"I guess I feel closer to the people in the town."
"Your parents are dead too?"
"No." She didn't say anything more. She didn't want to explain that there was a rift between them. She knew in Christian circles that it was kind of frowned on for a person not to be getting along with her family. After all, the Bible clearly said that if you don't love your brother whom you can see, how can you love God whom you can't?
She found it was a lot easier to love God than her brother, though. Or her mother. As the case may be.
"These are pretty. Did you design them?" Pastor Mark said as he put one on and held it up for her inspection.
"That's perfect. And yes, I did. I enjoy doing that kind of creative stuff. Especially after I've spent a lot of time working with my hands."
"I would think coming up with new recipes for candles would exercise your creative abilities."
"Definitely. I love that side of the business. But there are times where I'm just doing one after the other after the other and it takes no creativity at all, just a willingness to buckle in and do the work."
"That's what a lot of life is. A willingness to buckle in and do the work. Adult life anyway."
She grinned, looking over at the boys playing in the corner, popping blueberries into their mouths as they made truck noises and crawled on their hands and knees, one hand on their trucks, pushing them in a circle that must have been a racetrack or something.
"Yeah. The good old days, right?"
He looked at the boys and then shook his head. "I had a great childhood, but I love what I do, and I have no desire to go back there."
"Sometimes I wish I could go back permanently. The days whereI had no pressure, no worry about whether or not I was going to be able to buy groceries. No questions about whether or not my business was going to be able to stay solvent and pay for our health insurance."
"That's rough. But I have good news, I hope."
"Really?" she asked, her heart stuttering. She couldn't help stopping what she was doing and looking at him expectantly.
"Yeah. The church voted tonight to go ahead with their normal order of candles. But I know it's late. Pastor Johnson said he usually ordered them in September."
"Oh. Thank you, Jesus," she said, closing her eyes. Then she opened them and spoke immediately. "It doesn't matter how late it is. I will get the order done. I... I needed this order. But I didn't want to say how badly, because I didn't want the church to order it out of pity."
"That's not what happened. I think people really appreciate the quality of your candles, the delicate scent that does not overwhelm but lasts through the entire burning of the candle, but especially the way they brighten the church up in the dark month of January."
"That's awesome. It makes it even better that you're helping me tonight, because I definitely need to get these done if I'm going to have any prayer at all of getting the church candles done, especially if we lose electricity for a day or two with the storm."
"I've heard that's a real possibility," he said as he stuck another label on and carefully set the candle down with the other ones he had finished.
He was not taking things too fast, but he wasn't slow either. He was a good worker.
"The last I heard is that it's going to be more intense than they anticipated. It's up to three feet of snow. The last time we got two feet, I didn't have electricity for two days, and Pastor Johnson let me stay in the church."
"That reminds me. We're opening up the church as an emergencyshelter, so if you lose electricity, come on over. There's a generator, and we even have sleeping bags, apparently."
"Well, we have plenty of sleeping bags, and we'll be over then if we lose electricity, because we don't have a generator, and I don't want the boys to freeze."
"I'll make sure that they don't. And there's plenty of toys in the nursery."
"They'll be thrilled to be able to play with the nursery toys again. They graduated from nursery when they turned three, and they've been sad ever since."
Chapter 9
Mark pulled the last sleeping bag out of the dryer.
His washer had been doing laundry nonstop for what felt like forever. But all the sleeping bags the church had were now fully washed and dried and ready for the storm.
He wasn't entirely sure that people would actually come to the church, but he wanted to be prepared. About the time he wasn't, the lights would be out for a week.
