The Plain Choice by Sherry Gore

Author:Sherry Gore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2015-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

MY NAME WAS SHERRY

When Pastor Francis put me in the water it was glorious. I felt I was claiming a mantle created and carefully previsualized at the beginning of time. God had waited for me for thousands upon thousands of years. And here I was, finally, dripping wet on His doorstep.

I was baptized in front of strangers, an appropriate beginning, for much of what I would do over the next four years would place me among unfamiliar faces. But long before I looked out into those faces, I first had to look into Toby’s, and when I got home from the church and told him I’d been baptized, I could tell by his face that I’d hurt his feelings.

“And you didn’t ask me to come?”

“No, Toby. I didn’t.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know. It’s just something I had to do by myself.”

“But I’m your husband, Sherry,” he said. “I could’ve supported you.”

“I know, Tobin.” I called him Tobin when I felt sorry. “But I didn’t need support tonight. I needed to do this myself.”

We said little to each other for the rest of the evening. I wish I’d known then how to make my feelings clear — ​maybe I could’ve spared us some of the pain to come. But I didn’t. I could hardly understand what had happened.

I lay awake in bed for most of the night thinking about my baptism. I was afraid to sleep. I was afraid that somehow the baptism wouldn’t take, that I’d wake up in the morning the same old Sherry Gore again. As my eyelids grew heavier I tried reading a book but found I couldn’t follow the words. I turned on the television, but the sound warbled in my head and I couldn’t make sense of it. I was distracted by things beyond me, things calling out for my attention.

Finally, I drifted off to sleep, and that night my dreams were terrifying. I lived and relived days from my past in a nightmare state. Tuesday on the beach. Darren chasing me into the bathroom. My father’s face in that body bag.

Looking back now on that night of a thousand years, I see that those dreams were appropriate, because I was reliving those moments, those emotions, every day of my waking life — ​and had been for thirty-one years. I like to think those dreams were a way for me to remember all those pre-Christian days, to take them out for a final spin — ​right there at the end. Because I had been on a carousel my whole life, and now, I was about to get off.

When I opened my eyes the next morning, my first thought was to thank God I’d made it through. I looked at the ceiling.

Something was different.

I rolled over and placed my hand on my chest. Where was the heart I’d had before? The one blackened with resentment? That previous heart had ached, but this one . . . I could feel the blood in my arms; it rushed like wildflower seeds chuting down a gust of wind.

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