Product Name: Grill Daddy Price: $19.95, plus S&H. Put out by: Grill Daddy
The Grill Daddy (www.grilldaddy.net) is a steam powered grill-cleaning tool that sanitizes grills and eliminates the burnt on food, grease and dirt. Cleaning grills can be a difficult and time-consuming task but the alternative is far worse. Unwashed racks can house bacteria that could contaminate food and leave an unsanitary and bad taste.
Utilizing specially designed stainless-steel brushes, the Grill Daddy releases water as users brush, hitting the grill and turning to steam while rinsing away unsanitary debris.
Other features:
·Steam-powered
·No rancid greasy residue builds up on the brush (liquefies and melts it away)
·Safe for porcelain, steel and iron grills (hot or cold)
·Ergonomic handle keeps hands away from heat and provides maximum leverage
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
***Special thanks to Blythe Daniel of The Blythe Daniel Agency, Inc. for sending me a review copy.***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joan Ball is a professor in the Peter J. Tobin College of Business at St. Johns University in New York, and a writer at Beliefnet.com. She and her husband, Martin, have three children and they live in suburban New York.
List Price: $14.99 Paperback: 213 pages Publisher: Howard Books; Original edition (May 11, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 1439149879 ISBN-13: 978-1439149874 Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.5 x 0.6 inches
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
Struck
Thirty-seven is way too young to be having a heart attack, I thought, resting my hand on my chest and struggling to catch my breath. I’m sure it’s nothing.
But somewhere deep inside I knew I was lying to myself. Although I was a firm believer in mind over matter, my attempts to will away the waves of nausea and shortness of breath were failing miserably.
As my stoic resolve began to dissolve into genuine concern, I think there might actually be something wrong with me.
I looked at my watch, then over my shoulder into the serious-looking faces of forty or fifty strangers scattered in little clumps throughout the massive, mostly empty main sanctuary of a church we’d been attending for about a month. These clean-cut, well-manicured families in their suits and dresses and sensible shoes were way too straitlaced for my taste. In fact, they perfectly embodied the stereotype of church folks I’d carried along on my spiritual (and sometimes not so spiritual) journey from staunch atheism to recovery-based, power-greater-than-myself pseudo-agnosticism. They appeared boring and predictable; I saw nothing of myself in these people, and I was confident that their conception of Jesus as God was a farce.
Despite my growing concern over the pressure in my chest, I sat motionless, proud enough to choose the anonymity of the pew over creating a scene with a quick exit.
Of course, this begs the question: What was I doing there in the first place?
Faith aside, church and a nice brunch made for a surprisingly relaxing Sunday-morning routine that offset nicely the insane pace we managed to maintain Monday through Saturday. And since the kids liked meeting their friends there, it seemed like a benign sacrifice of an hour in exchange for some quality family-bonding time.
Even so, I didn’t really trust these church people. There was something about their unwavering propriety that I was sure amounted to little more than a thin disguise for a subtle yet palpable wariness of “outsiders.” Maybe it was the body language or the tone of their voices, but I always came away with the distinct sense that our presence was more tolerated than welcomed. Sure, they did all the right things. The smiles, hellos, and “how-was-your-week’s” were delivered perfectly, as if on cue. But, in the white space between the pleasantries, there was this underlying something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
It was kind of like a friend hosting a party who meets you at the door with a pleasant “Come on in. Make yourself at home. Can I get you a drink?” while shooting daggers at the husband she was fighting with as you pulled up the driveway. The words and actions say welcome, but you can’t help but feel otherwise.
Seven years in addiction recovery had conditioned me to believe that the newcomer—on the wagon or still drinking—is always the most important person in the room. This made the perceived lack of warmth distasteful enough that I thought it best to maintain a polite distance, just to be safe. That said, at this point in my life the polite distance suited me just fine. In fact, the protective cordiality on both sides allowed my husband, Martin, our three kids, and me finally, after nearly two years of halfhearted church shopping, to consider this a place where we might hang our spiritual hats.
I probably wouldn’t have been at church at all if I’d not married Martin six years earlier. When we met, in 1992, I was a single mother and a rabid atheist. More than that, my most potent venom was reserved for theists of the Christian persuasion. I’ve since been told that this brand of anti-theism is frequently born in bad experiences with the church or parochial school, but I was raised without any of that religious baggage.
Although my parents had grown up Roman Catholic, they abandoned the practice before I started grade school. So, coming from what could best be called a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps secular environment, I’d pieced together my own personal philosophy on religion and faith. In my view, people who embraced God and religion were emotionally, physically, or intellectually weak and unable to carry themselves through life on their own. This elaborate ruse called faith provided them with an external construct to prop them up. A fantasy scaffolding that I was smart enough and strong enough to avoid.
Although I vehemently disparaged believers, certain people or groups were paradoxically excluded from my disdain. My devout Catholic grandmother and others in my mother’s family fell into this category, as did anyone who embraced a spiritual path that I perceived to be cooler than Christianity—which included almost every religion or faith tradition on earth that wasn’t Christianity. I have to admit that their pardon was based on random criteria that made neither logical nor theological sense. Naturally, Martin—at the time a Bible-believing, Pentecostal-church-attending Christian—was exempt from my ire. But that was mainly because he was sexy, played guitar, and rarely talked about God unless someone else brought it up.
Note “In my view, people who embraced God and religion were emotionally, physically, or intellectually weak and unable to carry themselves through life on their own.”
I was like one of those aggressively discriminatory people who hate blacks or whites or gays, yet has one of those “friends who is different” from the stereotype. Somehow, the people I loved and respected were excused from my considerable contempt for Christians, yet I never disbanded my theory that faith was an illusion. It was this kind of convoluted mental calculus that allowed me to agree to a church wedding to Martin in 1996, and that fueled my sporadic church attendance—devoid of Christian faith—for the years that followed.
Surprisingly, in those months before and after we were married, I actually came to like going to church. There was something about the rhythm of doing the same thing once a week, every week, that was . . . I don’t know . . . comforting. Like playing house as a child.
And I got pretty good at playing church.
We went on Sundays and took the kids to a family program on Wednesdays. I even stepped in as a substitute Sunday-school teacher once or twice, which was really weird, since I couldn’t have answered even the simplest questions about the faith with any depth or accuracy if I’d been asked. Thankfully my students were four- and five-year-olds, and I’d been given a pretty thorough syllabus, so no one ever called my bluff. I probably could have continued attending church like that forever—a polite, clandestine agnostic—and no one would have been the wiser. But then we decided to move.
When we settled into our house in Warwick, a rural suburb of New York City, church became an inconvenience. The longer drive from our new house to church got real old, real quick and it didn’t take long for us to realize that losing twenty minutes of sleep to make it to church on time required a greater sacrifice than we were willing to make. After a couple months of setting the clock, overusing the snooze button, and vowing to “try again next week,” we figured we’d try to find a new church in Warwick. When our admittedly halfhearted search for a new place failed, we gave church a little rest. Surely Martin’s Jesus would understand that we were busy people with busy lives. Sunday was the only day that we were guaranteed a chance to sleep in. This omnipotent God had to know we worked hard to balance our careers, the kids’ activities, and the house all week and that we wanted—no, we deserved—a little extra sleep on Sunday mornings.
What we thought would be a short hiatus from church lasted about two years, until our daughter, Kesley, who was thirteen at the time, asked a plaintive question.
“Mom? Do you think we’ll ever go to church again?”
I had never gone to church as a kid, but I do remember what I was up to when I was thirteen. If I had a kid who was actually asking to go to church, I figured I should probably listen.
“Sure, Kels,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “We’ll go back soon.”
So, as quickly as we’d abandoned the Sunday-morning church routine, we reinstated it.
The routine was simple and predictable. We’d start out calm and quiet. Andrew and Ian, who were fourteen and five at the time, were the early risers. They’d wake up and make their way down to the basement family room, where they’d stretch out on facing couches and watch TV or play video games. Kelsey, who was a little slower and a lot grumpier in the morning, usually slept in until the last possible minute. Martin and I fell somewhere in the middle. We’d set the clock for far earlier than either of us intended to wake up and hit the snooze (love that snooze) before lounging in bed, talking or reading (or whatever . . .), until we’d lingered just long enough to get to church almost on time.
Now, if you ask me, being almost on time for anything is far worse than being completely late. Completely late makes it easier to resort to a simple, more relaxing Plan B, like “Let’s just sleep in” or “How about breakfast instead?” Being almost on time, on the other hand, held out a faint but real hope that, despite evidence to the contrary, Plan A may still be achievable. Almost on time got our competitive juices flowing and opened the door to chaos. It told us that, if we hustled, we might just make up the time—even if it meant tormenting ourselves and our children and ruining an otherwise peaceful morning. Martin and I took the bait every time.
“Kelsey, can you please finish getting ready and help your brother find his shoes?” I’d shout up from the bottom of the two-story foyer.
“You can’t wear that shirt, it’s dirty. Go change.” Martin would say as he abruptly intercepted Andrew in the kitchen.
Then I’d snap at our youngest as he followed me from room to room, holding a hundred trading cards and a shoe. “No, Ian, you cannot bring your Pokémon cards. Go ask Kelsey to help you find your other shoe.”
And finally, as if playing a role in a recurring nightmare, Martin would call from the back deck, “If you guys are not in the car in two minutes . . .”
Getting two adults, two teenagers, and a five-year-old showered, dressed, and out the door of a three-story house with three bathrooms shouldn’t be that difficult. And yet somehow it always was. So much for the nice, relaxing family morning.
Eventually, we’d pile into our SUV and back down the cobblestone driveway, catching a glimpse of our picture-postcard, red brick center-hall colonial as we went.
That Sunday morning in 2003 was no different.
“Martin, can I have my sunglasses?” I asked, turning down the cul-de-sac straight into the surprisingly strong spring sunshine.
“Where are they?” he said as he leaned down to rifle through my bigger-than-necessary bag.
“They should be in the inside pocket,” I said, hitting the gas, checking my makeup in the rearview mirror, and handing him my glasses in one unconscious and mindlessly dangerous motion.
He took my black-framed, cat-eye glasses and handed me a pair of dark Jackie-Os that set off my shoulder-length blond hair and monochromatic black outfit, completing the New York urban-chic style that I was trying hard to make look easy.
I looked down at the digital display—9:54 A.M. With six minutes to drive five minutes across town, we were still in the game. I made a quick right out of the cul-de-sac, rolled through a couple of stop signs, and turned into the parking lot as the church bells sounded the last deep doooong. Breathing a sigh of relief, we hit our seats just in time for the organist to play the intro to the first hymn.
Yes, I thought, there’s nothing like landing on the right side of almost on time.
As the notes boomed out of the enormous antique pipe organ and the robe-clad choir fought a losing battle to find the right key, I found myself looking up at the arched stained-glass windows that flanked the massive stone church. Someone had once told me that the panels were museum quality, designed and constructed by Tiffany & Co. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. They were amazing. Intricate patterns of metal and glass joined to form complex jewel-toned images of Jesus and his crew that exploded when backlit by the sun. I followed the colored beams as they cascaded through well-defined images of faces, bodies, and crosses into an impromptu dance of color that shifted on the floor as if projected by a giant, priceless kaleidoscope.
Note “With six minutes to drive five minutes across town, we were still in the game.”
I could always appreciate the majestic beauty of a church or cathedral. It was all that religion that happened inside that turned me off. I wonder how much you could get for those things at Sotheby’s, I thought as I turned my attention forward, where a boyish-looking man was calling the congregation to order. He wore a long white robe with a purple sash, the standard uniform for what the church people referred to as the traditional service.
This pastor, whom I will call Pastor Thomas, was about the same age as Martin and me—somewhere in his mid- to late thirties. Despite the fact that he was a little geeky, he seemed nice enough from a distance. We’d only spoken to him once or twice: brief, nice-to-see-you-back-again, so-nice-to-be-back conversations as we left the church. We might have avoided these rather awkward exchanges altogether were it not his custom to stand at the back door of the church sanctuary at the end of the service. It was like the receiving line at a wedding: people making their way down aisles at the left, right, and center of the enormous room, converging at the back into a human traffic jam.
“Before we get started,” Pastor Thomas announced with a broad smile on his face, “Mary Rooney and her son Jason [not their real names] are going to be accepted as new members of our congregation.” Apparently, anyone can go to church, but becoming a member took it to the next level. I just wasn’t sure what that next level looked like.
I almost applauded when the two of them stood up, but caught myself, forgetting that the people here never clapped. Even when singers did a fantastic duet or solo . . . nothing. No one else seemed to mind, but I found that pregnant pause while the musicians cleared their music and returned to their seats in silence to be distractingly awkward. One day I made the mistake of using the no-clapping thing as fodder for pre-service small talk with one of the women who seemed to be involved in a number of church activities.
Note “I almost applauded when the two of them stood up, but caught myself, forgetting that the people here never clapped.”
“Why is it,” I asked, “that no one ever claps for the singers or musicians?”
She made no attempt to hide her disdain for my question as she said curtly, “This is a church, not a concert.”
As Mary and her elementary-school-age son came to their feet, I wondered whether they were alone because of a divorce, if her husband had died, or if she had just chosen to have a child on her own. Whatever the circumstances, they reminded me of how difficult it had been to be a single mother and how lucky Andrew, Kelsey, and I were to have Martin in our lives. Once Ian was born, our new family was complete.
Pastor Thomas made his way across the stage (I think there’s a more formal name for it, but it looked like a stage to me) and opened a huge book that sat on a quarter-sawn oak pedestal. Then, without speaking, he raised his hands and swept them upward in a small circle like a conductor, and we all came to our feet. After a short prayer, and maybe another hymn, he began to ask Mary and Jason a series of questions.
“Do you accept the gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ revealed in the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the only way to eternal life?”
“I do,” they answered.
“Do you acknowledge that you are a sinner, sinful by nature, but that by the grace of God alone your sins have been forgiven and your old nature put to death, so that you may be brought to newness of life and set apart as a member of the Body of Christ?”
“I do.”
This Q and A went on for a few more minutes, covering promises to pray, seek God’s guidance, grow in faith, attend church, and accept and obey the rules and guidance of the church elders. They responded with dutiful “I dos” and “I wills” at the end of each question.
Next, the members of the congregation were asked if they would welcome the woman and her son into the “community of faith” and if they would “pledge to them your love, your prayers, and your encouragement as they live the Christian life with us.” The responses of the few dozen congregants in the large room sounded a little empty, as they delivered the best “We dos” and “We wills” they could muster. Not wanting to appear rude, I lip-synched the words along with the crowd.
Oh well, I thought, I guess I could never become a member of this church.
My understanding of the church-membership thing was still a little sketchy. Best I could tell, signing up with a certain church presupposed a heightened level of commitment, or maybe it just indicated that you intend to stick around. While I was okay with getting involved in some church activities or playing in the band, saying “I do” to anything involving Jesus was a commitment I was not willing, able, or interested in making.
Note “Saying ‘I do’ to anything involving Jesus was a commitment I was not willing, able, or interested in making.”
Sure, given the havoc I had wrought on myself and on others in my twenties, I could almost accept the notion that I might be sinful by nature. I’d even come to a place in my thirties, through the literature and guidance of a 12-step program, where I could pray to a “power greater than myself” with some assurance that it was better to pray than not to pray. But Jesus? The Old and New Testaments? Eternal life? Martin believed in all of that stuff, but not me. Not today. Not tomorrow. No way.
I was hoping that the church-membership thing wouldn’t extend the service longer than the usual one hour. I was pretty hungry and looking forward to endulging in some pancakes and syrup, even though yogurt and fruit would have been the more responsible option. As the announcements finished, Pastor Thomas began his sermon. The message was from the last book of the Bible, called Revelation.
The end of the world as we know it, oh my.
I knew very little about the Bible beyond my absolute confidence that, despite the heartfelt claims of the radio Christians, it was not the divinely inspired Word of God. I mean, how could it be? All of those writers with their hands all over it across the centuries and not one typo? I couldn’t understand who in their right mind would ever believe that all of those angry monks and sadistic inquisitors never changed a little bit of this or that to tip the scales in their favor. How gullible could people be?
While it might have been a lovely notion that some benevolent creator of the universe whispered down two thousand pages of frequently contradictory text because he loves people, I believed the whole Christianity thing had started as an elaborate ruse, perpetrated by powerful and wealthy people to control the uneducated masses. Then, like some centuries-old version of the kids’ game Telephone, the rules and the false hope they promised became a sad and pathetic crutch for the weak and a powerful hammer for the pious.
Note “I believed the whole Christianity thing had started as an elaborate ruse, perpetrated by powerful and wealthy people to control the uneducated masses.”
Pastor Thomas started talking about Jesus’ returning to earth—for what would be the end of the world—at a time that no one could predict. Judgment day. Armageddon. You don’t need to be a Christian to be familiar with these terms and the notions they conjure. I was half-listening and wondering what any of this could ever have to do with me when he began to read:
Then I saw Heaven open wide—and oh! A white horse and its Rider. The Rider named Faithful and True, judges and makes war in pure righteousness. His eyes are a blaze of fire, on his head many crowns. He has a Name inscribed that’s known only to himself. He is dressed in a robe soaked with blood, and he is addressed as “Word of God.” The armies of Heaven, mounted on white horses and dressed in dazzling white linen, follow him. A sharp sword comes out of his mouth so he can subdue the nations, then rule them with a rod of iron. He treads the winepress of the raging wrath of God, the Sovereign-Strong. On his robe and thigh is written, king of kings, lord of lords.
Apparently, unlike the love-everybody-Gandhi Jesus, the come-back-at-the-end-of-the-world Jesus is a wild warrior who’ll show up ready to rumble.
A sword in his mouth? I thought. These people are nuts.
That’s when my chest started to hurt.
At first it was just a small hollowness right below my sternum, like the sensation you get from swallowing too much pool water. Then came a wave of nausea. And then another. Finally, I started to have trouble catching my breath. Did I eat something bad? I wondered to myself. I hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, so maybe last night. Maybe indigestion? My watch read 10:45.
Just fifteen more minutes, I thought as I began to break into a cold sweat.
I contemplated leaving, but I was on the center side of a twelve-foot-long pew, which left me with two equally untenable choices: either I walk up the wide center aisle between row after row of intricately carved wooden pews while clutching my chest and gasping for breath, or I climb over Martin, the kids, and another family to get to the side aisle to do the same. I looked left and then right, considering my options, and decided that both involved more drama than I was willing to risk. And I was just image conscious enough to risk death by heart attack to avoid it. So I drew another deep breath and tried to focus on keeping myself from throwing up.
Note “I was just image conscious enough to risk death by heart attack to avoid it. So I drew another deep breath and tried to focus on keeping myself from throwing up.”
Martin, who was sitting to my right, was completely unaware of what I was going through. The heaviness of his eyelids, the rhythmic bobbing of his head, and his occasional half snore revealed that he was fighting a battle of his own. He could usually count on me for a gentle but firm elbow to the ribs when he was about to descend into REM sleep during a sermon, but today was different. As the minutes passed and my condition worsened, I had to admit that something was very, very wrong.
“Martin,” I finally whispered with an uncharacteristic sense of urgency, “Baby, wake up.”
“What?” he said, looking around. “I’m not sleeping.” “You’re not going to believe this,” I replied, ignoring his I’m-not-sleeping delusion, “but I think I might be having a freaking heart attack.”
Martin had been with me long enough to know that I was more prone to ignore illness than to overstate it. Looking at me with a combination of uncertainty and concern, he asked, “Do you want to go to the hospital?”
“No,” I said, still allowing self-consciousness to trump my mounting alarm. “Let’s wait and see what happens.”
Intent on maintaining my composure, I quietly struggled to catch a healthy breath and endure the distinct sensation that there was a five-hundred-pound weight perched squarely on the center of my chest.
Just five more minutes.
When the service ended, I took Martin’s arm, and with the kids in tow, we made our way down the center aisle toward the exit. Trying to remain ever so dignified in the midst of my increasing distress, we weaved in and out of small groups of people as quickly as possible, intending to beat the exit traffic without drawing undue attention to ourselves. The church folks were in no hurry as they waited in line to be greeted by Pastor Thomas, who stood between us and the door.
Please don’t try to talk to us. I have to get out of here.
Thankfully, an ancient woman whose curved body stood about four feet high had cornered Pastor Thomas, serving as a welcomed detour on the highway of people squeezing past them to make their way into the parking lot. Still holding on to Martin’s arm to maintain my balance, I scurried to the car, fighting the sensation that my legs might go out from under me at any moment. Come on, come on, I repeated to myself. I needed to get into the car. I needed to get home. I needed . . . I needed . . . I didn’t know what I needed, but I knew I didn’t need to be standing in that parking lot.
Martin unlocked the passenger-side door and helped me lift myself into the seat of the SUV as he closed the door. The kids stuffed themselves into the backseat, ignorant of what I was going through and likely expecting me to ask where they’d like to go for brunch. But what they got was something very different.
Note “Somewhere in the midst of all this, the pain in my chest lifted, and there I was . . . crying ugly and repeating over and over again, ‘It is all true, all of it, it is all true.’”
The minute I found myself in the privacy of the car, a wave of intense emotion came over me. It was like a dam had broken, a flood of pent-up pressure released behind it in the form of sobbing and hysterical crying. Somewhere in the midst of all this, the pain in my chest lifted and there I was—generally a model of rigid self-control and modern accomplishment—crying ugly and repeating over and over again, “It is all true, all of it, it is all true.” In that moment I knew I was not having a heart attack. Instead, despite lifelong skepticism and outright animosity toward traditional religion, without asking or seeking, this skeptical atheist turned churchgoing agnostic had somehow been struck Christian.
Munchie, my soon-to-be-five-year-old-and-soon-after-that-a-kindergartner, has had the hardest time deciding on a birthday theme. One day it was Transformers. Then Legos. Then Ben 10. Then he wanted all of them. So the theme became "a few of my favorite things".
I started with a song/invitation (it helps if you sing it!).
Robots that Transform and Thomas the Engine
Legos to build with and my new friend Ben 10
Bright colored packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things
=========
Hot dogs and burgers all cooked on the grill
Great friends and family to share in the thrill
Goodie bags with candy and decoder rings
These are a few of my favorite things!
=========
Will you please come—
To my party—
When I’m turning 5?
We will all share some favorite things
And then we’ll all feel so glad!
Then I googled "make trap door pinata" and found instructions to make this. It is supposed to be a pirate's chest, but I made it a toy box. It is a pull string pinata, so we don't have to blindfold a bunch of preschoolers and then hands out bats. (Who thought that was a good idea?)
Notice that Munchie is supporting Daddy and Papaw's temporary jobs. They are both working the census--John is working for the 3rd time since last spring. The shirt says, "Today we count..March to the mailbox". If you haven't sent in your census form, please be nice when someone, like my father-in-law, comes to your door. Now....back to our program....
I gave Munchie the option of a store bought cake, or one I made. If I made it, I would spend the extra money on toys for the cake. Of course, he acknowledged how priceless a cake made by mommy would be! (Okay, so hechose the extra toys....but a mom can dream, can't she?!?!)
So, in keeping with the "A few of my favorite things" theme, I decided to take 3 rectangular cakes and layer them. The top cake has the center cut out. It is supposed to look like a toybox with toys sticking out. I'm not sure if I accomplished that or not. But it has his favorite toys.
Aerial view:
Along the edges, I painted, "There are a few of my favorite things".
Munchie is NOT, I repeat, NOT wearing his birthday suit in this picture. He is, however, wearing nothing by Transformer underwear. (Hey! He is still 4!) Don't you love the pensive look on his face?!?
The "favorite things" include 4 sand molds (2 Spongebob and 2 Iron Man masks); an AstroBoy figure; a gold Hot Wheels car; 2 small Transformers (one is a robot and one is a car); a Ben10 character (Swamp thing?); and Felipe (the Phillips screwdriver from Handy Manny). In the morning I will throw in some extra Lego parts.
Now...if I can just get the birthday boy to settle down, I can get a little sleep before the party starts.....
I had the opportunity to review one of the DVDs from A History of Christianity, which is a six-part series presented by Diarmaid MacCulloch. MaCulloch is an Oxford history professor who is known for his books about the reformation. This series begins in the 7th century and continues to the 20th century. Besides just sharing the people of Christian history, but how Christianity has changed human society.
I look forward to watching the rest of the episodes.
Q & A with Diarmaid MacCulloch,
Host of A History of Christianity
(Part 1 of 2)
Q: A History of Christianity corrects several misconceptions regarding Christianity’s past and traditions, beginning with the earliest days of the fledgling religion. How does the true history of Christianity’s origins differ from the version most of us know?
A: Today, Christianity is seen as a Western faith. Indeed, many in the Muslim world would see Western lifestyles as Christian lifestyles. But Christianity is not by origin a Western religion. Its beginnings are in the Middle East, where there still exist churches which have been Eastern since the earliest Christian era. For centuries, Christianity flourished in the East, and indeed, at one point, it was poised to triumph in Asia, maybe even in China. The headquarters of Christianity might well have been Baghdad rather than Rome, and if that had happened, Western Christianity would have been very different. The story of the first Christianity tells us the Christian faith is, in fact, hugely diverse with many identities. The history of Christianity has been the never-ending rebirth of a meeting with Jesus Christ, the resurrected son of God. For some, like the Oriental and Orthodox churches, the meeting has been through ritual and tradition, or the inner life of the mystic. For Western Catholics, through obedience to the Church. In Protestant churches, through the Bible. And it’s the variety that is so remarkable in Christianity’s journey. It’s reached into every continent and adapted to new cultures. That’s the hallmark of a world religion.
Q: Why does Christian history fascinate you?
A: When I was a small boy, my parents used to drive me around historic churches searching out whatever looked interesting, but soon, they realized they had created a monster. The history of the church became my life’s work. For me, no other subject can rival its scale and drama. For 2,000 years, Christianity has been one of the great players in world history, inspiring faith but also squalid politics. It is an epic story starring a cast of extraordinary people—from Jesus himself and the first apostles to empresses, kings, and popes, from reformers and champions of human conscience to crusaders and sadists. Religious belief can transform us for good or ill. It has brought human beings to acts of criminal folly as well as the highest achievements of goodness and creativity. I will tell the story of both extremes. Christianity has survived persecution, splits, wars of religion, mockery, hatred. Today there are two billion Christians, a third of humanity—Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Pentecostal, and many more. Deep down, the Christian faith boasts a shared core—but what is it? This is something I wanted to explore on a truly global scale.
Q: Your search for Christianity’s true history begins with a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Why does this location tell us about the Christianity’s global roots?
A: The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is said to have been built where Jesus was crucified and buried. At its heart is what’s believed to be his tomb. The church built around the tomb of Jesus is the starting point for a forgotten story, a story that may overturn your preconceptions about early Christianity. Pride of place in this building goes to two churches—the Greek Orthodox church and the Roman Catholic church. It’s true that Orthodoxy and Catholicism dominated Christianity in Europe, in the West, for its first 1,500 years. But as you walk around the edges of the church, you can’t fail to notice other curious little chapels. They’re not Western or European. They’re Middle Eastern and African, and they tell a very different story about the origins of Christianity. Around the back of Jesus’ tomb is Egypt’s Coptic church. There are plenty of other churches at this location, but you need to know where to look: the Syriac Orthodox church, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, to name a few. Many versions of Christian history would make these churches unorthodox, yet they are far older than better known versions of Christianity like Protestantism. It’s easy for tourists to dismiss these ancient churches as quaint or even irrelevant. But that would be a big mistake.
Q: What are some general differences between the expansion of Western and Eastern Christianity?
A: In the West, Christianity became the religion of an entire empire. This meant the end of persecution. It brought power and wealth. It gave the Christian faith a chance at becoming a universal religion. In theory, it embraced Christians in the Eastern Empire as well as in the West.
But in the east, many Christians were unimpressed by the new alliance—even hostile. At stake were fundamental disagreements about the direction the faith should take. Jesus had told people to abandon wealth, not to ally with the rich and powerful. It was Eastern Christians in Syria who led the way, showing Western Christianity a pattern for spiritual life. We call this pattern monasticism, a way of life involving isolation from the world, austerity, and suffering. The expansion of Eastern Christianity has often taken place apart from any empire. It has often been a religion of dialogue, not conquest.
Note: I received one DVD to review from Audra Jennings of B & B Media group. I received no other compensation for this post.
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
***Special thanks to Susan Salley of Abingdon Press for sending me a review copy.***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
After his retirement from a distinguished career as a physician and medical educator, Richard turned his talents to non-medical writing. Code Blue is his debut novel, the first of the Prescription For Trouble series, featuring medical suspense. Richard and his wife, Kay, make their home in North Texas, where he continues his struggles to master golf and be the world’s most perfect grandfather.
List Price: $13.99 Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Abingdon Press (April 1, 2010) Language: English ISBN-10: 1426702361 ISBN-13: 978-1426702365
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
The black SUV barreled out of nowhere, its oversized tires straddling the centerline. Cathy jerked the steering wheel to the right and jammed the brake pedal to the floor. Her little Toyota rocked as though flicked by a giant hand before it spun off the narrow country road and hurtled toward the ditch and the peach orchard beyond it.
For a moment Cathy felt the fearful thrill of weightlessness. Then the world turned upside down, and everything went into freeze-frame slow motion.
The floating sensation ended with a jolt. The screech of ripping metal swallowed Cathy’s scream. The deploying airbag struck her face like a fist. The pressure of the shoulder harness took her breath away. The lap belt pressed into her abdomen, and she tasted bile and acid. As her head cleared, she found herself hanging head-down, swaying slightly as the car rocked to a standstill. In the silence that followed, her pulse hammered in her ears like distant, rhythmic thunder.
Cathy realized she was holding her breath. She let out a shuddering sigh, inhaled, and immediately choked on the dust that hung thick in the air. She released her death-grip on the steering wheel and tried to lift her arms. It hurt—it hurt a lot—but they seemed to work. She tilted her head and felt something warm trickle down her face. She tried to wipe it away, but not before a red haze clouded her vision.
She felt a burning sensation, first in her nostrils, then in the back of her throat. Gasoline! Cathy recalled all the crash victims she’d seen in the emergency room—victims who’d survived a car accident only to be engulfed in flames afterward. She had to get out of the car. Now. Her fingers probed for the seatbelt buckle. She found it and pressed the release button. Slowly. Be careful. Don’t fall out of the seat and make matters worse. The belt gave way, and she eased her weight onto her shoulders. She bit her lip from the pain, rolled onto her side, and looked around.
How could she escape? She tried the front doors. Jammed—both of them. She’d been driving with her window partially open, enjoying the brisk autumn air and the parade of orange and yellow trees rolling by in the Texas landscape. There was no way she could wriggle through that small opening. Cathy drew back both feet and kicked hard at the exposed glass. Nothing. She kicked harder. On the third try, the window gave way.
Where was her purse? Never mind. No time. She had to get out. Cathy inched her way through the window, flinching as tiny shards of glass stung her palms and knees. Once free from the car, she lay back on the grass and looked around at what remained of the orchard, blessing the trees that had sacrificed themselves to cushion her car’s landing.
She rose unsteadily to her feet. It seemed as though every bone in her body cried out at the effort. The moment she stood upright the world faded into a gray haze. She slumped to the ground and took a few deep breaths. Her head hurt, her eyes burned, her throat seemed to be closing up. The smell of gasoline cut through her lethargy. She had to get further away from the car. How could she do that, when she couldn’t even stand without passing out?
Cathy saw a peach sapling a few feet away, a tiny survivor amid the ruins. She crawled to the tree, grabbed it, and walked her hands up the trunk until she was almost upright. She clung there, drained by the exertion, until the world stopped spinning.
Something dripped into her eyes and the world turned red. Cathy risked turning loose with one hand and wiped it across her face. Her vision cleared a bit. She regarded the crimson stain on her palm. Good thing she was no stranger to the sight of blood.
Now she was upright, but could she walk? Maybe, if she could stand the pain. She wasn’t sure she could make it more than a step or two, though. A stout limb lying in the debris at her feet caught her eye. It was about four feet long, two inches thick—just the right size. Cathy eased her way down to a crouch, using the sapling for support. She grabbed the limb and, holding it like a staff, managed to stand up. She rested for a moment, then inched her way along the bottom of the ditch, away from the car. When she could no longer smell gasoline and when her aching limbs would carry her no farther, she leaned on her improvised crutch to rest.
Cathy stared at the road above her. The embankment sloped upward in a gentle rise of about six feet. Ordinarily, climbing it would be child’s play for her. But right now she felt like a baby—weak, uncoordinated, and fearful.
Maybe if she rested for a moment on that big rock. She hobbled to it and lowered herself, wincing with each movement. There was no way she could get comfortable—even breathing was painful—but she needed time to think.
Had the SUV really tried to run her off the road? She wanted to believe it was simply an accident, that someone had lost control of his vehicle. Just like she’d wanted to believe that the problems she’d had since she came back home were nothing more than a run of bad luck. Now she had to accept the possibility that someone was making an effort to drive her out of town.
She’d never thought much about the name of her hometown: Dainger, Texas. She vaguely recalled it was named for some settler, long ago forgotten. Now she was thinking the name seemed significant. Danger. Had the problems she’d left behind in Dallas followed her? Or did the roots lie here in Dainger? Possibly. After all, small towns have long memories. Of course, there could be another explanation. . . . No, she couldn’t accept that. Not yet.
Cathy turned to survey the wreckage of her poor little car. She saw wheels silhouetted against the sky, heard the ticking of the cooling motor. Then she picked up new sounds: the roar of a car’s engine, followed by the screech of tires and the chatter of gravel. It could be someone stopping to help. On the other hand, it could be the driver of the SUV coming back to finish the job. She thought of hiding. But where? How?
She watched a white pickup skid to a stop on the shoulder of the road above the wreckage. A car door slammed. A man’s voice called, “Is anyone down there? Are you hurt?”
No chance to get away now. She’d have to take her chances and pray that he was really here to help. Pray? That was a laugh. Cathy had prayed before, prayed hard, all without effect. Why should she expect anything different this time?
“Is someone there? Are you hurt?”
How should she react? Answer or stay quiet? Neither choice seemed good. She tried to clear the dust from her throat, but when she opened her mouth to yell, she could only manage a strangled whisper. “Yes.”
Footsteps crunched on the gravel shoulder above her, and an urgent voice shouted, “Is someone down there? Do you need help?”
“Yes,” she croaked a bit stronger.
“I’m coming down,” he said. “Hang on.”
A head peered over the edge of the embankment, but pulled back before she could get more than a glimpse of him.
In a few seconds, he scrambled down the embankment, skidding in the red clay before he could dig in the heels of his cowboy boots. At the bottom he looked around until he spotted her. He half-ran the last few feet to where she stood swaying on her makeshift crutch.
“Here, let me help you. Can you walk?”
Blood trickled into her eyes again, and even after she wiped it away, it was like looking through crimson gauze. Cathy could make out the man’s outline but not his features. He sounded harmless enough. But she supposed even mass murderers could sound harmless.
She gripped her makeshift staff harder; it might work as a weapon. “I don’t think anything’s broken.” Her voice cracked, and she coughed. “I’m just stunned. If you help me, I think I can move okay.”
He leaned down and Cathy put her left arm on his shoulder. He encircled her waist with his right arm, supporting her so her feet barely touched the ground as they shuffled toward the slope. At the bottom, he turned and swept her into his arms. The move took her by surprise, and she gasped. She felt him stagger a bit on the climb, but in a moment they made it to the top.
Her rescuer freed one hand and thumbed the latch on the passenger side door of his pickup. He turned to bump the door open with his hip, then deposited her gently onto the seat. “Rest there. I’ll call 911.”
Cathy leaned back and tried to calm down. His voice sounded familiar. Was he one of her patients? She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes, but the image remained cloudy.
The man pulled a flip-phone from his pocket and punched in three digits. “There’s been a one-car accident.”
She listened as he described the accident location in detail—a mile south of the Freeman farm, just before the Sandy Creek Bridge. This wasn’t some passer-by. He knew the area.
“I need an ambulance, a fire truck, and someone from the sheriff’s office. Oh, and send a flatbed wrecker. The car looks like it’s totaled.”
“I don’t need an ambulance,” Cathy protested.
He held up a hand and shushed her, something she hadn’t encountered since third grade. “Yes, she seems okay, but I still think they need to hurry.”
Cathy heard a few answering squawks from the phone before the man spoke again. “It’s Will Kennedy. Yes, thanks.”
Will Kennedy? If she hadn’t been sitting down, Cathy might have fallen over. She scrubbed at her eyes and squinted. Will? Yes, it was Will. Now even the shape of his body looked familiar: lean and muscular, just the way he’d been—. No. Don’t go there.
Will ended his call and leaned in through the open pickup door. “They’ll be here in a minute. Hang on.”
He took a clean handkerchief from the hip pocket of his pressed jeans and gently cleaned her face. The white cotton rapidly turned red, and Cathy realized that the blood had not only clouded her vision. It had masked her features.
“Will, don’t you recognize me?”
He stopped, looked at her, and frowned. “Cathy?”
“Yes.” There were so many things to say. She drew in a ragged breath. “Thanks. I appreciate your stopping.”
He gave her the wry grin she remembered so well, and her heart did a flip-flop. “I’d heard you were back in town, and I wondered when you’d get around to talking to me. I just didn’t know it would be like this.” He paused. “And forget about telling me not to have them send an ambulance. I don’t care if you are a doctor now, Cathy Sewell. I won’t turn you loose until another medic checks you.”
Cathy opened her mouth to speak, but Will’s cell phone rang. He answered it and walked away as he talked, while she sat and wondered what would have happened if they’d never turned each other loose in the first place.
* * *
As the ambulance sped toward Summers County General Hospital, Cathy wondered what kind of reception she would get there. Who would be on duty? Would they acknowledge her as a colleague, even though she hadn’t been given privileges yet? When her thoughts turned to recent events, she forced herself to shut down the synapses and put her mind into neutral.
The ambulance rocked to a halt outside the emergency room doors. Despite Cathy’s protestations, the emergency medical technicians kept her strapped securely on the stretcher while they offloaded it. Inside the ER, Cathy finally convinced her guardians to let her transfer to a wheelchair held by a waiting orderly.
“Thanks so much, guys. I’ll be fine. Really.”
At the admitting desk, the clerk looked up from her computer and frowned.
“Cathy?” She flushed. “I . . . I mean, Dr. Sewell?”
“It’s okay, Judy. I was Cathy through twelve years of school. No reason to change.” Cathy looked around. “Who’s the ER doctor on duty?”
“Dr. Patel. He just called in Dr. Bell to see a patient. Dr. Patel thought it might be a possible appendix.” She lowered her voice. “Dr. Bell took one look and made the diagnosis of stomach flu. I couldn’t see the need to call in another doctor for a consultation, but Dr. Patel is so afraid he’ll make a wrong diagnosis.” She pursed her lips as she realized her mistake of complaining about one doctor to another.
“Just be sure Dr. Patel doesn’t hear you say that.” Cathy tried to take the sting out of the words with a wink, but the blood dried around her eyes made it impossible. “Can you call him? I’ve been threatened with dire punishment if I don’t get checked out.”
Judy reached for the phone.
“Don’t bother, Judy. I’ll take care of Dr. Sewell myself.”
Cathy eased her head around to see Marcus Bell standing behind her. He wore khakis and a chocolate-brown golf shirt, covered by an immaculate white coat with his name embroidered over the pocket.
This was a trade Cathy would gladly make—finicky Dr. Patel for superdoc Marcus Bell. In the three years he’d been here, Marcus had built a reputation as an excellent clinician. He was also undoubtedly the best-looking doctor in town.
“Let’s get you into Treatment Room One,” Marcus steered Cathy’s wheelchair away from the desk. “Judy, you can bring me the paperwork when you have it ready. Please ask Marianne to step in and help me for a minute. And page Jerry for me, would you? Thanks.”
Cathy had been in treatment rooms like this many times in several hospitals. Now she noticed how different everything looked when viewed from this perspective. As if the accident and the adrenaline rush that followed hadn’t made her shaky enough, sitting there in a wheelchair emphasized her feeling of helplessness. “I feel so silly,” she said. “Usually I’m on the other end of all this.”
“Well, today you’re not.” Marcus gestured toward the nurse who stood in the doorway. “Let’s get you into a gown. Then we’ll check the extent of the damages.”
Marcus stepped discreetly from the room.
“I’m Marianne,” the nurse said. Then, as though reading Cathy’s mind, she added, “I know it’s hard for a doctor to be a patient. But try to relax. We’ll take good care of you.”
Marianne helped Cathy out of her clothes and into a hospital gown. If Cathy had felt vulnerable before this, the added factor of being in a garment that had so many openings closed only by drawstrings tripled the feeling. The nurse eased Cathy onto the examining table, covered her with a clean sheet, and called Marcus back into the room.
“Now, Cathy, the first thing I want to do is have a closer look at that cut on your head.” Marcus slipped on a pair of latex gloves and probed the wound.
Cathy flinched. “How does it look?”
“Not too bad. One laceration about three or four centimeters long in the frontal area. Not too deep. The bleeding’s almost stopped now. We’ll get some skull films, then I’ll suture it.” He wound a soft gauze bandage around her head and taped it.
Marcus flipped off his gloves and picked up the clipboard that Cathy knew held the beginnings of her chart. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
At first, Cathy laid out the details of the accident and her injuries in terse clinical language, as though presenting a case to an attending physician at Grand Rounds. She did fine until she realized how close she’d come to being killed, apparently by someone who meant to do just that. There were a couple of strangled hiccups, then a few muffled sobs, before the calm physician turned into a blubbering girl. “I’m . . . I’m sorry.” She reached for a tissue from the box Marcus held out.
“No problem. If you weren’t upset by all that, you wouldn’t be normal.” Marcus took an ophthalmoscope from the wall rack and shined its light into her eyes. “How’s your vision?”
“Still a little fuzzy—some halos around lights. I figured it was from the blood running into my eyes.”
He put down the instrument and rummaged in the drug cabinet. “Let’s wash out your eyes. I don’t want you to get a chemical keratitis from the powder on the air bag. I’ll give you some eye drops, but if your vision gets worse or doesn’t clear in a day or so, I want you to see an ophthalmologist.”
“Oh, right.” The fact that she hadn’t thought of that underscored to Cathy how shaken she still was.
“Now, let’s see what else might be injured.” Marcus took her left wrist and gently probed with his fingers. Apparently satisfied, he proceeded up along the bones of the arm. His touch was gentle, yet firm, and Cathy found it somehow reassuring. “We’ll need some X-rays. I want you to help me figure out the right parts.”
“I can’t help you much. I’m hurting pretty much everywhere,” Cathy said. “But, I haven’t felt any bones grating. I think I’m just banged up.”
Marcus turned his attention to her right arm. He paused in his prodding long enough to touch her chin and raise her head until their eyes met. “You’re like all of us. You think that because you’re a doctor you can’t be hurt or sick.”
“That’s not true. I don’t— Ow!” His hand on the point of her right shoulder sent a flash of pain along her collarbone.
“That’s more like it. We’ll get an X-ray of that shoulder and your clavicle. Seatbelt injuries do that sometimes. Now see if you can finish telling me what happened.”
This time she got through the story without tearing up, although Marcus’s efforts to find something broken or dislocated brought forth a number of additional flinches and exclamations.
“I really do think I’m fine except for some bruises,” she concluded.
“Really?”
“Okay, I’m also scared. And a little bit mad.”
A tinny voice over the intercom interrupted her. “Dr. Bell, is Marianne still in there?”
“I’m here,” the nurse replied.
“Can you help us out? There’s a pedi patient in Treatment Room Two with suspected meningitis. They’re about to do a spinal tap.”
“Go ahead,” Marcus said. “We can take it from here.”
No sooner had the nurse closed the door than there was a firm tap on it.
“Jerry?” Marcus called.
“Yes, sir.”
“Come in.”
The door creaked open, and Cathy turned. The pain that coursed through her neck made her regret the decision. A man in starched, immaculate whites strode into the room and stopped at an easy parade rest. A smattering of gray at the temples softened the red in his buzz-cut hair.
Marcus did the honors. “Dr. Sewell, this is Jerry O’Neal. Jerry retired after twenty years as a Marine corpsman, and he’s now the senior radiology technician at Summers County General. He probably knows as much medicine as you and I put together, but he’s too polite to let it show.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Doctor,” Jerry said.
Marcus handed the clipboard chart to Jerry. “Dr. Sewell’s been in an auto accident. She has a scalp laceration I’ll need to suture, but first, would you get a skull series, films of the right shoulder and clavicle?” He thought a bit. “Right knee. Right lower leg. While we’re at it, better do a C-spine too.”
“Yes, sir,” Jerry said. “Is that all?”
Marcus looked back at Cathy. “If you catch her rubbing anything else, shoot it. Call me when you’ve got the films ready.”
Cathy half- expected Jerry to salute Marcus. Instead, he nodded silently before helping her off the exam table and into a wheelchair.
“Don’t worry, Dr. Sewell. You’re in good hands.”
She tried to relax and take Jerry at his word. “Why haven’t I seen you around before this?”
Jerry fiddled with some dials. “I work weekdays as a trouble-shooter for an X-ray equipment company in Dallas. I’m only here on weekends. It fills the empty hours.”
That’s why I was taking a drive on Saturday afternoon. Filling the empty hours. That started a chain of thought Cathy didn’t want to pursue. Instead, she concentrated on getting through the next few minutes.
The X-rays took less time and caused less discomfort than Cathy expected. She could see why Marcus thought so highly of Jerry. Soon she was back in the treatment room, lying on the examination table. Jerry put up two of the X-rays on the wall view box and stacked the others neatly on the metal table beneath it.
“I’ll get Dr. Bell now. Will you be okay here for a minute?”
Cathy assured Jerry that she was fine, although she finally realized how many bumps and bruises she’d accumulated in the crash. Every movement seemed to make something else hurt.
When she thought about what came next, her anxiety kicked into high gear. Would Marcus have to shave her scalp before placing the stitches? She recalled her own experiences suturing scalp lacerations in the Parkland Hospital Emergency Room. Maybe it was a woman thing, but she’d felt sorry for those patients, walking out with a shaved spot on their head, a bald patch that was sometimes the size of a drink coaster. She hated the prospect of facing her patients on Monday in that condition. Truthfully, she even hated the prospect of looking at herself in the mirror. She was thinking about wigs when Marcus reentered the room.
“Let’s see what we’ve got.” He stepped to the view box and ran through the X-rays. “Skull series looks fine. . . . Neck is good. . . . Shoulder looks okay. . . .The clavicle isn’t fractured. . . . You are one lucky woman. Looks like all I have to do is suture that scalp laceration.”
Cathy was surprised when Marcus didn’t call for help, but rather assembled the necessary instruments and equipment himself. When he slipped his gloves on, she closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. The fact that she’d been on the other end of this procedure hundreds of times just made her dread it more.
Marcus’s touch was gentle as he cleaned the wound. Soon she felt the sting of a local anesthetic injection. After that, there was nothing except an occasional tug as he sutured.
Cathy processed what she’d just felt. “You didn’t shave my scalp.”
“Now why would I want to mar that natural beauty of yours? I didn’t paint the wound orange with Betadine, either. I used a clear antiseptic to prep the area and KY jelly to plaster the hair down out of my way. The sutures are clear nylon that won’t be noticeable in your blonde hair. When I’m finished, I’ll paint some collodion over the wound to protect it. In the morning, clean the area with a damp cloth, brush your hair over it, and no one will know the difference.”
Cathy couldn’t believe what she’d heard. “Natural beauty?” This was certainly at odds with what she’d been told about Marcus Bell. Since the death of his wife, Marcus apparently wanted nothing to do with women. Rumor had it he’d turned aside the advances of most of the single women in Dainger. Was he flirting with her now? Or was this simply his bedside manner?
Marcus snapped off his gloves and tossed them in the bucket at the end of the table. “See me in a week to remove the stitches—unless you want to stand on a box and look down on the top of your own head to remove them yourself.”
“Okay, I get it. I’ll stop being my own doctor,” she said.
“How about something for the pain?”
“I think I’ll be okay.”
“Tetanus shot?”
“I’m current.”
“Then how about dinner with me next Thursday?”
Once more, Cathy felt her head spin, but this time it had nothing to do with tumbling. about in a runaway auto.
* * *
Cathy had always dreaded Monday mornings, but none so much as this one. Today it was time to show her face to the world.
She took one last look in the mirror. Cathy had figured that her fair complexion would make her bruises show up like tire tracks on fresh snow, but the judicious application of some Covermark had done its job well. The redness she’d noticed in her eyes two days ago had responded well to the eye drops Marcus prescribed. And, true to his prediction, she’d been able to style her hair so that the blonde strands almost hid the stitches in her scalp. A little more lipstick and blusher than usual, drawing attention to her face instead of her hair, and maybe she could fake her way through the day.
No matter how successful she’d been in covering the outward signs of the accident, it was still impossible for her to move without aches and pains. She popped a couple of Extra Strength Tylenol, washed them down with the remnants of her second cup of coffee, and headed out the door to face another week. If the medication kicked in soon, maybe Jane wouldn’t notice that Cathy moved like an old woman. Maybe Jane hadn’t heard the news about the accident. Yeah, and maybe the President would call today and invite Cathy to dinner at the White House.
Cathy tried to sneak in the back door, but Jane’s hearing was awfully good for a woman her age. She met Cathy at the door to her office, clucking like a mother hen and shaking her head. “Dr. Sewell, what happened to you?”
What a break it had been for her when Jane—a trim, silver-haired grandmother with a sassy twinkle in her eye—answered her ad for a combination office nurse and secretary. She’d helped Cathy set up the office, given her advice on business, and provided a sympathetic ear on more occasions than she could count.
Cathy recognized Jane’s question as rhetorical. Having grown up in Dainger, Cathy knew how quickly news spread in her hometown. She’d bet that Jane had known about the accident before Cathy had cleared the emergency room doors on Saturday. By now, probably everyone in town knew.
“I was out for a ride in the country. I needed to relax and clear my mind. Then someone ran me off the road out near Big Sandy Creek. My car went out of control, flipped, and took out a row of Seth Johnson’s peach trees.” Cathy winced as she dropped her purse into the bottom drawer of her desk. “Dr. Bell sutured a laceration on my scalp.”
“Any other injuries? Do we need to cancel today’s patients?”
Cathy shook her head, aggravating a headache that the Tylenol had only dulled. “Other than the fact that I feel like I’ve just finished a week of two-a-day practices with the Dallas Cowboys, I’m okay.”
“It’s good that you have a nice light schedule today. You can take it easy.”
Cathy frowned. A “nice light schedule” for a doctor just getting started as a family practitioner wasn’t exactly the stuff she dreamed about. She needed patients. The money from the bank loan was about gone, and her income stream was anything but impressive. But, she’d do the best she could. Anything had to beat living in Dallas, knowing she might run into Robert.
Speak of the devil. Cathy actually shuddered when she saw the return address on the envelope sitting in the middle of her desk: Robert Edward Newell, M.D.
She clamped her jaws shut, snatched up a brass letter opener, and ripped open the envelope. Inside were two newspaper clippings and a few words scribbled on a piece of white notepad with an ad for a hypertension drug at the top of the page. The first clipping announced the engagement of Miss Laura Lynn Hunt, daughter of Dr. Earl and Mrs. Betty Hunt, to Dr. Robert Edward Newell. The second featured a photo of Laura Lynn and Robert, she in a high couture evening gown, he in a perfectly fitting tux, arriving at the Terpsichorean Ball. The note was brief and to the point: “See what you’ve missed?” No signature. Just a reminder, one that made her grit her teeth until her jaws ached. Leave it to Robert to rub salt in her wounds.
She forced herself to sit quietly and breathe deeply, until the knot in her throat loosened. Then she wadded the clippings and note into a tight ball, which she consigned to the wastebasket with as much force as she could muster.
No use rethinking the past. Time to get on with her life. “Jane,” she called. “May I have the charts for today’s patients? I want to go over them.”
Jane returned and deposited a pitifully small stack of thin charts on Cathy’s desk. The look in Jane’s eyes said it all. Sorry there aren’t more. Sorry you’re hurting. Sorry.
Cathy picked up the top chart but didn’t open it. “Do you think I made a mistake coming here to practice?”
Jane eased into one of the patient chairs across the desk from Cathy. “Why would you ask that?”
“I applied at three banks before I got a loan. When I mention to other doctors that I’m taking new patients, they get this embarrassed look and mumble something about keeping that in mind, but they never make any referrals. Several of my patients tell me they’ve heard stories around town that make them wonder about my capabilities. And my privileges at the hospital have been stuck in committee for over a month now.” Cathy pointed to the stitches in her scalp. “Now the situation seems to be escalating.”
“You mean the accident on Saturday?”
“It was no accident. I’m convinced that someone ran me off the road and intended to kill me.”
“Did you report it?” Jane asked.
“Yes, but fat lot of good it did. If Will Kennedy hadn’t insisted, I think the deputy who came out to investigate the accident would have written the whole thing off as careless driving on my part.” Cathy grimaced. “Of course, he may do that anyway.”
“What was Will Kennedy doing there?”
“He came along right after the wreck. When I couldn’t manage under my own power, Will carried me up the embankment. Then he insisted I go to the emergency room, and when they were loading me into the ambulance he slipped his card into my hand and whispered, ‘Please call me. I want to make sure you’re okay.’” Cathy pulled a business card from the pocket of her skirt, smoothed the wrinkles from it, and put it under the corner of her blotter.
“Did you phone him?”
Cathy shook her head. “I started to, but I couldn’t. I’m not ready to get close to any man. Not Will Kennedy. Not Marcus Bell. Not Robert Newell.” She took in a deep breath through her nose and let it out through pursed lips. “Especially not Robert Newell.”
“Who is—?”
Before Jane could finish, Cathy spun around in her chair and pulled a book at random from the shelf behind her. “Not now. Please. I need to look up something before I see my first patient.” She paged through the book, but none of the words registered.
Jane’s voice from behind her made Cathy close the book. “Dr. Sewell, you asked me a question. Let me answer it before I go. I don’t know if someone’s really making an effort to run you off. I’ve heard some of those rumors. They’re always anonymous, like ‘Somebody told me that Dr. Sewell’s not a good doctor.’ Or ‘I heard Dr. Sewell came back to Dainger because she couldn’t make it in Dallas.’ You have to ignore the gossip and rumors. They’re part of living here.”
Cathy swiveled back to face Jane. “I thought it would be easier to get my practice started in my hometown.”
“It might be, except that people here will compare you to your daddy, who was the best surgeon Dainger ever saw. In that situation a young, female doctor will come up short, no matter how qualified she is.”
Cathy tossed the book on her desk and held her hands up, palms forward. “If someone wants to get rid of me, they’re close to succeeding. I don’t know how much longer I can go on.”
“You’re a fighter, and I’m right here with you. Just stick with it.” Jane turned and walked toward the doorway.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Jane stopped and faced Cathy once more. “Have you been out to visit your folks?”
“It won’t do any good. There’s nothing for me there. I don’t have anything to say.”
Jane shook her head. “Sometimes you don’t have to say anything. Sometimes you simply have to make the effort and go. It’s the only way you’ll ever put all that behind you.”
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
***Special thanks to Pam Mettler of ZonderKidz for sending me a review copy.***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury has written more than forty of her Life-Changing Fiction titles and has nearly sixteen million in print. Dubbed by Time magazine as the Queen of Christian Fiction, Karen receives hundreds of letters each week and considers her readers friends. Her fiction has made her one of the country’s favorite storytellers, and one of her novels, Like Dandelion Dust, is under production for an upcoming major motion picture release. Her emotionally gripping titles include the popular Baxter family novels, the 9/11 Series, Even Now, Ever After, and Between Sundays. Karen and her husband, Don, live in the Pacific Northwest with their six children, three of whom are adopted from Haiti. You can find out more about Karen, her books, and her appearance schedule at her website.
Dan Andreasen lives in Medina, Ohio, with his wife and three children. He has illustrated more than thirty picture books. When his daughter was asked by her first grade teacher, “What kind of work does your daddy do?” she replied, “He colors.”
Q: A History of Christianity corrects several misconceptions regarding Christianity’s past and traditions, beginning with the earliest days of the fledgling religion. How does the true history of Christianity’s origins differ from the version most of us know?
Q: What are some general differences between the expansion of Western and Eastern Christianity?
