A Family for Christmas

Lydia took ten deep breaths in a row.

When she was still so angry she wanted to scream, she took ten more deep breaths before pulling her car out of the church parking lot and heading for the interstate.

She’d only calmed down slightly when she grabbed her phone and connected to Daniel, the pastor of her hometown church, who was always her first call after a meeting as frustrating as the one she’d just had.

It rang four times, and Lydia was about to hang up, realizing it was Sunday afternoon and Daniel was probably resting.

Before she could disconnect, he answered the phone. “Hey, Lydia.”

“Hi,” she said, feeling even guiltier since he sounded kind of distracted. “Sorry to call on a Sunday afternoon. I should have waited until tomorrow.”

“It’s fine. Jessica and I were just cleaning up from lunch.” He paused as if he were briefly searching his memory. “You were visiting another church this morning?”

“Yeah. In Charlotte.”

“I guess it didn’t go well then.”

“The presentation and Sunday school hour went great but not the meeting with the Session.” She paused to take another deep breath, reliving again her frustration from the meeting she’d just had with the elders of the church.

“What happened?” Daniel asked.

“Why the hell doesn’t anyone think I can do legal work in India without being married? How exactly is a husband supposed to be necessary for me to work with trafficked women?”

She was exaggerating a little since the NGO she was planning to work with was fine with her being a single woman. But she needed to raise support for her salary and expenses since the Christian human rights organization wasn’t able to give her a salary yet. That meant asking for money from individuals and churches. The churches in her circle always had money in their budgets for mission work, which is how they would classify her plan to work toward rescuing and restoring girls and women forced into the sex trade, but her Presbyterian denomination was a small and conservative one, which was making her attempt to raise support more difficult than it should have been.

She’d been at it for eight months now, and she wasn’t even close to having the yearly pledges she needed.

“You know,” she went on, “one of the elders asked me today why I wanted to do this instead of getting married and starting a family.”

She was venting, and she sounded too frustrated, so she tried to dial it back. “Sorry. You’ve heard all this before. I’ll call back tomorrow so you can enjoy your afternoon.”

“Are you headed for Columbia now?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure it’s going to be worth my time since it’s such a huge missions conference, which means I’m not going to get much attention. But I’ll give it a try.”

“Try not to exude impatience with people. They can pick up on it.”

She bit back her reply, which would have been neither patient nor gentle. She had always been an honest, straightforward person—some people would call her too much so—but as she’d gotten older she’d learned to temper those qualities with courtesy.

For the most part.

But it wasn’t like she’d be snapping at the church elders from whom she was asking money.

“I’m doing my best,” she gritted.

“I know. Sorry. I know you’re in a tough position. Hey, when you’re in Columbia tonight, you might touch base with Gabe Alexander. I was talking to him last week, and he’ll be at that same conference this evening. You two have a lot in common.”

“Who is this?” She’d reached the on-ramp for I-77, so she pulled her car onto the interstate, heading south.

“Gabe Alexander. You remember him, don’t you? He was in Willow Park one summer several years back.”

Lydia felt flustered and distracted from her aggravating morning, but she tried to search her memory for that name. “Maybe.”

“It was the summer the Johnsons were visiting from India. He heard their testimony too and felt called to India just like you did. You really need to connect with him.” Daniel’s tone changed as if he were just making a connection in his mind. “I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before. I’ll text you his phone number. Promise me you’ll talk to him this evening.”

“Okay. I promise.” She had no idea why Daniel sounded so excited, but she had no reason not to look the guy up. “Wait, is he Mary and Henry’s son? From church? I think I remember their son if it’s him. He and his wife had a new baby that summer, didn’t they? I took care of her in the nursery some and babysat for them once. They paid really well.”

She didn’t know why she added the last bit since it was irrelevant, but she remembered it, so she said it.

She usually said what she thought.

“Yeah. That’s him.”

“So they’re going to India too?”

“He is. They’re not married anymore.”

“Oh. Okay. Sure, I’ll talk to him.”