For everyone who wanted to know what it’s REALLY like to be a missionary!

Everything’s coming up Josey!

Out now with Steeple Hill Café

By Susan May Warren

…what is God doing?  When Josey Berglund’s little sister marries her ex, Josey heads out of town…to Russia, to teach English for a year.  If the snow, the subway, the market and the language don’t send her screaming, her love life just might.  Will she survive Russia?  Or God’s plans for her? 

(This scene, excerpted from Chapter one, takes place at Josey’s sister’s wedding…)

…Which brings me to the present when I’m banging my head on the linen-covered tables, arranged expertly by Susie’s Catering on the front yard of the Berglund Acres, thinking, “this is a joke, God, right?” A cool, end-of-May twilight breeze rustles the linen tablecloths and the lily and lilac centerpieces. I’m purposely not watching the happy couple circle the dance floor, and I’m wishing that I wasn’t nursing a glass of lemonade and wearing a dress that made me look like a poppy.

Oh yes, marshmallow me agreed to be the maid of honor. Like my mother said, “Wouldn’t the wedding pictures look nice with our whole family in them?” Hello, did anyone else – Grandma Netta, my brother Buddy, Jasmine the groom-stealer or either of my beaming parents — notice that the groom used to belong to me? That this moment in my life might be slightly painful?

Not. I’ve never been able to outflank my mother. She could teach an online course in practicality. So here I sit, my cleavage pushing out of the princess top (hey, I like Kringle too!), wanting to melt into a poppy puddle, or maybe just make a run for the border, when over to my side of misery slides Chase. I didn’t exactly expect him to show up at the wedding, but when I spied him an hour ago weaving his way through the receiving line, I suddenly felt like God might care, just a little. Despite the poppy dress. And, although I’ve spent most of the last hour hiding in the kitchen, I’m not sad Chase has found me.

That’s his specialty, actually. Chase Me, I called him (not to his face…please!) in high school. Most of the time I meant it in a good way.

“What?” I say in greeting, not able to look at Chase full in the face.

“I saw Jerry.”

Oh, thanks Chase. Could you please bring up every small town mistake I’ve ever made? I shrug, as if this is news but I don’t care, although, yes, I know my senior prom date/successful lawyer is back in town. I still track his movements like a panther, lifting my ears with every mention of his name, my nose to the wind, hoping to catch his scent. He’s arrived for the wedding, good friend of the family that he is. Good thing I don’t have another sister.

Suddenly I feel a little sick.

“You’re looking...what color is that exactly?” I hear him chuckle.

“Get away from me.” I lower my head onto my arm. It’s a beautiful day out, waves from the lake lapping the shore, the smell of summer in the breeze. The sun, of course, is totally on Jasmine’s side. Okay, I admit it! Evil me did walk in the smallest of circles this morning saying, under my breath of course, “Tut tut, it looks like rain.” But Jasmine must be much holier than I, because God heard, and answered her prayers.

Okay, I’m not that mean to really want it to rain. But a little ripple of thunder might have been nice. Just to shake things up.

“You look good,” I say to lessen my bark. I don’t actually look at Chase, but he always looks good, so I’m being honest. Thankfully, Chase alone understands the knife-in-the-gut affair this is. He too is a last fish in the sea. I figure that in our geriatric years, we’ll be hobbling to the local library from North Shore Acres, still trying to race each other down the hill.

I’m thankful for some consistencies in my life. He told me, sophomore year, as he hid out at Berglund Acres during one of his parents’ many skirmishes that he’d pull out his fingernails one-by-one before he even thought about trudging down the aisle.

Yet, here he is, at the scene of the crime to help me through this moment of need. I find a smile.

“It’s not really all that bad, is it?” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “I mean, c’mon GI, the guy has three chins.”

“He didn’t when I was dating him.”

I’m moved by both Chase’s touch – warm, strong hands, and the use of his nickname for me. He couldn’t bear to think of me as a girl when we were seven, so he called me GI Joe. Not that I minded, but I didn’t so much love his later embellishments, Gastro-Intestinal, The Great I, and my least favorite, Gone Insane. But his tone is sweet, and the GI term makes me warm in a way that has nothing to do with the sunny May day.

 “And aren’t you glad you know now the price you may have paid?” Chase tucks his finger under my chin, (thankfully I still have only one, despite my Kringle weakness) lifts my gaze off my arm and onto him. Hidey Ho, what happened to the boy next door? Where are the braces? And I distinctly remember acne. Lots of it. He looks, I might add, totally not the anthropologist he says he is – smart and even sexy in his wire-rims, black suit pants and pressed silk shirt…And those eyes – still blue, still friendly, still gleaming...

Sorta makes a girl wanna run for her Radio Flyer and have another go. What do I get if I win?

 “You didn’t want him anyway,” he says.

Who? Oh yeah, Milton.

“I didn’t?” I say. Who, exactly did I want?

“No,” he says, chuckling. “You’re better than that.”

“I am?” I moan, not wanting to sound pathetic, but after all, this is the same guy who saw me necking with a boy not my date at senior prom and covered for me. He knows a few secrets. “I don’t feel better.”

“Well you are.” The music changes. Now, the crooning of Roberta Flack. “Tonight, I celebrate my love for you...” Is this necessary? Movement toward the dance floor, laughter. Oh, everybody’s happy. But Chase is staring at me, an odd look in his eyes, and I see our past flash in them.

I’m glimpsing a moment, a rip in the fabric of this horrific day, exposing hope. In fact, my life has suddenly changed tempo. Old promises play in my mind. Chase and I, nine years old, ensconced high in the trees, the sun kissing late autumn leaves. A crisp wind rustles the canopy around me as Chase turns around, hammer in hand. His curls are long, poking out of his homemade knit cap. “Will you marry me?”

“Of course,” I say and glare at him. Slacker. We have a fort to build.

But now, nearly fifteen years later, I realize he’s returned to ask me to dance. To twirl me around the floor in front of my sister, and her husband, saying, Thank you, Bozo, for not realizing what you had and saving her for me. Then he’ll sweep me in his arms and kiss me and…time to cash in the promises.

Wait! This is Chase. My last resort. Didn’t I use those very words two days before graduation under a starlit sky? My friend. My tormentor. My neighbor. The guy who bailed me out of the clink the night I got arrested for skinny-dipping and didn’t laugh.

The last line of defense before I’m lone gal out in the world of singleness.

Kissing Chase would be like kissing the cousin you always had a crush on – daring but just way too creepy. He knows too much. Besides, ever since I got serious with God, there’s been a gulf between Chase and me. The more I try and share with him God’s grace, and the richness of life with a Savior watching my back and setting my course, Chase pulls away and turns me off.

It makes me ache, and pushes me to prayer. Most of all, it puts a stop-sign between us. Not only emotionally but spiritually. I groan to think of Chase not with me in heaven. The thought burns a hole in the center of my chest, and if I could have one thing, it wouldn’t be Chase’s embrace around me. It would be his embrace around Christ.

I smile anyway, touched that Chase is still ‘Chase-Me’, my next-door-neighbor hero.

Then, as I’m grinning at our past, our friendship, his smile fades and he glances away, at...a girl. She’s glaring at us with a possessive look that comes straight from the Isle of Amazon. And, in her strapless dress and buff arms, well, she just might be able to take me.

Especially with me stuffed inside the poppy affair, barely able to take a full breath. I sit back in my chair, and something inside my heart has snapped. Of course, Chase and Buffy the Amazon Queen, the perfect match. Why would I ever think that Mr. Anthropology, I-Travel-The-World, might return home for me?

Shyster. We had a deal.

Then he opens his mouth, and if this day could get worse, he shatters every last Cinderella dream in my ashes to dustbin existence.

“C’mere, Josey. I have a surprise for you. I’d like you to meet my fiancé, Elizabeth.”

Did anyone else hear that howl?

Everything’s Coming up Josey

Copyright 2006 by Susan May Warren

ISBN: 0-373-78561-5

Available at your local or online bookstore

For more information: www.susanmaywarren.com