

# The Hope That Is In You

By

Christopher T. Walker

Copyright © 2019 by Christopher T. Walker

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed "Attention: Permissions Coordinator," at the address below.

M. Emile Gary

Tales of Christian Faith Press  
Solus.Rex@gmx.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

Publisher's Cataloging-in-Publication data  
Walker, Christopher T.  
The Hope That Is In You : Tales of Christian Faith Volume One / Christopher T. Walker.  
165 p. 23 cm.  
TOCF UIN 00-0001  
1. Fiction 2. Spirituality 3. Christian Faith

First Edition June 2019

# The Hope That Is In You

By

Christopher T. Walker

"But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect," (Peter 3:15 English Standard Version).

# Dedication

Infinite thanks to J. for guiding me through the difficult task of transforming his story into words. This book is dedicated to him.

I would also like to thank my editor and friend, Emile, for valuable advice and an occasional splash of tolerance as deadlines loomed. And no, this isn't my way of telling you I'll be late on volume two!

# Preface

"Based on a true story" would not quite accurately describe this book. Yes, the character "Josh" is based on a real person I met and have remained friends with, a real person who went through most of what is described in this story, a real person who pulled me out of the worst depression I have ever known. His story, as he told it to me, is faithfully represented in the pages of this book. The more fantastic elements, however, have been added in order to convey within the narrow confines of a beginning, middle, and end the intense range of emotions the real Josh felt over a much longer period of time.

Those elements of the story I have just described as "fantastic" appear to me to be quite ordinary in the context of the infinite power of our Creator. In an age when the general public is fascinated by the meaningless actions of fictional Hollywood sorcerers, who wave magic wands in order to make objects levitate (or similarly pointless special-effects driven actions), it is high time that modern artists remind the public of the insignificance of fictional magic in comparison to His extraordinary act of creation, an act that brought forth from nothing humanity and everything that surrounds us.

The real Josh knocked on my door many years ago on a miserably hot and humid summer day in Lexington, Kentucky. He certainly had no idea that behind that door lived a man whose life was falling apart. My wife had broken our marriage vows and, rather than apologize and try to save our marriage, had decided to continue her pursuit of the frivolous pleasures that her life had become centered around. As if that were not painful enough, she had decided to drag the love of my life, our daughter, into the drama she had created. When a situation like this occurs, lawyers feed off the tragedy. No one holds anyone accountable for their actions, and the system seems tailor-made to allow terrible behavior to be rewarded. Josh helped me remember that even though modern society sometimes appears to have given up on basic concepts of right and wrong, we must look past the ephemeral trends of pseudo "correctness" that swirl around us like so much white noise. Make no mistake, there is a "right" and there is a "wrong" in this world, and no amount of litigation or prevarication will ever change that.

When I opened the door, Josh appeared to me exactly as he is described in this book. He unfortunately did not keep the rather comical suit he was wearing that day (described in great detail in this book), but if he had, I would frame it and hang it on my wall. The courage it took that young man to do what he did that day, and what he has done for so many others since, fills me with awe. If I, in my humble way, am able to spread his story faithfully, then the greatest reward for me may be achieved: to help the message behind his words and actions reach as many people as possible. The world is in need of a message that heals, inspires, heightens faith, saves souls, and keeps us in touch with both who we truly are and who made us. That message has been around for thousands of years now, but must be continually renewed in order to fight the type of impulses that pull humanity into darkness. In my humble way, I hope this story will help bring light to those who need it, as Josh brought light to me.

# Chapter 1

## The Man In The Black Camaro

"For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord," (Romans 8:38-39 English Standard Version).

✝✝✝

Joshua Vaughan had overslept again. It was a vibrant Sunday afternoon in Lexington, Kentucky, but as this teenager slept in his room with the curtains drawn and a pillow over his head, the outside world was having a hard time making an impression on him.

He would have welcomed the intrusion of the day. At that moment, his dreams had turned from a random collage of incomplete narratives punctuated by appearances of friends, family, and yesterday's strangers to the dream, the nightmare he couldn't escape from.

For weeks, the dream had returned to him every night. It always started innocently enough. There was a stage set up in a gargantuan stadium that seemed to hold the entire world. Josh stood on the stage with his electric guitar hanging from his shoulder. He pushed his dark brown, lightly curled hair straight back and then placed his hand on the guitar's neck. Behind him, walls of amplifiers stood at the ready. He then surveyed the crowd before him and held his picking hand up high in the air to signal he was ready to rock. A deafening roar of excitement crescendoed into the cloudy sky. As if on auto pilot, his hands began creating chord progressions that set the amplifiers on fire. Then, with movements as precise as a spider walking on a web, his fingers navigated the strings, creating a guitar solo for the ages. The frenzy of the crowd became even more intense. Josh felt a true connection to the fans. Then the notes he was playing transformed into something beyond music. The waves of sound streaming from the speakers took on vibrant colors. Suddenly, azure notes were pouring from the amplifier. They were soon joined by notes of crimson red, green, purple, and a myriad of other colors. The world became draped in the color of his music, like a living canvas constantly repainted by crashing waves of pigment. Josh surveyed everything around him and, in supreme self-satisfaction, could not imagine how the world had even existed before he brought it to life with his music. But at that moment, his hands began to tire. The effortless, perfect chord choices became labored. Josh's fingers began to cramp up, and he had to fight to find the correct chord voicings. False notes streaked through the stratosphere, and when he looked up at his amplifiers, he saw that the colors of his sound had all faded to a dark and depressing gray. He let his hands fall down to his sides and stared in disbelief at the swirling gray waves that were erasing all the beautiful colors he had given to the world. And as he followed those waves from the amplifier to the crowd, he saw that the people had been transformed by his music into lifeless, gray piles of bones. Guilt built up inside him as he looked for a single survivor. How could he have led them all to this end?

Josh turned violently in his bed. He was trying subconsciously to pull himself out of the nightmare by anchoring a fragment of his consciousness to the outside world, but the dark and isolated cocoon he had created for himself wasn't complying. His sheets were becoming damp with sweat. He needed to break free from the dream.

In the nightmare, as he stood on the stage surrounded by an ever-graying world, a dim flash of light caught his eye. He focused all his attention on it and saw, as it grew stronger, that it was a mix of sound and white light that was cutting through the depressing gray around him. His growing consciousness focused on the light. The sound, he realized, was not from anything inside the dream, but rather...a car horn! It was a car horn, coming from the street outside his window.

Josh awoke and pulled the sleep mask off his face. He brought his feet to the floor and for a moment sat hunched over on the edge of his bed trying to shake off the vague feeling of guilt that the nightmare had left him with. He couldn't shake the feeling that somehow this dream was trying to tell him something.

Another barrage of honking broke the serenity of his room. So impolite, thought Josh. Who honks nowadays anyway?

He rose to his feet, walked over to the window, and pulled open the curtains just enough to peak outside without letting anyone who may have been out there get a glimpse of the silly monkey-and-banana themed pajamas he was wearing. They had been given to him by the church after his accident, and, although he was happy and grateful to have them, he thought he was a little too mature to be seen in them.

As his eyes adjusted to the daylight, a vintage black Camaro came into focus. It was parked in front of his apartment building. The car was a 1960's model, but it looked brand new. As he admired the vehicle, the tinted passenger-side window lowered. The driver, an African American man who looked to be in his 70's, was dressed in a black suit and wore a black planter hat that had a band adorned with oval pieces of silver that shone in the afternoon sun. Below the brim of the hat, Josh could see that the man had a gray goatee and mustache.

The man raised his head and looked toward Josh's window.

"C'mon, boy," the man said, gesturing with his hand. "We gotta get going. This day is gonna be a long one."

Josh moved back in surprise and then leaned in again to peak out of the slit in the curtains to see if there was anyone outside that the man could have been talking to.

"No, no. I'm talking to you, monkey boy," said the man as if he had read Josh's thoughts.

Josh looked again at the Camaro. As a cloud passed overhead and blocked the strong sun that had been reflecting off the car, he now noticed that it was not entirely black. The paint job featured a simple white cross about a foot high on the passenger-side door.

Oh no! thought Josh. Today? It's today? Well, why wouldn't it be today? He admitted. But how did this man even know I was in here? I didn't even open the—but his thought was cut off by a new round of honking. This time, the man laid on the horn without interruption.

Josh threw back the curtains and slid the window open.

"Okay, okay! I'll be right out," he shouted. "Give me five—no, make that ten minutes."

The man nodded his head in agreement.

Josh shut the window and turned back to his room, the disorder of which was now plainly exposed by the day.

Josh had not expected anyone to show up at his apartment. He certainly hadn't expected a stranger to come unannounced. He did know, however, that something was supposed to happen at some point—the pastor had told him to be prepared. He just thought that he himself was supposed to be the sole author of that something. Maybe I took too long to get started, so now I'm getting a kick in the pants, he thought.

On his way to the closet, Josh stepped over a pile of dirty clothes, some library books, and an empty pizza box. The closet itself was practically empty, except for a beige suit and a pair of green Converse sneakers.

Josh thought back to the day when he had received the suit. It had only been a few weeks earlier.

"You'll know what to do when the time comes," Pastor John had cryptically told him before handing him the suit, which could only politely be described as beige. It was, in fact, quite a bit brighter than beige and only a few shades darker than Big Bird's feathers. The large, dangling gold buttons surely weren't standard on suits normal people wore, and the wide collar had gone in and out of vogue so many times that only irony could justify it as a fashion statement now.

Josh had taken the suit with a certain amount of dread. A musky odor of mothballs not only trailed the suit but seemed to precede it: seeing the thing from across the room, one couldn't help but think of mothballs, causing that particular odor to surge up from the recesses of memory. But Josh wasn't complaining. He much preferred to evoke the odor of mothballs than to have people guess the suit's true history.

The suit, in fact, was a dead man's suit. It had been a donation to the church after hanging who knows how many years (decades, thought Josh) in a widow's closet. Most of Josh's belongings had been stolen while he was in the hospital, so he was incredibly grateful to receive the help. Still, now that the suit was hanging in his closet and he had had time to think about it, it gave him the willies.

Pastor John hadn't said what it was that Josh was supposed to do. He had only told Josh that someday he would have the opportunity to reach young people like himself and maybe keep them from having to go through what he had gone through. Whenever that day came, he should try to do his best.

Josh changed quickly. Since he had no other shoes anyway, he tried to avoid thinking about how terrible his green Converse looked with the suit. He was mostly just relieved that when he put the already knotted tie around his neck and tightened it, the length worked out. He had never tied one before, so it could have been worse.

Josh looked in the mirror that hung on the inside of the closet door and assessed the situation. Big Bird suit. Brown, almost purple tie. Green sneakers. No belt. The pants were too long and bunched up at the top of his shoes. The shirt may have been white at some point in a long-forgotten past. The jacket's original owner must have had much larger shoulders.

If this suit were a piece of classical music, he thought, it would be titled "Ode to Wrinkles", and the refrain would be all about stinky mothballs.

He closed the closet door. There was no reason to dwell on what would only make him depressed. Afterall, even though he had maybe waited too long to get started, he was excited to help people by telling them what he had learned and by sharing his love of God. What did it matter what he was wearing? Once I start talking about Jesus, people won't even notice, right?

✝✝✝

Josh stepped outside into the heat of a cloudless and humid July day. As he walked toward the black Camaro, he wondered where they would be going and what they'd be doing. He hoped it would be somewhere there was air conditioning.

When he opened the passenger-side door, he heard music playing from the car's sound system. It was a soulful blues, with a lead guitar tone that sounded like it was straight from a vintage guitar in the sixties, but clearer and more emotion-laden than anything he had ever heard.

He got in and shut the door, happy to get out of the heat.

"Hi, I'm Josh," he said.

"Nice to meet you, Josh," replied the man. "The name is James, but you can call me Jimmy."

Jimmy's voice was soft, and he spoke slowly with an almost musical inflection. As they shook hands, Josh noticed that the man was quite thin, but appeared as strong as a much younger man. With his elegant black suit, his planter hat, his well-groomed facial hair, and his vintage car, Jimmy had a well-orchestrated look that gave him an unmistakable panache.

"I have to say, Josh," said Jimmy with a sly smile, "I think the guy you got that suit from probably looked better in it even after he had passed away."

Josh laughed but began to feel self-conscious.

"Who is this guitarist?" Josh said, trying to change the subject but also curious to know who was producing some of the most gut-wrenching solos he'd ever heard.

"I'm sure we'll have time to talk music later, little man," replied Jimmy. "But first I noticed you didn't bring your book with you. You got the entire thing memorized?"

"Well, no... I wasn't sure what we were doing today," answered Josh.

"Alright. Why don't you reach into the glove compartment and take mine. It'll be my gift to you. And next time you go anywhere without it, know that I'll be giving you the evil eye," he said and winked playfully.

Josh opened the glove compartment and pulled out the most beautiful Bible he'd ever seen. The cover was made of perfectly black, soft leather and was adorned with an ornate cross of gold leaf.

"Looks brand new, don't it?" said Jimmy. "Don't be fooled. It's over a hundred years old. It was given to me back in the days when I knew worse than nothing. It's pulled me out of some dark places, Josh. Like the ones I think you're in now."

Josh failed to hide his surprise at that last statement. He wondered what Jimmy had been told about him.

"You take this book," Jimmy continued, "but know it's not just a gift. It's also a responsibility. Some day when you get to that good place and you see someone who needs to know what you know, you pass it along, too."

Jimmy reached over to the ignition and turned the key. The motor leaped to life with the force of hundreds of horses. Jimmy steered the car away from the curb and headed toward the Kentucky countryside.

"So where are we going?" asked Josh.

Jimmy grabbed a pair of dark sunglasses from the pocket of his jacket and put them on.

"There are some things you're not going to understand, boy. It'll be better not to ask. You know all things happen for a reason in this infinite universe. You'll have lots of time later to think everything over. You just promise me you'll stay focused. Can you dig that?"

"Sure," replied Josh without giving it much thought. He had the feeling that, as nice as he appeared to be, Jimmy was also a little too theatrical. He wrote it off as owing to a difference in age.

"Alright then. This whole thing is almost ready. It's a question of timing. We're still a little early, so we've got time for a drive."

Jimmy drove them through the countryside. They passed by many farms with their endless lines of black wooden fences, inside of which beautiful horses ran through the bluegrass. Josh felt connected to the farms, having grown up in the area and having passed many a summer painting fences and barns to earn a little spending money.

"Something else about that Bible," Jimmy said softly while staring at the road ahead, one hand on the wheel. "It always tells you what you need to know about the future and the past. People in this world are always looking for cheap advice from Hollywood magicians and crooks when the truth is right in there. Close your eyes now."

Josh complied out of politeness, but in truth was beginning to wonder what the point of this day was.

"Feel the sun against your skin. Feel the road pass underneath us. All this is just temporary. We could pass a thousand beautiful sites, live a thousand beautiful days, spend an infinite amount of time confronted by extraordinary visions without really being able to see. You feel what I'm saying? Sometimes, it's a simple as needing, let's say, a pair of spiritual glasses. But sometimes, you can experience the same thing over and over without really being able to see anything, because you need a deeper push toward the truth. Now, you and I could sit down on a comfortable couch, and I could try to tell you what you're missing, but things you don't work hard for never change your life, man. And to be honest, it would take me too long to get to the starting point—the truth of where you are now. You might even hide it from me. So today you've got to get it all right, and we won't move on until you do. Today, you've got to go through the honest experience of it all."

Josh tried to take in what Jimmy was saying and make sense of it. He kept his eyes closed and tried to imagine the landscape they were passing through. He wondered, however, what this had to do with anything.

"But you'll not be alone," said Jimmy. "I can help show you the way. The first thing to know is that the book you're holding is a guide to this life. It helps you interpret the past and leads you into the future. Too many people use it only during certain hours of the week, as if its wisdom is limited to the hours of a church service. But time places no limits on this book. The lessons inside this book are always important, and they always apply to what you're going through. You just have to be willing to make the connection. So right now, open that book at random, and whichever passage your eyes fall on, you read it until you're ready to use it to guide your day."

Josh felt the smooth edges of the Bible pages, chose a spot, and opened the book. He opened his eyes and read the first passage he saw:

"But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance," (2 Peter 3:8-9 King James Version).

Josh read the passage several times, taking in the phrasing of the King James Version, so different from the English Standard Version he was used to reading. As he wondered what connection this passage could have to the day ahead of him, he felt the car come to a stop. He looked up from the Bible to see where they were.

The first thing he saw was incomprehensibly strange. A barn swallow, in mid-flight, appeared frozen in the sky some twenty yards in front of the car. At first Josh thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. He rubbed them and looked again. It was still there, but what he then saw in the distance overwhelmed his senses and filled him with rage. It was a battered old farmhouse on a large stretch of poorly tended land.

"No way! Not this! Not in a million years!" yelled Josh.

# Chapter 2

## Left For Dead

"For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first," (2 Peter 2:20 English Standard Version).

✝✝✝

One Year Earlier

"Can you hear me?" were the words that pulled Josh from the darkness. It was a deep, male voice from directly above him. "Can you hear me? Say anything if you can hear me."

Josh was irritated at the sound of the words, which seemed to prick his spine like needles. He retracted from them. He twisted his body to move away from them but found himself constrained against what he was coming to realize was the floor. He was unable to do more than weakly move his arms.

Josh felt his eyelids being pulled up. A bright light was shone in his eyes. He raised his hands up slowly to shield his eyes and saw that his skin was so pale that it appeared to have a light blue hue. The ramifications of his pallor, the cool clamminess of his skin, the fading in and out of consciousness—none of these registered with Josh. He simply existed in an ebb and flow of numbness and disconnect.

Presently, he rolled his head to the side and saw the shoes of several people walking on the carpeted floor around him. He saw, and briefly wondered the purpose of, a stretcher. He felt more hands on his body, and then he found himself being raised slightly and moved onto the stretcher.

No, no, he thought. We have more songs to play. Everyone wants to hear more music. I've got to tune my guitar first.

Josh tried to move, intending to stand up to look for his guitar. He was unable to do so. His legs felt as heavy as lead. He opened his eyes and again noticed that he was on a stretcher. The stretcher was now being lifted by people wearing uniforms. He looked past the uniforms and saw the basement of the large country house he lived in and shared with all his band members. At the far end of the room, he saw the instruments, the amps, the drum kit, and the microphones. He saw the wet bar, full of bottles and glasses, many of which appeared half full.

What Josh didn't notice was the incongruity of it all. Present were all the signs of a raging house party. Absent were the revelers, the music, the great conversations, the dimmed lights and the swirling smoke. The lights were in fact almost painfully bright, and had he been able to notice such things, Josh would have seen that the only people present in the entire house were the ones helping carry him out of the basement, up the stairs, out of the house, and into a waiting ambulance.

✝✝✝

The clouds of numbness previously swirling around Josh had now turned to thorn and thistle. His head pounded, and beeping machines around him were preventing him from thinking of anything else.

Josh opened his eyes to the sterility and minimalism of a hospital room. He was lying in a slightly inclined bed with large rails to prevent him from rolling off. A tube was hooked up to his arm, delivering the contents of an IV bag. His vital signs were being monitored.

A television mounted near the ceiling was turned on to a rerun of an old sitcom. A light chuckle came from Josh's right. He turned to see a man sitting in a worn, faux-leather chair. The man looked to be in his thirties. He was slender and wore sandals, a pair of khaki pants, and a blue polo shirt. His full, sandy blond hair was unkempt. He must have been there for a while.

The man noticed that Josh was awake and gave him a smile.

"Well look who's back!" he said. He stood up and took a few steps over to the bed. "The nurse asked me to give you some water when you woke up. Are you hungry?"

"Yeah, I could eat," answered Josh, hoping that food would make him feel better.

"I'll head over to the nurses desk and see if they can help us out," he said and then disappeared into the hallway before Josh could even ask his name.

Josh stared blankly at the television. In the current setting, the sitcom's humor was lost on him. Watching the show, he felt the same way he would have felt if he had been stranded on a deserted island and, by some extraordinary collusion of wind and irony, the financial section of the newspaper had fallen from the sky onto his lap.

The man returned about half an hour later holding a cafeteria tray.

"I can't guarantee anything on this is good, but at least it's free, right?" he said, placing the tray on the bedside table.

"Thank you," Josh said. "Are you a doctor?"

"No. I'm a pastor. Pastor John. I'm from your church. You haven't come around in a while. Pastor David is mostly retired now, but he still helps us out as best he can. You can catch up with him sometime, if you want to come back to us, of course."

"But how did you...I mean, why are you here?"

"The hospital tried to contact your family when you were brought here. When they learned that your parents were no longer with us, they called a few of the numbers that were in your wallet. You had one of our cards with you. David wanted to come himself, but his health hasn't been great lately. I figured I could help out and meet you at the same time."

Josh had forgotten he was carrying the Church's card in his wallet. He hadn't looked at it in years, but he remembered why he had kept it. It had his favorite verse printed on it: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God," (English Standard Version). For so many years he had done just that, but something he couldn't even remember had led him to making music for other reasons, and those reasons had been replaced by even more confused reasons until, he now realized, everything about his life had spun out of control and had brought him here, on the edge of death, in a hospital room where the only one who cared about him was someone he had never met before.

"Has anyone else come to visit?" Josh asked with trepidation.

"I'm sorry, Josh. No one has been here."

For the most part, Josh was not surprised. Even though he shared a house with his band members, he never felt like they liked each other personally. Lexington wasn't a huge city, and musically, the scene barely existed. To make the type of music they wanted to make, they simply needed each other. Most of the time when they weren't making music, they avoided each other. But Della? How could she not come?

"It was nice of you to come, Pastor John. Thank you," said Josh.

"No problem. We still have a place for you, and we want to make sure you're able to come claim it whenever you're ready."

Josh remained silent.

"Listen," continued Pastor John, "you've been through a lot. You should take some time to think things over. Sometimes people stop thinking about the important things. We get too busy living to think about what inspires us to be alive. Even though these near tragedies are terrible things, they sometimes provide us the impetus to finally draw some important lines, to decide what it is we want to stand for and what we want to dedicate our lives to. You'll be healed up in no time at all, and you could go right back to what you were doing before. But you have to ask yourself, what were you actually doing? And if it led you to this, wouldn't you rather dedicate yourself to the truth you've been suppressing? To the truth that leads you back home? That is, if you haven't given up on that truth..."

Josh hadn't thought of it in that way. He had never forgotten. He had never renounced his beliefs. But over time, he had encumbered all the mental landscape he had dedicated to God with different concerns and goals, to such a point that he could no longer really see God.

"No," said Josh. "This has nothing to do with it. I still know the truth."

"But it does, Josh. It does. If you are honest with yourself, you can't truly believe in something that has no impact on the way you live your life—that's not faith. I see people all the time who say they believe but who start breaking as many of the Ten Commandments as they can on the way home from Church. If you truly believe something, it changes you. Tell me this, Josh: if you love God, then you know that the path you are going down breaks his heart. And you may even go so far down that path that you become a false believer, a hypocrite. You'll tell people you believe in God, but you won't really. You might be able to fool the people here, but you won't fool the man upstairs. No matter what you want to pretend while you're here during your lifetime, which is only a blink of the eye compared to an eternity in Heaven, the reality of where you'll be going will be much different. So tell me, Josh, if you truly believe, why are you acting exactly like someone who doesn't?"

Josh had no answers. Pastor John's words were hitting him hard. He tried to rationalize away what he could, but there was no denying that he was acting in contradiction to his stated beliefs. And maybe, Josh thought, it's because I have given up on my beliefs.

"I know this is a bit much right now, Josh. Let's take it slowly."

Josh thanked him and, for the first time in a long time, prayed before he began to eat.

They talked casually for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, interrupted by a nap and several visits from doctors. Pastor John talked about changes in the church and the new goals he had set, which all seemed to Josh to be related to holding people to their word and giving them opportunities to help others. John avoided pushing Josh too much for details of his life, but rather worked at establishing a friendship so that Josh would feel comfortable coming to him when the time was right.

As the night approached, Pastor John stood up to go home. Josh didn't want to be left alone, but he knew John probably hadn't slept the night before.

"I'll be back tomorrow to visit," said Pastor John. "You keep me updated. They said you wouldn't be here long. When you do get discharged, I'll pick you up. Between now and then, think about where it is you want me to take you."

Josh understood that John meant much more than a physical destination.

After they said their goodbyes, Josh found himself alone in the uncomfortable hospital room, grappling with his shock at the fact that no one at the previous night's party cared to know if he was okay.

✝✝✝

Several days had passed. A large, heavy set and rather surly male nurse pushed Josh in a wheelchair from his room to the main entrance. Josh felt embarrassed to make his exit this way when he was perfectly capable of walking, but that, apparently, was hospital policy.

Once on the sidewalk, Josh stood up and turned around to thank the nurse, who foiled the attempt at courtesy with a perfunctory "alright then" and a quick retreat back into the hospital.

Well, I don't plan on seeing him again. At least not here, thought Josh, who then turned to wait for Pastor John.

John arrived in a beat-up brown sedan, clearly in great spirits.

"The big day has arrived!" John exclaimed. "Bet you are happy to be moving on, eh?"

"Absolutely. Not planning on coming back here any time soon. Couldn't eat another hospital meal if I had to."

"Well, let's go grab some real food and talk things over. Want me to help you with your bags?"

"Ha ha, funny guy," responded Josh. The only possession he had on him, besides the close on his back, was a small paper bag containing a bottle of multivitamins.

Josh got in the car, and they drove to a nearby diner. The food they ate tasted amazing to Josh, even though it would have been a sub-par burger and fries on any normal day. They finished eating and ordered coffee.

"Where do you want to go now? Back to the house?" asked John.

Josh had had several days to think it over. He had no idea where to go, but he knew he couldn't go back to that life. He knew that the life he had built for himself was in contradiction to his beliefs. He also knew that he had been suppressing his beliefs so much that they were fading into nothing. He needed them back, but he didn't know where to start.

"I can't go back there, and not because I'm afraid of this happening again, but because I'm afraid of losing who I am. I'm afraid of forgetting my Lord and Savior. I've got to change before it's too late."

"Good, Josh. Good. I'm really glad to hear this. I've got some ideas on how to help you get on your feet again. We can provide you a place to stay. It's certainly not anything to write home about, but you'll have a small apartment to yourself while you get back on your feet."

"Wow, thank you so much."

"And I want you to know that I want nothing in return for this. Follow your heart and do what is right by God. Everything else will work itself out."

Over the next few days, Josh received help from old friends and new members of the church alike. His life was changing so quickly and meaningfully that he hardly knew how to thank everyone.

He felt like everything was moving in the right direction, but he knew that this was only the beginning and that he needed time to get strong. So when he needed to retrieve his belongings at the old house, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He thought that going back there would be dangerous. He couldn't remember everything that had happened that disastrous night, be what he did know about it still filled him with so much anger that he thought he'd lose control of himself if he went back now. John understood and volunteered to take care of it.

Josh had been impatient to see his old things, but when John arrived at the apartment with the few boxes he was able to get from Josh's former housemates, it was clear that the majority of his belongings had been stolen. Josh's beautiful guitar was gone, his computer was missing, and even his more expensive clothing had been picked through. Josh kept reminding himself of what was really important, but he had to fight hard to keep from being overtaken by rage.

# Chapter 3

## The Creator at the Loom

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good," (Romans 12:21 English Standard Version).

✝✝✝

Present Day

"No way! Not this! Not in a million years!" yelled Josh.

Jimmy had parked the car at the beginning of a long driveway leading to a large farmhouse in the middle of rural Kentucky. The expansive yard, more a mixture of haphazardly mown weeds than a field of cultured grass, was bordered by black wooden fencing in desperate need of painting. Many of the rails had become detached and lay rotting on the ground. The house itself had formerly been a gem, but now the white paint was dirty and peeling, several shutters were missing, the boards of the porch were bowed, and patches of weeds were sprouting through the gravel of the driveway. A couch had been moved onto the porch, and an incongruous refrigerator had been placed on the lawn just outside the garage, still managing to run with fits of pinging and humming. An unused horse barn that had fallen into a state of disrepair was located behind the house.

Seeing the house for the first time in a year, Josh had a visceral reaction to it. He didn't notice the state of the property, but rather was flooded with the feeling of numbness and vertigo that he had had when he was being carried out of the house on a stretcher. For a moment, it felt like he had gone back in time, as if nothing had changed since then, as if his life was teetering on the brink of disaster. He hated the feeling and wanted to be free of it. He wanted to get out of the car and run to anywhere else but here.

"A lot of things must be going through your mind right now," said Jimmy. "It'd be normal if you were angry. Go ahead, you can tell me."

Josh wanted to yell at him. He wanted to tell him what a fool he was. Instead, he opted for sarcasm. "I've got an idea. I'll just open this book up at random and the first thing I see will give me the answer to everything, eh Jimmy?"

Josh closed his eyes and, with exaggerated motions flipped through the Bible and brought his finger down with a hard thump onto the page.

"For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God," read Josh. "James 1:20." Josh wanted to ignore it. He wanted to get angry and lose control, but something he didn't understand was occurring. Clearly, Jimmy knew something he didn't.

"You may think that was coincidence. Today, it isn't. Today, you'll be getting a little more help than normal, a little more advice. After today, you'll have to work harder for it. You'll have to put in the time studying so that those verses will be there when you need them."

Josh wanted to say he was sorry, but he was beginning to grasp that he was in the middle of something strange. He sat silent trying to grasp what it all meant.

He looked again at the barn swallow that seemed to hang motionless above the yard. The entire scene before him, in fact, seemed remarkably still. The trees in the distance did not shimmer with light reflected from wind-stirred leaves, but perhaps there was no wind this day.

"I know you don't want to be here," said Jimmy. "You have a good reason. But you can't stay holed up in your apartment forever, and you can't pretend you're living your beliefs if you refuse to go to the places those beliefs would be challenged. It's easy to go through life surrounded by people who believe the same things you do. It sure makes you feel good to get the constant approval, but sometimes the only way to really know yourself is to know what you'll stand for when times get tough. You're at the point where you need to know, Josh."

"That's not right...I'm doing much better. Things are okay."

"And that's why you aren't answering the call? How many days have you woke up feeling guilty because you know you aren't doing what you feel in your heart needs to be done? How long has that ugly yellow suit been hanging in your closet?"

"It's beige, actually," said Josh. Jimmy rolled his eyes.

"If you don't think what you know needs to be shared, then it ain't worth you knowing either."

Josh knew that wasn't true. He knew that what he had was worth sharing. Why had he avoided doing it for so long? He had to admit that what Jimmy was saying was true: it was much easier to surround yourself with people who believed the same things you believed. The people who needed help, however, were not singing right next to you every Sunday.

"I'm ready to do this," said Josh, "but can we go somewhere else? Can we just drive anywhere else?"

"Where would you be right now if Pastor John had said the same thing when you needed him? Should he have gone somewhere that would have been easier for him? Should he have left you alone at the hospital?"

There was nothing more to object to. There was nothing more Josh could have said that wouldn't have been a cop out. He look at Jimmy and nodded.

"But I'm not happy about this," said Josh.

"Forcing yourself to start no matter what is the mark of a strong person," Jimmy answered with a smile.

Josh didn't feel strong, but he wanted to be. He knew that, now more than ever, he was going to have to be strong.

Jimmy turned down the blues music that had so far provided the soundtrack to the day. He pushed his hat back slightly, shifted in the car seat to get comfortable, and then stared into the distance.

"It's so easy to forget that what we experience is not permanent," said Jimmy. "It's all fluid. Life exists in relation to other moments, and the fabric of moments—time—is a creation like anything else. The creator can weave, unravel, weave, unravel...as many times as necessary to ensure the final product is what He wants. Right here, right now, this very second, the design has begun."

Josh now knew better than to question Jimmy when he was getting philosophical, no matter how spacey is seemed.

"I'm worried they're not going to give me a chance," said Josh. They're probably going to think they're seeing a ghost, he thought.

"Then you'll keep trying until you find a way to get through to them. You just start walking, and by the time you make it down that long driveway, you'll have thought of a way to begin."

Josh breathed deeply, opened the car door, and stepped out into the hot and humid air. Ahead of him, a barn swallow made its way across his line of sight. In the distance, the trees swayed noticeably in the wind. Josh turned to see if Jimmy had noticed, but he had already reclined his seat and lowered his hat over his eyes.

Josh shut the door and began walking down the long driveway to the old familiar farmhouse. Although he could no longer relate to it, he still remembered the excitement he felt the first time he came there.

✝✝✝

Two Years Earlier

"It's in the middle of nowhere," Alex said, pulling the car up near the porch steps. "Kind of a dump at that."

The house had seen better days, but Josh didn't notice any of its flaws. He saw the house as his chance to be free, to begin living a life that he was in control of. Although he was only 16, his foster family had agreed to let him move out. As long as they were still receiving checks, they didn't care where Josh wanted to live.

"I've got to pass the audition first anyway. If they don't like the way I play, I may be calling you back sooner than expected," said Josh.

He took his guitar out of the trunk and then tapped on the side of the car to signal to Alex that he could leave. He then walked up the porch stairs, causing the planks to creak in rhythm.

Nervousness gripped his throat as he knocked on the door. He wished he weren't in such a desperate situation and could actually enjoy the audition without the pressure of needing a place to stay. What if they liked his playing but couldn't stand him personally?

The door opened to reveal a tall, lanky man in his mid twenties. He was wearing a white, threadbare V-neck T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans with holes in the knees. His hairstyle resembled the mop-top sixties. He was barefoot, wore dark sunglasses, and had in his hand something Josh mistook as a lit cigarette.

"Guitar man, alright. I'm Pete," he said, but didn't offer to shake hands. He leaned against the door and looked past Josh to see what kind of car was leaving the property. "I sing and write the songs. I write everything we play."

A moment of silence passed. Josh had the impression Pete was deep in thought. Before the pause became awkward, he spoke up.

"I'm Josh. Thanks for having me out today. Mind if I come in?"

Coming back to the present, Pete answered "Yeah, yeah. Come in. We can have a look at this guitar you brought, guitar man."

Pete remained leaning against the door and with a lavish sweep of his arm directed Josh inside. Josh stepped in and was hit by the strong aroma of incense.

The living room's hardwood floor was covered by imitation Persian rugs. Two haphazardly placed couches almost formed an L around a large, water-stained coffee table. A window overlooked the front yard. Josh waved at two young men sitting on the couch.

"That's Felix," said Pete pointing to a slightly overweight teen with long blond hair. "He plays drums. Well, he sits on a stool and beats on stuff like a deranged monkey, anyway."

"Hey," said Felix with a wave and chuckled.

"And that's Zack," he continued, neither looking at nor gesturing toward the second man, who looked to be in his early twenties. "Zack holds up the low end."

Zack had short, dark brown hair and wore a pork-pie hat. He was sporting a mustache and goatee, and was wearing a concert T-shirt from a band Josh didn't recognize. As Josh would discover later, Zack had a habit of only professing admiration for groups no one had ever heard of.

"Hey man," said Zack. "What do you play on? Let's see the guitar."

Josh set the case on the floor and opened it. He took out a surf-green guitar that had so much wear on the finish and neck that it looked like it had been played for decades. Although many newer guitars were artificially made to look worn to lend the novice player a certain cachet, Josh's guitar was the real deal. For over three years, he had frequented every pawn store in town looking for guitar parts he could use to build exactly what he wanted for as little money as possible. When he had finished it, he not only had a great sounding guitar, but the act of putting it together himself had made the guitar important to him in a way that a new guitar never could have been.

"Wow..." said Zack in appreciation. "Now that's a guitar. I gotta hear that thing plugged in."

"Our jam room is in the basement," said Felix. "Let's see what you can do."

Zack and Felix started walking toward the stairs. Pete, who had taken out his phone and started texting, sat down on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table.

"I'll come down if you don't suck," Pete said without looking up.

The three of them went downstairs to the basement, which was carpeted on the floor, walls and ceiling to dampen sound. Felix's drum kit was set up in a corner. To the left of the drums, Zack's bass was on a stand in front of his amplifier. A guitar amp was on the other side of the drums. Josh walked over and plugged in.

Felix sat down at his set, picked up his sticks, and played a few runs to warm up.

"12-bar blues in A?" asked Zack as he turned on his amp.

Josh's answer came in the form of a blazing blues riff that gave the perfect lead-in for Felix and Zack. Felix's drum playing was heavy and deliberate, with an artful use of syncopation and surprisingly dexterous foot work on his double bass pedals. Zack not only played solid baselines but could also transition easily to melodic runs that ushered in Josh's chord changes. The three of them played through the progression enough times to give each of them ample solo opportunities. After he was satisfied that Josh could handle all the paces they could put him through, Felix brought the jam to a close with a cascade of rolls and cymbal crashes.

Slow, soft clapping came from the stairs as Pete sauntered down to join them.

"Long-loving woman," Pete said as he walked over to the PA system and adjusted equalizer to his microphone.

Zack went over the chord progressions with Josh. "Just keep up the best you can, and don't play over Pete."

The song started slowly and soulfully. After the introduction, the musicians paused for Pete's first lines. With planned theatricality, Pete leaned forward with the microphone stand and built up to a high, tenor melody that pushed the limits of his range. The musicians came back in, playing through verses and chorus until the song was finished.

The look on Pete's face conveyed the decision: Josh was in. Zack and Felix smiled in relief that Pete approved.

Josh felt elated at having fit into the band so well, but one thing didn't sit right with him. Pete's lyrics bordered on obscene. Josh's favorite bands up to that point were Christian rock bands, and he'd never had to question the motivation of the lyrics to his favorite songs. Pete's lyrics made him cringe, and he wondered what kind of person Pete had to be to be able to write like that. Even though he didn't like it, he told himself that Pete was the one singing the lyrics. That meant that he personally didn't have anything to do with the meaning. You can't be responsible for everything that goes on around you, right? If everything had to be perfect, no one would ever get anything done.

"Where did you learn to play like that?" asked Pete, uncharacteristically showing unreserved appreciation of someone else's talent.

'I play at church most Sundays."

Zack, Felix, and Pete burst out laughing.

"Holy guacamole," said Felix.

"Peeerraaaaise the lawd!" exclaimed Pete. "Do you dance around with your hands in the air and stuff?"

Josh laughed it off. He had already heard every joke imaginable about going to church. These guys were no worse than other people he had met.

"So look," Pete said, "you're in. You can move in when you want but rent starts from now. We expect to do at least two shows a week once you get up to speed. Any questions?"

Josh only wanted to see his room. Felix took him up to the second floor. The room was large, already furnished, and had two windows that overlooked the backyard and the horse barn. Without being completely conscious of it, Josh was so excited to have his own space—and a space that he had earned with his talent at that—that his reservations about certain details of this new adventure fell silently away. And anyway, he wouldn't stop being the person he had always been just because he didn't voice any opposition to a few things he found questionable around him, right?

# Chapter 4

## Time is an Illusion

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace," (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 English Standard Version).

✝✝✝

Present Day

Josh made his way down the long driveway, his green Converse sneakers stirring up dust in the breeze. The house looked completely different to him, as it no longer represented freedom and taking control of his life, but rather a time when everything had spun dangerously out of control and had almost ended by him paying the ultimate price.

He paused before the porch and assessed the situation. He knew they would think he looked like a fool. He knew that the Bible he carried would be an instant target of ridicule. He knew he would need to think fast on his feet in order to guide them towards a more favorable opinion of Christianity by sharing what he could. He didn't expect to be able to change their opinions immediately, but he hoped that he could start them down the path of being willing to learn more.

Josh summoned up all the courage he could from deep in the recesses of his soul and stepped up the creaky porch stairs to arrive at the front door. He held his hand in front of the door and paused, taken by how strange it felt to be back. He then knocked three times and stood, slightly trembling with fear, gripping his Bible tighter than he realized.

The door swung open. It was Pete, looking as arrogant as ever, but now sporting a style that would be more appropriate for a fashion runway than a grungy dive bar. His hair was cropped short, except for a small lock of long bangs that fell straight down over one of his eyes. His pants were navy blue with pinstripes and looked tighter than anyone would be comfortable wearing. His white, elegant shirt was half unbuttoned. The only thing Josh saw that was similar to his former style was his penchant for going barefoot.

Pete's eyebrows seemed to arch higher than humanly possible as an uncontrollable, almost hysterical smile surged up on his face.

"You cannot—I mean cannot—be serious," Pete exclaimed between half-hearted attempts to control his laughter. "This is too much. Hold on."

Pete took out his phone and snapped a picture.

"I'm going to juxtapose that with an old pic of you in concert. It's going to be a riot when I post that online."

Pete looked with delight at the photo he had just taken. After what seemed to Josh like an eternity, Pete looked back up at him.

"Right, okay,' said Pete, trying to get his bearings. "So...you're serious right now. You've put on this crap suit, grabbed a Bible, and come here because you have personal knowledge of all the sinful things we're doing, and you're going to come in and save the day. That about sum it up? Or are you just angry that it didn't work out for you? No one asked you to take off, anyway."

Josh was finding it hard to stay focused. He felt like he was being pulled back into his former life. Hearing Pete again made him want to argue. He wanted to ask him what had happened that last night. He wanted to know why Pete and the others hadn't been there when the paramedics came. He wanted all the answers that he had been denied for so long. He wanted to know how it had all happened.

His thoughts became clouded. The task he had set himself with seemed so abstract in comparison to his desire to make Pete tell him the truth and then berate him with every foul name he could conjure up.

"I'm...I'm here to help you see the truth," Josh managed to stutter out, half-heartedly holding up his Bible, but almost overwhelmed by the anger surging up inside of him.

"Truth? Dude, you've got a book in your hands that says the Earth is five thousand years old. You could dig a hole in this yard, pull up some rocks, test them with that carbon stuff, and they'd turn out to be, like, hundreds of times older than that. What kind of ignorant crap is that? Seriously, man, why would I bother reading anything else in that book after knowing it has something that stupid in it?"

Josh started to say, "because it's true!", but stopped himself. That wouldn't be convincing. The problem was he didn't know how to counter a scientific argument against the Bible. What was he supposed to say? He just stood there looking confused.

"See, man, you don't know anything," continued Pete. "Why did you really come back here? Did you want to throw down another handful of pills and get the job done right this time?"

It was as if a bolt of lightning had struck Josh. Had he really done that to himself that night? On purpose? No, no. That wasn't possible. That couldn't have been true.

"Look, it's been great," said Pete, "but I've got to get going. Big date later tonight and I've got to knock out some new lyrics now. Be a stranger, now," he said as he turned and closed the door.

Josh was left standing in front of a closed door unable to move as he tried to process what had just happened. It was like his brain, out of shock, had stopped sending signals to the rest of his body.

He decided he'd better sit down on the porch steps for moment to collect himself, but when he tried to move, nothing happened. He was frozen there, not breathing, not blinking, not even moving his eyes. He tried to say something, but he couldn't move his mouth or make any sound. What was happening? Was he having some sort of medical emergency that would result in him being carried away again? Who would call the ambulance? No one inside the house would even notice until it was too late.

Josh was desperate to make a noise, any noise, that someone could hear. Even if he simply fell over and hit the door, he thought, his odds would be better than they were now. He concentrated on leaning toward the door. He prayed to God to give him the strength to pull himself out of this. And then, it happened.

Josh's body remained as still as a statue. Josh could see this because he, or rather a translucent version of him, was slowly rising out of his body, looking down at it. Josh raised his hands to examine them.

"What! I can see through them! I can see through me, actually," he exclaimed, looking at the rest of himself.

He tried to reach down to touch his body as he floated away from it, but his hand passed right through, and he felt nothing.

He looked around him. Nothing was moving. The trees had stopped swaying. The one or two clouds in the otherwise clear sky hung like paintings in the distance. In the other direction, a commercial airliner was fixed at the head of a vapor trail. The trail wasn't dissipating, and the plane wasn't crossing the horizon. It simply appeared to have stopped...As Josh rose higher, he could see what looked like parked cars on the roads, with people just sitting inside motionless. Everything around him looked like a perfect photograph, and, as extraordinary as it was to be seeing it, it was so unnatural that the interesting strangeness of it all was mixed with a feeling of growing unease.

He had now floated up higher than the roofline. He could still see his unmoving body down below, and his worry increased. It can't be good to leave your body, he thought. Josh decided to try to float back toward it, but no matter what he did, he kept floating away. He realized with terror that, although he could move his spectral body, he couldn't control where it was going. I'm not...dead..am I?

Is that what he had been brought back here to do? To die at the very place where he had escaped death a year ago? Was there some utility to all this? What would be gained?

But then Josh, still floating slowly away from the house, saw the front door open again. It was Pete, and he was saying something Josh didn't understand in a mysterious language. Was Pete just messing with him? He concentrated on the voice, now difficult to hear from so far away.

"Won, regnarts a eb. Won sciryl wen emos tuo kconk ot tog ev'I dna thginot retal etad gib. Gniog teg ot tog ev'I tub, taerg neeb s'ti, kool."

Was he losing his hearing? It sounded unlike anything he'd heard Pete say before. Was it a foreign language that Pete was using to insult him one last time?

Pete spoke another barrage of unfamiliar sounds, and then Josh heard noise coming from his own body. The sound had the same strange intonations that he had just heard from Pete. Pete spoke again, and then stood laughing as he looked at his phone. He then snapped a picture of Josh's body, and the odd conversation continued. After a little more of this, Pete shut the door. Josh's body stood there for a moment, and then knocked on the door.

What was going on? Josh looked around him and saw incomprehensible strangeness. The cars that had recently appeared to be parked in the streets were now moving, but backwards. Josh looked up at the sky. The plane that had been hanging motionless now seemed to be eating up its vapor trail, flying in the wrong direction! Josh looked again at his body, which now miraculously navigated the porch stairs backwards and began heading down the driveway, still backwards.

Josh himself, or at least this new spectral version of himself, was now floating in the same direction that his body was walking in. He watched his body navigate the driveway backwards.

He searched the horizon looking for more signs he could use to decipher what was going on. Off to his right, he saw an almost imperceptible streak of color zooming toward him. He tried to focus on it as he floated toward the black Camaro. It was a barn swallow, darting through the air with agility...but backwards! He had seen this bird earlier, frozen in the sky, before he had gotten out of the car.

As Josh neared the car, he began to descend toward the roof. Josh's body had reached the door. He saw the door open and his body enter the car. His spectral self was now on course to crash into the roof. He took one last look at the barn swallow, whose nimble flapping slowed and came to a stop as the bird once again took up its frozen position in the sky. Josh's feet were about to hit the roof, so he braced himself for the pain. But when he finally touched the car, his feet slipped right through the metal, and soon he found himself descending into the car, where he then had the comforting sensation of reattaching to his body.

Now in the car, Josh and Jimmy began exchanging backwards dialogue. Josh wondered how long this would go on. He feared it might never stop, that he'd have to relive, backwards, his entire life again, watching all the mistakes he'd ever made.

Then, a serious look came over Jimmy. "Nugeb sah ngised eht, dnoces yrev siht, won thgir, ereh thgir," he said, and then paused so long that Josh thought time had frozen. Then Jimmy looked at Josh and spoke words that Josh remembered hearing earlier. "Right here, right now, this very second, the design has begun."

✝✝✝

Josh lifted his hands up and examined them. Perfectly opaque. He had never been happier in his life to see his own hands. He felt his legs, his face, his arms. He was there again, a whole human being, not a spectre on the way to the afterlife.

"What just happened?" exclaimed Josh on the verge of breaking into hysterics. "What was that?"

Jimmy was as calm as ever. A sly smile crossed his face as he nodded his head to the rhythm of the music coming through the sound system.

"Nothing happened. Or rather, nothing remains. The tapestry was woven, the tapestry was undone. Somebody didn't like the way it looked."

I know I didn't like the way it looked, thought Josh. I wish God would unweave all the times I looked like an idiot, not just this one.

"So, what exactly is this?" asked Josh, looking outside the car window. The world sat motionless, waiting once again. His favorite barn swallow was there, ready to bolt forward.

"We're at that dark place in your life. That place where you could decide to choose comfort and live in a bubble surrounded by people who think exactly like you. That type of life changes you. It makes you complacent. It can tear down what you believe as time wears on, because belief doesn't exist for long without action. And, worst of all, it teaches you to look the other way when people need help. Josh, you're here to make a choice. You can go home, or you can commit to taking the road less traveled. It'll be hard, but it'll make you the type of person you can be proud of, and the type of person you'll want God to see when he looks down on you."

"But what am I supposed to do? Go there again? Sooner or later they'll call the cops on me."

"No, no. Remember, it's undone. For them, you haven't been there yet. You've come back to when we first arrived here. If you choose to stay, we're going to work until you get things right."

Josh still didn't know exactly what that meant. He had no idea how that would play out. How would he learn what he needed to know if he didn't even know what he needed to know?

"Look, all you need to do is be honest," said Jimmy. "Do you want me to take you home, or are you willing to do what is difficult, even if it means not being comfortable, and even if you may not succeed? Answer how you truly feel"

The situation was almost overwhelming. Only a little while ago, Josh had been sleeping in his bed, and since then what had happened? He had revisited the place where he had almost died. He had made a fool of himself. Then, he had capped it all off by exiting his body somehow and time traveling back just far enough to potentially make a fool of himself again the exact same way. What a day he was having.

He knew, however, that it was better to make a fool of yourself trying to do what was right than it was to stay in bed doing nothing. Plus, he was ashamed that he had been unable to produce even a weak counter to Pete's scientific argument. How could he go back home and pretend that had never happened?

"I want to stay and fight," Josh said.

# Chapter 5

## Age is an Illusion

"But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day," (2 Peter 3:8 English Standard Version).

✝✝✝

One Year and Ten Months Earlier

The marquee above the door of the small club in Louisville displayed the name of five bands, but for Pete, Zack, Felix, and Josh, there was only one name that counted: Round the Corners. They stood on the sidewalk underneath the white light of the sign, instrument cases in hand, taking in the validation that the sign seemed to bestow upon their efforts. No matter how small this unpaid gig would be, they were now a band performing in concert. Unimportant was the fact that they were the last of five bands, none of which would play more than 20 minutes to an audience composed largely of friends and family.

"First Louisville, then stadiums all over the world!" said Zack triumphantly.

"We might have to do a few gigs in between those two stages," answered Felix.

The band walked into the small club, whose dim lighting effectively hid disrepair and dinginess. A long, mirrored bar complete with an endless variety of colorful bottles was located just after the entry. Opposite the bar was a small upraised stage illuminated by spotlights. Several tables had been set up in the area in front of the stage, which, although not very rock n' roll, at least gave the impression that the club was fuller than it actually was.

Pete approached the bartender. "We're Round the Corners. How do we get backstage?"

The bartender, who was also the club's owner, soundman, and sometime janitor, gave only a quick glance at them as he continued washing glasses in the sink. "No backstage, boys. Have a seat at one of the tables and go directly on stage when it's your turn."

Josh looked at the seating area and noticed that many of the people there were members of the other bands. He wondered how responsive an audience they'd make. Still, the people who were there looked like they were having a good time, so that put him at ease.

They stacked their guitar cases near the stage and sat down at an empty table. Pete and Zack ordered drinks. Felix tried to order a drink, but had to pull the infamous "I forgot to bring it" line when the waitress asked for his ID.

The first band to play was a '70s hard-rock clone band who mainly played cover tunes. The band members were young but affected an attitude of world weariness. With their deliberate retro look and serious attitudes, Josh had the same impression of humorous incongruity that he would have had from looking at a photo of a baby in dark sunglasses and a leather biker jacket. But overall, they weren't bad.

The crowd generally was supportive. They cheered and clapped even when a few false notes or improperly placed beats had clearly occurred. As the night wore on and bands finished their sets, people in the audience began to table hop to get to know each other.

Josh, Felix, and Zack were working out how they'd end extended versions of their songs if the energy from the audience inspired them to play longer when Josh heard the grinding of a chair on the concrete floor next to him. He turned to see a girl roughly his age sit down next to him. She had red hair and a complexion punctuated with an occasional freckle. She wore round, John Lennon-esque glasses, a long-sleeve black turtleneck shirt even though it was quite warm in the club, and black pants. The blackness of her clothes made her rainbow-colored costume earrings all the more conspicuous. Josh associated her look with that of a bohemian art student, the type of person who had become unanchored from time during the pursuit of a higher esthetic standard.

"Della!" shouted Pete from across the table.

"The one and only," replied Della, comically framing her face with her hands and adopting an expression of mock enthusiasm. "I know this loser, and this loser," she said pointing to Zack and Felix, who took her words as a great honor. "But you," she said, placing a hand on Josh's shoulder, "look way to fresh faced to have been hanging around these guys for long."

"That's Josh," said Pete. "New guitarist."

"Hi," said Josh timidly.

Josh felt at that moment that the focal point of his existence was located underneath Della's casual touch. It was, he knew, a common gesture that meant nothing, but during the mere couple of seconds it occured, Josh had managed to impart to it an entirely unrealistic significance. Such was the nature of a tender soul who finds a face that holds the possibility of love, and for Josh, Della had a magnetic combination of cuteness and mystery.

"So who do you like?" asked Della.

"What?" asked Josh, who had the feeling that his thoughts had been read.

"Who are your favorite guitarists?"

"Oh, yeah."

Josh listed a dozen or so of his favorites. Della recognized the guitarists from popular rock and pop bands, but not the ones who played in jazz, blues or Christian rock groups.

"Do you play?" asked Josh.

"No, just a fan. I study graphic art at UK. Do you go to college?"

For Josh, this question was something of a sore spot. He was at that age where everyone asked him this question, and he had the feeling that the entire world was tacitly telling him he'd never amount to anything unless he went to college. Life, however, had simply not provided him an easy path to university life. Losing his parents and bouncing through foster homes had made survival his first priority, and, as a result, studying had always seemed much less important than it was in reality. Over the years, he had managed to come to terms with his tragic family life, and, although he had simply stopped going to high school at a time when it was all too much for him, he had later obtained his GED. No sooner had he managed that, however, than the next societal benchmark, the college degree, was placed before him, and it left him feeling like nothing he did was ever going to be enough. Not to mention that even if he did decide to go, the problem of paying for it all loomed large.

"I haven't started yet. I don't know what I'd study except music, and I don't know how I'd pay for it right now," Josh said.

"Totally understand. It's ridiculous how expensive it is. I'm so jealous of people whose parents pay for theirs. Must be nice."

"So you have a job, too?" asked Josh.

"Della is an entrepreneur!" said Felix, accenting the word in a comically pretentious manner.

"Definitely an entrepreneur. Our favorite kind," added Zack.

Josh smiled but was confused by the exchange. He thought that maybe Zack and Felix were also interested in Della and that they were somehow flirting with her.

A crackling of microphone feedback turned their attention to the stage. The next band was introduced and the concert continued.

Josh felt elated. The evening now seemed to stretch before him like eternity. The loud music, relaxed atmosphere, and the furtive glances he stole of Della caused his normal preoccupations to fade away. He wanted the night to go on forever.

By the time Round the Corners was introduced, many of the audience members had left. But as Josh took the stage, he didn't notice their absence, or simply didn't care, because, still sitting at the table they had just abandoned was Della, and although he couldn't see very well with the spotlights shining towards him, he dreamed that her eyes were on him.

✝✝✝

Present Day

Josh looked at the farmhouse and began to feel differently about it. Yes, it was the site of painful memories, and always would be. But he now began to see it as a puzzle to be solved, a problem that could be worked out, a source of conflict that could be made peaceful through his own actions. He felt like he could turn the tide and not only liberate himself from the past, but help his former bandmates build a better future.

"There are so many things I don't know," said Josh. "The opportunity to do something over doesn't necessarily make you better at it. If I tried to hit a baseball out of a stadium and had an unlimited amount of pitches to do it, I'd probably never manage. What happens if I just keep failing, and what will happen when I succeed? How will I even know?"

"It might not be obvious, but you have to learn to read the signs. You have to be sensitive to the impact you're having on people."

"But right from the beginning, I've already failed," Josh said dejectedly. "If I go back right now, I know what Pete will say, and I know I don't have the answer. He says the Earth is much older than we think and it can be proven scientifically. If I can't explain why that isn't true, he won't listen to anything more. For him, it proves that God doesn't exist."

"And what do you think about using time and age to disprove God?" asked Jimmy.

Josh thought hard about the question. He didn't have an answer because he was simply not used to looking for ways to prove that God existed. It would have even felt a little contradictory to pray to God every day and then spend time trying to justify His existence, but now he felt completely unprepared to talk to people who didn't believe.

Jimmy could see that Josh was at a loss.

"What do we know about time, Josh? I mean besides using a watch to show up for a meeting. What do we really know about it?"

Josh wasn't used to questions like this. He didn't consider himself scientifically minded, and he didn't think ordinary people spent much time thinking about this type of question.

"I don't know. I've never studied it."

"Scientists spend their lives studying time, and not even they fully grasp what it means. But do we need to study time to know the most important thing about it? Tell me, Josh, who created time?"

"God did."

"Exactly. He created time along with everything else, and no one on this earth truly understands time. Explanations of it are theoretical, yet someone tells you we can use time as a way of measuring the reality of God and the Bible, as if time were some universal constant that existed outside of God? The only thing people do when they try to disprove God with time is to take their own flawed, human understanding of time and force that flaw onto their understanding of God. How could a thing that God created—that we don't even understand—disprove God?"

"So even if someone says they don't believe in God, they can't use time as a justification not to believe in Him..."

"Very true. And some people talk about measuring the age of rocks with complicated methods as if those methods are infallible, but those techniques rely on assumptions that most people don't know about. But let's assume the methods are legitimate. Would that disprove God? Tell me, did God make anything you can think of that seemed to already be of a certain age?"

Josh thought of all the things God had made and it seemed to him that many things fit that description.

"Well, Eve, for one," answered Josh. "God didn't hand Adam a baby and say 'in twenty years, you'll have the ideal companion'."

"That's right. I guess if scientists went back in time and used carbon dating to find out how old Eve was when Adam met her, we could conclude that God doesn't exist, right?" Jimmy said, barely containing his laughter.

Josh chuckled at how ridiculous that idea sounded.

"But be careful," Jimmy said, "not to make the mistake of rejecting science. Science describes and discovers, and just because it's not perfect, and just because scientists don't always understand that they are using science to describe God's creations doesn't mean science isn't one of the greatest gifts God has given us."

"But so many people use it to try to say God doesn't exist," answered Josh.

"People let themselves be distracted. They search for conclusions for their own purposes where there aren't really conclusions to be drawn. Again, let's pretend that I measure the age of a rock and it's a million years old. What does that mean? God put a magnificent Earth in place for us. Everything about the Earth is amazing. We study it to know what is happening with it right now and where it's going. God embedded in the Earth information for us to discover that allows us to better describe where things are headed. God could have created the Earth and given us absolutely zero information about how it functioned. Think about it. What if you saw a mountain in front of you, but had no idea how long it takes for a mountain to form? Then we couldn't estimate how long it will take for islands to appear, just to name one thing. But we look at the movement of continents, the movement of tectonic plates, and we think we have a good idea of how the Earth will change in the future. And that's normal. God has given us all this information so that we can continue to discover the Earth's beauty. But people take that information and try to go backwards with it...again, it's kind of like saying 'Eve didn't exist because she was never a baby'. God has given us science to describe all sorts of amazing things, but the miracle of creation isn't one of them."

For a long time, Josh sat deep in reflection. What Jimmy said made so much sense to him, and he couldn't believe he'd never thought of it before. Scientists are human and flawed just like anyone else, so of course there will be many different, very human attempts to make science bend to human motivations. But there will be great uses of it as well. Weren't most things in life like that? Just because a deranged madman uses a knife to hurt people doesn't mean you should never use one to cook with, right?

"If you remove all this static from the way people think about God, they'll be left in a position of openness," continued Jimmy. "That doesn't mean they'll come around immediately, but it means they might start seeing the possibilities."

Jimmy's words resonated in Josh. Even Josh had a less-than-admirable impression of door-to-door witnessing because it seemed all too often that the person doing it was just making people angry and giving Christians a bad reputation. He realized he had avoided trying so far for that very reason. He now believed it could be different. He would, as Jimmy put it, try to remove the static from the way people thought about God.

# Chapter 6

## If at First...

"When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him," (Proverbs 16:7 English Standard Version).

✝✝✝

Josh opened the car door and stepped out. The barn swallow again flew off with a vigorous flapping of tiny wings, and the world around him lurched forward towards the promise of new outcomes.

Josh went over the age and time argument, excited to be able to give someone else the knowledge that Jimmy had given him. He was concentrating so hard on how he would deliver it that, before he knew it, he had made it all the way to the porch of the farmhouse. He knocked on the front door and waited.

Pete opened the door and gave the same look of surprise mixed with mockery that he had previously given. Josh waited for the expected introductory insults that he had heard last time. They didn't come. Although Pete clearly was chuckling to himself about Josh's appearance, he wasn't saying anything out loud this time.

"Hello, Pete. I guess you didn't expect to see me again," Josh said to make sure that Pete had remembered nothing from his last visit.

"Never thought about it either way, actually," Pete said with nonchalance, taking out his phone. Josh expected him to snap a photo and insult his appearance, but he didn't. He checked the screen and then put it back in his pocket.

Josh paused for an awkward moment, not knowing what to say next. He had imagined this scene playing out exactly as it had the last time, with the only difference being that he would have all the answers and delivered them with dazzling confidence. He was now simply waiting for his cue.

"Someone came and got your stuff a while ago. If you're missing something, it ain't here," Pete said indifferently. He was looking off behind Josh. "Is that your car?"

"No, it's a friend's car from church," he answered.

"Church? Oh yeah, look at you with your Bible. So do you have to wear crap clothes when you become a Christian or is that just your new style?"

There was the Pete Josh knew. He was sure that he would be able to give his speech any moment now. Maybe Pete just needed a little prodding...

"No, as long as you're willing to come to church, you can wear whatever you want. How about you come with me sometime?"

Pete's lazy gaze into the distance broke with a jolt. He looked at Josh with puzzlement, as if Josh had invited him to do something completely irrational, like shave his head.

"I'd rather not do anything that holds the possibility that I could end up standing on someone's porch in an awful suit like that talking about Jesus and all his buddies."

"But the stories are really good. I mean, even if you aren't religious, the stories are interesting," Josh said enthusiastically. "They've inspired all sorts of works of art for centuries."

"Yeah, and even before the Bible stole those stories from so-called pagan religions, they were inspiring people. I don't need to read the Bible's version of those stories. I can read the originals. I'm reading the Epic of Gilgamesh now, and guess what? It was written thousands of years before that thing," he said, pointing to Josh's Bible. "Every story in the Bible was hijacked from some other culture."

Josh's heart sank in his chest. Clearly, he was not going to get to deliver the rebuttal to the insults of the previous encounter. He felt cheated and angry. He wanted to appear smart, like Jimmy, rather than like a fool in a clown suit.

"Well, then you know where you're going," lashed out Josh before he could think about what he was saying.

"What?" answered Pete. "Oh, I'm supposed to be scared now, tough guy?"

"That's right. You'd better be afraid of God, because the way you're ignoring him, you're headed right to Hell, and your pretty-boy clothes and stupid haircut won't save you!"

"Alright, then I'll see you there!" yelled Pete and slammed the door in Josh's face. "And get off my porch," came a final directive through the door.

Josh wanted to let out a yell of anger but found himself unable to move. Great, he thought, here we go again.

He rose slowly out of his body but this time didn't marvel at being able to see through himself, being able to look down at his body, or anything else related to the world's backwards trip to the starting point. He was simply too angry to enjoy observing anything about his ethereal float back to the Camaro. The barn swallow made it back to the starting point. Josh slid through the car's metal roof and back down into his body. As he checked to see if he could move his arms again, he was greeted with soft applause.

"Hey, that was great," said Jimmy sarcastically. "You really went in there and saved the day."

"Well, what was that anyway? What is the point of this whole thing? Are we just trying to make me look stupid as many times as possible? I don't need this!"

"You need to take a deep breath and calm down. Getting angry isn't going to help anything. In fact, it's going to make everything a lot worse."

"But I didn't have a chance to say anything about time. What was the point of starting over? Why should I keep going back there if it's different every time?"

"You tell me, Josh. What's your goal? To mechanically repeat clever things that someone tells you, or to learn to think critically about God so that you'll be prepared for anything you face in the future? You know what happens to people who try to take the cheap way out by just learning to parrot what other people say? They repeat what they've learned at the wrong times, and they end up making no sense at all. The reality is you can't memorize all the answers in preparation for everything someone could possibly ask. You have to go way deeper and learn to think."

Josh was already tired of having to admit he was wrong, but he understood the reasoning behind what Jimmy was saying.

"And Josh," continued Jimmy, "telling people who don't believe in God that they're going to Hell? Tell me what's wrong with that."

"If they think God is fiction, they think Hell is fiction, too," said Josh dejectedly.

"Talk about putting the cart before the horse...You want to make people fear Hell, help them believe in God first." Jimmy punctuated what he said next by tapping Josh on the shoulder. "Don't ever take pleasure in saying what you said back there."

"Alright, alright," answered Josh. "But if I get out of this car now and go down there again, I'll just get a new situation? I mean, will Pete say something new to challenge God?"

"Do you have the answer to the last challenge? If you don't, you'll have to go through the same thing again. When you discover the answer, the scene will move on to the next phase as if you had already helped Pete through it."

"But I don't know the answer. I don't know Gilgamesh, and I don't know anything about pagan stories. What am I supposed to answer?"

"It's an interesting accusation," said Jimmy. "You know, sometimes you don't have to be perfectly familiar with the examples people throw at you to come up with answers. Sometimes, you can use what you know about human nature. Someone says that two stories are alike, so one must have copied from the other? Have you ever heard the saying 'there's nothing new under the sun'?"

"Of course."

"People have always told stories based on what happens in the world around them. Imagine someone writes a work of fiction about a flood, simply because it rains a lot. Decades later, a real flood occurs, and someone writes about it. Does it make sense to say that the non-fictional account of the real flood was a copy of the fictional flood story?"

"Not at all," answered Josh.

"And think about this: the idea of being saved by someone existed a long time before Jesus saved us. That doesn't mean that the very real act of Jesus saving us was a copy of an old epic poem. In fact, it seems more logical to think that humans felt for a long time that we needed to be saved, and so we wrote stories about it while waiting for Jesus to come."

Josh resolved then and there to do his best not to lose his temper and lash out. The answers he needed to help people were always there. He just had to be willing to make the effort to find them.

✝✝✝

One Year and Eight Months Earlier

Winter had begun to settle on the old farmhouse. There had been no snow fall yet, but a series of cold snaps had pushed away the colorful spectacle of fall, leaving the skeleton-esque tree branches to impose on the sky their mysterious hieroglyphs.

Josh found that the one disadvantage of his attic bedroom was draftiness. A space heater set to high wasn't enough to overcome the cold, so he piled on extra blankets and slept soundly in his comfortable cocoon.

He was in bed asleep when a soft rapping at his door pulled him awake. From the light streaming in the window, he guessed he had again slept into the afternoon. Pete's dates with a seemingly endless stream of girls typically resulted in band practices being pushed to later in the evenings, so little by little Josh had found himself becoming a night owl.

"If this is Zack, the shirt is dirty, dude. You'll have to wear something else," Josh shouted while rolling over and positioning a pillow over his head, hoping to sleep a little longer.

Zack, fascinated by bands who were so obscure that no one could level criticism at them, had become infatuated with one of Josh's T-shirts, which featured the logo of a strange band that Josh actually believed wasn't real. The band, "Neglected Shrubbery", presented itself as a tribute band to Monty Python. As soon as Zack had seen it, he began asking if he could borrow it at least once a week.

"It's not Zack, but I think I know what shirt you're talking about, oddly enough," came the answer in a girl's voice.

Josh threw off the covers, got out of bed, and searched the floor for something he could hurriedly throw on. The floor presented him an embarrassment of possibilities, albeit rather smelly ones.

"One second!" he shouted.

Josh threw on a shirt and, in one of those coincidences that seem more meaningful than they actually are, saw that it was the Neglected Shrubbery T-shirt.

"Be right there," he said as he jumped into a pair of wrinkled jeans.

Josh patted down his uncombed hair and assessed his look in the mirror. It was a disaster but conveyed the air of a struggling artist. He figured that would help it go over.

He opened the door to reveal Della, who had traded her usual radiant summer dresses for black tights, a pink angora sweater, and a delicate scarf. She looked behind him into the man cave that was his room and gave a chuckle.

"Now this is the room of a single guy," she said. "And since you already announced that shirt was dirty, I'll skip the hello hug."

The disappointment at hearing that last sentence caused Josh to imagine himself becoming a veritable laundry artist to ensure that such a missed opportunity would never happen again.

"So what are you up to today?" asked Josh. "What day is it, anyway?'

"Sunday! Geeze, you clearly don't keep up with the world around you. Anyway, I dropped by to say hi to the guys and to see if you wanted to take me to dinner, which, if you're keeping score, is in about three hours."

"Right, yeah. That sounds great, but we haven't gotten paid for our last set of gigs yet, so I'm a little strapped for cash."

"That's okay. I just made some money, so I'll invite you this time and you can get me next time—assuming, of course, you'll be able to stand eating with me again," Della said with a tone of exaggeration, as if it was impossible that Josh could want anything else.

Josh felt bad about not being able to pay for dinner, but he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity. And he would definitely take her out as soon as he got paid. He knew Della was a student, so she probably didn't have much money either, which made her invitation all the more sincere to him. He seemed to remember asking her where she worked, but he couldn't recall now.

"Sounds great. I'll even run this amazing T-shirt through the laundry so I can look my best," Josh said jokingly.

"I think an incinerator would do better on that than a washing machine would," Della said, clearly only half joking. "I'll pick you up later. Ta ta."

Della turned and headed down the stairs. As Josh watched her go, she turned around deliberately and caught him gazing dreamily at her. She smiled almost imperceptibly and then continued on her way. Josh blushed and in embarrassment gave a meager wave of his hand too late for her to notice.

He turned back into his room and began straightening up. He felt like he had been lucky that his slovenliness hadn't put her off. He'd make sure from now on that his room was a more welcoming place.

The final act of the deep cleaning was to bestow upon Zack the prized Neglected Shrubbery T-shirt. In a nascent feeling of jealousy, he knew that, if nothing else, Della would appreciate Zack less for wearing it.

# Chapter 7

## The One True God

"All who fashion idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know, that they may be put to shame. Who fashions a god or casts an idol that is profitable for nothing?" (Isaiah 44:9-10 English Standard Version).

✝✝✝

Present Day

Josh was about to step out of the car to start time in motion again when a thought crossed his mind. Each time he had come back to the car, he felt re-energized, or at least not any more tired than he had felt when he and Jimmy first arrived. But what about Jimmy? And, moreover, how was it that this whole process seemed normal to Jimmy? Who was he, exactly? Josh would have remembered seeing someone like Jimmy around. With his stylish clothes, distinctive hat, and vintage car, how could anyone not remember him?

The curious look on Josh's face must have betrayed his thoughts.

"You worry about you right now, little man," said Jimmy. "Plenty of time to think about me later. But don't worry. I don't get bored easily, and I don't mind waiting here as long as it takes."

Josh, completely unsatisfied with Jimmy's answer, resigned himself to not knowing for a while longer.

He opened the car door and set the world in motion. The familiar barn swallow traced its familiar path, the airplane headed across the sky, and the trees swayed gently in the wind. Josh crossed his familiar path as well, which ended with the sound of creaking porch planks and a confident series of knocks on the front door.

Pete opened the door, still dressed like a barefoot GQ model, but now looking somehow less hostile, less sarcastic. Josh thought that he could even discern the shade of a welcoming smile.

"Wow, it's been forever," said Pete. "You look like you've been hanging in there," he said after giving Josh a quick once over.

Josh was completely taken aback. He knew Pete thought he looked terrible, but Pete had made an effort not to tell him as much. Josh had gotten use to open insults and hadn't expected this attempt at politeness.

"Thanks, Pete. I am doing really well, actually. And hey, you seem to be doing fantastic as usual. Like the new look."

"Thanks," said Pete, pushing back his lock of bangs.

"So listen, man. I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I thought I'd drop by to say hi to you guys, and while I'm here maybe tell you a little about what I've rededicated my life to." Josh raised his Bible slightly, drawing Pete's attention to it. "Do you have some time?"

Pete checked his phone quickly and put it back in his pocket.

"Sorry," Pete said. "Just checking for a message. I've got a date tonight."

"No problem," answered Josh, working hard to hide his amazement at hearing Pete say the word "sorry".

"Look, you know that people come here all the time to talk about their religions. Last month some guy came here talking about a religion I'd never even heard of. I asked him why I should listen to his spiel, and he said because it's all true. I asked him how he knew that, and he pulled out a thick book and told me it was all written in there. I told him that everyone who comes here to talk about religion has their own book, and everyone says their book is the reason they're right. By that logic, they all have to be wrong, because they can't all use the same argument to say their god is the one true god. Thanks, but no thanks."

Josh nodded his head and thought for a moment about what all this meant. The first time Josh had talked with Pete, Pete's attitude had been one of total derision. It appeared that as Pete's challenges were overcome, his bad attitude had been tempered. Not to say that Pete had been converted, but rather successful answers to his challenges had at least made Pete civil. That made sense. Even if someone doesn't agree with you, if they respect your thought process and know that you care, they'll give you a shot.

But how could Josh respond to this latest critique of faith? Wasn't Pete right? Didn't every religion point to a holy text to give proof of its supremacy? Josh wanted to be careful with his response. He wanted to be respectful of the honest enquiry Pete had made. Most of all, he wanted his answer to show evidence of the level of critical thinking and understanding that he hoped to embody.

"You're right, Pete. Pointing to a book in that way isn't enough. People have been writing stories since the beginning of time, but a holy book has to be so much more than fiction. I guess I'd say that the Bible's connections to history and historical figures is undeniable. Many different kinds of people acknowledge the historical truth of Biblical events. People visit the places described in the Bible. They study the history of the cultures where people described in the Bible really lived. There are so many events and people connecting the Bible to the world we live in, but I'll just mention one. After Jesus was crucified, if he wasn't truly resurrected like the Bible tells us, why wasn't his body there in the tomb when people looked for it? And how is it that multiple historical figures wrote corroborating descriptions of Jesus' life and resurrection? You can go even further. There are a ton of angles to look at this from. No other supposed religion comes even close to claiming the level of historical truth that is present in the Bible. If I were you, when I heard people claiming that their book represents the truth, I'd ask them to show you the connections with history. And I think it's a great idea to spend time reading those books, but I think if you hold your search to a higher standard, you will, without a doubt, be struck by the truth of the Bible. And if you ever want to talk about it, let me know. I'll be around."

Josh knew he had just pushed Pete's attention span as far as he could, maybe too far. Pete, however, appeared to have listened, and, best of all, he wasn't laughing in Josh's face.

"There are a lot of things to consider," said Pete. "The subject can be difficult to grasp. Hey, I've been listening to a band whose lyrics make references to the Bible that are over my head. Maybe you can help me with them."

"Yeah, sure. I might have to look some of them up, too, but I know lots of people who can help."

"I've got to take off now, but I'm sure I'll see you around," Pete said. "The guys are inside. Head on in and say hello."

"Thanks, Pete," answered Josh, who stepped into the living room. Pete disappeared down the hall, presumably to find a pair of shoes.

Josh knew he had just accomplished something amazing. It might have seemed like nothing to an outsider, but Josh had just established an open line of communication with one of the most stubborn, egotistical people he knew. It was a much better strategy than trying to force Pete to accept God immediately as the result of a ten minute conversation in a doorway.

Then it dawned on him: he had passed the first test of the day. Time was still flowing normally, and he was about to continue on to new ground.

✝✝✝

One Year and Seven Months Earlier

For Josh, there was nothing more depressing than visiting the cemetery in winter. It was a time when the whole world seemed to echo the death that was everywhere below the ground, a time when loss seemed to be multiplied by the absence of thriving and vibrant life in the world around him.

He made his way down the winding path to the familiar plots. He sat down between the two graves and looked at his parents' headstones, which featured simple designs showing his parents' names, dates of birth and death, a cross, and a floral border. The headstones were filthy and, not having anything else to clean them with, Josh grabbed hold of his sleeve and rubbed the dirt away.

"Sorry I haven't been around in a while," Josh said while looking into the distance, as if he were somehow trying to avoid looking at them. "I finally have a place of my own, and I'm making money doing what I love. I'm in a band, and we're playing places all the time now. I actually wrote the music to our last song, and it's really good, I think."

A couple of dead leaves were kicked up by the cold breeze and landed on his mom's headstone. Josh picked one of them up and held it by the stem, spinning it slowly.

"I also met someone. Her name is Della. We've had a few dates already, and it's been great. She studies art and has shows at galleries of her paintings."

Josh had attended one of Della's shows on their third date. The theme of the exhibition, he was told, was internal struggle. To capture what she called the "inability of the mind to identify and act upon its own shortcomings", she had created five oil paintings in a low-light environment without the use of her hands. It appeared that she had covered herself with paint and rolled over one of the canvases. The work attracted a lot of attention, and Della spent most of the evening talking to what Josh assumed were interested art enthusiasts. She certainly seemed to be successful judging by how much money she spent. As far as Josh could tell, selling her paintings was her only source of income.

"I've been so busy that I've not had time for much else. Someday I might start school, but not right now. I don't even have time to go to church now because of our band practices. We don't have a set schedule so I have to be available and at the ready. It's okay though, because I can still read the Bible whenever I want."

Josh felt guilty, as if he had lied. Yes, he could have read the Bible when he wanted to, but the times when he actually did read it had become rare. In fact, even seeing his Bible now made him feel guilty. As a result, he had stuck it in the bottom drawer of his nightstand and rarely took it out.

"I guess there's not much else. I live in a pretty nice place, I guess. Lots of room."

Josh paused, trying to think of something else to say. He had, without realizing it, moved further than he had realized from his parents.

Ever since his parents had died when he was 11, Josh had been coming to the cemetery regularly to recount every detail of his life. He had organized his life in a way that he knew would allow him to see them again someday. Everything he believed in told him that they were waiting for him in heaven, and that the pain of having lost them would be erased one day.

Now, however, his beliefs were taking a back seat to other endeavors, and without having realized it was happening, Josh's connection to his parents was slowly fading. He wasn't fully conscious of why it was happening, but the result was a feeling of guilt that he couldn't place and a growing sense of shame at the things he shared with them, as if he knew those things were building walls between him and his parents. In the end, to avoid the guilt and the shame, he had begun visiting their graves less and less.

Josh rose to his feet, dusted off the dirt from his jeans, and gave a final look at his parents gravestones. He had the growing feeling that the only thing left of his parents were those awful, cold stones, and he had to fight to push out of his mind the thought that he'd be better off no longer coming here at all.

✝✝✝

He had only been dating Della for a little over a month, but Josh had begun dreaming of it lasting forever. Although the rational part of him knew that couples had to pass through many long stages to arrive at a point when they could honestly say they needed to be joined forever, the unthinking, purely emotional version of himself wanted to steal Della away from the world and run off to a place where rules didn't apply, a place where no one and nothing could interfere with what he was sure would be a great and endless love story.

"Della, do you ever think about...forever?" asked Josh.

They were lying on the living room couch, her head on his chest, both of them staring out the window at the falling snow.

"Honestly, never. I try to make what I can out of the present. Forever seems like a long way away, and what would thinking about it amount to anyway?"

Josh realized they were talking about two separate subjects. He became worried that a speech about his undying love might be silly, given that she hadn't guessed what he was hinting at it, so he decided to continue on her theme.

"But don't you think you have to prepare for the future beyond just living day to day?"

"I think the future is just a collection of things we throw there from the present. It's like a painting. Today, I may love yellow, so I'll paint the sun. Tomorrow, maybe I'll be in the mood for green and paint trees. Somewhere in the future, there will be a painting of a sun and some trees."

"So the future is kind of the sum of the parts of the present?"

"What else would it be?" she asked.

In reality, Josh couldn't have cared less about the future at the moment. He ran his hand through Della's fragrant, red hair. He couldn't imagine any future without the feeling of eternity he was experiencing right then. He felt like he was going to live forever and nothing was ever going to change.

"Well...what if it's more like the stock market?"

"What?" asked Della incredulously. This comparison was clearly not one that an artist of the dreamy romantic type could relate to.

"Yeah, I mean, every day, you do something that is going to pay off big in the future. The whole ends up much, much bigger than the sum of the parts. Isn't that kind of what most people do? I mean, take religion for example. The time people put into their faith results in, like, the biggest jackpot of all time, right?" he asked, trying to move the subject off of money to something she might prefer.

"Both those types of people are missing the point. What if you die today? What good will the money do you? And those people who have had the carrot of a utopian afterlife dangled in front of their noses just to keep them from committing crime, well, they probably have nothing to offer the present anyway."

Josh felt like he had just taken a punch. Religion as a way to scare people into obeying the law? Was that really all she thought it was?

"So, what do you believe happens after we die?" asked Josh, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

"I have no idea, and neither does anyone else until it happens. People can pretend all they want, but they don't really know."

"So you've never gone to church? What do you believe in?"

"I went for a while but stopped. I consider myself a spiritual person, but not necessarily religious in the traditional manner."

Josh wasn't sure exactly what this meant, but he had heard other people say the same thing. He had always assumed it meant that they believed generally the same thing but with different interpretations of the details that kept them from wanting to enter into conversations. But he had always assumed they were Christians, after all.

"Oh," he said, betraying in that one syllable his surprise and disappointment.

Della rolled over to look him straight in the eyes, her long hair cascading down over him.

"Oh Josh, are you going to kick me out of here if I don't think exactly like you?" she asked, giving him an affected look of sadness that was much more playful than anything else.

Josh laughed at the thought. Of course not. Wasn't everyone nowadays promoting respecting other people's opinions? So what if Della's opinions were a little different from his. What would it matter in the end anyway? Someday in the future they'd have time to discuss it. It was too early to get hung up on such things now.

"Well, you can stay under certain conditions," he answered, pointing to his cheek.

Della laughed and moved closer. She touched her lips to the spot he had indicated. The kiss felt electric, as if it had made his entire existence surge up from the darkness. Any questions he had regarding her spirituality and what exactly it meant vanished and were replaced by the simple desire to live in the overwhelmingly pleasurable present.

# Chapter 8

## An Unexpected Reversal

"Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy," (Proverbs 27:6 English Standard Version).

✝✝✝

Present Day

Josh left the living room and walked down the hallway past the kitchen. He heard noise coming from the bedroom at the end of the hall, which is where he remembered Zack's room to be.

Zack had always seemed slightly stand-offish to Josh. Maybe it was the fact that Zack was a few years older, but it had always seemed to him while he was living there that Zack was the least interested in getting to know him. Because of this, Josh wondered how hard it was going to be to strike up an honest conversation with him.

The hallway was decorated with aged, peeling wallpaper. There were a few ironic picture frames filled with images of famous rockstars hanging where you would normally expect to see family pictures. There were quite a few darkened outlines of picture frames that had been removed. In a few of those spots, someone had drawn, in permanent marker, stick figure families in various postures.

Josh walked down to Zack's door and knocked. The worst that could happen was that he could fail and then have to start over, right?

"Who is it?" called Zack from the other side of the door.

"Hi, Zack. It's Josh. Josh Vaughan. I just came back to say hi to everyone."

Josh heard footsteps approach the door. When it opened, he was surprised to see Zack dressed in the most boring clothes he'd ever seen him in. Gone was the look of an up-and-coming rocker complete with obscure concert T-shirts. His brown hair, which was always short and messy, was now styled and clean. He had shaved off his mustache and goatee, and his trademark pork-pie hat was nowhere to be found.

Zack must have noticed Josh's surprise.

"I'm interning at a finance company," Zack said. "It's not a place you want to stand out because of your look. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I guess not. Finance? When did you start doing that?"

"I always did that. I was just taking a breather from school, but I finished up last semester. Might go to grad school next, depending on whether I get offered a job."

Josh was struck by how wrong he had been about Zack. He had assumed music was his only interest. He had assumed he hadn't been to college. He had assumed too many things about him without actually trying to get to know him.

"I had no idea. That's great, man. Congrats."

"Thanks," said Zack and paused, clearly waiting for Josh to either continue the conversation or leave.

"I really came back here to ask you if you would consider accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior, like I have," said Josh. "I can help you answer any questions you may have."

Zack let the words sink in and then gave a sarcastic smile.

"You? Help me? Remember when you first came here? You claimed you were a Christian. But how did you act? How did your beliefs make you act any differently from anyone else? I could argue you behaved worse than most people in the end. No, I don't think I want any 'help' from you."

Josh felt anger brewing inside him. He hadn't come here to be questioned by someone he didn't even respect, moreover by someone who didn't even really know him.

"I don't really think you know what you're talking about," responded Josh rudely, and no sooner had the words left his mouth than the world around him froze and he began the slow drift backwards through time to the starting point in the black Camaro.

✝✝✝

Josh dropped down through the car's roof and into his waiting body.

"Oh come on," Josh said. "I can't ever get angry, even a little bit? The guy deserved a lot more. What does he know anyway?"

"Why don't you look for the answer in the Bible, if you can't remember?" said Jimmy, whose calmness conveyed the certainty of already knowing the answer.

Josh frowned and shook his head. He knew he was wrong but didn't want to admit it. Zack had touched a nerve and Josh felt like behaving irrationally.

"Come on, now," said Jimmy.

Josh closed his eyes, thumbed through the pages of his Bible randomly, and brought his index finger down hard on the page.

"'Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God,' James 1:19-20," read Josh.

"But be honest with yourself," said Jimmy. "You already knew getting angry was selfish. Any time you get angry just to protect your ego, you can be sure you're not doing the work of God, Josh."

Josh nodded reluctantly and prepared himself to try again. Maybe all he needed to do was word what he had said previously a little differently?

The scene played out over and over again. No matter what he tried, the result was the same. Josh would find himself at Zack's door, and after the requisite small talk, Zack would shut down the conversation by essentially calling Josh a hypocrite.

Josh tried hundreds of variants on the same theme:

"Can I talk about God with you?"

"Maybe we could read Bible passages together?"

"Could we share our favorite verses?"

"How does the Bible guide your day?"

And so forth, ad nauseum.

Back in the Camaro, Josh was ready to call it quits.

"Look, there are some people you just can't reach," said Josh angrily. "All I have to do is the best I can, and after that, it's not my problem."

"Who gets to say if you've done your best?" asked Jimmy. 'You? Won't that be convenient: 'Hey, I've done my best, I'm going to go home and relax now!' Come on, Josh. People do that all the time. You wanna be like those people who think that once they've been insulted, they've done everything God wants from them? Some people actually enjoy getting insulted when they're trying to talk about God, because they think that provides the evidence that they're working hard for Him. God knows when you put in the work and when you don't. You look into your heart and tell me you don't feel like you are giving up."

"I'm out of solutions. I've tried everything."

"No, Josh. You're still looking for answers in yourself even after exhausting everything you know. You have all the resources you need right there in your hands, but you have to let yourself go and learn to accept the help. If you don't acknowledge the limits of human understanding, you'll never see human error, and you won't be able to pull yourself out of difficult situations. We all need help that comes from beyond us. You need to learn to turn to it faster now, and as time passes, your instinct will grow."

Josh knew his decisions were being clouded by frustration. He did, after all, have the most amazing gift right there in his hands, yet he kept going with his own instincts, which he knew were flawed. He again placed his Bible on his lap, flipped through the pages, and brought his index finger down at random onto a page with a soft thump.

"'Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.' 1 Peter 5:5," read Josh.

He thought over every conversation he had had with Zack over the course of the day. There was a common denominator that brought everything to a halt every time. He just had to face up to it.

Josh stepped out of the Camaro and set time in motion. He made his way to the house and then to Zack's room. He knocked on the door for what seemed like the thousandth time. He again made small talk with Zack, all the while hoping he could get it right this time. The moment arrived.

"Look, I guess I did come here with something more to say," Josh began. "When I was living here, I didn't live up to my convictions. I pretty much gave up on everything for a while. I knew it was wrong, but it all just kind of snuck up on me before I realized it was happening. I'm not saying living here with you guys was what caused it. I'm not blaming anyone but myself. I would completely understand if you thought that, even now, I was just doing whatever was convenient without actually believing in anything, but all I ask is that you consider that I was weak and that I'm now working to make sure I stay strong. Part of that is taking strength from friends by learning from them and helping them when I can. If you would ever share with me the things that help you stay strong, I would really appreciate it."

Zack looked slightly blindsided by this speech, and for a moment appeared to roll his eyes. But after a few moments, he nodded his head.

"Everyone goes through these types of moments, and that's okay," replied Zack. "It's the people who don't admit it that I can't stand. You give me a call when you want, and we'll set something up. I'm glad you are doing better, man."

"Thank you, really. I'll do that."

"I'm about to get out of here. I'll walk you out."

"Actually," said Josh, I was hoping to talk to Felix while I was here. Is he around?"

"I don't think that's such a great idea. Why don't you come back later?"

"Well, I mean, I'm here now, right? It won't take long," answered Josh. He wondered why Zack would think that a quick conversation wouldn't be a good idea. "Just point me his way and I'll say a quick hello."

"He moved into your old room," said Zack. "He's up there now."

"Great," answered Zack.

"No, man. Don't go up there. A lot has changed since you've been gone."

"Of course it has. I wouldn't have expected any different."

"This is different. You need to come back later."

"It's okay—I won't bother him that much," Josh said as he turned to walk down the hallway.

Zack stepped into the hallway behind him.

"Josh! Hey, wait."

Josh turned around to see a panicked look on Zack's face.

"He's not alone," said Zack. "He's with Della."

# Chapter 9

## Confusion

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9 English Standard Version).

✝✝✝

One Year and Three Months Earlier

It was the biggest show Round the Corners had ever played. The sold-out theatre in Cincinnati held over five thousand people. The stage lights were so bright that Josh couldn't make out the faces of anyone beyond the first few rows. Beyond the lights, he could only see waves of movement in the shadowy recesses of the hall. Towers of speakers lined the stage. They sent the musical heartbeat of the evening into the great body of revelers.

The band had been playing for over an hour. The hot stage lights had caused Josh to sweat from the first song of the set. Now an hour later, Josh felt like he was going to pass out from dehydration.

As the current song finished and the crowd erupted in applause, Josh turned to catch the attention of one of the stagehands. He raised his hand to his mouth and made the universal gesture for "drink". Pete saw this and didn't lose a beat.

"Alright, yeah!" screamed Pete into the microphone. "Let's get the drinks flowing people!"

The crowd cheered raucously. Josh was used to Pete's theatrics by now and had come to understand that part of Pete's appeal to the audience was his call to hedonism.

Josh and Zack tuned their instruments while Pete made conversation with some of the front-row audience members. Josh figured there was only about thirty minutes left of the show, but he was much more exhausted than normal. This show had been the most high-energy performance the band had yet given.

A waitress arrived on stage with large plastic cups. She sat them on the stage near each musician, handing the final one to Felix, who took a long drink before letting out a primal yell.

Josh picked up his cup and saw what looked like cola poured over ice. As he brought it to his lips, the strong smell made him aware that this certainly was not the soft drink he had hoped for. He lowered the cup before tasting it. Pete noticed and gave a laugh.

"Look everybody! My guitarist isn't in the mood to drink with us tonight!" Pete said and laughed again. Boos rolled through the audience. "Come on, Josh. Just this once. Did all these people pay money to come here and see you turn up your nose rather than share a toast with them?"

Josh felt incredibly embarrassed and wished Pete would have let him off the hook. He was pretty sure that the crowd was joking, but some of them actually did sound irritated. A low chant of "Drink! Drink! Drink!" was growing louder and louder.

Josh looked into the cup again. He saw several large chunks of ice. He really did need something to drink, and now he had the added pressure of the crowd and Pete's antics. If he could just manage to take an ice cube without drinking whatever was in the glass, wouldn't it all work out okay?

Josh brought the cup to his lips and tilted it up. The crowd cheered wildly. Josh went for one of the ice cubes but got a stinging throat full of beverage. He coughed and turned red, much to the amusement of the crowd. Josh lifted the cup a second time, and as he tilted his head back, he saw Della off stage, laughing and cheering for him. He took a second gulp of the drink and felt the warmth descend his throat. It sent shivers through his body. He reached into the cup to grab the ice cube and popped it into his mouth. He raised his cup to the crowd with a smile, and Felix began the drum solo that signaled the start of the next song.

Josh looked again at Della, who applauded him and laughed.

For the remainder of the set, Josh felt like his body had been set to auto pilot. He still managed to get through the songs, but the sips that he continued to take from his cup acted on him quickly, making him feel numb and much less aware of what was happening around him.

Josh barely remembered the end of the show. One moment, he was standing on stage listening to wild applause while staring into the bright stage lights, and the next he was in the back of the van, snuggling up to Della and staring at passing headlights as the band returned to Lexington.

"Wake up, sleepy head!" Della said as the van came to a stop and the motor turned off.

Josh lifted his head off Della's shoulder and saw that they had made it home. He had slept for almost the entire two-hour trip.

Della helped Josh out of the van and into the house. They made their way upstairs to his room.

"Can you get me a glass of water?" asked Josh, who was more dehydrated now than he had been during the show.

"Sure," answered Della, who left the room and made her way down the stairs to the kitchen.

Josh undressed and got into bed. It was late and he was looking forward to sleeping off the excesses of the night.

Della came back with a glass of water. Josh took it and downed the entire glass. He immediately felt better.

"Thank you!" he said. "Thanks for everything. That was a crazy night."

"Definitely. You were hilarious," she said and bent down to kiss him.

"Are you going to be around tomorrow?" he asked.

"Oh, I think so," she answered. Della walked over to the door and turned off the light. Josh heard the bedroom door close. Then he heard footsteps coming toward the bed. As his eyes adjusted to the light, he could make out Della's silhouette as she removed her clothing. He heard her dress fall to the floor.

Josh froze. His heart began to race. The whole evening had put him in uncharted territory, and he was in no condition to assert what he knew to be right, so he said nothing. He didn't have the strength or awareness to make a good decision. He simply allowed the moment to impose upon him the entropy of an unguided life.

He felt the sheets move and the cool air of the room rush underneath them as they were lifted slightly. The cool air was replaced by the warmth of Della, who slid into bed and wrapped her arms around him. Josh held her tightly, surrendering himself to the moment. This is what love must be like, he thought as he brought his lips to hers.

✝✝✝

Present Day

The stairs leading up to Josh's old room now seemed like the unscalable wall of an enemy castle. He stood looking up the stairway, feeling as if he'd been shot by a thousand arrows from a fortified position, arrows that had found the exact weak points in his armor.

Hearing her name had briefly made him feel like he was back in the past, back in a time when he had thought that he and Della were going to be together forever. Now, those feelings were mixed with the feelings of rejection and confusion at having been abandoned abruptly with no explanation. How could she have not wanted to know if he had survived that night? How could he have meant so little to her?

Josh had to fight the urge to turn and run. If he quit now, who would blame him for not continuing? He was sure that Jimmy would understand if he wanted to stop.

He took the first step up the familiar staircase. What would he say to them? How would they react when they saw him? Would he be able to do anything other than break down emotionally and let loose a childish rant?

As he made his way up the stairs, his legs began to feel weak. His heart began beating quickly, and his mind was racing. At the top of the stairs, he heard their voices punctuated by Della's carefree laughter. A couple of steps across creaking floorboards led him to his former door. Felix and Della must have heard his approach, because the talking died down.

Josh stood before the door, and as he raised his hand to knock, he suddenly became overtaken by the need to hear an explanation. This was his former room, his former girlfriend, his former bandmate. They had moved on as if he had never existed. They had replaced him as if he were irrelevant, as if he were just a movie extra in the film of their lives.

Without his realizing it, Josh's purpose had suddenly disappeared. Gone was his desire to help his old acquaintances. Gone was his desire to bring people to the beauty of God. All-consuming was his desire to have an answer to the causes of the frustration of his past. The past had caught up to and overwhelmed Josh, to the point that he may as well have still been living in it.

Josh knocked on the door. As he waited for it to open, more and more things he wanted to know about surged into his mind. How did it all happen? How could they have watched him get into so much trouble without helping? And where had his prized guitar gone anyway? Did they keep it? Sell it? Give it to someone?

The door opened. Felix was standing in front of him, a carbon-copy of the Felix of old. Della was sitting on the bed, wearing a little red dress that Josh had wrapped his arms around so many times. The sight of her brought back the memory of her touch, her smell, and the memory of the dreams he had had for a future with her.

The smile Felix had on his face when the door opened froze awkwardly as he wondered how to react. Della looked away from Josh and lowered her eyes.

"Well, look at you both," said Josh. "My old room. My old girlfriend. Hey, do you still go by 'Felix', or did you change your name to 'Josh', too, so you could really fit into the life you stole from me?"

Felix's taken-aback look was now replaced by anger.

"I think you should leave," said Felix.

"Of course you do," replied Josh. "I can see you want to get back to my life, and my being here makes that a little inconvenient. Hey, speaking of stealing, is my guitar anywhere here? You could give that back at least."

At those words, Della looked up at Josh with a look of surprise and disbelief.

"You don't remember?" she asked. "I'm sorry Josh. I really am. I shouldn't have—"

"—You don't have to say anything," interrupted Felix. "You don't remember this, smart guy?"

Felix pushed back his sleeve, revealing a four-inch scar on his forearm.

"I was lucky you missed my wrist. I could have died!" yelled Felix.

Felix walked over to the closet and took out a large cardboard box.

"Here you go, friend," Felix said sarcastically. "I was saving this in case I decided to sue you. Take it and get out of here."

Felix shoved the box into Josh's arms and slammed the bedroom door.

Thoroughly confused, Josh took a few steps down the hall before he set the box on the floor. He took a few deep breaths to collect himself, then kneeled down and removed the cardboard lid.

It was his guitar. At least, it was most of his guitar. The body had been smashed in half. The neck was broken, and shards of wood were jutting out. The strings were broken and wrapped nonsensically among the wooden debris. As he examined the contents of the box, wondering what or who could have caused this, he saw that the maple wood of the fractured neck was stained with violet smears.

Josh leaned in closely and raised the neck up to get a better look at it. He looked closely at the discoloration. It was blood.

He fell back dumbstruck against the wall. Before letting the neck fall back into the box, he saw a flash of orange plastic. He reached in and took it out. It was a pill container.

Slowly, memories began returning from the cloudy recesses of his mind. Slowly, the suppressed details of that nearly fatal night offered themselves up like the missing evidence of a long unsolved crime.

✝✝✝

One Year Earlier

"This isn't working," said Pete from the recording studio's control room. His voice came through the studio's monitors, where Josh, Felix, and Zack sat at the ready. "Trying to record this live isn't happening. Anybody against laying one track at a time?"

"Can we do the bass and the drums together?" asked Felix. "That way I won't lose my place."

Pete looked at the engineer, who gave a nod.

"Alright," said Pete. "Everyone else out."

Josh laughed, as "everyone else" clearly meant him. He stepped out into the waiting room, shut the studio door, and sat down on the couch. He took out his phone to see if he had received any messages from Della. He smiled when he saw her name.

Still on for tonight? read her text.

The plan was to celebrate the first recorded single from Round the Corners. The song had already garnered interest from the college radio station, which regularly advertised the band's live shows and gave enthusiastic reviews. Although the recording progress was slow, Pete, in his typical show of bravado, had organized a house party and invited more people than the house could hold to both listen to the new recording and enjoy a couple of live songs that the band had never played in public before. Although it made the band nervous to have already scheduled a party to celebrate work they hadn't accomplished yet, the fear of failing in front of their fans made them extra motivated to succeed.

Of course! typed Josh. Stay over tonight. I haven't seen you forever.

Josh surfed the internet while waiting for her response. In the background, Zack and Felix had begun laying down the foundation music of their recording.

It had been over a month since Della had spent the night at the house. During that time, they had gotten together for lunches and a movie or two, but Della had explained that she was in a period of intense exam preparation and absolutely had to succeed. She'd soon be finished and things would get back to normal.

Thirty minutes or so passed before Josh's phone beeped again. It was her response.

I'll see you at the party.

Josh's heart seemed to lift as if from a great ocean swell. He took her response as an affirmative and already looked forward to when they would be alone together after the party.

Minutes turned to hours as Zack and Felix endlessly started, stopped, restarted, improvised, took the occasional break, and argued about the arrangement. But finally, they made their way through the entire song perfectly, triggering a salvo of congratulatory cheers from the control room.

The waiting room door opened. Pete excitedly motioned to Josh.

"Let's go man. The mojo is right!" said Pete.

Josh walked into the studio and was greeted by the high fives of a very sweaty and rather smelly Felix.

"Dude, keep the magic going!" said Felix.

"Absolutely," answered Josh.

"We're never going to get through this tonight unless we record together," said Pete. "But it's got to be perfect. Can you handle this?"

"Of course," answered Josh. He wasn't about to be late for the party tonight.

Pete warmed up his vocal chords and sang a few improvisations into the microphone so that the engineer could get the levels rights. Josh played a few chords and adjusted the settings on his amp and his effects board.

"Okay," said the engineer through the monitors. "Get ready."

Josh listened intensely. First the drums came in. Pete found his cue and, in a surge of energy, pulled forth the best performance he had to offer. Josh could tell that he was going for it all in one take, and that with the force at which he was singing, his voice wouldn't manage many re-recordings. Josh knew he had to be perfect. The bass started the familiar riff. Josh worried for a moment that the settings he had chosen would be all wrong. He became paranoid and worried all in the space of a few seconds, but when the time came and he brought the pick down across the strings, the notes rang true.

Four minutes later, the guitar and vocals had been added flawlessly. Pete and Josh stood stunned when the studio light had changed from red to green, indicating that the recording had stopped. They knew what they had just done, and they knew that it had been perfect.

Felix and Zack burst into the room and hugged them both with such force that they almost knocked them over.

After Pete and the engineer set the mix where they wanted it, they played the song over the monitors of the studio. The band listened intensely, breaking out in smiles multiple times during the listening and erupting in applause and wild cheers at the end.

"And that is how it's done, boys," said Pete.

✝✝✝

The house party was in full force. Josh could barely cut a path through all the people to move from room to room. When he went up to his own room to see if Della was there, he found it full of strangers who were using it as a place to talk. Everywhere else in the house, the music was loud, the lighting was low, and the faces were mostly new. Josh was incredibly happy when he saw someone he knew, but in reality, there was only one person he was looking for: Della.

Suddenly, there was a pause in the music. It felt strange to suddenly hear everyone's voices around him. The crowd seemed generally confused as they waited for the next stage in the festivities. Not long after, the song the band had finished recording earlier came blaring through the sound system and was greeted by wild screams of enthusiasm.

Josh made his way downstairs to the jam room, which was also packed with partygoers. Josh stood next to a group of people as his eyes adjusted to the even darker lighting of the basement.

"This is going to be unbelievable," said one of the guys in the group to the others. "D says this will completely blow your mind." The man held something out to the group in his hand. Josh saw that they were pills of some kind. Several of the people in the group took them from him, popped them in their mouths, and chased them down with their drinks. Josh was shocked by how trusting these people were. It didn't seem like they had any idea what they had just taken.

"How is it that she always ends up at these things anyway?" said a young woman in the group whose tone was disdainful. "Every big party I end up at, it seems like she's there selling all the drugs. What, does she have, like, a monopoly on parties or something?"

"She always ends up at the right place at the right time," said the man. "When you're as hot as she is, you can pretty much get into any party you want. She always seems to find a way."

"Yeah, by sleeping with someone," replied the young woman, provoking uncontrollable laughter from the group.

Josh moved towards the back of the room where the instruments were set up for the mini concert they were going to give soon. He picked up his guitar and started tuning it with an electric tuner, trusting the digital readout since the music was too loud for him to actually hear anything.

As he was turning the tuning pegs, he noticed a little farther away another group of people closely gathered in a circle. One of the men took his wallet out of his back pocket, opened it, and took out a wad of bills. He handed them over to someone whose face Josh couldn't see, and in exchange received a small plastic bottle. As the group broke up, to his surprise he saw Della.

Josh shouted to her to catch her attention, but she seemed to be scanning the room looking for someone. Maybe she was looking for him?

A woman on the far side of the room caught Della's eye and gestured for her to come over. There, the two girls leaned in close to exchange a few words through the deafening music. While they were still close together, Josh saw the woman hand Della a wad of bills. Josh wondered why Della would be taking money from anyone here. She certainly wasn't selling art here. Della put the cash in her purse and brought out a small prescription bottle, which she handed to the woman, who quickly dropped it in her own purse. The two girls smiled at each other and then turned to drift on separate paths through the frenzied crowd.

Entrepreneur, thought Josh. Wasn't that the word Felix and Zack had used to describe Della the very first time Josh had met her? He had been confused by their use of that word back then. He had thought that was a strange way of describing someone who sold works of art, like Della supposedly did. Josh thought again about Della's artwork. She always gave complicated descriptions of what appeared to him to be completely random ways of throwing paint onto a canvas. Della always made it sound like it was profound somehow to paint as fast and as unusually as possible. The one thing he'd never seen her do was to create something that actually looked recognizable. Her paintings were always named after complicated emotions, and you had to look at them for a long time before you could convince yourself that there was something about the work that could suggest the possibility of whatever it was she was explaining...

And yet she always seemed to do so well financially at her shows. She always seemed to have so much money to spend. Who was buying these paintings? Were they actually buying paintings, or something else being disguised as a painting?

A sickening feeling overcame Josh. He felt nauseous. He unstrapped his guitar and let it fall to the floor. He doubled over, ran his hands through his hair, and closed his eyes as if he were hoping to be somewhere else when he opened them again.

"D", that man had called her. "D", who always finds herself selling at the big parties. Because, the woman had said, she always finds the right person to sleep with.

That couldn't be possible, thought Josh, but everything seemed to add up. Had Della really used him to get closer to the people who would buy her drugs? Had she really faked being his girlfriend all this time? This simply couldn't be. There had to be a mistake. Those weren't pill bottles. They were something else. They had to be. And "D"? That could have been anyone.

Josh rose to his feet, steadied himself, and started making his way to the other side of the room. It was difficult to make any progress with so many people jammed into one room, so he resorted to pushing people out of his way. As he approached the group where she was standing, Della realized that something was wrong. She broke off her conversation, closed her purse, and composed herself for whatever awaited her.

Josh's face was twisted in an angry smile.

"Hello dearest," he said.

Before she could answer, he grabbed her purse and pulled it from her shoulder.

"Ow!" she yelled. "What are you doing?"

Josh began opening the purse. Della reached out to stop him, attempting to take it back. Josh managed to reach in and pull out a small prescription bottle before she pulled the purse away.

"So this is more important than me, right?" asked Josh. "This is worth doing anything for? Well then, maybe I'm the one who knows nothing. Maybe I'm the only one here who has been getting it all wrong all this time!"

Josh turned and made his way back toward the instruments. Della followed him, reciting what seemed to Josh to be an endless amount of rehearsed excuses. He felt her tugging at his arm, but he shrugged her off.

"Josh! Josh! You have to listen to me!" Della cried.

Josh turned quickly, a look of anger on his face.

"What are these exactly?" Josh asked, opening the bottle and pouring the pills into his hand.

Della stood silent, unmoving, watching him. When one of the pills fell from Josh's hand to the floor, Della bent down quickly to pick it up.

"Amazing," said Josh. "If I threw these on the floor, you'd scramble after them like they were gold."

Josh took a few steps away from her and then noticed all the bottles on the counter of the wet bar. He stepped quickly over to it, took a bottle, and began swallowing the pills.

Della began backing away slowly, afraid of what would happen next.

Josh finished taking the pills and drank until the bottle was empty. He lowered his gaze back to Della as she moved away.

"There! Now I'm just like you. And you! And you!" he said, pointing randomly to people in the crowd, who didn't seem to notice anything unusual and certainly hadn't followed what had happened. "Where are you going now?" he asked as he saw Della moving farther away.

She turned and made her way as quickly as possible up the stairs. Josh started after her, but at that moment, Pete, Felix, and Zack came down to begin the show.

Forget her anyway, thought Josh as he made his way back to his guitar. He picked it up off the floor and began tuning it with difficulty because his hands were shaking from anger.

The band warmed up as more and more people crowded into the basement. Josh could feel the warmth of the alcohol entering his system. The alcohol made his body feel relaxed and numb, but he felt nothing beyond that. He wondered why anyone would pay for pills that didn't seem to do much. Maybe Della had not only been selling drugs, but selling fake drugs as well.

Pete stepped up to the microphone and looked out over the crowd as if he were standing in front of a stadium full of fans. His gestures were grandiose in an attempt to create the type of stage presence that could excite fans who were many rows away from a stage. He held up his arms in a "V" to gain everyone's attention.

"We hope you like our new single, which will officially be released on Monday!" said Pete, whose words were carried throughout the house by monitors for the guests who couldn't fit downstairs.

"We love you!" screamed a group of girls from somewhere upstairs. The band laughed. Then a group of guys comically yelled the same thing, causing everyone in the house to laugh.

"And we love you, beautiful people! All right! Let's rock! Ready boys? One, two, three, yeah!"

And with that, the band started playing their new single.

Josh had never felt like he did at that moment. Somewhere inside him, he was breaking in two. The world he thought he was living in had turned out to be a lie. He felt so stupid for not having seen who Della really was, and he couldn't stop wondering how she could have seen him as completely irrelevant, as just something to use and then throw away. How could love mean so much to him, but absolutely nothing to her? Weren't their limits in life that people couldn't go beyond? Weren't their certain things that were inviolable, such as love, that even cruel and inhuman people couldn't trample upon? If people were willing to do anything for selfish reasons, how could you ever really know anyone in life? How could you ever guarantee that life was anything other than a giant lie?

The band progressed from one song to the next, punctuated by Pete's ever-popular stage banter.

Josh closed his eyes and let the music wash over him. He was now feeling extremely unusual. He felt numb and euphoric in one sense, but at the same time out of control and terrified by it. When he opened his eyes, it was as if the world had slowed down around him. All the movement around him was followed by visual tracers of strange colors, as if multi-colored shadows were surging out of the darkness. Josh, in an increasingly confused state, believed that it was his guitar playing that was causing all of this. Somehow, his music was making these people incomprehensibly foreign to him.

Josh stopped playing his guitar and stood there, watching the sea of strange colors wash over the crowd. Never did it occur to him that the pills he had taken were acting violently on his system. Stopping the guitar, he thought, is apparently not enough. He had set something in motion that couldn't be stopped. He had started something that he no longer wanted any part of. He had to get out of it. He had to be free from all this. He had become a victim in the clutches of some monstrous predator, and he had to escape.

Josh took off his guitar, held it by the neck, raised it high in the air, and brought it crashing down against the floor. His field of vision was become narrower and narrower. He had to break out of it. He had to smash his way out of it. The darkness was coming for him, closing in on him. He raised the guitar again and struck out wildly with it. He heard yelling and commotion from the room. He continued to smash his guitar against whatever he could see. The music disappeared and was replaced by a muffled chaos. Total darkness had almost enveloped him. In one last effort, he raised what was left of his guitar and brought it down on Felix's drums. He heard a long howl before he was brutally subdued by unknown arms. Josh found himself on the floor, being held down and not able to fight it, his existence fading to black.

# Chapter 10

## Clarity

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." (Jeremiah 29:11 English Standard Version).

✝✝✝

Present Day

The full awareness of what had happened that night caused Josh to enter a state of shock. He had no memory of having returned to the black Camaro, but there he was. He had no idea how long he had been sitting in the passenger seat. He snapped out of it and looked at Jimmy.

"I was repressing all that," said Josh. "I kept telling myself it was the overdose that kept me from remembering. But that wasn't entirely true. I guess I was just fighting the truth to protect myself. But there are parts I don't remember. I still don't know why I was there alone when the paramedics showed up."

"When you did your guitar-smashing act, most of the people at that party got scared and took off," said Jimmy. "They knew something was seriously wrong, and they didn't want any part of it. When you accidentally hit Felix, you cut his forearm and almost sliced his wrist open. People were scared. Pete was the one who actually called 911 for you, using your phone so they'd think it was you who had called. He made sure the paramedics were coming, and then he and Zack drove Felix to the hospital. Everyone else at the party took off so they wouldn't be around when the police came, in case they started asking about all the drugs and underaged drinking going on that night."

Josh found it difficult to hear these details. He found it physically draining to revisit that night. He had wanted to leave it all behind him, but now the knowledge that so many people had been affected by his dangerous behavior made it all the more difficult to cast aside. Josh felt like he was reaching the limit of what he could go through in one day. He felt like he needed to stop.

"Jimmy, I don't know if I can go on. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing anymore. I thought today was about me helping people, not facing up to all of my flaws. It's just too hard. You obviously knew all this before we started. You knew what I was going to find here."

"Yes, I did," said Jimmy. "It won't always be this hard, Josh, but this day is one you've got to remember, because the reality is that we are all sinners. When you stand in front of someone you are trying to help, you can't forget that fact. You can't pose as someone who is perfect and above everyone else. You've got to let people know that you're in the same boat as they are, but that you've found the path out through Jesus, and that you want to share it with them. Is there any doubt in your mind about that?"

Josh was absolutely sure he'd never forget how flawed he was. He had no intention of trying to pretend that night hadn't happened.

"No doubt at all," answered Josh.

"Good. That will make you stronger. It will let you be honest with people, and they will feel your honestly. And I'll tell you, it's the same for me. Josh, look at me. Have I given you the impression at any point today that I think I'm better than you?"

"No," answered Josh. "Well, there was that one thing you said about this gorgeous big-bird suit I'm wearing." The two men broke out in laughter. "But seriously, no."

"Good. Because if I had, I would have failed. Witnessing isn't about that. Every time you witness to someone you should also be learning about yourself. It's about opening an honest dialogue with someone, not about trying to shove your opinion down their throats as fast as possible so you can move on to the next person. It takes time and it's hard. And unfortunately, I'll tell you this: so many people witness so poorly that everywhere you go, very few people are going to be happy to see you at first. The people you want to help are all going to remember that witness in the past who basically told them 'you don't believe what I believe? Well, you know where you're going' and they're going to think you're the same at first. You have to fight against that."

"So, am I going to have to tell my story to everyone I meet? I don't think I can handle reliving this over and over."

"Have I told you my story?" asked Jimmy.

Josh thought about how little he seemed to know about Jimmy and yet how much he trusted him, how much Jimmy seemed to empathize with him.

"No...but it's like you understand, and I assume if you understand that well, you must have gone through something difficult, too."

"Right. That's what relating to people is about. I could tell you about myself, and someday I might, but even without telling you, you can feel it when we talk. If I have the answers to certain questions, it's probably because I've been there before. You've got to be able to get that across to people."

"How am I supposed to do that now with Felix and Della? Now that I know she was the cause of that night, I don't know if can even look at her again."

"Whoa, wait a minute," said Jimmy with a surprised look on this face. Is that the lesson you're taking away from this?"

"Well, I never would have lost it if she hadn't used me like that," said Josh confidently.

Jimmy shook his head in disappointment.

"Now listen, part of knowing yourself is knowing where true responsibility lies. Let's back up. You chose to seek this house out. You chose this band. You kept telling yourself you needed them. Why didn't you start your own band and choose your own bandmates—people you could trust? Why didn't you start a band that sang about things you believed in? You disagreed with Pete's lyrics the first time you heard them. So why'd you put up with it?"

"I wasn't the one singing those lyrics," answered Josh.

"What does it matter? Did you think the people who came to your shows would think the same way? Those lyrics attracted fans who didn't mind those messages. Did you ever think about the fact that the music you made with this band would draw people toward you who held fundamentally different beliefs? Isn't that what happened? And you helped make it happen."

"There's a difference between little mistakes and purposeful deceit," answered Josh angrily.

"Oh yeah, let's talk about that. So you had no idea how bad this situation was, right? What does the Bible say about love. You know what I'm talking about. I mean physical love."

"Okay, I had sex out of marriage. So I deserved this?"

"I'm not saying you deserved it. I'm saying that God knows the limits of what his creations can handle. He knows your emotional limits. Men and women need to know they are in love first before they take it to the next level. Marriage is the mark of true love, not sex. But men and women confuse the two all the time, and God knows this. The guidelines he lays out for you are for your own good, Josh. You thought you were in love, but if you think about it now, there was no evidence of love except the physical act. You can't always trust your perceptions—you have to trust God's word. When you go against it, you find yourself in situations that God was trying to protect you from. It was easy for Della to make you think you were in love. But if you were doing what you were supposed to do, you'd have made her prove she loved you over time and with sincerity, which she wouldn't have been able to do. Then, you'd have known the truth. God doesn't give empty edicts, Josh. He knows what is best for you. If you had obeyed him, you'd never have gotten yourself in this situation. You'd have never handed yourself over to someone to be abused just because of meaningless passion. It would have been easily avoidable. And yeah, you can whine all day long about getting taken advantage of. But there will always be people out there trying to profit from your weakness. If it hadn't been her, it would have been someone else. The only way to avoid them all is to live right."

Josh recoiled from the blow he had just been given. He hadn't been able to think in those terms because he had only focused on single relationships, not on how his relationships fit within the global concept of what was right and wrong. It seemed to him like everyone behaved this way, always saying they believed in one thing but ignoring what they believed completely when choosing friends and building their lives. Maybe more people should realize that if they build their lives with disregard for what is right and wrong, they shouldn't be surprised when everything comes crashing down around them.

"I was responsible," said Josh slowly. "I did that. I was the author of my own misery."

"Excellent, Josh. Only after that realization can you truly try to prevent it from happening again."

✝✝✝

Josh looked again at the immobile barn swallow, which seemed to hang on the motionless sky like a painting on a wall. He now felt appreciation and wonder at the exceptional situation he had been placed in this day. He knew he'd probably never again see the world around him advancing and retreating alternately through what is normally the unstoppable progress of time.

Josh looked at Jimmy as if he were seeing him for the last time. Something in him told him that their time together was running out. There were so many things he wanted to ask him about himself. There was so much more he wanted to hear from him. Jimmy wasn't like anyone he'd ever met before, and Josh wanted to know about Jimmy's past and how he had become who he was now. Josh was convinced that this was not the first time Jimmy had gone through a day like today, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

"Jimmy..." Josh began, not knowing how to say what he wanted to say.

"Someday," said Jimmy. "Someday we'll talk about me. But not today."

"But will I even see you again?"

"You know we all will in the end," answered Jimmy. "You can introduce me to your parents if I don't run into them first."

A flood of happiness overtook Josh. He felt like his connection to his parents was renewed and stronger than ever, as if he could take them in his arms right then and hold them forever.

"But let's not get ahead of ourselves," continued Jimmy. "You've got one more thing to do, guitar man."

With all the progress that he had made personally, Josh had almost forgotten that the final challenge of the day was yet to come.

# Chapter 11

## Apogee

"Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man!" (Luke 6:22 English Standard Version).

✝✝✝

"One of them may hate me for slicing his arm open with my broken guitar, and the other may hate me for knowing the truth about her," said Josh. "I'm not sure how I should approach this."

"Use all the lessons you've learned so far," said Jimmy. "You may not succeed, Josh. But how you act in the face of failure means a lot to people. You may not get much of a reaction from them now, but you can make an impression on them that may bring them around later. No matter what, you stay courageous. Even if they insult you and try to tear you down, you stay calm, knowing that you are doing right by God."

"I will. I'll take whatever they dish out. I'll probably deserve some of it. And if I can't reach them today, I'll at least show them that I'll be there for them when they're ready."

"Good man. You succeed at doing that, and you'll have a good shot. I know you think this is going to be the hardest part of the day, but you've already done the hardest: you've grown in faith and you've increased your self-awareness. I think you'll see that your fear before had more to do with knowing you weren't ready for the challenge. Now that you are, I think you'll be surprised how much easier it will be."

Josh put his hand on the door handle, started to pull on it and then stopped.

"I can't thank you enough, Jimmy. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come here. I probably would have kept pushing off getting my life in order. I may never have gotten things straight."

Jimmy laughed and held out his hand to Josh, who shook it firmly.

"It was my pleasure. We all need help in our lives. You just pass on what you've learned to those who need it. That's all I ask."

"I will," said Josh. "I promise."

Josh remembered something he had wanted to ask Jimmy earlier.

"Say, who is the guitar player we've been listening to? I've never heard blues like this. I don't think I've ever heard delta-style Christian blues before."

"Ah, glad you're a fan. That, I'm proud to say, is yours truly."

"No way!" said Josh. He had never heard better playing or more poetic lyrics. The evocation of sadness for the purposes of exercising it away had never been done better, he thought. Jimmy's blues captured perfectly the pain of coming to grips with human nature and working to overcome it.

"I'll play it for you in person someday. Maybe you can join my band for a few songs. You wouldn't believe some of the cats I play with. Some of the best players there ever were."

Josh smiled and nodded. He pulled the handle and pushed the door open. He stepped out, setting the barn swallow and the rest of time and space in motion again. He shut the door and took a few steps toward the house. He felt confused but couldn't quite put his finger on why. Half way down the driveway, it hit him. Some of the best players there ever were? What exactly did that mean? Josh turned around quickly, but to his astonishment the black Camaro was gone. He had heard nothing. He couldn't see a trace of the car anywhere. It had just disappeared.

✝✝✝

Josh approached the house as he had already done so many times that day, but now that Jimmy had gone, he felt the pressure of having to get it right the first time. There would be no do-overs now, no rewinds to erase his mistakes. He noticed, however, that although Jimmy was no longer there waiting for him, he felt undeniably like he was still there with him. He felt his presence through the advice he had appropriated, and now more than ever, he knew how to find the answers he needed.

The Bible Jimmy had given him now felt like an organic extension of himself. He felt as if it were the key to taking his life to the next level and that the confidence he gained by carrying it would allow him to face any difficulty with optimism.

The entire chain of events of the day had started over, as if Josh had never been there. He again met Pete at the door, but talking to him now was easier and more natural. Josh was not in the slightest bit intimidated by Pete's arrogance. The conversation between them played out on equal footing with an even more positive result than before.

Zack again started the conversation with pessimism but was much more quickly won over. This time, Josh took away from their conversation the solid impression that Zack might turn into a true friend, and perhaps even a bandmate for the group Josh planned on starting.

Felix's door, which had previously loomed in Josh's mind like the drawbridge of an enemy castle, now provoked no emotional reaction whatsoever. When that door opened, Felix and Della seemed to him like old friends. They had, after all, played a huge role in helping him understand himself, whether they realized it or not.

They, however, were just as surprised to see him as they had been the first time. Josh now realized that they were more worried about confrontation than they were angry. He intended to set their minds at ease.

"Hi guys. It's been forever. I promise I'm not here to attack you with guitars or publicly berate you," he said with a laugh, which put them at ease. "Yeah, that was crazy, and I'm really sorry about that. I didn't even remember doing it until recently, and when I realized fully what had happened, I wanted to come over to apologize. So I'm sorry for the role I played in all that. I'm glad you both are okay and I hope you're doing great."

Felix smiled in his typical carefree way.

"Dude," Felix said, "check out this scar."

Felix rolled up his sleeve and held his arm up.

"Yeah, it was lame that night," continued Felix, "but everyone in the world wants to see this thing now. I've got the best rock-n'-roll injury of anyone I know. People actually ask me to see the guitar when they come over. It's famous around here now. I was thinking of framing it. You don't...want it back or anything, do you?"

"No man, you can keep that one," said Josh with a laugh.

"Sweet," said Felix. "People say we'll never record anything that good again and that the smashing of that guitar marked the end of that period for us. They talk about my drumming style before and after, like I changed somehow. And the song? It's like everyone wants to talk about all the drama around it, so it gets played all the time."

"Well, I hope they end up talking about me for better reasons than that," said Josh.

Josh looked at Della and saw that what he had formerly mistaken as an expression of anger was, in fact, shame.

"No hard feelings Della?" Josh asked.

The question put Della a little more at ease.

"Of course not," she answered. "I thought you'd never want to show up around here again. I thought you probably had good reasons to avoid us."

"Guys, I realized that if I tried to avoid you, I'd only really be trying to avoid the things I did that I wasn't proud of. You weren't responsible for those things. Don't get me wrong, I think you have your own things to work on, but my problems didn't have anything to do with you."

"So you aren't angry with us at all?" asked Della.

"No, not at all," answered Josh. "And I hope you both can forgive me if I caused you any pain."

Felix and Della looked surprised to hear these words. They nodded silently.

"So are you getting back into music?" asked Felix.

"You know, I am," answered Josh. "But I'm going to do it right this time. I'm going to make music I believe in, music that talks about faith and love. I want to make music that leads people down the right path, and that keeps me on the right path, too. Music that uplifts people and brings them closer to God. I expect you guys to come to at least one of my shows, alright?"

"Absolutely," answered Felix.

Della nodded, but was less convincing. Josh figured her response was the strongest commitment he could get from her today, and if he pushed any harder she might resent the invitation. As long as she was with Felix and he was open to coming, he figured the odds were good that she'd show up, too, and that would be enough to start a dialogue.

The only thing that remained was, well, the biggest challenge of his life. He had to write the music that would perfectly convey the love of God to all who would hear it. His music would have to offer hope and serve as an open invitation to all.

Oh, and one more thing remained as well.

"Can I ask a favor?" asked Josh. "Can you guys give me a ride back home? My friend waited around as long as he could, but I think he finally realized that someone else needed him more urgently now than I do."
Epilogue

During the writing process, I mailed a draft version of the manuscript of this book to Josh, confident that I had captured this slice of his life accurately. Several months later, we met for dinner to discuss the work. Josh arrived with a stack of paper that looked like it had spent several seasons exposed to the elements. It was my manuscript, but with thousands upon thousands of corrections written in the margins. The pages looked as if they had been agonized over, and it was rare to find a page unstained by coffee. Josh had clearly spent an enormous amount of time pouring over these words.

The major changes he provided concerned the conversations with the character "Jimmy". Interestingly, when Josh first arrived at my door long ago he was still new to witnessing, and so he was being shadowed by an older gentleman, who stood near the street at the edge of my lawn waiting to jump in should Josh find himself in difficulty. From my point of view, this situation seemed somewhat comical at first. Here was this young kid dressed ridiculously wanting to talk with me about God, all the while being surveilled by an elderly gentleman in the background, ready to swoop in at the first sign of trouble. It felt a little like our conversation was being filmed by a camera crew. The character Jimmy was my fictionalized version of Josh's chaperone, and so in the draft I had simply imagined the advice he might have given him. It turned out I had not given enough credit to the man. I had assumed that the major discussions had all occurred between Josh and the people he was trying to reach, but just as important were the discussions Josh had had with his chaperone. As Josh put it, his chaperone knew him well enough to hit where it hurt. No excuse was going to fly; no reasons Josh could invent to back down were going to find an audience. Youth needs inspiration, and age needs to see wisdom enacted. This was what I had missed, and this is what Josh added to the book that I had missed the first go around.

I asked Josh if he would mind if I gave readers an update of his life in these pages. I knew people would be interested to know what had happened to him. Was he married? Had he gone to college? What career had he chosen? Did he have a family? He said that among all the things he had done after the events of this book, what he wanted people to know is that the importance of trying to reach people has never changed. He still feels that mix of nervousness, excitement, and hope before reaching out to people. He still tries to get better at relating to people. He still works at understanding the teachings of the Bible and conveying those lessons as best he can. That being the case, he said he preferred to leave readers with the image of him contained in these pages. No matter what he became afterwards, a large part of him remains a naive boy in a comical suit giving everything he has in the most honest way he knows.

So that is how I will leave him.

