The pressure increased even more. Her heart began to race. Her breath grew shallow. Her skin turned clammy—too hot and too cold at the same time. Faintness gusted through her, and she struggled not to vomit.
Her mind broke free of its leash.You’re going to have a heart attack like Frank. You can’t get enoughair into your lungs.
Terrified, she grabbed for her phone. Leaning on the counterfor support, she exited the kitchen and shuffled toward the living area in her socks. She’d rest on the sofa—
She didn’t get that far. Halfway there, she braced her palm on the wall and fought a losing battle to master her body. She crumpled to the floor. Hunching forward, she planted her arms on her upraised knees.
Her pulse beat out a rhythm of alarm as she dialed Zander on her cell.
“Hello?” he said.
“Zander...”
“I’ll be right there. Are you at home?”
“Yes.”
He’d understood everything she needed him to understand from the state of her voice alone.
It would take him fifteen minutes to get here from the inn, a length of time that seemed impossible. She couldn’t stand this for fifteen more seconds, let alone fifteen more minutes.
She pulled her mom’s words from her memory as urgently as if they were a lifeline. “Youcan rely on Him in the hard as well as in the easy. If He leads you into something hard, then He’ll provide the grace you need to bear up under it.”
Britt desperately longed for that to be true.
Her eyes squeezed shut.God, she prayed.Save me.
She’d been submerged by a situation she couldn’t power through. Couldn’t talk herself out of. Couldn’t evade. The self-sufficiency she’d used to treat every other difficulty of her life was worthless to her now. She’d failed to deal with or even acknowledge numerous injuries and sorrows.
She wasn’t fine.
She’d hadn’t been fine many, many other times.
She wasn’t fine.
I’m relying on you, she told God shakily.Not me this time. Only you.
She hung on to Him for one minute. Then, eventually, two minutes. Three.
He didn’t make everything better by quieting her body the way that she wanted Him to. Her body and mind continued to rage. But His presence turned her brutal predicament from something she could not endure into something she could endure, through His power.
She sensed His nearness, His mighty Spirit. Resolutely, He funneled courage into her. As she gave her weight over to Him, He began to carry her, the way her mom had said He would.
Another minute passed. Another. The tighter she gripped Him, the more dependable she found Him to be.
What an idiot she’d been. So full of willful confidence in her own capability. Her sisters and parents and Maddie and Zander had all been right about her. She’d trusted in herself and ended up on her butt in her living room, incapacitated. A week ago she’d been going about her life as if she had it all under control. Now that illusion of control had been shattered.
The truth: she was small and frail. Horrifically human. The Bible was right when it said her life was like a mist that would soon vanish. On the day of her kayaking accident and the day of her abduction, she’d seen just how susceptible she was to death. Her time on earth? Incredibly temporary.
God Most High couldn’t be more different. He was creator of heaven and earth. The Ancient of Days. Her intuition could only grasp at a fraction of His size and even that fraction wasvast.
How could such an all-powerful God love her enough to meet her here?
She didn’t know how. She only knew that, incomprehensibly, He did love her that much.
Because Hewashere.
When she heard Zander’s footsteps on her front porch, gratitude unfurled within her. He knew where she hid her spare key and, sure enough, she heard it twist in the door lock. She lifted her face in time to see him enter. He wore track pants and a black athletic shirt, and he looked healthy and normal and strong.
