comfort

Daddy?_____ right here, baby.__umps form in my throat, going all the way down into the core of me.It__ his voice. His. Right there. I reach toward the doorknob but I don__ get to turn it.Nick smashes at me with his head, pushing against my lower jaw and cheek, like a blow. His muzzle moves my head away from the door. He presses his face in between me and the wood. Fur gets in my mouth. I spit it out and push at him.__hat__ my dad. My dad._ I slap the door. __e__ on the other side. The pixies will get him.__ick shows me his teeth.__ can__ lose him again, Nick.__he wolf snarls like he__ ready to bite. My head jerks back and away, but then I steady myself.__et . . . out . . . of . . . the . . . way.__ushing against his thick neck, I slam my hands against him over and over again, pummeling him. He doesn__ budge.__ove!_ I order. __ove.___ara, is there a wolf in there with you? Do not trust him,_ my dad__ voice says, calmly, really calmly.I grab a fistful of fur and freeze. All at once it hits me that something is not right. My dad would never be calm if I was in my bedroom with a wolf. He__ be stressed and screaming, breaking the door down, kicking it in like he did once when I was really little and had accidentally locked myself in the bathroom and couldn__ get the lock out of the bolt because it was so old. He__ kicked that door down, splintering the wood, clutching me to him. He__ kissed my forehead over and over again.____ never let anything happen to you, princess,_ he__ said. __ou__e my baby.__y dad would be kicking the door in. My dad would be saving me.__et me in,_ he says. __ara . . .__etting go of Nick, I stagger backward. My hands fly up to my mouth, covering it.Nick stops snarling at me and wags his fluffy tail.How would my dad know that it is a wolf in here and not a dog? How would he know that it isn__ pixies?I shudder. Nick pounds next to me, pressing his side against my legs. I drop my hands and plunge my fingers into his fur, burying them there, looking for something. Maybe comfort. Maybe warmth. Maybe strength. Maybe all three.

As uncomfortable as it might be, I refuse to let the comfort of being agreed with suffocate my opinions.

Like infants, when they are born into the world, God's children are not born again in the full possession of their spiritual faculties; and it is well and wisely ordered that it is so. What we win easily, we seldom value sufficiently. The very fact that believers have to struggle and fight hard before they get hold of real soundness in the faith, helps to make them prize it more when they have attained it. The truths that cost us a battle are precisely those which we grasp most firmly, and never let go.

I just don__ understand how you can get so much comfort from a religion whose language does so much harm.__I realized that what troubled me most was her use of the word __omfort,_ so in my reply I addressed that first. I said that I didn__ think it was comfort I was seeking, or comfort that I__ found. Look, I said to her, as a rush of words came to me. As far as I__ concerned, this religion has saved my life, my husband__ life, and our marriage. So it__ not comfort that I__ talking about but salvation.

[bookcover:Lessons Learned|13578440] Another shot, and for some reason, I__ the only one who can__ move. Who can__ scream. Who can__ do anything but watch as the young man__ body slumps over his tray. Finally, I find my voice and scream his name.

Art is to console those who are broken by life.

My mother may no longer be (if she ever was) a mast to which I can rope myself. But I fear the loss of Lesley. Without her observance, and her sturdy presence, I would feel windblown.

We Let the Boat DriftI set out for the pond, crossing the ravine where seedling pines start up like sparks between the disused rails of the Boston and Maine.The grass in the field would make a second crop if early autumn rains hadn't washed the goodness out. After the night's hard frost it makes a brittle rustling as I walk.The water is utterly still. Here and therea black twig sticks up. It's five years today, and even now I can't accept what cancer did to him -- not death so much as the annihilation of the whole man, sense by sense, thought by thought, hope by hope.Once we talked about the life to come. I took the Bible from the nightstand and offered John 14: "I go to prepare a place for you.""Fine. Good," he said. "But what about Matthew? 'You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.'" And he wept.My neighbor honks and waves driving by. She counsels troubled students; keeps bees; her goats follow her to the mailbox.Last Sunday afternoon we went canoeing on the pond. Something terrible at school had shaken her. We talked quietly far from shore. The paddlesrested across our laps; glittering dropsfell randomly from their tips. The lightaround us seemed alive. A loon-itinerant-let us get quite close before it dove, coming upafter a long time, and well away from humankind

Death loves death, not life. Dying people love to know that others die with them; it is a comfort to learn you are not alone in the kiln, in the grave.

... there are things that outweigh comfort, unless one is an old woman or a cat.

Might I not be able to love God in the ways that Katie was loving me? A desire to be close, to be in touch, to receive strokes and caresses from the Eternal, to feel warm and safe and comfortable with God? Was this not exactly what I longed for -- the experience of stretching out, so to speak, on the breast of God, purring in contentment, safely supported by the everlasting arms?

You cannot find comfort in ducks.Stoop to look into those beady brown eyes, and they will tell you no

But the nightmare was a strange comfort to me; in it, I found a sense of escape, and were it possible to go live in that nightmare, I would have, bizzare though that may sound.

God and the Angels can and want to assist you with all aspects of your life. Your happiness and life is their primary mission.

I__ mean? That__ the worst you can throw at me?___ean and self-pitying. Does that make it better?___nd what are you, Astrid?_ he shouted. __ smug know-it-all! You point your finger at me and say, __ey, Sam, you make the decisions, and you take all the heat.____h, it__ my fault? No way. I didn__ anoint you.___eah, you did, Astrid. You guilted me into it. You think I don__ know what you__e all about? You used me to protect Little Pete. You use me to get your way. You manipulate me anytime you feel like it.___ou really are a jerk, you know that?___o, I__ not a jerk, Astrid. You know what I am? I__ the guy getting people killed,_ Sam said quietly.Then, __y head is exploding from it. I can__ get my brain around it. I can__ do this. I can__ be that guy, Astrid, I__ a kid, I should be studying algebra or whatever. I should be hanging out. I should be watching TV.__is voice rose, higher and louder till he was screaming. __hat do you want from me? I__ not Little Pete__ father. I__ not everybody__ father. Do you ever stop to think what people are asking me to do? You know what they want me to do? Do you? They want me to kill my brother so the lights will come back on. They want me to kill kids! Kill Drake. Kill Diana. Get our own kids killed.__hat__ what they ask. Why not, Sam? Why aren__ you doing what you have to do, Sam? Tell kids to get eaten alive by zekes, Sam. Tell Edilio to dig some more holes in the square, Sam.__e had gone from yelling to sobbing. ____ fifteen years old. I__ fifteen.__e sat down hard on the edge of the bed. __h, my God, Astrid. It__ in my head, all these things. I can__ get rid of them. It__ like some filthy animal inside my head and I will never, ever, ever get rid of it. It makes me feel so bad. It__ disgusting. I want to throw up. I want to die. I want someone to shoot me in the head so I don__ have to think about everything.__strid was beside him, and her arms were around him. He was ashamed, but he couldn__ stop the tears. He was sobbing like he had when he was a little kid, like when he had a nightmare. Out of control. Sobbing.Gradually the spasms slowed. Then stopped. His breathing went from ragged to regular.____ really glad the lights weren__ on,_ Sam said. __ad enough you had to hear it._____ falling apart,_ he said.Astrid gave no answer, just held him close. And after what felt like a very long time, Sam moved away from her, gently putting distance between them again.__isten. You won__ ever tell anyone___o. But, Sam___lease don__ tell me it__ okay,_ Sam said. __on__ be nice to me anymore. Don__ even tell me you love me. I__ about a millimeter from falling apart again.___kay.

You quit? I thought you said it was too dangerous to quit, Alex. You said people who try to get out die.""I almost did. If it weren't for Gary Frankel, I probably wouldn't have made it. . . .""Gary Frankel?" The nicest, geekiest guy in school? For the first time I scan Alex's face and see a faint, new scar above his eye and nasty ones by his ear and neck. "Oh, God! W-what did they d-do to you?"He takes my hand and places it on his chest. His eyes are intense and dark, like they were the first time I noticed him in the parking lot that first day of school senior year. "It took me a long time to realize I needed to fix everything The choices I made. The gang. Bein' beaten to within an inch of my life and branded like cattle was nothin' compared to losin' you. If I could take back every word I said in the hospital, I would. I thought if I pushed you away, I'd be protectin' you from what happened to Paco and my dad." He looks up and his eyes pierce mine. "I'll never push you away again, Brittany. Ever. I swear."Beaten? Branded? I'm feeling sick to my stomach and tears sting my eyes."Shh." He puts his arms around me, rubbing his hands across my back. "It's all right. I'm okay," he chants over and over again, his voice catching.

His other hand finds my cheek, and he wipes away my tears with his thumb. The chocolate scent overwhelms me as he bends over and whispers in my ear, __o, Cassie. No, no, no.__ throw my arm around his neck and press his dry cheek against my wet one. I__ shaking like an epileptic, and for the first time I can feel the weight of the quilts on the top of my toes because the blinding dark sharpens your other senses.I__ a bubbling stew of random thoughts and feelings. I__ worried my hair might smell. I want some chocolate. This guy holding me__ell, it__ more like I was holding him__as seen me in all my naked glory. What did he think about my body? What did I think about my body? Does God really care about promises? Do I really care about God? Are miracles something like the Red Sea parting or more like Evan Walker finding me locked in a block of ice in a wilderness of white?__assie, it__ going to be okay,_ he whispers into my ear, chocolate breath.

Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.