Coming Home: A Story of Undying Hope by Kingsbury Karen

Author:Kingsbury, Karen [Kingsbury, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780310333647
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2012-06-25T22:00:00+00:00

WITH EVERY BREATH, JOHN WISHED HE would wake up. That none of the things happening around him were really happening. But he was wide awake and they were playing out as surely as the clock ticking on the wall. Dr. Hazel had assured him the others were on their way back down. Many of them, anyway.

And he had other news, too. Erin didn’t look well. Her vital signs were weakening, and her fever was up. Infection was a strong possibility, her body too badly damaged to fight the ravaging destruction throughout it. “I want you to be ready, John. That’s all.”

Be ready? How in the world could anyone be ready for forty-eight hours like they’d all just gone through? Either way, he nodded. Took the news like another sucker punch to the gut in a fight he had lost in a knockout three rounds ago. He went to Sam’s room first, to the right side of his bed where there were fewer machines. On the other side his heart was still beating. Same as they’d done with Clarissa. His organs needed to be protected if they’d be worth passing on to someone else.

He stared at his son-in-law, and a collage of memories flashed in his mind. Sam Hogan coming to him when Erin was just out of college. I’d like to marry your daughter, sir. I promise to take care of her as long as I live. And then they were sitting around the Baxter family dining room table — back when the house still belonged to John and Elizabeth — and they were back from their honeymoon to Lake Michigan and ready to open wedding presents and Sam was smiling and saying, Everything feels so new and shiny, just like our lives together. And they were coming to him and Elizabeth — Sam and Erin, both — and they were asking for advice, how marriage could withstand infertility. And Sam’s voice rang through the memory. I love Erin with or without children, but the pressure is killing us. With that the flashback changed and Sam and Erin were walking up to him with not one but four adopted daughters. And Sam was beaming and saying, If I live to be a hundred years old, I’ll never understand why God chose to bless us so completely.

Ambitious, determined, loyal Sam Hogan.

John put his hand on Sam’s head and felt him, the reality of him. Lord, now the girls have their daddy again. Let them be together in heaven. Let Elizabeth be with them so that all my loved ones on that side are together with You. Please …

It was a picture he hadn’t allowed in his mind until only just now. Somehow the horror of the last few days had been so firmly entrenched in the here and now, he had forgotten about the there and then. The fact that as Erin’s family—one at a time — left this world, they were instantly in the other.

A different sort of emotion filled his heart and soul and created tears where before the anger and doubt were consuming him.

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