I defend my habit by saying, “Hey, this is what we drink in China.”
Matthew and I continue to meet in the kitchen a few nights a week when he is not away on road trips witnessing in other cities. I tell him about Hac Sa, the Farm, the animals. We talk about our past relationships. Our pain and our understanding of the Mo Letters.
Are the two most unlikely people becoming friends?
I start to look forward to seeing him, and I notice a little bubble of excitement in my stomach when I put on my robe and casually head to the kitchen for my nightly mug of hot water.
After a month, our late-night kitchen conversations begin to change. Matthew hardly ever speaks of his former girlfriend now. Instead, we talk about God and prophecy, and he plays his guitar so I can hear the songs he’s writing. Then we hug goodnight, and we go to our separate rooms.
The routine is comforting, easy, and safe, until one evening, when I go in for the obligatory goodnight hug, I linger. His arms stay wrapped around me. My foot slips, and I end up in his lap. For a moment, we laugh. But neither of us moves. I sit on his lap longer, and before I know it, our lips are touching. We both jump back, shocked. I don’t know if I kissed him or he kissed me, but I realize I don’t care. Being with him is starting to feel so natural.
Kissing Matthew becomes a habit—and for the first time, a relationship feels special and beautiful and right. I begin to smile more; I don’t even mind the oat cakes in the morning. One afternoon, as I’m floating down the hallway, Abigail calls my name. Someone’s on the telephone.
I’m not expecting anyone. My mom and father just spoke with me the week before, for Christmas, and no one has the money to call long-distance on a whim. I pick up the receiver.
“Faith.” I hear Chris’s familiar voice. “When are you coming back? I miss you.”
The phone goes limp in my hand. I haven’t thought much about Chris in months. We’d sent each other a few letters, but that was it. I’m shocked that he got the permission—and the money—to call.
“Faith?” he says again.
My heart squeezes at the pain in his voice. But I must be honest. It won’t help to lead him on. “I’m not coming back, Chris. God wants me to serve Him here.”
“Should I come there?”
“No,” I say, using all my strength to force that one little word from my throat. “I love you, and I always will, but I don’t believe we are meant to be together. I’m sorry.”
I hear the click of his receiver, and all my pent-up feelings spill out. I cry—for him, and for me. Chris is the one person I know who truly loves me and wants to marry me, and I’ve just severed that link. But I can’t love him the way he wants me to.
After four months of deep freeze, the snow melts and green shoots blossom, as do my feelings for Matthew. This is more than friendship. Am I in love? I realize with a shock that I haven’t felt like this about someone since I was ten and wrote my emotions into a poem for Michael, my first love. I’d begun to wonder if I was capable of feeling like that again, worried that perhaps that part of me was broken.
Whenever Matthew returns from witnessing, I feel a lightness in my chest. I wait for his hand to find mine, to feel his warmth against my own. I look forward to his breath on my neck when we can steal time alone and the sound of his laughter chasing me down the hall to my bedroom. We escape the crowded apartment to make love under the summer sun in a hidden corner of the nearly abandoned botanical gardens.
I come home from a day at the orphanage and rush to the boys’ room to tell Matthew about it, but the story dies on my lips. A suitcase is lying open on his bed.
Matthew walks toward me and takes my hands. He’s leaving, he says, in a voice nearly too soft to hear. He has been informed by the Area Shepherds that he must return to Moscow for punishment, due to some indiscretion at a previous Home that is only now catching up to him.
No, please God. I grab him around the waist, crushing him into me as he holds me gently. I never want to let go, but I know I must accept the inevitable. After a few minutes, I release my grip and help him fold his shirts.
As I weep into my pillow, I repeat Romans 8:28 over and over. What good can come from this? As my sniffles subside, I visualize a future where the pain is less sharp. The only “good” I can muster is, At least, I will have more compassion on others experiencing heartbreak and be able to comfort them. I clutch that sliver of hope to my heart as I fall asleep.
After Matthew leaves, I’m haunted by him. Every time I walk through a door or turn into the hall, I expect he’ll be there with his saucy smile. Each disappointment keeps the pain fresh, but I must force a happy face—to look sad is unloving to others and selfish.
Matthew and I write a few long love letters to each other, but two months after his departure, I receive his last correspondence. “I met up with my old girlfriend,” it reads. “She has been through a lot. Turns out she loves me after all, and we have gotten back together.”
I lock myself in the bathroom, the only place I can be alone, and sit on the toilet, clutching the letter as tears stream down my face. I hear Yana banging on the door, but I shut out the noise. I shut out everything. I turn to the only help I know—God.
Huddled in my bed that night, I write in my journal, tears smudging the pen marks.
Dear Lord, take my worthless, selfish life
And end the emptiness of its strife.
Let it be melted wholly into Thee,
For only then will I be set free.
Free from the sorrow, free from the pain
That comes from looking for selfish gain.
Free to become as nothing to me,
Knowing that I am something to Thee.
I give you my whole self. Do what you want with me. I give you my marriage vows as my Husband. I promise to love, honor, obey, follow, and serve You faithfully until death fully unites us and beyond. Amen.
The idea of another winter in this place is too bleak to contemplate, so when my visa runs out at the end of the year, I don’t ask to renew it.
A new missionary wave is announced: Pioneer Mainland China for Jesus. It is a call for Family members willing to go undercover to evangelize in China. My parents have already moved to Xiamen, the mainland China university city right across the strait from Taiwan. I submit my request for a transfer to join them. Philip and Abigail agree to pay for my plane ticket in gratitude for my teaching Emily.
When I leave Kazakhstan, I leave the name Jewel with it. It never fit me—no matter how hard I worked to be accepted, to survive, to become what they wanted me to be. I’m glad to be rid of the name, to shed a skin that has grown too tight.
It’s time for a new start in a new place as the new Faith.
24
Pretending Is the First Step to Being