C'mon, I have coffee and doughnuts in the kitchen."

  Just minutes later, the two reclined on Debbie's lush white sectional sofa over doughnuts and coffee.

  Liv's brain scrambled to find words. "I'm so sorry this happened." That was the best she could do?

  Debbie smiled through tears. "Thank you." She paused a moment. "I just don't know what to do or where to go from here."

  Liv took a bite of the warm Krispy Kreme doughnut and let it dissolve in her mouth. Better to just let Debbie talk rather than pound her with a bunch of questions.

  "I don't even have a job. That's one thing I always resented about being a military wife." She took a sip of her coffee, then sat the cup on the glass-topped coffee table. "Mike always got to follow his career dreams, while I always got to follow Mike."

  Liv's chest tightened in pain. Hadn't she always felt the same way at times? "I totally understand, Debbie. When Jeff left this last time, I started a photography business. I'm afraid of losing him and not having anything else to fall back on." There. She'd given words to her fear. But rather than feel better, she felt as though she was just spreading the fear around and making it multiply.

  Tears leaked from pooled eyes and dripped down Debbie's cheeks. "At least you have a child. A piece of your husband that I'll never have from mine."

  "I thought you didn't want kids."

  "I didn't. But I sure do now." Debbie yanked a Kleenex from a box between them on the couch and dried her eyes, all the while shaking her head in desperation. "What am I supposed to do?"

  Liv's shoulders rose and fell as she released a sigh. Just as she'd expected. She had nothing. Nothing to help someone whose world had exploded into pieces. No words. No emotional Band-Aid. Words fell from her lips without permission or thought. "It's been good to have my family and my daughter, but without God, I'd fall apart." Where had that come from?

  Before her very eyes, Debbie's once-friendly face morphed into a hard shell of a mask. "Boy, am I easily deceived. I didn't take you for one of them." She rose to her feet.

  Liv frowned. One of them?

  "I think it's time for you to go." Debbie refused eye contact.

  She stood. "I'm sorry if I said something wrong. I was just trying to help."

  A scornful laugh came from her friend. "Doubtful. You just wanted to use my pain to make me fall for a pack of lies." Debbie strode to the front door.

  A pack of lies? Is that how Debbie saw the Bible? Liv followed and arrived just as the door opened as a command for to her to leave. She stopped and faced Debbie, her heart heavy. "I'm sorry if that's what you think. I wanted to help because you're my friend."

  "Not any more." The words dripped like frozen icicles.

  Liv stepped out the door and turned once more. "Please don't do this, Debbie. Let me help."

  Debbie's swollen eyes narrowed to narrow slits. "I don't need that kind of help. By the way, I got word through the grapevine that there are two men from our squadron missing in action. Do you know where your husband is?"

  With those fear-filled words still hanging in the air between them, the door slammed in Liv's face, her mind and heart immediately focused on her worst fears.

  * * *

  With an aching chest and frantic thoughts, Liv made her way back home as quickly as possible. Was it true? Or was Debbie in such a place of pain that she wanted others to hurt, too?

  Once at home, she threw her purse on the couch and headed straight for the laptop. Email was the top priority in her own frantic version of triage. Had Jeff written? She quickly pulled up the internet and scrolled through her messages. Still nothing from her husband, which did nothing but exacerbate her panic. Next she googled "missing in action in Afghanistan." There were plenty of stories--even some that were recent--but no details that provided the information she was desperate for.

  Liv raised both palms to her cheeks, her breath coming in uneven and shallow spurts. God, I don't know what to do. Please help me..

  She stood and paced across the floor to the front door and back again, her thoughts racing. The Navy would contact her if he were missing. That tidbit of information floated to the front of her brain, but it did nothing to alleviate the panic that made her pulse bounce around like a buoy on choppy waves.

  Liv rubbed a hand across her lips. An all-too familiar part of deployment training for wives was an order not to watch television or the internet for news. She'd broken that cardinal rule more than once. But now she had to know, and would do anything to find out. She picked up her phone and called Darcy.

  "Hey, Liv."

  "Hey. Listen I was just over at Debbie's and she said two men were missing in action. Is that true?"

  Her friend's shocked gasp sounded through the phone, but other than that the silence was deafening. Finally Darcy broke the silence. "Yes, but I don't know who."

  "What do you mean you don't know? How can you know two are missing, but not know who they are?"

  "When Doug and I were on Skype, he mentioned that two were missing, but we got cut off b
efore he could tell me who. I haven't heard from him since."

  For the second time in two days, Liv's knees buckled beneath her. And a second later, she lost her Krispy Kreme doughnut and cup of coffee.

  Chapter Nine

  "How was school today?" Liv delivered the question as chipper as possible as her daughter climbed into the back seat and buckled the belt on her car seat. For Chesney's sake she had to maintain a facade of normalcy, even when it seemed like everything was falling to pieces with the news of two missing in action and absolutely no communication from Jeff.

  Her daughter's hang-dog expression let Liv know that it hadn't been a good day.

  Liv moved around the car, climbed in the driver's seat, buckled her seatbelt, and put the car in gear, easing out of the long line of cars at the preschool. "Wanna talk about it?" She peered in the rearview mirror at Chesney.

  "No matter how hard I try to do the right thing, I always mess up." Chesney's overly dramatic hands gestured wildly as she spoke.

  "Me too."

  Chesney's already big eyes widened further and her lowered chin stretched out her face with lips drawn up tight.

  Liv suppressed a smile. "Does that surprise you?"

  Her daughter nodded, again with an overdramatic flair. "I thought grown-ups didn't mess up."

  "Well, that doesn't line up with the biggest story now, does it? Adam, Eve, Cain...even Abraham. They were all grownups, and they continued to mess up." Mess-ups and broken pieces were deeply embedded in the genetic code of humanity.

  "So it's okay to mess up?"

  "Yes and no. We should never mess up on purpose just because we can. But when we do mess up, we need to be honest with God and ourselves that we've blown it." Advice Liv had heeded a few minutes before leaving to pick up Chesney, as she poured out her heart and own broken pieces to God, pleading for His help.

  "What about the Fixer?"

  "What about Him?"

  "Does He show up in the next part of the story?"

  Liv smiled at her daughter through the rearview mirror, happy her daughter was so into this telling of the gospel story, but wishing against all hope that Jeff would return to help her tell it. "Guess we'll find out later tonight. For right now, how does a trip to the beach sound?"

  "Hurray! Let's go to the beach!"

  That evening, feeling more relaxed and less panicked after their visit to the beach and dinner out, Liv and Chesney once more reclined on Chesney's bed, Liv's Bible open on her lap. "Tonight the story is about Moses and the people of Israel."

  "I know that story," crowed Chesney triumphantly. "Moses' mommy put him in a basket and then in a river so the king's daughter would see him."

  "Good for you, Chesney, but this part of the story is when Moses is a grownup."

  "Oh." The air in her daughter's sails sagged momentarily, but then a curious light shone in Chesney's eyes. "Was Moses broken too?"

  "Definitely. Just like all people are. He even killed a man. In fact, he was living in the desert, trying to hide away from his wrongdoing, when God told him to go back to Egypt where the children of Jacob had become slaves. It would be his job to set the people free from slavery."

  "What is slavery?"

  "It's when the people in power make others do whatever they say. The Hebrew people had to make bricks and build cities for the wicked king. They cried out to God, and God sent Moses to deliver them."

  "Did it work?"

  "Yes, in a great and mighty way. God gave Moses the ability to do many signs and wonders. At first the wicked king refused to let the people go, but finally God convinced him." Liv paused to corral her thoughts. This next part was difficult to understand, even as an adult. Would a four-year-old accept it? "The night before the people left, God did something very special. He had all the people kill a lamb to eat. He told them to put some of the blood over their door. Those who listened were saved, but those who didn't experienced death in their houses."

  Chesney's normally smooth forehead had wrinkled, and her eyes held sorrow. "Why did they have to kill the lambs?"

  "Well, it was what God told them to do, and it provided food for them."

  "Couldn't they just go to the grocery store for food to eat?"

  A smile burgeoned on Liv's face. Good point. "I know it's hard for you to understand, but back then people grew their own food. But the most important reason for killing the lambs was that it was a picture of what would happen when the Fixer would come." Liv observed her daughter's face. Chesney seemed to not only hang on every word, but also accept it. "The last God-sign was enough for the mean king to let the Hebrew people go."

  "I bet they were happy."

  "Yes, they were. But it didn't take too long before they started following their own way instead of God's way."

  Chesney shook her head back and forth to show that their behavior made no sense to her.

  "In fact, God gave ten special rules to show the people how to live in relationship to God and their fellow man, but like you and me, no matter how hard they tried--sometimes because they didn't try at all and sometimes because they made their own rules--they couldn't keep God's law perfectly."

  A big yawn crept from Chesney's mouth, in spite of her attempts to stifle it.

  Liv closed her Bible. "It's time for you to go to sleep, little one. We'll do some more of the big story later on." As she tucked the covers around her nearly-asleep daughter, her thoughts flashed once more to her daughter's birth. What a miracle that Chesney survived, a reminder for the present that God had a way of working things out when there seemed to be no hope. Now a second miracle child lived within her.

  Fear once more tremored through her veins in the enemy's attempt to take over her thoughts and move her focus. Fears about Jeff's safety and his ability to make it home in one piece. Fears about how she would ever be able to bear and raise another child and Chesney, especially if she had to do it on her own. Fears that splintered inside her brain, sending prickly shards that embedded in her flesh. What was it Mom had said? Something about living in the possibilities and hope rather than the yuck. She closed her eyes, suddenly world weary and the enemy close, but God even closer.

  Yes, the enemy wanted her to live in the yuck, to give way to her fears, to fall into a depression and hopelessness. But God was bigger, a fact she had to hold on to with every ounce of faith and strength she could muster. Somehow--even in the midst of her own broken pieces--she had to learn to trust Him more and keep her mind focused on Him.

  Chapter Ten

  Friday morning, Liv accepted Darcy's offer for help and let her friend drop Chesney off at school so she could make her early morning pottery lesson on time. After the normal greetings, Liv set to work, wedging the clay like she'd learned the previous week. Next she moved to the pottery wheel with the wedged clay. She once more watched Marty Guthrie as he easily demonstrated how to form a cup.

  She paid particular attention to his fingers and noticed for the first time how his hands were both gentle and strong. Not too much pressure, but just enough, with each hand exerting an equal amount of strength. Though it took her several tries, by the end of the lesson she had formed an acceptable cup.

  "Want to keep this one?" The spry old man peered above the top of his reading glasses.

  Liv shook her head and glanced at the clock. She'd have to get a move on it to make her doctor's appointment. "I don't think so. I think I'm finally getting the hang of it, so I'll wait until next week and see how it goes then."

  "Sounds good to me."

  She thanked him and hurried outside to her minivan. A few minutes later she arrived at the medical clinic with five minutes to spare, but her heart raced from the expended energy and effort.

  To her pleasant surprise, she was ushered to the exam room just a few minutes later.

  Liv tried not to flinch as Dr. Amy's cool stethoscope landed on her lower abdomen. She watched for any sort of reaction on the doctor's face. Had her fears and worries and stress caused even more problems,
especially as it related to the baby?

  A slight frown appeared between Dr. Amy's eyes. She listened some more, then sighed, and removed the stethoscope to let it hang around her neck. "How have you been feeling, Liv?"

  Liv grimaced. Best not to hold anything back, though she was pretty sure the doctor wouldn't like it. "Not well, actually. My husband deployed right after I found out about the pregnancy. I've been upset, depressed, and struggling to keep a normal life going for our daughter. Then a friend of mine--who is also a military wife--lost her husband." She intentionally left out the part about the soldiers missing in action, doing all she could to follow her mother's advice to live in hope.

  The doctor's eyes had taken on compassion, but her lips had drawn into a thin taut line. "And what are you doing to take care of yourself?"

  Good question. Liv moved her gaze to the typical suspended ceiling tiles of office buildings. "Does retail therapy count?"

  The doctor laughed. "Only if you can afford it."

  Another grimace landed on Liv's face. So far she was coming up short. Far short. "I took up pottery and started a photography business."

  "Now we're getting somewhere, as long as you don't overdo it with your new business. What about your extended family?"

  "They're in Colorado. I thought about taking Chesney to see them over the Christmas holidays." She cast an expectant gaze on the doctor, pleading silently that the idea would be an agreeable one.

  "Flying or driving?"

  Liv longed to keep the answer to herself, certain the doctor wouldn't approve. "Driving."

  Dr. Amy said nothing, but shook her head from side to side.

  "I really need some time with them." The words tumbled from Liv's lips in a pleading tone.

  "I understand that, and I think it would be good for you emotionally. But based on the baby's erratic heartbeat I don't think it's advisable for you to drive that far." She paused. "I know you're not going to like this, but unless you start doing a better job of dealing with your stress, you'll end up on bed rest for the remainder of your pregnancy."