Joy Comes in the Morning

A. Spangler Carolyn

Description

In a small town in southwestern Michigan, four lives teeter on the edges of happiness and despair. Emily is a divorced high school English teacher. She has a personal relationship with God; she knows He is a loving, forgiving father. Despite her relationship with Him, Emily cant seem to move beyond the past and a painful divorce that haunts her present, as problems with her ex-husband interfere with her current budding relationship.Her son, Tom, is twenty-two and was recently diagnosed with Parkinsons disease. Because of this, his young wife has left him. Although he has become a Christian, he wonders how he will cope with his uncertain future by himself. His younger sister, Katie, is twenty and in college. She wants to have faith in God, but she rebels because a caring God would not give her brother Parkinsons. As she struggles with depression, only time will tell whether anyone can help her turn her life around.Franklin works with Emily at the high school as a social studies teacher. His faith in God is strong, but due to rejection by the person he believed to be his true love, his faith in people is not. He wants to make things work with Emily, but her past may keep them apart. These four people struggle to fix things, but what they must realize is that while they cant solve their problems, God can.

Informations

• Publié par: Inspiring Voices
• Date de parution: 26 mars 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781462409310
• Langue: English

Extrait

JOY COMES IN THE MORNING
Carolyn A. Spangler


Copyright © 2014 Carolyn A. Spangler.
 
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.
 
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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: 978-1-4624-0930-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4624-0931-0 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014904978
 
Inspiring Voices rev. date: 03/25/2014

Contents
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

Dedication
For my children, seven grandchildren, and great granddaug hter.
May all of them come to know an important truth. Being a Christian doesn’t make for a perfect life. Bad things still happen; common, everyday emotions, problems, and challenges still come. There are still struggles with temptation, forgiveness, doing the right thing, and understanding ot hers.
But God is with us always, comforting us, so we need not fear our enemies, illness, death, or anyt hing.

CHAPTER 1
Emily
Help us O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name; And deliver us and forgive our sins for Your name’s sake.
—Psalm 79:9
Sometimes life seems way too complicated, way too hard. I wonder what it would be like to have no problems, to know that my kids are healthy, to feel the love of a special man, to wake up and find that all of those essays have been magically graded. Would I be happy then? Or would I still have this gnawing feeling inside of me that there was something missing in my life?
E mily Sanderson pulled into her driveway, groaning as she heard music beside her. She’d never get to her cell phone in time. Besides she didn’t feel like talking to anyone; she was way too tired from a hard day at school. But what if it were one of her kids? She stopped and reached for her handbag on the passenger seat. The music nagged on and on. Where was that phone? She looked up and realized she was inching up to the garage door. It would not be cool to crash in front of her own condo because of a stupid phone call. The noise finally stopped. Oh well, she’d call back in a mi nute.
She clicked on the garage door opener and slowly eased her way to the tennis ball hanging from the rafters - her son’s contribution to helping her get settled in her new home. “Mom, you’re going to smash your bike one of these days,” he had said. “And you worry too much,” she had retorted. The tennis ball went up an yway.
Music again. A very persistent caller. She easily found the phone in its usual pocket, noticed that it was Jack, and answered an yway.
“Hello, Emily!” His loud voice boomed in her ear. “I was wondering if you were going to an swer.”
“I was just driving into the garage and couldn’t get to the phone,” she explained. Then she was annoyed with herself. Why was she explaining to her ex-husband why she couldn’t immediately answer his call? And why was he calling, anyway? They had nothing to discuss any more. After all his badgering, she had finally sold their house so he could have the money he seemed to need so desperately. She had had a long day of teaching. Why couldn’t he just leave her a lone?
Emily opened the door with her left hand holding her cell up to her ear. With her right she pulled out her green paisley briefcase. So many papers to grade ton ight.
“Emily, are you t here?”
“Yes … yes. What do you need?”
“Just a little of your time. I’ll be here in Springton all weekend. Could we get together Sunday after noon?”
She shook her head no. Why did they need to do this? She really didn’t want to deal with him again. He had the divorce he wanted. They were completely separate now. She had tried so hard to forgive and forget. And that had been a very long process. She and her counselor had spent countless hours going over all the problems leading to their divorce. And Jack hadn’t wanted to talk about it then. Why now? What kind of game was he pla ying?
“Well, I don’t know,” she started. “I’ve got a briefcase full of work t o do.”
“Emily, you always have papers to grade. They never go away, from what I remember. This won’t take long. Let’s meet at Barney’s about 2:30.”
Emily paused, thinking of his comment about papers. It was true. There were always papers to grade. Had that been an issue he hadn’t talked about before? One of the many issues they hadn’t talked about? Her counselor had pointed out how little she and Jack had actually discussed things in their marr iage.
“All right, all right. But let’s make it 3:30. I don’t even get home from church and dinner until 2:00.” She sighed as she put her briefcase on the kitchen table and kicked the door shut.
“Great. See you then.”
At least she had her way on the time. She could have met him at 2:30, she thought, but she was tired of always doing things his way.
Emily went back to the garage to lug in a couple of grocery bags from her little Volkswagen bug; she had reluctantly stopped at the store on the way home from school so she’d have something to eat tonight. She clicked open the trunk, grabbed the plastic bags full of fruit and frozen dinners, opened the door, and stood for a moment looking at the Michigan sky. Nothing but swirling black clouds. Dark and dreary, just like every other day for the past three weeks. Very depressing, almost more than she could stand. Too bad she couldn’t follow her parents to Flo rida.
Emily looked back at her car. Gray, just like the weather and her mood. Why had she ever thought that color looked so professional and right for her? She should have chosen something bright, like salsa red.
She took the bags to the kitchen counter, quickly stored the groceries in the refrigerator, and then decided to get the mail before taking off her coat. She walked out onto the driveway lined with brown leaves. Not many left on the trees. A few yellow oak leaves hung on the branches, refusing to believe winter was coming. The lawn was also brown and dry, along with the petunias and marigolds she had planted last spring. Snow would be here soon.
The street was quiet on this Thursday afternoon. There were no little kids riding bicycles or playing baseball on the corner lot. She noticed the neighbor across the street on a ladder hanging Christmas lights. It was early; Thanksgiving hadn’t even come yet. Maybe she had missed the notice of the contest to see who could get the lights up first. Or maybe he had nothing better to do. Would she hang lights this year? No, too much school work t o do.
Once inside, she put her coat in the closet and then dumped her briefcase full of ungraded papers on the desk in the den. She had to deal with some of those Huckleberry Finn essays soon. What had Huck learned about relationships with others? That was the question she had asked her tenth graders to ponder as they wrote about three pages. Maybe she’d learn something. So far her life didn’t deserve even a passing grade on relationships. Look what had happened to her and Jack. The marriage that was to last forever had not. She had wanted it to last, but Jack hadn’t. At age 46, she was a fai lure.
Emily walked to her bedroom, shedding her blouse, shoes, and skirt by the time she reached the closet. A few minutes later she was in the kitchen, in comfortable jeans, a WMU sweatshirt, and tennis shoes. She opened a soda, slid the last brownie out of the pan, and settled into the rocker in the living room. She gazed around, feeling her mood lift a bit. It was a warm and cozy place. A gas-lit fireplace, wood blinds and a dark red valance on the window facing the street, a new sage green loveseat, a small television on the bookcase in the corner, a reading lamp beside the rocker with its red and green checked cushion. This was okay. Maybe even better than okay.
Then she thought of Jack. Too bad her weekend would have to be ruined with a meeting with him. “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Her pastor had just preached on that verse last Sunday. She supposed she should try to carry out that idea. Holding a grudge and constantly complaining about Jack hadn’t seemed to help. “So how’s that working out for you?” her good friend Pat had asked her once after a particularly long afternoon of venting all her frustrations about Jack. “Isn’t it time to mov e on?”
That comment and question had made her think. Pat was probably right. One of these days she had to move on. There were probably many people who were tired of hearing about how bad Jack was.
Moving on. That was the hard part. She had made a big step when she sold the house and moved out. The house s