Ah, that was it, wasn’t it? The planning and maintenance were not the issues. It was how he had elevated them above surrender. He’d not given God the opportunity to surprise him. He’d lost his trust.
“Father, Mommy, I don’t want to just maintain what we have. That doesn’t mean it is not important or valuable.” He released a breath, defusing what was left of his fight. “I’ve learned just how valuable it is.” He met his sister’s eyes. She had the grace not to return his look with a full-blown “I told you so” expression.
“Thank you for how hard you worked to start and build this business. I am grateful for the opportunities we have been granted because of it and how you stewarded it. My desire to continue working as a physical therapist is not against you or Fayson. It is moving forward into an area that means a lot to me, that I feel God stirring in me.” He slumped down in the velvet dining chair, deflated but in the best, wrung-out way.
“God’s way forward,” he added and paused, testing his words against the sincerity of his heart. “Kenya asked me if I was just some business lackey playing the part of a public servant.” His mouth tipped, throat thickened. He recalled the fire in her eyes that had confronted and awed him at the same time.
Solomon looked his parents in their eyes, hoping they wouldn’t look away, as was their habit. “I am a man who wants to heal hurts and hearts as a DPT, not as a businessman.”
“But son, we also help people through the business.”
Solomon didn’t flinch. “I thought I could finish the chapter here and be what the company wanted because I love you both. And I honor you.” His eyes found his mother. He blinked. Surprised at the dampness of her eyes. And the pride?
“Honor matters, son,” she said in a low, weighty tone, her fingers laced together in what looked like a death grip around her tea. This would be an uphill fight, God help him. But what he said couldn’t be undone.
“Don’t misunderstand me. I am grateful. You both have done so much for us, for me.” He pressed his fist to his chest. “I know we have planned things out for so long, and I have worked hard to accomplish them.” He exhaled.
“When you sent me to boarding school, my intention for most of the time was to learn as much as I could in order to apply it to business school. But when I was injured”—his knee pulsed with a phantom ache, memories of a torn ACL that ruined his chances of playing soccer his junior year—“it was the same time everything exploded with the business, so you guys were busy with that. Which I understood.”
“But son, we were there for your surgery and a week after.” His mother looked pained.
“Yes, but it was hard on me, not only physically but mentally and spiritually. I was so low then. Lonely, frustrated, questioning everything. My physical therapist helped me heal on the outside but also took me to church. Brought me to his house when I was homesick and let me be a part of his family meals and gatherings.” He swallowed. “That changed everything for me. But I didn’t know until I was midway through college that my desires had shifted. I remembered seeing other people in the clinic during my recovery who went from being almost immobile to walking out the doors on their own several weeks later. My PT did this for me. I wanted to learn how to do it for others.”
“So instead of following my footsteps, you are following his?” His father’s voice was tight, words forced.
Solomon shook his head, praying he could articulate this well. “Father, Mommy, please don’t think wrongly of me. I mean no disrespect or dishonor.”
He didn’t want to choose, but he had to and in doing so risked the love and respect of the family he more than adored. This family had given everything to him, and what did he have to show for it? A failed move, a failed test, and a failed fake relationship with a diminishing hope for a real one with the woman he couldn’t help but love.
His mother reached for him, her grip tight. “Son, hear me. Honor is important. Thatishow you maintain what we have.” She pressed close. “And it is how we steward what is to come. And I believe you are doing your best to steward what you feel God is leading you into. We must then trust that God will take care of everything he has givenusto do too.”
She smiled then, and like the sun in its full brilliance, memories and innate knowing converged. He saw her face bent down over his bruises and scrapes. Her stern look and reprimands, her swatting hands when he tried to grab plantain that had just come out of the pan. He remembered the shift in her body when he left for boarding school. The rejection he’d assumed, he saw now as a heart hurting over letting her son go.
The same look he now saw in her eyes. She was releasing him in a similar way.
“Ehen,Favour. The man saysMommy, and you melt like palm oil in the sun.” His father tsked.
Solomon blinked through his own rising tears. His eyes bounced from his father’s crossed arms to his mother’s open ones. “What are you saying?” He cleared his throat. “Mother?”
“It is too late now.” His father rolled his eyes, but not before he saw the look of release in them too.
“You know my friend, don’t you?”
Solomon had no clue which friend his mother referred to, so he stayed silent.
His mother waited a beat and then lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Althea!”
“Auntie Thea, of course!”
She leveled an exasperated gaze at her son but not enough to dismantle the openness in the room. “Anyway, she has actually gotten to know yourfriend.”
Solomon didn’t miss the inflection on the wordfriend.
“And thinks she will be a good choice for the business we are starting together.” His mother squeezed his hand. “And from what I’ve seen of her and what I hear, your Kenya is someone who is not worth losing. It took much courage for her to be with us and try to appease us. We can be hard to please.”
Simon coughed like he was clearing a nagging tickle in his throat. Nneka looked down at her plate, gaining a sudden interest in her roasted vegetables.
He squeezed his mother’s hand back. He didn’t necessarily need their permission, but he treasured it anyway. “Thank you, Mommy. That means a lot.”
