Serial Fiction: Rekindle Parts 3 & 4

July 2, 2020July 8, 2020 / Lisa R. Howeler / 1 Comment

I’m sharing parts three and four of Rekindle today. To read the first two parts, click HERE.

With the children in bed, it was just Matt and Cassie alone in the living room. Alone. Together. With a canyon of silence between them.

Matt slumped further down on the couch, drumming his fingers on the cushion. He had no idea what to do with himself without hearings to plan for, committee meetings to gather research for or statements to draft for the press with his brother. He should probably be on the phone with John and Liam, preparing their plan of action for when they got back into the office in the next week or so. He looked at his phone on the end of the couch but didn’t feel any motivation to reach for it. In fact, he didn’t feel any motivation at all to deal with his job, especially the press.

He’d already drafted a statement with John. There really wasn’t anything else to say. For now anyhow. He was sure in the next day or so he’d be getting calls from other congressmen and congresswomen looking to set up virtual meetings to draft various bills or establish plans of action for the current situation, but for now his phone had gone silent and he should enjoy the silence while he could. He would have enjoyed it, if it just wasn’t so weird.

He felt his forehead. Maybe he was coming down with that virus after all. He’d been going full bore at his job for two years straight now, but today he’d finally hit some kind of wall. He wasn’t even motivated to reach for the remote and watch television.

He looked over at Cassie sitting sideways on a chair, her legs hanging over the arm of it, her head bent over a book. She was wearing a pair of hot pink short-shorts, a loose fitting white t-shirt and her hair was falling out of a messy bun she’d piled on top of her head. Her long legs were as shapely and attractive as the first day he’d met her. His eyes followed the length of them from her bare toes to the edge of her shorts and remembered the many times his hand had traveled that path over the years.

Desire swelled in his chest as he thought about the night they’d celebrated his congressional win. She’d worn that black skirt with the slit in the side, the slit that went from her knee to the middle of her thigh. Only she hadn’t even known the skirt had that slit until she was at his victory speech and he’d laughed later in the back of Liam’s car when he had watched her try to hold the pieces together, her cheeks flushed pink. Cassie always was fairly modest in how she dressed and he knew she never would have worn the dress if she hadn’t been rushed. The election results came in earlier than expected and she’d snatched the skirt out of her closet, the skirt she’d purchased a few days before but hadn’t had a chance to try on. She knew Matt’s acceptance speech was going to be closely watched by many since he had run against a long-time congressman who had been thrown in the middle of a scandal the year before.

“I can’t believe I wore this skirt to your acceptance speech,” she hissed. “I can imagine what the press will be saying tomorrow.”

“That your gorgeous?”

“Or that I’m a floozy.”

Matt tipped his head all the way back and laughed. “A floozy? What happened right there? Did we just teleport back to the 40s?”

Cassie punched Matt in the upper arm, giggling. “Shut up.”

Back at the house, the children staying with Cassie’s parents, Matt had stood behind Cassie as she unhooked her necklace and took her earrings out.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, stepping closer, reaching out to touch the edge of the skirt. “I really like this skirt.”

“Oh, you do, do you?”

His finger found the slit and slipped inside, touching the skin there, on her upper thigh.

His mouth touched her bare neck, his voice husky as he spoke. “All I wanted to do was get back here with you. No kids. All alone. Finally.”

She turned, smiling, pushing her hands into his hair. “And what can we do here, all alone?”

He didn’t need words to answer her question. His mouth found hers while he gently pushed her back toward the bed, lowering her to it.

“You okay over there?”

Cassie’s voice interrupted the memory of his hand traveling under that skirt, up that leg, that night.

“Huh? Oh yeah. Good. I’m good.”

“You miss work, don’t you?”

“Um. No. Actually. I don’t. And that weirds me out a little.”

“Oh.”

She shrugged and turned back to her book. “This break is probably just showing you how burned out you are.”

“I’m not burned out. Am I?”

Cassie was back into her book. “Mmm. If you say so.”

Matt sat up straighter and leaned forward on his knees toward Cassie.

“We haven’t spent a lot of time together lately, have we?

She glanced up from the book, one eyebrow cocked.

“No. Not really, but you’ve been busy. I understand.”

“Do you want to spend more time together? I mean, maybe you’re bored with me? Our life here together?”

Cassie laughed. “Matt, where is this all coming from?” she closed the book. “Is this because of Liam and Maddie?

Matthew shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe. It’s got me thinking a lot, I guess.”

“So? What’s the verdict? Are Liam and Maddie getting a divorce?”

Matt sighed. “I don’t know. I mean, they’ve been meeting with a divorce attorney. The only reason they missed the last meeting was because of this whole debacle.”

He looked at Cassie, watched her watching him and wondered again if Cassie would ever want to divorce him. If she did, he wouldn’t blame her. He’d dragged her into this crazy political world, under a never-satisfied microscope of public scrutiny. The same with the kids. What had he been thinking? Of his constituents? The future of the country? Or had it really just been of himself and his own desire to reach a certain level of success?

“And now they are stuck together in that house,” Maddie said with a shake of her head. “Wow. That has to be super awkward.”

“Yeah. It is. Liam said Maddie accused him of cheating on her.”

Cassie’s eyes widened. “No way.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, did he?”

“Cassie! You know Liam wouldn’t do something like that.”

“I don’t think he would, no, but . . .”

“But what? Men do those things because we’re all jerks, is that what you mean?”

“I’m not saying that but long hours, all those pretty women around, he and Maddie so distant after the miscarriages, especially after the last one.”

Matt was feeling uncomfortable with his wife’s line of thinking. He stood and walked toward the kitchen for a glass of juice. His wife really thought his little brother could cheat on his wife? If she thought that then what did she think of him? He’d been working long hours too. Around a lot of pretty women, many of them more than willing to sleep with a congressman to work their way up the ladder in their careers. Was Cassie drawing a line between the possibility that Liam had cheated to the possibility he had too?

He poured the juice and heard her footsteps behind him. “I’m sorry, Matt. I really can’t see Liam doing that, no. Your brother has just been under a lot of pressure and —”

“Being under pressure doesn’t lean to affairs every time, okay?”

Cassie raised her eyes brows and held up her hands. “Okay. I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. I was just trying to enjoy a quiet night for once with a book. I’ll leave you alone.”

Matt turned toward her. “Cassie, I didn’t mean to start a fight either. I just —”

“It’s fine.” Cassie walked to him and kissed his cheek. She stepped back and looked him in the eyes. “You just need to unwind. You’ve been put through the ringer by the media, other members of congress, and now Liam’s drama. I don’t blame you for being tense. Why don’t you go watch one of your favorite shows. I’m going to turn in early.”

“You don’t need to turn in early.”

Her mind had been made up though. She was weary of discussing Liam and politics and viruses and . . . life, quite frankly.

“I really do need to,” she said softly, already at the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “See you in the morning, Matt.”

Matt finished his juice and shuffled back to the living room. Watch one of his favorite shows? He didn’t even have any favorite shows. Not current ones anyhow. He never had time to watch television anymore. He sat on the couch and slumped in the corner of it again, even further down this time than before.

He didn’t have time for anything anymore other than political fights and trying to put out fires. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. Dang it. What had he been thinking dragging his family through all of this? Just, seriously, what had he been thinking?

***

Cassie climbed under the covers and flopped on her back to stare at the ceiling, barely lit by the moonlight outside.

What was with all of Matt’s weird questions tonight? The situation with Liam and Maddie must be rattling him even more than she realized. She fluffed up her pillow, hugged it and tried to get more comfortable. It wasn’t working, though. Her mind was racing too much.

She was thinking about viruses and if her family was safe and Liam and Maddie and how to get groceries if they had to shelter in place and the media and what they’d be saying for the rest of the week with Matt and his staff having still worked for a week after they knew they’d been exposed to a contagious virus. She squeezed her eyes shut, took in a deep breath and held it for several seconds before letting it out again. She had to calm down.

She couldn’t deny that there were days she regretted agreeing with Matt that he should run for Congress. They both had such high hopes three years ago; hopes that they could make changes for the voters who had put their faith in Matt, while not being changed. But it was impossible not to be changed by the influences of Washington, D.C. Nothing in this city was like the small upstate New York town Cassie had grown up in and it was also nothing like where she and Matt had lived before he had been elected.

Stevensville, Ohio was small. Very small. It was also still her and Matt’s home in the summers when they left Washington D.C. behind for much needed breaks. Only that break wouldn’t be coming this year. Not with all the craziness about viruses and quarantines and freezes on travel. Cassie wanted to cry but she was afraid to because once she started, she might not stop. She was homesick for Ohio, for her own family, for Matt’s family, for the familiar she’d left behind when Matt was elected two years ago.

She sighed and opened her eyes, looking at the other side of the bed where Matt slept most nights of the week, unless he was working late and then he stayed at John’s apartment, closer to his office. She touched the side of the bed, feeling the cool sheets, thinking of how many nights they’d laid here next to each other, back to back, rarely speaking because she knew he needed his sleep, because she knew he needed to get up early in the morning, because she didn’t want to burden him anymore than he was already burdened.

But she missed him. She missed him holding her and them talking about their future, instead of him telling her about the stress he’d been under that day and then falling into a fitful sleep. She missed his hand on her cheek as he moved closer late at night, a small, mischievous smile that signaled he wasn’t ready for sleep yet.

She missed long, slow kisses, roaming hands, but as much as the physical, she missed the emotional connection they’d once had. The connection when Matt wanted to talk with her before anyone else, when he didn’t want to make a decision unless he’d asked her, and when she’d known so much about his day, his job and his life that it was as if they were thinking like one person.

“Cassie, are you sure you’re okay with this?” he’d asked three and a half years ago when he’d considered running for congress.

“Yeah. I am.”

That’s what she’d said, but she really wasn’t sure she was okay with it. She was okay with Matt wanting to help the people of his small hometown and the surrounding counties by becoming a congressman from Ohio, but she wasn’t really sure she was okay with the lives of their entire family being upended. She’d given up her social worker career five years before, deciding to spend more time at home with the children. Matt’s career as a lawyer had exploded and from there he’d become involved in county politics and then state politics. When the state’s Republican party came to him and asked him to run for Congress, he’d turned them down at first. But after several meetings, a few months of consideration, and talking to Cassie, his parents, his sister and brother, he’d decided to step into an already contentious race for the seat.

From the moment he’d announced to the day he won the seat, the lives of the Grant family had been a whirlwind. After the election, the moving began, the children were enrolled in new schools; every effort was made to ensure that the children and Cassie would see Matt as much as possible, despite his job.

The idea had been a good one, but the execution of it had started to fail within six months. Meetings, conferences, sessions that ran late into the night, and media-made emergencies were constant, taking over every aspect of Matt and Cassie’s life. Matt still made every effort to attend baseball games, dance recitals, and Saturday mornings at the park, in addition to balancing his responsibilities as a congressman, but that left little to almost no time for him and Cassie.

For the most part, Cassie was okay with being the last in line for his attention. She preferred he spend as much time as he could with the children during their formative years. This was a season of life, not a new normal. Time for them, as a couple, would come later, when things slowed down.

If things slow down, Cassie thought, panic suddenly gripping her, like a heavy weight in the center of her chest. If Matt gets reelected we could have another two years of this and maybe even another two after that. . .

She shuddered, pulling the covers up around her, even though it wasn’t that cold in their bedroom. She tried to imagine two more years, or even more, of accusations against her husband, and sometimes even her, in the press. She tried to imagine two more years of barely seeing her husband; of feeling like her husband’s nanny, even though she loved her children desperately; and of constituents confronting her husband when they were out in public, complaining about this or that change he’d promised he’d make if elected but still hadn’t been able to.

Cassie knew it wasn’t only the town she and Matt had lived in before moving here that she was homesick for, or the quiet life they’d led before he’d entered politics. She was homesick for time alone with Matt. She was tired of sharing him with his staff, his fellow congressmen, his constituents, and the press. She was tired of feeling like she was second in line for his attention, even though she knew he didn’t mean to make her feel that way.

Who knows, she thought, feeling sleep finally settling on her. Maybe this quarantine will be good for not only Liam and Maddie but for Matt and me. Maybe I’ll actually get him to myself for once.

A bit of fiction for your Thursday: Rekindle Part 1 and Part 2

June 25, 2020June 25, 2020 / Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

I wrote Quarantined as a short story back in April. I’ve decided to combine it with a follow-up story called Rekindle and release it at some point on Kindle Unlimited as a novella under the title Quarantined. I shared the first part of Rekindle about a month ago, but instead of linking to it, I thought I’d just share part one and two here today.

I’ll be sharing another chapter of The Farmer’s Daughter tomorrow.

Matt Grant tapped the end button on the screen of his phone and laid the phone on the coffee table next to his laptop and paperwork. He rubbed his hand across his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a tension headache pulsating in his temples.

He’d just got off the phone with his assistant press secretary, John Chambers. They’d drafted another statement for the media, answering accusations that Matt was still at work in his office in the House of Representatives.

“Just make sure they know I’m at home, self-quarantining, just like my doctor told me to,” Matt had told John, more than a touch of annoyance in his voice.

“I’m making sure,” John said. “I’m assuring them all of us are safely locked away now. Just like the critics seem to think we should be, even though our preliminary tests are inconclusive. I doubt this will satisfy them, but we can try.”

With the statement to the press out of the way, Matt’s mind wandered back to his brother Liam, who he needed to call and check on. Liam’s preliminary test had been positive, which was what had triggered this latest scandal in the first place. Matt was sure Liam would be fine but there was a small part of him that worried about his little brother catching the virus that was sending others to ICUs across the country. Matt wasn’t only worried about Liam’s physical help though. He was also worried about his mental and emotional health.

Liam had told Matt months ago that his marriage was in shambles. Matt had barely listened, sure his brother and sister-in-law would work things out. Matthew knew Liam still loved his wife Maddie, and Maddie still loved Liam. If they didn’t still love each other they wouldn’t be struggling so much with the idea of divorce.

It couldn’t be easy being quarantined together during a pandemic with all the issues they had with each other but Matthew was glad they were. Maybe they’d work out some of those issues and save what had been a great union at one time. As it was, their divorce proceedings had been delayed because of the pandemic. As Matthew saw it, this was a way for them to buy more time and truly be sure the divorce was what they wanted and he told his brother as much on the phone just now.

What made Matthew uncomfortable wasn’t only that he could hear pain mixed with longing in his brother’s voice when they had talked on the video call. It was also that he wondered, worried even, that maybe his marriage was bleeding out in the same way his younger brother’s had and he had been too wrapped up in himself to realize it.

Matthew and Cassie hadn’t had a lot of time alone lately. They actually had barely had time to even speak lately.

Their life had been a runaway train since the election two years ago and now it was picking up speed again as Matthew’s re-election campaign was underway. In Washington he faced daily drama and conflict whether he wanted it or not. Becoming the youngest head of the Intel Committee four months ago hadn’t helped slow things down any either.

Then there was this crazy never-before-seen virus that seemed to come out of nowhere a few weeks ago and now had him at home with his family, waiting to see if he developed any symptoms after being exposed to it more than a week ago and maybe again a few days ago. He was convinced if he had the virus, he would have developed symptoms by now, but he stayed home to make sure things looked good to the press and his constituents. Making sure things “looked good and right” to others seemed to be 90 percent of his job anymore, leaving little room for him to actually do good and right and accomplish the things he’d been elected to do.

All the drama in the House of Representatives left him little time to focus on Cassie or the kids and he regretted that. He regretted it even more when his brother’s march toward divorce had become a growing reality. He’d never pictured Liam and Maddie divorced. They were the perfect couple. They’d weathered some hard storms, but Matthew had been sure the challenges would bring them closer together. In fact, he thought it had but now he realized he’d been too wrapped up in the campaign and job to notice how much they’d actually drifted apart.

Sure, Liam, as his press secretary, spent many late nights working with him, but he imagined when he went home he and Maddie made up for lost time. Instead Matt had just learned that Liam had been working at home as well, passing out in his office, leaving Maddie alone most of the time, writing her romance novels and reaching for companionship on social media.

Matthew and Liam’s parents had been the perfect example of a stable, loving marriage. Married 54 years, Tom and Phyllis Grant made it clear each day how much they loved each other. Sure, they had argued, even in front of their children, but those arguments had been resolved usually before the sun had gone down and with a fair amount of ‘making up’. Matthew and Liam, and his sister Lana had been grateful the majority of that making up had gone on behind closed doors.

Standing from the couch to stretch, Matthew looked out the window at his own three children playing ball in the backyard and felt a twinge of guilt. Getting pregnant and carrying three babies to term had been easy for him and Cassie. They’d never had to face the heartbreak of not being able to get pregnant or of a miscarriage. Matthew felt like he’d taken being able to become a father so easily for granted.

He looked around his living room, well decorated with expensive furniture and commissioned paintings, and thought about how much of his life he had taken for granted, especially lately. He’d taken for granted the newer model car he drove, the highly-rated bed he slept on, the full refrigerator, and even fuller bank account.

He rubbed his hand along his chin and turned toward the kitchen where Cassie was making a late lunch for him and the kids. Her dark brown hair fell to her waist in a tight braid, the bottom of it grazing the top of the waistband of a pair of red workout shorts. Her favorite T-shirt, featuring Johnny Cash wearing a cowboy hat, fit her medium build well, hugging all the areas it should, especially for the benefit of her husband admiring the view that he hadn’t admired for a long time.

He watched her stirring the taco meat in the skillet and his gaze traveled down her legs and back up again, thinking about the first time they’d met in an English lecture at college.

“Pst.”

He’d leaned over the desk to try to get her attention, but she was intently focused on the professor. He had tried again.

“Pst.”

She glared over her shoulder at him.

“Do you have an extra pen?” he whispered.

She rolled her eyes, ignored him, tapping the end of her own pen against her cheek gently as she kept her eyes focused forward.

“It’s just,” he leaned a little closer so he didn’t interrupt the other students. “I left my pen back in my dorm room and I want to make sure I’m taking notes.”

He was glad he had leaned a little closer. She smelled amazing. What was that perfume? He had no idea but it was intoxicating. Maybe it was her shampoo. The fluorescent light from the lecture hall was reflecting off her luxurious black strands of hair and he pondered what it would feel like to reach out and touch it. But he didn’t reach out and touch it. That would be weird. Even a 19-year old college freshman like himself knew that.

A year later, though, he was touching that soft dark hair while he kissed Cassie for the first time outside her dorm after their third date. And over the years he’d sank his hands in that hair in moments of tenderness and moments of passion. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he watched his wife and thought about a few of those moments, including that time in the back of his new car after he’d landed that job at the law firm in Detroit.

He could deny it. It wasn’t only the material things of his life that he had taken for granted. He had also been taking Cassie for granted. For far too long.

***

Cassie Grant turned from where she was cooking lunch for her husband and children and watched her husband pace back and forth in the living room.

She knew he was worried about the situation with the virus, the way his office had been thrown into the middle of an unexpected scandal. She was sure he was also worried about whether he’d develop symptoms of the virus, pass it on to the children, and if his other staff members would be infected, now that it looked like Liam’s test for it was positive. Too little was known about how the virus affected the majority of people, although early reports stated that most cases were mild.

And then there was Liam and Maddie’s marriage, which was about to end. Matt and his brother had been raised by parents who had been married 54 years. The brothers and their sister weren’t a product of divorce and Cassie wondered if the prospect of Liam’s marriage ending was weighing on Matt’s mind along with the virus.

Cassie wasn’t sure what her husband was thinking anymore, though, because Matt hadn’t been talking to her much lately. He’d been busy at the office, putting out fires, which seemed to pop up several times throughout the day, thanks to a 24/7 news cycle that never let up.

She couldn’t deny that she missed seeing her husband. She missed their date nights and family movie nights and him just being around the house when she needed him. But she knew that he was doing what he thought was right to try to make a difference for the people who elected him.

Turning the burner down she leaned back against the counter and watched Matt turn and look out the window where their children were playing. Her gaze fell on the back of his head, on his soft brown hair and she remembered with a soft laugh that day in college when they’d been studying in a private room on the first floor of the university library. The love seat they were sitting on was soft, plush, light maroon.

Papers and books were spread out in front of them and Matt was debating the importance of some moment in history to the future of something or other. Cassie didn’t know. She’d tuned him out long ago. She’d been watching him, though, amazed at how impassioned he was about the topic at hand, at the muscles in his jaw, at his long, strong fingers, at a strand of hair that had fallen across his forehead that she desperately wanted to push to the side. And she’d definitely been watching his mouth, his lips looking amazingly kissable.

Cassie was sick of listening to him quite frankly.

“Cassie, don’t you see that —”

Matt’s words were cut short as Cassie leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his, touching the side of his face gently. She pulled back and looked at him, her mouth still inches from his.

“Oh. Um. Okay. Was I talking too —”

“Just shut up, Matt.”

He laughed softly and she caught his mouth with hers again, sinking her hands into his hair, moving closer to him at the same time he moved closer to her.

He slid his arm around her and held her to him gently as the kiss continued.

“So, I guess you weren’t only interested in me as a study partner,” he said breathlessly a few moments later.

“Is that the only way you were interested in me?” she asked, her fingers still in his hair, playing with it.

A grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “What do you think Cassie Henderson?”

She answered with another kiss, and they leaned back against the seat as they kissed, forgetting they were in a study room in the library.

Three years later they were married, a year later their first, a boy, was born. That had been 15 years ago and now they had three children, an expensive home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and Matt was a U.S. Congressman while she stayed home with the children, her career as a social worker long behind her.

Sure, some of that initial passion was gone, replaced with the everyday and the mundane, but Cassie recognized this as a season – a season during which marriage became more about comfortable moments and less about desire. It wasn’t that she didn’t have desire for Matt; it was just that they never seemed to have time for it anymore.

She startled out of her thoughts, smelling something burning.

“Oh no!”

She rushed to the stove and turned it down, smoke billowing from the skillet where she’d been browning meat for tacos. She moved the skillet to another burner and groaned. It looked like they’d be having peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch today.

The blaring of the smoke alarm only made the humiliation that much worse.

Matt rushed into the kitchen, waving a newspaper at the smoke. “Whoa there! Let’s not add burned down house to our list of bizarre occurrences for the month.”

“Sorry. I guess I got distracted.”

Matt pulled the battery from the fire alarm. “No big deal, right? It might can be salvaged.”

He grimaced at the charged edges of the meat in the pan. “Or maybe the dog would like a treat.”

Cassie sighed. “I’m not sure even Barney should eat that. Anyhow, I’ll make the kids some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You want one?”

“You know what? Yeah. I haven’t one of those in years. Crustless?”

Cassie shook her head. “What are you, 6?”

“Just for sentimental reasons,” Matt said with a wink. “My mom used to make them that way for me.”

Cassie pulled the bread out of the bread box and Matt slid the peanut butter and jelly across the counter.

“So, being quarantined with me has to be pretty boring for you, huh?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said with a smile, spreading peanut butter on slices of bread. “But it is weird seeing you here this time of day or, well, much at all.”

Matt winced softly. “Ouch.”

“Well, it’s not your fault. You’re busy.” He couldn’t read her tone of voice but sadly it seemed more apathetic, more along the line of “that’s just the way it is” than anything else.

Matt leaned back against the counter, sliding his hands in his dress pants pockets. He looked at his dress shoes, chewing on his bottom lip, thinking. First, he thought about how absent he’d been in his family’s life. Then he thought about how he was quarantined at home but for some reason he was still wearing dress shoes, a dress shirt and tie, as if he was on his way to a meeting or a congressional hearing. He had apparently forgotten how to relax, unwind, and kick back.

He cleared his throat. “I guess I can go to change into something more comfortable. It doesn’t look like I’ll be doing anything business related for a few days anyhow.”

When he returned wearing a pair of sweatpants and a Garth Brooks t-shirt the children were already around the table, munching on sandwiches and drinking chocolate milk.

“Daddy! Sit next to me!” his youngest, Lauren, called, tapping the back of the chair next to her.

“Okay. I can do that.”

His son Tyler eyed him over his glass of chocolate milk as he drank from it. At the age of 13 he waffled between being interested and detached most of the time Matt interacted with him.

“It’s weird seeing you here,” Tyler said bluntly as Matt sat down.

Matt looked into his son’s bright blue eyes, noticing the acne starting to form along the top of his forehead near his closely cropped hairline.

Matt wasn’t sure how to take the comment. Did Tyler mean “good weird” or “bad weird”? Should he ask? Did he even want to know?

Luckily, he didn’t have to decipher his son’s meaning for long.

“But it’s a good weird, right?” Cassie asked, as if she could read Matt’s mind, and after 15-years of marriage, she probably could.

Tyler grinned. “Yeah. It’s a good weird. Just weird.”

Gracie, the middle daughter, smiled sweetly at Matt and then giggled around a mouthful of sandwich.

“I like you being here, Daddy.”

Matt smiled back at her, reaching across the table to cover her hand with his. “I like it too, sweetie. Maybe something good will come out of all of this, huh? At least you will all see me a little more often.”

His gaze focused on Cassie and he saw she was watching him, but again he was having a hard time reading her feelings. Was she happy they’d all be spending more time together? Or was the extra time with him simply a reminder for her how much she didn’t need him around anymore?

Fiction Thursday: Fully Alive, Chapter 7

June 11, 2020June 11, 2020 / Lisa R. Howeler / Leave a comment

This is an excerpt from my Novella Fully Alive, currently in progress. I have not edited or rewritten the fiction posted here yet and do so before I publish it later on Kindle, so there are bound to be typos, plo. To read the other parts of Fully Alive, click HERE.

Josefa woke with a start, cold sweat beading across her forehead. She tried to remember where she was, the only sound her rapid, pulsating heartbeat . She looked around and slowly her room began to take shape in the moonlight. She’d had the nightmare again. The one she’d had night after night. The nightmare of that day in Jerusalem, when her family had been there for Passover.

The day Yeshua died.

The day five years ago when Yeshua had been murdered on Golgotha.

She remembered it like it had been yesterday.

Voices full of rage echoed within the city walls.

“Crucify him!”

Her father had trembled next to her with shock, anger, confusion. He pulled and her younger brother close. “Keep walking. Don’t stop.”

Her mother followed, tears streaking her face, sobs shaking her body.

“Father, why would they do this?” Tears soaked Josefa’s face as the crowd enveloped her, jostled her into other people.

She didn’t understand. Why were the priests of this city demanding the death of the man who had brought her back from the dead? What had he done that deserved death?

She screamed in protest, but no one could hear her and if they could, they weren’t listening.

“It’s not true! He saved me! He brought me back from the dead!” She tried again, her throat raw, her voice hoarse. “He gave me back my life!”

A man shoved her hard to the ground.

“Shut your mouth, you blaspheming liar!”

Saliva dripped down his chin as he screamed. A tremor of fear rushed through Josefa and she looked away quickly. It was as if he was possessed. Maybe he was.

Jairus stooped to protect her and swung around toward the man, anger clouding his vision. “Never touch my daughter!”

The man was screaming again, standing over her and her father. “You are nothing, Jew!”

“I am a leader in the synagogue, I am a holy —”

More people were shouting at Jairus and Josefa now, shouting at anyone they felt were followers of Yeshua.

“You are nothing!”

“Blaspheming scum, go back to whatever city you came from.”

“Do you follow this man? Then you should be put to death with him.”

Jairus jerked his head toward an open area near the city wall.

“Myriam, Ephra, Josefa, come. We must leave.”

Josefa turned to follow her family but paused, looking over her shoulder at the yelling crowd, at the sudden appearance of Yeshua through the crowd, struggling to walk under the weight of what looked like a large piece of wood. She watched in horror as he fell onto the stones, the wood on top of him. Blood dropped onto the dirt from his face, his hands, everywhere. Josefa couldn’t see any of Yeshua’ skin that wasn’t bleeding.

She broke from her father’s arms and stood along the edge of the crowd as Yeshua walked by, reaching out, her fingertips touching Yeshua’ bloody garment, hanging in rags off his shoulder. She jerked her hand away and held it to her mouth as she began to sob.

“Yeshua. Yeshua,” Josefa choked out. “I believe in you, Yeshua.”

Yeshua looked at the ground as he fell again, and she wondered if he even knew she was there. A Roman soldier dragged a man from the crowd and tossed him to the ground in front of Yeshua.

“Help him! Pick up the cross!” the soldier demanded.

As the man helped lift what the soldier had called a cross, another soldier lifted Yeshua to his feet. They watched the scene together and Josefa’s heart raced as Yeshua stood slowly, raised his eyes toward the crowd and found her gaze.

His eyelids were swollen, blood running in rivulets from what appeared to be thorns bent into the shape of a crown on his head. He looked at her with an unfocused gaze as he hooked one arm around the man and the other around the wood. Hot tears stung Josefa’s eyes, rushed down her cheeks as Yeshua moved his gaze from her and looked back to the ground, shuffling his feet forward in step with the other man.

A strong hand gripped her wrist and pulled her backward, through the crowd. She looked up into deep blue eyes, a smooth face stained with dirt under a Roman helmet. The soldier’s face was young, but his eyes were old. She expected a rebuke but instead his voice was gentle, filled with compassion.

“You must leave this area. It’s not safe for young girls like you.”

She could hear her father calling for her, but Josefa couldn’t seem to pull her eyes from the soldier’s.

“Come, Josefa!” Jairus said sharply, prying the soldier’s fingers from his daughter’s wrist. “Let’s get away from here.”

Her father’s voice was breaking with emotion and when she looked up at him, he was rubbing the back of his hand across his face.

“I can take no more,” he whispered hoarsely.

She looked up and the soldier had turned and was following the crowd, to where she didn’t know.

She followed her father and they found the rest of their family waiting for them by the city gates.

“We must leave, Jairus. It’s no longer safe,” Myriam whispered, trembling.

Jairus pulled her close and nodded. “We will go and collect our things from Lieber’s and begin our journey this evening. I will see if I can convince him and his family to come with us. The Romans are thirsty for blood this day.”

“What are they going to do to Yeshua, father?” Josefa asked, fear shivering through her.

Jairus shook his head. “I don’t know, Josefa. Keep walking.”

Jairus’ brother declined traveling away from Jerusalem, begging Jairus to remain for Passover.

“Traveling on Passover is forbidden. We will be safe here on this side of the city. The Romans are only taking care of a troublemaker, a man who called himself the Son of God.”

“But Uncle Leiber —”

Jairus scowled at his daughter. “Josefa. Be silent. Go prepare the afternoon meal with the women.”

All these years later, Josefa still remembered how darkness fell later that day, how the ground shook and she fell to the dirt courtyard outside her aunt and uncle’s home in fear.

She screamed, reaching out for something to hold onto but finding nothing. As the ground rose up beneath her, the sun darkened and she couldn’t see her parents or anyone else.

“Yeshua! Yeshua! Help me!”

Bricks fell from stone structures around her, striking her and then blackness settled over her and all was still.

“Josefa!” She woke to her mother’s voice that day and again, five years later, she heard her mother call to her. And again her mother took her in arms and again she told her everything would be okay and prayed over her, asking for Adonai’s protection

Fiction Thursday: Fully Alive Chapter 6

June 4, 2020 / Lisa R. Howeler / 4 Comments

Find the other parts of this story HERE or at the link at the top of the page. There are other works of fiction at the top of the page, as well, including The Farmer’s Daughter, Quarantined (a short story), Rekindle (the start of another story story), and links to my two books for sale on digital platforms.

P.S. The character in this section will have a name change before the final publication. I just have decided on the name I want for her yet.

Eliana couldn’t stop thinking about the day her healing had come. Cleaning flour from the bowl, preparing to cook a meal for her sister’s family after so long, tears were warm on her face.

The morning she had been healed she had sat in the room of the home she’d been confined to for so long, weak, her heart heavy with loneliness and despair, the same as almost every morning for 12 years. Her husband Josiah had divorced her years before, declaring her unclean and unfit to bear him children. She watched him with his new wife from a distance, watched their children grow and felt the ache in her own womb for a child of her own.

“He will come with healing in his wings,” she whispered the morning she had been healed, remembering the prophecy of Malachi.

His wings. She wasn’t sure what that meant but she thought of what she had heard – that John the Baptizer had spoken, saying that a man who came to him for baptism was the one they’d been waiting for, the prophesied messiah. This man was a rabbi, a teacher, but whispers said he was so much more. Healings at his hands. Blind men seeing, crippled walking, souls rejoicing. She closed her eyes, pictured the man and what he might look like. What he might be wearing. She pictured his prayer garment and thought of how the corner of it, the tzitziyot, was called the wings of the garment.

The wings of the garment.

The wings.

With wings.

She felt it first in the pit of her stomach, a hard, hopeful knot. From all she had heard this man was indeed the one who would come to heal, not only her, but all mankind.

He had been easy to find. She had simply followed the crowd that pushed against him. She walked with her head covered, the covering pulled across her face with her hands that she clutched before her face, her head bowed.

Even though Eliana felt that this man called Yeshua was the messiah and knew touching his garment could heal her, she was fearful as she approached him. She was impure and she knew that if she touched him – this pure man – he would also become impure. He paused to speak with a man and someone in the crowd bumped her and she stumbled forward. He was so close. So close. She lowered herself to the ground as he stood, slowing reaching out. If she could just touch — Her hand trembled and she clutched her fingers into a fist, biting her lower lip, closing her eyes, hesitating.

“Adonai, Adonai. . .” she whispered, her lips dry.

She opened her eyes, drew a breath slow into her lungs, and stretched out her hand again, a sob gurling deep in her chest as her fingertips brushed the twisted wool at the edge his prayer shawl. Comfort and warmth flowed through her immediately and the pain she had suffered under for so long was gone. It was gone. She couldn’t feel the crunching agony within her womb. She couldn’t feel anything but peace.

The blood she had felt drip slowly down her leg, off and on, so many days for the last 12 years suddenly stopped. She felt dry where she had wet for so long. Eliana stood abruptly and turned to leave, to go home, get away from the crowds, think about what had happened, about what her future might hold now.

“Who touched my clothes?”

The voice of Yeshua startled Eliana and she looked back to see him looking around him, searching the crowd for the person who had touched him. A lightening bolt of fear coursed through her. She had been careful only to touch the tzitziyot, not him. How had he known? Even one of Yeshua’ followers expressed disbelief that he wanted to know who had touched him and pointed out that people were all around him. Anyone of them could have touched him.

“I felt power go out from me.”

Eliana trembled in fear, her breathing shallow. She clutched her hands together to try to stop the shaking. He knew someone had reached out for his healing. He knew.

How could he know?

How could he know unless. . .?

She watched him and fell instantly to her knees.

The words spilled out of her

“It was me, teacher.”

She felt, rather than saw him turn to her. Her eyes were on the ground, trembles shivering through her. “I have been bleeding, unclean for 12 years. I have been to every doctor. I have tried everything. I was shunned by my family, my community. But when I heard about you – when I heard of those you had healed, I knew – I knew you could take it all away and heal me. I knew you were the one who has been prophesied.”

He kneeled to her level, cupped her chin in his hand. She lifted her eyes slowly, to eyes soft with compassion.

“Your trust has healed you,” he said softly, so soft she could barely hear him. Then he spoke again, louder. “Your trust, daughter, has healed you. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”

Her sister’s voice yanked Eliana from her memories of the day.

“Eliana! Have you finished the bread?”

“Yes, Ledah, I have.”

“Well, bring it. We are ready for dinner.”

Sunlight poured in through the window of the family home and across the table lined with food. Ledah’s family sat on the floor, children with big brown eyes looking kindly and expectedly at Eliana as she handed her sister the bread mixture. Her sister immediately started cooking the bread over the small fire pit just outside the door.

“We shall celebrate today,” Ledah said with a smile at Eliana as she placed the bread in the bowl. “Jeremiah has slaughtered our best lamb to celebrate your healing. It still makes no sense, but I don’t care. It is a wonderful day!”

Eliana smiled and shrugged. “I don’t understand it either. All I know is when I touched his garment, I was healed. I can’t explain it. I can’t tell you more than that. But I no longer suffer the way I did.”

Ledah shook her head. “It makes no sense, Eliana. A mere man can not heal you by you touching his garment.”

“Then he is not a mere man, is he?”

“Eliana, we have all heard these stories before. Supposed messiahs come to rescue the Jews. Yet here we sit under Roman rule. Don’t start believing all that nonsense now.”

“I don’t know what to believe, yet, but I know what happened to me and I know I am healed, Ledah. I know I have a lightness I have not known for 12 years. This is a gift I can not take lightly.”

Ledah took her older sister’s hand, squeezed it and smiled. “And that’s all that matters. That you are back with us and soon you will live life again among your people.”

Live life again? Eliana didn’t even know what that meant. After so many year alone, watching her husband remarry and have children from afar, she didn’t even know how to enter life again.

She couldn’t imagine any man wanting to marry her, not after she’d been cast aside by her husband. Her chance of having children was gone.

Yet, she had her health again and that in itself opened up hope to her.

And hope? Well, hope meant anything was possible now.

Fiction Thursday: Rekindle, A Short Story Part 1

May 28, 2020May 27, 2020 / Lisa R. Howeler / 2 Comments

In April I shared Quarantined, a short story based on current events. This week I had an idea for a second short story jumping off from the characters I mentioned in Quarantined. This is the first part. You can find links to my other fiction serials I’m sharing on the blog at the top of the page under “Fully Alive” and “The Farmer’s Daughter.” Links to my books for sale are also available under the link at Books for Sale at the top of the page.

Matthew Grant’s conversation with his brother Liam had made him uncomfortable.

Liam’s marriage was in shambles, but Matthew knew Liam still loved his wife Maddie and Maddie still loved Liam. If they didn’t still love each other they wouldn’t be struggling so much with the idea of divorce. It couldn’t be easy being quarantined together during a pandemic with all the issues they had with each other but Matthew was glad they were. Maybe they’d work out some of those issues and save what had been a great union at one time. As it was, their divorce proceedings had been delayed because of the pandemic. As Matthew saw it, this was a way for them to buy more time and truly be sure the divorce was what they wanted.

What made Matthew uncomfortable wasn’t only that he could hear pain mixed with longing in his brother’s voice when they had talked on the video call. It was also that he wondered, worried even, if similar marital trials might one day pull at his own marriage. Maybe it already was happening and he had been too wrapped up in himself to realize it.

Matthew and Cassie hadn’t had a lot of time alone lately. Their life had been a runaway train since the election two years ago. In Washington he faced daily drama and conflict whether he wanted to or not. Becoming the youngest head of the Intel Committee hadn’t helped slow things down any either.

Then there was this crazy never-before-seen virus that seemed to come out of nowhere a few weeks ago and now had him at home with his family, waiting to see if he developed any symptoms after being exposed to it more than a week ago. He was convinced if he had the virus he would have developed symptoms by now, but he stayed home to make sure things looked good to the press and his constituents. Making sure things “looked good and right” to others seemed to be 90 percent of his job anymore, leaving little room for him to actually accomplish the things he’d been elected to do.

All the drama in the House of Representatives left him little time to focus on Cassie or the kids and he regretted that. He regretted it even more when his brother’s march toward divorce had become a growing reality. He’d never pictured Liam and Maddie divorced. They were the perfect couple. They’d weathered some hard storms, including the miscarriages, but Matthew had been sure the challenges would bring them closer together. In fact, he thought it had but maybe he’d been too wrapped up in the campaign to pay attention.

Matthew and Liam’s parents had provided for them the perfect example of a stable, loving marriage. Married 54 years, Bert and Phyllis Grant made it clear each day how much they loved each other. Sure, they had argued, even in front of their children, but those arguments had been resolved usually before the sun had gone down and with a fair amount of ‘making up’. Matthew and Liam, and his sister Lana had been grateful the majority of that making up had gone on behind closed doors.

He looked around his living room, well decorated with expensive furniture and commissioned paintings, and thought about how much of his life he had taken for granted, especially lately. He’d taken for granted the newer model car he drove, the highly rated bed he slept on, the full refrigerator and even fuller bank account.

He rubbed his hand along his chin and turned toward the kitchen where Cassie was making a late lunch for him and the kids. Her dark brown hair fell to her waist in a tight braid, the bottom of it grazing the top of the waist band of a pair of red workout shorts. Her favorite tshirt, featuring Johnny Cash wearing a cowboy hat, fit her medium build well, hugging all the areas it should, especially for the benefit of her husband admiring the view that he hadn’t admired for a long time. He watched her stirring the taco meat in the skillet and his gaze traveled down her legs and back up again, thinking about the first time they’d met in an English lecture at college.

“Pst.”

He’d leaned over the desk to try to get her attention but she was intently focused on the professor. He had tried again.

“Pst.”

She glared over her shoulder at him.

“Do you have an extra pen?” he whispered.

She rolled her eyes, ignored him, tapping the end of her own pen against her cheek gently as she kept her eyes focused forward.

“It’s just,” he leaned a little closer so he didn’t interrupt the other students. “I left my pen back in my dorm room and I want to make sure I’m taking notes.”

He could deny it. It wasn’t only the material things of his life that he had taken for granted. He had also been taking Cassie for granted. For far too long.

Fiction Thursday: Fully Alive, Chapter 5

May 21, 2020May 20, 2020 / Lisa R. Howeler / 1 Comment

This is a continuing fiction story.

If you would like to read the other parts of Fully Alive, please click HERE.

If you would like to read other fiction by me, please see my short story Quarantined, here on the blog, my book A New Beginning on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and my continuing story The Farmer’s Daughter here on the blog.

“What do you think you’ll do, Yeshua? Save a girl who is already dead?”

The men laughed.

“What a fool!”

“Who does he think he is?”

“Oh, don’t you remember? He is the son of God.”

More laughter.

“If you hadn’t stopped to talk to that unclean woman, maybe she’d still be alive.”

“Go, we don’t need you here! She’s gone!”

“Clear this house so only your family is here.”

Jairus woke with a start. His memories of that day lingered in his mind as the fog of sleep faded.

It had been two years since Josefa had been raised from the dead. There were some parts of the story he wondered if he had imagined, yet he heard the voices in his dreams each night, seconds before he drifted off to sleep. Josefa often told him the same happened to her.

She wasn’t sure if her memories were dreams or her dreams were memories. She often asked Jairus about the day and what he remembered.

Sometimes Jairus answered, other times he waved her away, told her to go outside and play with her friends, be a child, enjoy life. There was only so many times he could talk about it, still unsure of what had happened and what he should believe.

He thought about the day at the temple. The day the man had reached up, asked Yeshua to heal his hand. Jairus could feel the anger coming off the other synagogue leaders, rabbis, and teachers.

“He would not dare to try his antics on Shabbat,” Rabbi Avigdor whispered bitterly, his face was twisted in disgust.

When Yeshua had told the man to step forward a hush settled over the leaders in the temple. Yeshua turned and looked at each man, as if searching for just one there who might have compassion on the man.

“You know healing is forbidden on Shabbat,” one of the leaders said curtly, as if to answer his gaze.

“Is it lawful on Shabbat to do good or to do evil, to save a life or to kill?”

The leaders pulled their gaze from Yeshua’s and looked at the stone floor, their sandals, anywhere but at the man they had allowed to speak within their walls and now seemed to be challenging them. They fell silent, unwilling to answer him.

Jairus could only watch in surprise. He saw anger mixed with sadness flicker in Yeshua’ eyes before Yeshua turned away from the other leaders to face the man.

“Stretch out your hand,” Yeshua said firmly.

Jairus could tell it pained the man to reveal the withered hand as he lifted it toward Yeshua.

Yeshua laid his hand over the man’s and when he withdrew it, the marks that had been there were gone. A murmur of shock rippled throughout the crowd of men who had been watching.

“Blasphemy!” Avigdor spat, his body visibly trembling with anger.

“I refuse to stand here and watch this man mock our laws and our traditions. Levi, Micha, Moshe, come with me.”

Jairus pondered in amazement at the man flexing his fingers, staring at his hand in shock and wonder.

“My hand!” the man’s face was wet with tears. He took Yeshua’ hand and kissed it. “Thank you. Thank you.”

“Jairus!” Avigdor shouted for him from the doorway.

Jairus looked away from Yeshua and the man as Avigdor jerk his head toward the front steps.

He followed the rabbi into the bright sunlight and heat of the day.

“Jairus, tell me you don’t believe the blasphemy of this man?” Avigdor snapped at him.

Rabbi Levi didn’t wait for Jairus to answer. He was incredulous. “Must we again listen to another self-proclaimed messiah?”

“We will not. But too many people – they are already following him,” Avigdor said sharply. “We can not let his man lead our people out of the will of God.”

Levi shook his head and put his hand behind his back.

“But what can we do? How can we stop him?”

Jairus stood outside of the group, tugging at his beard.

“I think we should wait – see what else he says. He may stumble eventually,” he offered finally.

“Wait for what? For him to lead a revolt against us or even worse cause more issues with the Romans?” Avigdor growled. “Jairus, don’t be foolish –“

“Maybe he’s right,” Rabbi Micha took his turn to speak, holding his hand up as if to pause their racing thoughts. “The people will eventually see that this Yeshua isn’t who they think he is. They’ll eventually see he brings them empty promises. If we leave him alone he will eventually stumble and make a fool of himself.”

“He already speaks blasphemy. He already mocks our ways,” Avigdor snapped. “What more should we wait for?”

Rabbi Levi put his hand gently on Avigdor’s shoulder. “Shabbat is almost over. Let us try to calm ourselves and pray. We won’t help matters yelling and screaming when we are so fired up. We will return to this topic after Shabbat, when we’ve had time to clear our heads.”

Levi was often the voice of reason and the one who could calm Avigdor, but this was one time Jairus wasn’t sure it would work.

Avigdor shook his head, looked at the ground for a moment and then looked at Levi.

“You are right, Levi. I will bring this up again after Sabbath,” he said, still with an edge to his voice, but now calmer than before. “But I can not promise you my opinion will not be the same.”

Jairus followed behind the men then paused and looked back at the door of the synagogue. Yeshua and the man he had healed were walking through the doorway.

“Rabbi, how can I ever thank you?” the man was asking, tears streaking his cheeks.

Yeshua stopped walking and turned toward the man.

“Honor your God each day. Have no other gods before him. Love others as you love yourself.”

The man kissed Yeshua’ hand, which was clasped in his own.

“I will do my best,” he told Yeshua.

“That is all God asks of you,” Yeshua said softly, a smile tilting his mouth upward.

He turned and as his followers came around him they all walked together into the crowd, which swallowed Yeshua from Jairus’ view.

“Josefa! Can you come to the stream to play?”

Her friend Caleb peered at her through the curtain of her sleeping quarters window.

She rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“After chores, yes.”

The sun was high the sky when Josefa finally took off her sandals and placed her feet in the stream near the olive trees. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the cool water against her skin.

Caleb leaned close to her and whispered in her ear. “I heard another story about demons and Yeshua’ followers.”

“Caleb. Stop that. There is no such thing as demons.”

“There totally is! They said Yeshua’ follower named Matthew spoke to the man and said there was a demon in him. The man who told me said the man with the demon spoke funny and fell to the ground.”

“Like this!” Caleb fell on the ground and his face twisted up while he jerked around with his arms against his chest, flailing back and forth.

He jumped up and stuck his tongue out at Josefa and shook his head back and forth vigorously

Josefa put her hands up as if to push Caleb away from her as he continued to distort his face, bursting into laughter.

“Then the man yelled back at Matthew and told him he lived there now and he wasn’t leaving, but Matthew said ‘You have no place here, demon and in the name of the most high God I command you to leave.’”

Caleb pointed at an imaginary man and made a stern face to imitate Matthew.

“In the name of the —” He stepped closer to Josefa as he continued to point. He lifted his chin and looked sternly at her down his nose. “The most high Gawd! Be goooone!”

Josefa put her hand over her mouth and giggled until the sound of footsteps startled them both.

Caleb’s older brother, Enoch, scowled down at them.

“Who do these men think they are?” he snapped. Acting as if they have authority to mess with the possessed?”

Enoch knelt next to the stream to fill his wineskin, shaking his head.

“No one asked you, Enoch,” Caleb said, rolling his eyes.

Enock snorted. “These are the words of children. Stories. That’s all they are. Only a baby like you would believe them.”

Caleb stood, hands clenched into fists. “That’s not true! I heard them talking about it in the market. That man named Matthew called a demon out.”

Caleb made a weird face again and staggered toward Enoch. “’I am a servant of the devil!’ That’s what the man said.”

Enoch stepped away from his brother, turned his back to him and tied his bag closed.

“And, besides, Yeshua raised Josefa from the dead!” Caleb’s voice was loud and defiant.

Josefa’s cheeks flushed red.

“Caleb . . .”

“What?” Caleb said. “He did! You should tell more people! They should know the truth about Yeshua and his followers and who they really are.”

“You speak foolishness, Caleb,” Enoch said.

Enoch turned toward Josefa and she caught his gaze, his deep green eyes watching her. The palms of her hands were warm, moist and her heart pounded hard and fast in her chest.

Enoch smirked and stepped toward her. “Is this true, Josefa? Is it true what people are saying? Tell me, Josefa, daughter of Jairus, what did Yeshua really do?”

Her heart pounding in her ears almost drowned out his mocking words.

She kept her eyes down, looking at the olive branch in her hand. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why? Because it’s a lie, right? What your family said happened is a lie isn’t it?”

Josefa turned to look at Enoch, her face warm.

“He asked us not to speak of it —”

Enoch laughed. “Of course, he did.” His smile faded, he stepped toward her and towered above her. “Because nothing happened.”

Caleb was furious. “They were already holding a time of mourning for her, Enoch! You don’t know! You were out with the sheep. But it’s true! I was there! I was crying!”

Enoch shook his head and tied his wine skin to his belt and reached for his staff.

“She was probably just asleep. You cry over everything. You’re still a boy.”

“She wasn’t breathing. I saw her! I touched her!”

Josefa looked at Caleb. She hadn’t known he’d been with her.

“You were there?” she asked softly.

Caleb’s cheeks were red now.

“Yes. I came because I did not want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe you were gone. I was there when Yeshua came with those men and then he told us all to leave.”

Enoch’s haughty laugh interrupted their exchange.

“Of course, Yeshua wanted everyone to leave. So, he could pretend Josefa was really dead.” He ruffled Caleb’s hair, but Caleb slapped his hand way. “Okay, little one, I’m leaving you and your friend to your childish tales. Take care of mama while Joseph and I are gone to find the lost sheep.”

He paused and looked at Josefa, half turned away from her.

“Take care, Josefa. I don’t believe you were truly dead, but I am glad you are still alive.”

“Thank you, Enoch.”

Her voice softened to a whisper. “But I was dead.”

The sound of a passing cart drowned out her voice.

Enoch walked around the children and called out to his older brother.

“Joseph wait for me!”

“Why didn’t you tell him?” Caleb asked as Enoch and Joseph disappeared down the road.

“I don’t know. Yeshua said to tell no one. I wasn’t sure —”

“But so many already know, Josefa. They know the truth about what happened to you. If it was me, I wouldn’t be ashamed. I’d be excited to let everyone know that I had been dead but now was alive.”

Josefa flicked at the water with her fingers and stared at the pools rolling into each other.

“But what if no one believes me?” she asked.

“But what if some do?” Caleb countered.

Fiction Thursday: Fully Alive, Chapter 4. Atticus

May 14, 2020May 14, 2020 / Lisa R. Howeler / 1 Comment

This is a continuing serial, or a novella in progress. As always there could be typos, missing words, plot holes, etc., etc., which I will fix in rewrites, copy-editing and all that jazz. To read the other parts of the story you can follow along HERE or at the link at the top of the page.

The stench of death filled Atticus’ nostrils. Any other man would have gagged on vomit, but death was a smell Atticus was accustomed to. Before being stationed in Jerusalem he had been on the battlefields of Germania and before that he’d trained in Rome itself to one day become what his father had been — a Roman centurion.

He’d been 16 when he’d first started training. His legion leader had called him a wolf pup, wet behind the ears.

He still had a lot to learn but battle had burned the timid, cautious nature out of him. Sometimes he felt like he had aged more in the last three years than he had in his entire 22-years of life. Experience built a thick jaded wall around him.

Even with all the death he had witnessed in such a short time, he found it hard to get use to the sights and smells of corpses rotting under stones outside the city gates, or bodies half eaten by wild dogs. The Jews called the Romans cruel, but Atticus saw the ways they punished those in their community who had stepped outside the bounds of their laws as vicious and barbaric.

“What I don’t understand is why we’re moving their dead.” Theopholus spat saliva onto the ground and swiped a hand across his mouth. “They killed them they should dispose of them. Instead they leave them here to rot and we have to find somewhere to throw them.”

Atticus shook his head. “Me neither but we must follow orders.”

Theopholus lifted the other side of the cloth they had rolled the corpses into and they shuffled to one side before tipping the cloth and rolling the human remains into a large pit already partially filled with bodies and waste.

“Is that the last one?” Theopholus asked with a look of disgust.

Atticus looked across the field of blood-splattered stones. “It looks like it.”

Theopholus stepped back and leaned against the wall, opening his flask and taking a long swig. “Have you heard about his man in Judeah? This man they say is performing miracles?”

He handed the flask to Atticus and Atticus took it and drank from it. “Another healer, huh?”

Theopholus nodded. “The people think they have another Messiah.”

Atticus laughed and sneered. “Another one? Don’t we get a new one every few years? And yet they still are crap under our shoes.”

“This place will be crawling with them come Passover, you know,” Theopholus said. “They come here in droves to remember the day they say their God delivered them from Pharaoh. The streets smell of them and their food and drink. The only good thing about them is their women. They are worth a good —”

“That beggar is here again.”

Atticus changed the subject quickly. He didn’t want to hear about Theopholus’ sexual conquests today. He wasn’t in the mood, though he couldn’t say why. Maybe it was because he himself had not lain with a woman for more than a year now. It wasn’t for a lack of women that was for sure. Something about the harlots in Jerusalem left him with a sick feeling in his stomach. They were too willing, too eager, expecting he’d come to them quickly and willingly to burn off pent up energy from patrolling the streets all day.

But he didn’t want to release pent up energy as much as he once did. Instead he longed for someone to share his thoughts with not just someone who could meet his physical needs.

“I thought Aurelius told him to leave yesterday. You want me to take care of it?”

Atticus shook his head, still watching the man crouched in front of the wall near the city entrance.

“No. I’ll take care of him.”

“Okay. Then I’m going to the baths. Meet you there later?”

Atticus nodded, staring ahead, thinking about how much he hated this city. The land Atticus had come from, a few miles outside Rome, had been lusciously green, full of life and food. This city was dirty and barren, full of beggars and lepers and people looking for ways to take advantage of other people. It was full of these people called Jews who believed in one God and held strange rituals, though he had to admit their rituals were no stranger than those in his own world who slit the throats of young animals to sacrifice to many Gods, hoping one of them would take pity on them and answer their prayers for whatever their need was.

The Jews killed animals too but believed the blood of a young lamb would wipe out all of their misdeeds, which they called sins. He laughed ruefully to himself as he thought of all his misdeeds. If he ever tried to wipe all his sins away they’d need an entire herd of young sheep to slit the throats of.

He sighed and walked toward the beggar sitting crouched, his knees up, his back against the warm stones and his hand out with a small wooden cup.

“Find favor with God and give to the poor,” the man suggested in a frail, rasped voice as Atticus approached.

His face and clothes were smeared with dirt or at least Atticus hoped it was only dirt.

He sniffed.

It was not only dirt.

The beggar looked up as Atticus’ shadow fell over him, his held tilted back, his eyes obviously unseeing. He must have felt the warmth of the sun disappear from his skin.

Atticus considered the man for a moment, his thin figure, his dirty feet with shredded sandals, his matted hair and clouded eyes, his slightly gaped open mouth with missing teething. Every day he sat out here, asking for money to buy food to fill his belly. The Jews said someone in his family must have done something wrong because as far as any of them knew, he’d been born blind. Anyone born with a deformity was being punished by God, they said.

He had scoffed when he heard it, the absurdity of their god apparent. They called him loving yet believed he struck children down for the sins of their fathers? Each time he heard them speak of their god they grew more weak and pathetic in his mind.

Atticus tried not to feel pity for the beggar, but he did. He couldn’t imagine waking up every morning with your only goal being to sit in the middle of a city and beg for money so your belly wouldn’t ache with hunger when you went to bed that night. He didn’t want to chase him away, but he knew the prefect had told him to leave before and would soon use force to make sure he did.

“Who’s there?”

The man’s head tilted from side to side as he spoke, trying to hear what the person standing above him would say.

Atticus squatted next to the beggar so he could be heard over the merchants, animals, and carts passing by.

“You have been told before, old man, that you need to leave.”

The beggar’s expression faded from hopeful to deflated.

“I will not stay long, master. I need just a little bit for my second meal then I shall go.”

Atticus let out a long breath. “You know the rules.”

He wasn’t sure where the compassion he was beginning to feel for the man was coming from but he softened his tone as he spoke again. “Sir, if you don’t go, my concern is you will be forced to go. I think you know what I mean by that.”

The man nodded slowly, clutching the cup with both hands against his chest. “Yes, centurian.”

Atticus laughed softly. “I am a legionary, sir, but thank you for the promotion.”

The beggar shrugged his shoulders, a grin tugging at his chapped lips. “I can’t keep up with all of the rankings of your army. My apologies.”

Atticus placed a gentle hand under the man’s upper arm and helped him to his feet. He slid two fingers into the pouch on his belt and felt two coins there then dropped them both into the man’s cup.

“This should feed you for today. Go, eat and keep yourself safe from the prefect, okay?”

The beggar’s face showed his surprise. He grasped Atticus’ stronger, rough hands with a gnarled one. “Thank you, master. Thank you. Adonai will smile upon you for your kindness.

Atticus looked around nervously, pried the man’s hand from his and stepped back. “Just go,” he said softly. “I have no need for blessings from your god.”

He watched the beggar limp through the crowd until he couldn’t see him anymore then turned to head back toward the baths to clean the filth and smell of death off himself.

“You won’t ever advance in this army with such softness, soldier.”

The voice of the man towering above him on a stallion was harsh, sharp. Atticus looked up into narrowed blue eyes, a square jawline fixed tight and lips pressed into a colorless thin line. Atticus averted his eyes quickly to the ground, recognizing the actual centurion of his unit, Marcus.

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

“I never want to see you handle our subjects in such a manner again. A firm hand is all that is needed, something you’re well aware of.”

“Yes sir.”

Marcus leaned forward, propping his arms over the leather of the saddle strapped to the horse. “Maybe we need to find a way to toughen you up, young Atticus. Sirius has an opening in his unit. They carry the bodies away from the crucifixions. It might just be what someone like you needs to burn the softness away.”

Atticus’ chest constricted. He’d watched a crucifixion once. He didn’t relish the idea of having to take down the bodies of the dead, their bodies limp and drained of fluids, sometimes their eyes eaten out by the birds.“Whatever you think is best, sir.”

Marcus laughed loudly. “We’ll see, boy. Just don’t let me see you coddling the subjects again. Do you understand?”

“Yes, centurion.”

Atticus watched Marcus ride away before he turned and walked slowly toward the baths, anxious to wash the blood and dirt — and this day — from his body.

Fiction Thursday: Rewrites and doubts about writing ability

April 30, 2020April 30, 2020 / Lisa R. Howeler / 19 Comments

So, here is the truth: I have been rewriting and editing A New Beginning this week and I’m discouraged. I don’t like parts of it and may need to gut the thing before I sent the thing to Kindle sometime in May. That’s the honest truth. I read it and think that there are so many sections that really need to be reworked so I’m working on that right now. I’m also having a lot of doubts about my writing but I’m sure that’s normal for any writer.

Which brings me to why there is not a new chapter for Fully Alive today. I do have ideas for Fully Alive. Plenty of ideas. But I’m intimidated by the story. A comment on my chapter last week highlighted this anxiety about writing this story, though unintentionally. The person who commented mentioned how difficult it is to make people from 2,000 years ago real to my readers. How true that is. Fully Alive is a story that has been in my mind for more than a year now and I’ve tossed it back and forth in this old noggin of mine so much that I’m back to my old habit of overthinking. The person who commented said they were sure I could bring the characters to life, but I keep thinking: What if I’m not the one to write this story?

I’ve written large chunks of this story, but I know I need to do more research before I can fully flush it out. That need for research is one reason I’m stuck on Chapter 4. If I show you the first paragraph of this chapter, you may understand better why I need to do some research.

The stench of death filled Atticus’ nostrils. Any other man would have gagged on vomit, but death was a smell Atticus was accustomed to. Before being stationed in Jerusalem he had been on the battlefields of Germania and before that he’d trained in Rome itself to become what his father had been — a Roman centurion.

I am so excited to explore the character of Atticus, I can not even tell you. But I don’t know enough about him yet. I need to know more about the army he is apart of before I can understand him. And I need to know more about his culture, how he grew up, before I can really tell his story. So, I’m a bit stuck. I need time to research, but I also need time to finish rewriting parts of A New Beginning, unpacking our house, writing The Farmer’s Daughter, and did I mention unpacking our house?

I have a lot of self-doubt when it comes to my writing. People I thought cared about me have declined reading it in the past and I know it is really stupid to hold on to that rejection (which the person probably doesn’t even know they did) but it’s still there in the back of my mind, amongst a pile of various other rejection skeletons. I still don’t feel like I’ve found my groove for fiction writing, but I’m not giving up. Not yet. I really enjoy it, even if it isn’t perfect. I like telling stories, even if they aren’t award winning.

I plan to keep sharing fiction on the blog, but I thought today I’d share with you that sometimes writing it is a challenge for me. While it’s a challenge, it’s also a ton of fun and I am determined not to take the fun out of it, which is why I decided there isn’t anything or anyone who says I have to share a piece of fiction on my blog if I feel it isn’t ready. If there isn’t anyone pressuring me to share before I’m ready, then why am I pressuring myself? Who even knows.

All that being said, I do have additional chapters from The Farmer’s Daughter to share tomorrow and Saturday. I’ve been working on Fully Alive and The Farmer’s Daughter about the same amount of time but Molly’s story is coming faster for me because her story takes places in a more modern time and in a setting I’m more familiar with.

Here is a sneak peek of that chapter:

I brought you some lemonade.”
Robert looked up, his face smeared with grease and sweat and when he saw his wife standing there, her dark brown curls falling around her shoulders, the sunlight behind her creating a deep orange aura around her, his stomach flipped like it so often did when he saw her. She still had the same affect on him even after 31 years of marriage. He couldn’t look at her without feeling the way he had at the age of 15 when he’d met her on that merry-go-round at the fair; a teenage giddiness that sent ripples of pleasure through his chest.
Robert straightened from where he’d been bent over the tractor and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Thanks, sweetie.”
He took the glass from her hand and drank it in one long gulp, the cold of it spreading from his chest throughout this limbs, bringing him a cool feeling he’d desperately needed.
“I needed that,” he said handing her the glass. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She stood, smiling, holding the glass, watching him as he wiped the grease from his hands. “Have you figured out what’s wrong with it yet?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Robert said, avoiding her gaze. He knew she didn’t really want to know about the tractor. She wanted to know why Bill had been there and he knew he was going to have to tell her. He’d hoped she hadn’t seen the exchange, but he knew better. Annie didn’t miss much around this place and it wasn’t easy to keep secrets between them.
He knew if he looked at her she’d draw it out of him, the same way she drew so much else out of him – deep feelings he wouldn’t share with anyone else: worries, hurts, joys, sadness, fear. Desire. Passion.
He didn’t want her to draw this out of him, to have to admit he was failing his family; that even by working so hard every day on this farm he couldn’t pay his bills, pay his debts, and keep the farm going the same way his father would have.
“How far behind are we, Robert?”

I’ll see you tomorrow for the rest of Chapter 5 of The Farmer’s Daughter!

Want to read what I’ve shared so far on Fully Alive? Click the link at the top of the page or HERE. You can find additional chapters from The Farmer’s Daughter HERE or at the link at the top of the page.

Fiction Thursday: Fully Alive Chapter 3

April 23, 2020April 23, 2020 / Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

I finally found some time to sit and finish Chapter 3. As always, this is a story in progress, so there will be most likely be typos, plot holes, etc. I’ll rewrite and edit it prior to publishing it in the future on Kindle.

If you’re looking for other fiction I’ve written you can find my first book, A Story to Tell, on Kindle; my second book, chapter by chapter, here, or at the link at the top of the page under A New Beginning, or my short story Quarantined. I’m also sharing The Farmer’s Daughter on Fridays.

“Eliana, you must understand. Your bleeding does not stop. You are tuma. Unclean. I can not continue our marriage covenant any longer. There isn’t even a possibility of continuing my family’s line with you in this condition and there is no possibility of us . . .”

Josiah turned to look at Eliana, pain in his eyes. He shook his head and turned from her.

“My heart is broken but this is the way it must be. Arrangements have already been made and the divorce will be finalized within a fortnight. I will give you your certificate of divorce then.”

Eliana fell on her knees to the dirt floor of the home she had shared with her husband for only three years before the bleeding started and wouldn’t stop. Eventually he had cast her out and she’d been living in a small home behind theirs because Jewish law called her unclean.

Her body shook with sobs that rose from deep within her as Josiah continued to stand with his back to her.

“Josiah!” she cried out between sobs. “Please. I love you. I am your wife. You can not abandon me at such a time. I am frightened and no doctor has helped me. I already live away from you, I can’t make you unclean. Please, wait . . . wait for me to be healed.”

A cold shiver rushed through her body. She had been shamed so much already, would she now be further shamed by being cast away by the man she had loved for so long? Panic seized her and without thinking she lunged forward, grasping Josiah’s hand, pressing it to her cheek.

“Do not shame me further, Josiah!”

Josiah ripped his hand from hers and staggered back as if struck by a blow.

“Eliana! No! You have made me unclean! I must go to the mikvah now to be cleansed! Stop this! You must accept our marriage is over. I will no longer continue to be bound in marriage to a woman I can’t even touch or . . . or make love to, have children with. A man can’t be expected to live such a lonely existence without his needs being met.”

He turned away from her, yanking the door to the home open. “I will provide you with a small sum of money to help you find food and shelter,” he said, his tone cold and detached. “You may stay in the house I have provided until you find a new home. Please be gone from this house when I return. Goodbye, Eliana. May Yahweh protect and bless you in your future.”

Eliana screamed at the closed door several moments, but soon collapsed in exhaustion. She had no strength to mourn. Blood had flowed from her for so long she wondered how she still breathed at all, let alone how she had managed to function to prepare her own food, clean her clothes and wash the clothes of the gentiles who knew nothing of her lengthy bleeding.

Josiah spoke of loneliness. He knew nothing of the isolation and loneliness she had faced for 5 years now. He knew nothing of the looks of disgust from those in her own community. He knew nothing of what she had suffered because he had turned from her when she needed him most.

Looking around the room, prostrate on the floor, she remembered the early days of marriage with Josiah. She remembered laughter, warm kisses, intimate moments within the bonds of marriage.

“We shall call him Tikvah. ‘Hope’,” Josiah had said, his hands on her protruding belly.

She laughed. “But we don’t even know if it will be a boy or a girl.”

“It will be a boy,” he said, laughing as he leaned close to kiss her. “A big, strong boy to help me in the fields.”

Eliana had laughed with him and now she wished she could remember how to laugh.

The day she held their son, Tikvah, lifeless in her arms, mere minutes after birth, she had forgotten how to laugh or even what laughter sounded like.

Josiah had become more distant, snared in his own grief, unable to soothe Elaina’s emotional pain. When the bleeding wouldn’t stop after birth, trickling each day, she became worried.

“It will stop,” her mother told her. “Do not worry, Eliana. This happened to my sister after she lost her baby, but the bleeding stopped.”

And eventually the bleeding slowed, her energy returned and Eliana was certain happiness would one day return to her, Josiah would hold her in his arms, and another baby would come.

The water of the mikvah was warm and inviting the day the bleeding stopped, and she prayed it would cleanse her from the tuma, make her clean again, help Josiah love her again. His mouth was warm on her own that night as he believed she had been cleansed but she no longer felt the passion she had before the loss. Something had withered inside her, faded away.

A week later she woke and felt warmth beneath her garments. Looking at her bed clothes she stared in disbelief at the growing red stain. The bleeding had returned.

“I love you, Eliana, but you must stay here. I can no longer have you in the home.”

Josiah tossed blankets at her feet, a small sack of coins, a few weeks later. The barren room around her reminded her of her barren womb and she wept when he had closed the door, leaving her alone in the darkened room. She stayed there, alone, only her sister visiting her with food and company a few times a week, watching Josiah live his life at the bottom of the hill, inviting friends to his home, working in the fields, and eventually speaking with Baruch, the butcher, who Eliana knew had three young, unmarried daughters at home.

“Elohim. Please. Please.”

She had paced the floor, tears in her eyes. She clutched at the top of her dress and sat, weak again.

“Don’t let Josiah marry again, leave me behind,” she had whispered to herself.

She could not even reach out to him, beg him to not choose another wife. Touching him would make him unclean like she was. She should have known then that this day would come, the day he would tell her she was no longer wanted, and he would no longer wait for her to be healed.

Eliana wished for death the night after Josiah told her he was marrying another to give him children.

“You can remain as my wife and return if the bleeding stops,” he had told her in a soft, hopeful voice.

But the bleeding had not stopped, and Eliana had watched as Abbigail’s belly had grown rounder and then later when she held a small newborn against her chest.

She now wished for death again, knowing Josiah didn’t want to wait to see if she would be healed. He had decided he truly no longer wanted her, no longer loved her.

She dragged her nails along her skin, wished for something hard and sharp to stab through her veins, let the blood run from every inch of her like it had been seeping from beneath her garments for so long. She imagined death enveloping her like a black sheet, pulling her down and down until she no longer had to think about the pain, the hurt, the rejection, the loss.

“Do it.”

A voice hissed at her from the darkness, barely audible.

Her hair and clothes damp against her felt like chains as she thrashed under the blanket, trapped between sleep and wakefulness.

“End it.”

She was choking, fingers tight around her throat, squeezing.

“No one loves you. No one ever will.”

She reached out, tried to scream, but no sound came.

Shame whispered, breath hot against her face. “You are unclean. You will never be clean.”

Depression growled deep in her soul. “You’re worthless.”

Rejection taunted. “You’re nothing. Nothing but a burden to all you touch.”

Despair urged her to stop the voices, stop the hurt, stop the terror gnawing at her insides. “Just one cut and it will all be over.”

Eliana screamed out, trying to pull away from the claws pulling her down. “Adonai! Adonai! Help me!”

She gasped as she awoke, sun pouring in on her from the small window above her bed. She threw her blankets from her and stood quickly looking around the room frantically.

Had it all been a dream? Were the spirts still there?

“Eliana? Are you awake?”

Her sister’s voice startled her and she backed against the wall, sliding down it and pulling her knees to her chest.

When Ledah opened the door, Eliana’s face was pressed against her knees as she rocked slowly and sobbed.

“Oh, Eliana.” Ledah kneeled beside her, wrapping her arms tightly around her and pulling her close. “Eliana, I am so sorry for these many years of suffering you’ve faced. I will not leave you. I am here and I am not afraid to touch you. Do you understand?”

Eliana nodded but couldn’t speak, sobs choking her words, tears soaking her hair and dirt stained robe.

Oh Adonai, she prayed, clutching to her sister’s garment. Save me. Don’t let the Spirit of Death torment me any longer. Please, bring healing to me.

***

The sound of footsteps outside her window woke Josefa. She rubbed her eyes as she looked out the window, watching a crowd of people walking, laughing, talking past. Women and men were carrying children on their shoulders or leading them through the crowds. Older women were walking slowly with walking sticks. Men were speaking in hushed tones while other men spoke loudly, debating theological subjects.

“Where are those people going?” she asked her mother when she walked bleary eyed into the living area.

Her mother was busy kneading flour to bake bread.

“They say Yeshua is speaking on the hill today. They want to hear what he has to say.”

“Can I go, mama?”

“We have things to do here, Josefa. And you have not had your morning meal yet. You should eat.”

“I can take bread with me. I could go and tell you what he says.”

“Go alone? I don’t like the idea of that. . .”

Josefa glanced behind her, out the window and caught a glimpse of her mother’s friend Elizabeth among the crowd.

“Look, there is Elizabeth! I could walk with her.”

Sitting back on her feet, Myriam saw her daughter, saw the brightness in her eyes, the hope. She sighed. There were worse things than her daughter learning from the man who so many, including herself, were beginning to believe was truly the son of God.

“Hurry and catch up with her but don’t stay long. Come home for lunch and tell us what he says.”

She wrapped a cloth around a piece of bread she’d made fresh that morning. “Take this with you and eat.”

Josefa threw her arms around her mama’s middle quickly, snatching the bread and darting from the room.

“Thank you, mama!” she called over her shoulder.

Outside the sun was bright. Excited voices mingled with the sounds of the street – creaks and groans of a merchant’s cart, a woman calling for her child, a man calling out the price of the fish he was selling, laughter from a group of men gathered together outside the synagogue. Josefa pushed forward through the crowd toward Elizabeth, reading out and touching arm.

“Mama said I can come with you. Are we going to hear Yeshua?”

Elizabeth’s dark hair hung loose down her back, bouncing as she walked. Her smile was sweet and welcoming as she turned to look at Josesfa.

“Yes, Josefa. We are going to hear what the teacher has to say. Is it okay with your mother that you come with me?”

“Yes. She said I could come if I was with you.”

Elizabeth’s youngest daughter, Lydia, held tightly to her mother’s hand, her toddler cheeks flushed in the warm sun.

Josefa slid her hand into Elizabeth’s other hand.

Elizabeth squeezed her hand gently. “Tell me, Josefa. How do you feel since the teacher came to visit you?”

“Amazing, Elizabeth. The world has never been brighter, food never tasted so incredible. It’s as if life is new again.”

Elizabeth laughed. “Oh, Josefa, you always have sounded older than you are. Sometimes I think that you were born a little old woman.”

Josefa smiled, hoping that Elizabeth’s words were meant to be a compliment.

A man behind them walked faster so he was walking in step with them.

“Are you Jairus’ daughter?” he asked, breathless.

He didn’t wait for Josefa to answer.

“Yeshua brought you back to life, didn’t he? What was it like? What did he say? Who do you believe he is? Is he truly the son of God?”

Words rushed out of him quickly, too quick for Josefa to answer and even if she had been able to fit her response in between the questions, she didn’t know what to say.

The rabbi had told her parents to treasure the miracle as their own and not to share it with others.

Elizabeth pulled Josefa against her as they walked.

“She’s just a child,” she said to the man. “Don’t bother her with so many questions.”

The man fell silent, looked down at the ground as they walked.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

He looked up and they followed his gaze to the top of the hill where Yeshua stood with his disciples and other followers.

“What do you think?” Elizabeth asked the man as the crowd slowed their steps. “Who do you say he is?”

The man shook his head slowly, never taking is eyes off the teacher.

“I don’t know. Truly. I do not know.”

“Hear me, everyone, and understand.”

The voice of Yeshua drifted to Josefa and she strained to hear, walking beyond Elizabeth and the man, pushing through the crowd.

“There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him, but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear!”

Josefa sat among others near the front of the crowd, pondering Yeshua’ words as he spoke. So much of his words were a mystery to her but she silently prayed Jehovah would show her later what the words meant.

An hour passed before Yeshua’ raised his hand to those asking questions.

“There will be time for answers later. I must go and break bread with my disciples now.”

Josefa looked over her shoulder for Elizabeth but couldn’t see her. She knew she should turn around and find her so they could return home but instead she rushed to follow Yeshua and the men who followed him, careful to stay several steps behind.

They sat next to the water, under an olive tree as another man approached with baskets.

“I have found us food – bread and fish, some fruit. Let us eat.”

As the men began to eat Josefa crouched behind a mound of dirt several feet away, close enough to hear their words.

“Where shall we go next, Master?” a man asked Yeshua.

“Wherever people will listen to us,” Yeshua said, breaking a piece of bread off.

“Master, I have a question – about what you said earlier today,” a disciple sat close to Yeshua, knee propped up and an arm laying across his knee.

“Yes, Thomas . . . please ask.”

“When you were speaking about whatever enters a man will not defile him. Does this mean that there are no rules about what foods we should eat? Should we ignore the law Moses gave us?”

Yeshua took a drink of water from a cup one of the disciples offered him. He sighed and leaned toward the man he had called Thomas.

“Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from the outside cannot defile him because it does not enter his heart, but his stomach and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods. What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”

Josefa leaned back against the rock mulling the words over in her mind as the men ate and began to talk about their plans for the rest of the day, where they would rest that night and what cities they hoped to reach later in the week.

Hurried footsteps startled her. “Josefa!”

She looked up to see Elizabeth standing above her. “What are you doing? Your mother trusted me with you. Now come. It’s time to get home. Your mother will want you to help prepare for the afternoon meal.”

Josefa walked behind Elizabeth, the voice of Yeshua and his followers fading with each step. Her mind wandered to life before Yeshua had healed her as Lydia reached up and slipped her tiny had in hers.

Josefa thought about how every day had seemed routine, mundane, not full of life and hope before she’d been risen from the dead. She’d never thought about her future before then. She’d thought about chasing frogs with her friend Caleb and learning how to sow and make bread with her mother. She’d worried about who she might be betrothed to by her parents. But now she thought about so much more. She thought about how she could help others feel the way she felt; how she could show them how amazing life could really be and what a gift it was.

“Josefa, now that you are well life seems normal again,” her brother had told her one day after Yeshua had visited.

But Josefa didn’t want to go back to normal. She didn’t want to look back at the normal of her life before. She wanted to look forward to a new type of normal – a life full of opportunities to really live.

Boondock Ramblings

A little bit about a lot of things

Fiction Thursday

Serial Fiction: Rekindle Parts 3 & 4

A bit of fiction for your Thursday: Rekindle Part 1 and Part 2

Fiction Thursday: Fully Alive, Chapter 7

Fiction Thursday: Fully Alive Chapter 6

Fiction Thursday: Rekindle, A Short Story Part 1

Fiction Thursday: Fully Alive, Chapter 5

Fiction Thursday: Fully Alive, Chapter 4. Atticus

Fiction Thursday: Rewrites and doubts about writing ability

Fiction Thursday: Fully Alive Chapter 3

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