Four months later
Kevin insisted I join the basketball team. As much as I wanted to make excuses to avoid it, my friend was bound and determined that I be there. So every Wednesday afternoon, rain or shine, I raced around the court with a bunch of other men, all serving in ministry in one capacity or another. To my surprise, I actually came to enjoy the workout. I found the physical exertion helped sweat away the worst of my frustration and depression.
As difficult as it was to admit, that’s what I’d been suffering from—a deep, dark depression. At the time I hadn’t realized it, which is probably fairly common. While in seminary, I’d sat through plenty of psychology classes. One would think I’d be able to recognize the symptoms. Unfortunately, I’d been walking around in a thick fog of loss and grief and hadn’t been able to recognize what was happening to me.
Once I faced a few home truths about myself, I made an appointment with a physician as well as started weekly counseling for me and my kids. We’d been through hell, and it was time we stopped pretending all was fine when it wasn’t. The antidepressants and counseling had done wonders for my mental health. Time with friends and physical exercise had been added bonuses.
As the weeks progressed, Kevin and I started taking time to cool off together after basketball with a cold soda. In retrospect, I was convinced he planned these sessions. We talked about Katie’s sickness and ultimate death and about the effect her passing had on the children. Kevin had been the one to recommend the counselor, who happened to be a friend of his.
As a result, both Mark and Sarah seemed to be adjusting and accepting life without their mother a little better. Sarah had been only five when Katie was first diagnosed with stage-four ovarian cancer. The doctors gave her just a few months. She lasted six. In some ways I wish she’d died sooner. That sounds callous, and I suffered a tremendous amount of guilt for thinking that, but those last weeks when she’d lingered were the hardest of my life. It became intolerable to watch her suffer. It killed me in ways I was only now beginning to recognize.
After about a month of the soda breaks, a couple of the other guys joined in. I looked forward to that time as much as I did to playing basketball. As an added advantage, I was in the best shape I’d been in since college.
About a week or so before Easter, when I was arriving at the center for my weekly basketball game, I caught sight of a woman who looked vaguely familiar as I went to collect Sarah from the child-care center. My daughter had accompanied me, since it was spring break. It didn’t take me long to recognize the woman helping in the center as the one I’d found in church all those months ago. She was walking with another Hope Center resident. The two of them were laughing. I smiled and decided to ask Kevin about her.
After the game, as we gathered in the staff kitchen with our drinks, I looked to Kevin. “You remember that woman I brought by a few months back?”
“Shay,” he supplied.
“Yeah, Shay. How’s she doing?”
“There are confidentiality matters, but seeing that you’re the one who brought her here, I can let you know that Shay is toeing the line. Still got attitude, but that’s par for the course.”
I grinned, remembering how her eyes had flashed with defiance when I first met her. Finding her in the church that day wasn’t coincidence, I knew that now. If not for stumbling upon Shay, I don’t know what would have happened with me personally. Contacting Kevin had been a turning point in my recovery from the loss of my wife.
Kevin studied me. “How about we talk to Lilly? She’s Shay’s counselor.”
“Sure.” I was eager to hear about Shay’s progress, and Kevin seemed to sense that.
Kevin disappeared for a few minutes and returned with the woman I’d met the afternoon I’d brought Shay to the center for an evaluation.
“You remember Pastor Douglas, don’t you?” Kevin asked.
Lilly raised her chin in greeting. “I do.”
“He was asking about Shay. Can you give us an update?”
“Sure.” Lilly crossed her arms. “She came with a chip on her shoulder, which is fairly common. I had to call her on the carpet a couple times, but she does what’s required of her. The attitude is more out of fear, I think.”
“Fear?” I asked.
“Yeah, Shay’s afraid of what will happen to her if she fails. It could mean life on the street, so she’s doing what’s necessary to stay in the program.”
In other words, and I was reading between the lines, Shay was doing just enough to remain in the program. All I could do was hope that the life lessons taught at the center would take hold.
“Is she attending church with the other women?” I asked. I knew church attendance was completely voluntary. It said a lot if she had made that step of faith.
Lilly shook her head. “Not yet, but hopefully she will in time.”
“The counseling sessions are going well?” I asked, knowing how much counseling had helped me and my children.
Lilly hesitated before she answered. “They’re going okay. She’s pretty tightly wound just yet. Given time, I believe she’ll let me peek behind those walls.” She paused and then looked to me. “You’re that pastor she met when she was released from prison, right?”
I nodded.
“She’s mentioned you a couple times. I asked if I could pass along any information about her, should you ask, and she was fine with that.”
“You say she mentioned me? In what way?”
“Said you helped her. She didn’t come out and say it, but I knew that it meant something. With women like Shay, their relationships with men have usually been anything but positive. You may be the first man to actually show any genuine concern for her.”
I swallowed back my surprise. I had done so little. I felt a bit ashamed that I hadn’t followed up sooner. “All I did was call Kevin. If she’s grateful to anyone, it should be to you and Kevin.”
Lilly shook her head. “She said you gave her hope.” She paused before adding, “It would do Shay a world of good if you gave her a word of encouragement.”
“Now?” I was all sweaty and probably smelled bad.
“No time like the present,” Lilly insisted. “I’ll call her down to my office and give you two a few minutes. That sound good to you?”
Shrugging, I said, “Sure.”
Kevin slapped my back on my way out the door, and I followed Lilly to her office. She had me sit in her chair while I waited for Shay after Lilly had called her to her office. I heard Shay before I saw her. Lilly stood outside her office, waiting for her.
“What did I do?” Shay asked with a tone of defiance, challenging Lilly.
“You have a visitor.”
“A visitor? Me?” She sounded shocked. “Who is it?”
“Check it out.” Lilly opened the office door and I stood as Shay stepped inside.
“Hello, Shay,” I said.
Her eyes rounded and she looked dumbstruck. “Drew…I mean Pastor Douglas.”
“You can call me Drew.” I gestured toward the chair for her to take a seat. “I thought I’d check to see how it’s going,” I said, although I had a good idea from what Lilly had already mentioned.
She shrugged. “I’m okay.”
She studied me as if she needed to remember exactly who I was, which seemed odd, given that she’d called me by name.
“You’ve changed,” she said, and then snapped her mouth closed as if she regretted the words as soon as she said them.
It surprised me that she’d noticed. “How so?” I asked, curious as to what differences she saw.
“When we met you looked…I don’t know, burdened, I guess. It’s better now?”
“Much,” I said. I hadn’t come to talk about myself, though, so I leaned back in the chair and focused my attention on Shay. “So tell me, are the classes here helping you?”
“Yeah, I guess.” She sat up a bit straighter. “I’ve graduated into Phase Two.”
“What did you learn in Phase One?” I asked. It’d been years since Kevin had mentioned the details of the program, and I was interested in hearing what Shay had to tell me.
“Right from the start there have been plenty of sessions with Lilly. They want me to talk about my life and all that sh—” She paused. “All that childhood crap. Stuff,” she quickly amended. “Especially Lilly,” she said and snickered.
“You don’t like Lilly?”
“She’s all right. Lilly’s tough. Like me, she’s been around the block more times than the postman. She doesn’t take any bull, if you know what I mean.”
Grinning, I nodded. “I do.”
“There are fitness and nutrition classes, and that’s been the best part for me. I think when it comes time to look for a job I’d like to find something in that field.”
“Good.” I hoped that encouraged her.
She smiled and looked down at her hands, as if she didn’t want me to know that anything I said pleased her.
“What’s been the hardest part for you?” I asked.
Shay glanced up, met my gaze, and then immediately broke eye contact. “Boundaries, for sure. I don’t know why, but somehow it got programmed in my head that if someone needed me, then it was my duty to do whatever it was, no matter what the cost was to me personally. Crazy, isn’t it?”
She impressed me. “You’re not the only one dealing with those issues.”
That small smile came and disappeared just as quickly again.
“Tell me about Phase Two.”
“Well, I’ll continue to spend a lot of time with Lilly, but I don’t mind that as much as I did in the beginning. I’m still not sure I like her, but I trust her. She isn’t going to take any guff. I guess it boils down to the fact that I don’t always like hearing what she has to say.”
I knew the feeling well. I’d come away from my own counseling sessions with the same thought.
“A few times I’ve been so mad that it takes me a day or two to get over the anger and come to grips with what she’s saying. If I disagree, I’ve learned it’s generally because it was something I didn’t want to hear.”
“I get that.”
“I’ve come to realize I have a lot of anger in me. For instance, the only thing that gave me any hope behind bars was my weekly correspondence from Elizabeth, an older woman who volunteered with Prison Fellowship. Her last letter before I was released really frustrated and angered me, because she had so much hope for my future, and I had none. I never wrote her back, and I’ve regretted it every day since. This week, I finally sat down and let her know where I am, that her prayers were working, and how much progress I’ve made. And then, there’s my brother.”
“Your brother?”
She lowered her gaze. “I embezzled money for him. He was in a bad spot and was desperate for the money. He convinced me he would be able to return it, which was pure fiction. He had no way of getting the money back to me and he knew it. He let me take the rap. I was angry with him. The bitterness ate me alive while I served my sentence.”
That was understandable. I was pleased Shay trusted me enough to share what had led to her time behind bars.
“What I didn’t realize until I moved into the center is that I have a lot of repressed feelings toward my dad that have come out in self-destructive ways. That’s what Lilly tells me. She seems to think that if someone physically hurts me, then I convince myself that I must deserve it.” She hesitated and picked at her fingernails before she continued. “I’m not sure I’m ready to buy into all this, but I’m willing to listen and chew on it.”
I smiled, encouraging her to continue.
“Lilly claims anger and grief go together. Not sure I buy that, either, but I remember I was angry with my mother for leaving, like she had a choice,” Shay added. “Mom died, so it wasn’t like she packed her bags and ran off.”
My children had felt that same sense of abandonment, and it had come out in negative ways. Hearing that Shay had experienced the same thing after the loss of her own mother helped me realize what Mark and Sarah had been feeling since we buried Katie.
“Of all the classes you’ve attended, which is your favorite?” I asked.
Shay seemed to mull over my question for a few awkward moments, as if searching for an answer. I feared she would say whatever she felt I would want to hear. “Actually, I’ve gained the most out of the class dealing with emotional freedom,” she mentioned.
Once she got started telling me about the class, Shay had a lot to say. She seemed sincere, and the more she spoke, the more genuine she sounded.
“I don’t need to be carrying around the weight of the world. I realize if I have any chance of living a decent life, of making the right choices, then I need to let go of these resentments before I can move on. I’ve started with my father but have yet to deal with what my brother did to me.”
As if reading my mind, Shay added, “I haven’t heard from my brother, Caden, in over three years, so I have no idea if he’s alive or dead.” She paused and glanced down at her hands. “Odd part is, with Caden, I’ve come to accept that I need to forgive myself, too. I was the one who got him involved with Shooter.”
“Shooter?”
“My ex-boyfriend. He’s in prison. Doubt he’ll come out anytime soon, which is a good thing.”
I could see that despite her attitude, Shay had come a long way in the short amount of time that she’d been at the center. “Lilly tells me you’re doing well and I wanted you to know how proud I am of you.”
Shay’s head shot up and her eyes widened with shock. “You are?”
“I had a good feeling that this was the right place for you. I’m glad it’s working out. Do you have any family who will visit you over Easter?” I asked.
Shaking her head, she looked down at her hands in her lap once again. “No…I don’t have any family, well, other than my brother, but like I said, I haven’t seen him in over three years.”
“You’re making friends, though?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“If you like, I’ll check on you again in a few months.”
“If you want,” she said, shrugging as if it wasn’t a big deal.
Standing up from the chair, I thought it was time I give Lilly back her small office.
Shay stood when I did. “Before you go, I wanted to mention that I saw the woman you mentioned.”
My mind went blank. “I mentioned someone?”
“Yes, the day you dropped me off at the women’s shelter. You said the church supplied one dinner a month and that Linda Kincaid was the one heading up the volunteers for the dinner.”
“Oh, right.” I remembered that now.
“You said I wouldn’t have a problem identifying her, and you were right. As soon as I saw her, I knew she was the one you’d told me about.”
“Did you say anything to her?” I asked. I realized I’d never told Linda about meeting Shay, although Mary Lou, my assistant, might have said something.
“No…I wasn’t sure I should.”
“You should,” I encouraged. “Linda’s big heart matches her height.”
“If I see her again I might say something,” she offered noncommittally.
“I hope you do,” I encouraged. I’d be sure to give Linda a heads-up about Shay so she wouldn’t be taken by surprise.
By the time I left the center it looked like it might rain. Sarah was sure to love that. We’d put Easter decorations out earlier in the week, but I hadn’t had time to dye eggs with the kids. Tonight would be perfect for that, following choir practice. I did what I could to make their lives as normal as possible without their mother, not that it was easy.
This would be the third Easter without Katie. The first two had been dreadful. The three of us had done our best to put on a happy face and pretend all was well. Sarah was the one who broke down first, crying, saying she wanted her mother and that I didn’t do anything right. I comforted my daughter as best as I could. The problem was I needed comforting myself.
For the first time since we buried Katie, I had the feeling we were going to make it just fine. I wasn’t sure I could attribute this sense of well-being to my time spent with Shay, but I decided I would.
I vividly remembered the day we’d met and how I’d felt after dropping her off at the shelter. I’d mentioned how meeting her had helped me. Everything had changed for me and my children after that day.
I collected Sarah and together we left Hope Center. I felt good after talking to Shay. Good for us both.