By the Light of a Thousand Stars

Langston Turner Jamie

Description

Beyond the Sorrow, Belief Awaited....Catherine had vowed long ago to be the kind of mother she'd never known herself, but somewhere along the way things became muddled. One by one her three children rebelled, leaving her outwardly perfect family in disarray. As if their household isn't disrupted enough, Catherine's strange sister-in-law moves in--uninvited.Into the chaos steps a new neighbor, as different from Catherine as any woman could be. Catherine is both appalled and fascinated by the unique way Barb's family interprets life's trials, and she is inexplicably drawn to them. When tragedy strikes, she finds herself longing to discover the secret to their joyful, contented lives.A Christy Award Finalist

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781441204387
• Langue: English

Extrait

By the Light of a Thousand Stars
Jamie Langston Turner
© 1999 by Jamie Langston Turner
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438 www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-0438-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Cover design by Lookout Design, Inc.
FOR JESS
who is going with me
“The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him . Thy father and thy mother shall be glad , and she that bore thee shall rejoice.”
P ROVERBS 23:24, 25
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
July 29
Dottie
1. A Few Short Years
August 23-September 5
Catherine
2. Our Lowly Estate
3. A Distant City
4. Thin Air
5. Slow Circles
6. An Empty Room
7. The Same Hand
8. A Little Taste
9. The Right Words
10. All Those Wrinkles
11. The Very Tip
12. The Middle of the Day
13. Bits and Pieces
14. Missing Items
November 22-December 29
Barb
15. Too Much Trouble
16. A Truth of Life
17. That Small Gesture
18. Lists of Things
19. A Most Pressing Matter
20. A Special Case
21. Just Another Adventure
22. A Great Sum
23. The Real Thing
24. Extra Space
25. Happy Thoughts
26. The Passage of Time
February 17-March 18
Della Boyd
27. Close Range
28. A Different View
29. Huge Risk
30. A Sign of Life
31. As a Shadow
32. Further Clues
33. A Cold, Dark Feeling
May 26
Dottie
34. The Motions of Faith

About the Author
Other Books by Author
Back Cover
July 29
DOTTIE
1
A Few Short Years
Lying on her daughter’s bed, Dottie Puckett heard sounds as if they were magnified a hundred times that day. She heard the usual things you’d expect to hear an airplane, distant traffic, the air conditioning turning on and off. And she heard other things, too a high-pitched motorized whine from somewhere nearby, the chatter of a squirrel outside the window, a tree branch brushing against the gutter, the coursing sound of water through a pipe, her own breathing.
Sounds told you a lot. Today they told her that people and things were going about their normal business in spite of what had happened here at this house only three weeks ago. Though everybody thought she was mild-mannered and good-natured, Dottie knew that what she felt right now was closer to anger than anything else. Not that she was angry at the planes and cars and water pipes, for goodness’ sake, but why is it, she thought, that I have to go on breathing in and out when Bonita is lying in a box a mile down the road?
A mile down the road. They had made a short day’s walk out of it one time, she and Bonita. It couldn’t have been more than three or four years ago. Bonita would have been twelve or thirteen at the time. Dottie had packed a lunch for them of cold chicken left over from supper the night before and pimento cheese sandwiches, and the two of them had walked down one Saturday in early spring to pay a surprise visit to Birdie Freeman, whose house stood right next to Shepherd’s Valley Cemetery along Highway 11. They could have driven, of course, but the whole point of it was to take a springtime walk. They meandered a bit on the way, detouring into a wooded area to look for birds building their nests, a subject that had fascinated Bonita at the time, and stopping to peer into the windows of an old abandoned farmhouse next to an empty field, trying to imagine things about the people who had lived there. Bonita had picked a bouquet of wild hawthorn and forsythia growing at the side of the house to take to Birdie.
If Birdie hadn’t been home, they already had it planned that they would take a turn through the cemetery, eat their lunch by the willow trees, and start back home. But she was home, hanging out towels and sheets on her clothesline. They heard her humming as they approached. Her small hands were brisk and efficient with the large white sheets. Dottie had motioned to Bonita, putting her finger to her lips, and they had stood watching Birdie a full minute or two before she knew they were there.
Even though she didn’t want to think about it now, Dottie remembered how joyfully Birdie had greeted them, scolding them for bringing their own lunch, then pulling them into her house to see the new braided rug she and her husband, Mickey, had made by hand from old fabric scraps. Birdie had fixed herself a sandwich and had eaten lunch with Dottie and Bonita by the willow trees behind the cemetery. And though Dottie especially didn’t want to think about this part, the three of them had walked through the cemetery before it was all over. Bonita had read the names and epitaphs aloud, and Birdie had loved the one that read A Saint on Earth as He Is in Heaven .
If someone had told the three of them that spring Saturday that within a few short years two of them would be buried right there in that very cemetery, they wouldn’t have believed it. It was far too unlikely. But the unlikelihood of that paled in comparison to the way Birdie and Bonita had both died.
Dottie took hold of the bedspread beneath her and crumpled a handful of chenille in each fist. She breathed in deeply and held it while she slowly counted to ten. Don’t say the word died, she told herself. Don’t even think. Just listen . Stop remembering things . She decided to close her eyes so she wouldn’t be distracted by the things she saw in Bonita’s bedroom, not that there was much left of Bonita in the room. Only her furniture, really, and the curtains they had made together last summer when they were redecorating her bedroom for her sixteenth birthday. Right before she squeezed her eyes shut, Dottie saw in a blinding flash the pink ruffled valance on the window facing the front of the house. Don’t think about it , she thought. Don’t think about how Bonita tore that ruffle out and resewed it three times to get it even. Just listen .
She couldn’t have said how long she lay there with her eyes closed. She might have fallen asleep, for when she opened her eyes again sometime later, the angle of sunlight coming in through the windows seemed different. She glanced around for a clock but knew there wasn’t one in here. But as she had no idea what time it had been when she had slipped off her shoes to lie down on Bonita’s bed, a clock wouldn’t have told her how much time had passed. The words echoed inside her head. Time passing time passing time passing time . . . The passing of time, which had once seemed so important in marking off small accomplishments and segments of life, now seemed utterly meaningless. Time passed, and what it took with it couldn’t be retrieved.
Think of Bible verses, Dottie told herself. Though she knew reams of Scripture by heart, the one that sprang first to her mind was the old standby. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.” A picture of the three of them eating lunch under willow trees behind the cemetery came into her mind. “He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” Again she clutched at the bedspread. She felt no restoration of soul, couldn’t see any righteousness for all the brambles that had overgrown her path. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” She heard herself cry out and immediately clapped her hand over her mouth. All her life she had recited these verses, yet now, when it counted most, the truth seemed to elude her. She felt the cold, hard presence of evil in the shadow of Bonita’s death, and instead of comfort, she felt that her soul had been beaten with a rod and staff. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. . . .”
She couldn’t continue. She had to stop this. A sudden, desperate dread of what was to come seized her. Where was her faith? Was this how it was going to be for the rest of her life? Lay hold of Scripture, she told herself, and as she cast about frantically for another passage, the words of Job’s wife suddenly shouted in her mind: “Curse God, and die.” But just as swiftly Job’s reply offered itself: “What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” He had told his wife she was speaking as a foolish woman. And that’s just what you’re doing, Dottie told herself. You’re speaking as a foolish woman. Again she thought of Job’s answer: “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?”
Oh, but I would gladly give up a thousand good things I’ve received from God’s hand, thought Dottie, if only I could have Bonita back. Again the smothering thought came to her that had first come to her at Bonita’s funeral: For the rest of my days on earth, I won’t see Bonita. I won’t hear her voice or touch her ever again for as long as I live . She bit her lower lip until she felt pain. They had told her that Bonita hadn’t felt any pain, that in all probability she had died instantly.
Things had seemed so simple before. Had anybody asked her how to suffer great loss, she would have quoted verse after verse, stringing them together like shiny beads. “God is good,” she would have assured the person, “his merciful goodness endures to all generations,” “all things work together for goo