Flip Side of Love by Bolton Nancy Shew

Author:Bolton, Nancy Shew
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Fiction
Publisher: Pelican Book Group
Published: 2018-11-16T16:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

Ruth hurried upstairs after dinner cleanup and scooped up the phone. She shut her bedroom door and settled on her bed. Paul had been so uneasy this afternoon while he sat in the chair watching the choir—as though he were sick or hurt. His eyes traveled over the students with an expression she didn’t recognize. Something was amiss, she knew it in her bones, and heaviness dogged her ever since class.

She dialed and pulled in a relieved breath when she heard his voice. “Are you OK? I’ve been worried about you since choir. You looked so, I don’t know, bleak I guess.”

“Yeah.” He breathed out. “I...well...I saw a look on faces that I haven’t seen these last two school years. I watched the choir change under Doug’s direction. They opened up and relaxed. They couldn’t do that with me…I wouldn’t let them.”

His grieved tone added to her heaviness. “Why are you so hard on yourself? You conduct your way, he conducts his.”

“I have to be hard on myself. I don’t want to be the same arrogant jerk I’ve been. If I don’t acknowledge my faults, I’m in danger of sliding back into them.”

“Well, you don’t have to reject every way you’ve been. How could we have learned so much if you were such a bad director?”

He exhaled. “You learned in spite of me. I’ll try to help you understand. I intimidated a lot of them and because of that, they didn’t go as far as they could have, as students like you, and Barry, and others have who weren’t intimidated. I didn’t help the others grow because I didn’t encourage them enough. I see now that different students need different treatment in order to shine. I treated you all like one big, stubborn herd. I was wrong.”

There was truth in his words. It would be wrong to dispute him, but the sound of his extreme remorse hurt her. She understood his passion, his drive. Why couldn’t he accept and forgive himself?

“You’re not going to stop being yourself, are you? You may like the way Mr. White conducts, but for me it’s too laid back. You have energy and passion and feel the music all through you. Don’t you know how inspiring that is?”

“But it doesn’t have to be mixed with temper tantrums and bullying, does it?”

“Well...no. I guess I didn’t care as long as the good stuff was there.”

He barked a short laugh. “Not everyone’s an optimist, Ruth. It heartens me that you felt this way before you loved me, but it doesn’t cancel my failure to a big portion of the choir members. It hurts to see it.”

Her instinctive resistance to extended melancholy kicked in. “Well, there’s no sense wallowing in it. OK, you messed up, you didn’t do the job you wanted to. How about if you look at what you did accomplish? Doesn’t that factor in?”

“Yes, God brought that to my mind. But I can’t dismiss my mistakes. I’ve done it too easily in the past. I don’t want to anymore.

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