The first message was a hang-up. The second was Jack. “Grace, hi. It’s me, Jack.” He sounded tired, subdued. “Listen, I just wanted to apologize again. I really don’t know why I did that. Um … please call me, okay? Please don’t be mad at me. I know I was totally out of line; I should have asked or—well, I should have just left well enough alone, is what I should have done.” He sighed, sounding frustrated. “Look, please just call me, okay?” He left his number and hung up.

I microwaved my dinner, then picked at it until it was cold again. I was hungry, but I didn’t feel like eating. I was tired, but I’d been in bed all day. I had a stack of papers to grade, but I could barely put two thoughts together. My mother had once described these as the symptoms she’d experienced when she’d fallen in love with my father. She later described them as the symptoms she’d experienced when she’d fallen out of love with my father. I had no idea what they were signaling for me. I warmed up my dinner a final time, forced myself to eat, and then pulled the papers out of my bag and graded until eight, then went back to bed. I didn’t even think about the fact that I’d skipped church for the first time.

I tried to pray once I was in bed, but I couldn’t. That’s when I figured out what was wrong: I was angry at God. Angry He had led me into this, angry He had allowed things to get this far when He knew He’d forbidden me to be with someone who didn’t believe in Him the way I did. A sliver of me wanted to reach out to Him and ask Him for His help, but the rest of me wanted Him to mind His own business and leave me alone.

That moment, buried under the covers, turned out to be pivotal, because it was the moment I made the decision to take my own road. It wasn’t exactly a conscious resolution, but more of an opening of my mind to the things I had been denying myself out of obedience to God, an embracing of the options that had originally been out of bounds. Someone was whispering to me that I was exempt from these rules, that God would not blame me for following after that which He told others to run from, and even though I knew that voice wasn’t from God, I chose to listen and to believe.

JACK