July 4, 2006 @ 2:59 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized

"The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice." — George Eliot

Riley boarded the plane with a heavy heart.

It was almost as though a part of herself wasn’t making the journey home willingly. Instead, a noose had wrapped itself around her heart, and now she was once again prisoner to emotions she thought sure she had laid to rest years before.

Even as the massive 747 left the runway and took to the sky, Riley sat with forehead pressed to the window, eyes closed, wondering if there was anything she could have said or done that brought on the change in Ethan. Her mind replayed the past few days, over and over again, in a desperate attempt to dissect where things might have gone wrong.

Even though they’d walked away from one another years ago, the love hadn’t gone away. It never would, of that much Riley was certain.

The man made her a better person - even if he did live on the opposite side of the country. He was the boy who knew the little girl inside of her, and catered to the dreams in her heart that refused to die. He got her, pure and simple, and she got him.

She’d come back home to Maine for her sister’s wedding but, deep in her heart, she’d only looked forward to this past week because it meant she’d get to see Ethan again. But Ethan had spent the better part of the past three days trying his best to avoid her. She’d seen more of the back of his crisply starched white shirts than she’d seen of his face.

At first she’d been confused. But then she’d remembered his words to her from years before.

Why put ourselves through this agony, Riles? He had shrugged then and her heart had twisted at the mixture of longing and regret she’d seen in his eyes. It’s like loving candy and going to the candy store every day, but never being able to buy anything. Torture, that’s what it is.

Riley understood this. It didn’t change anything, and yet it changed everytbing. She got it, just like she always got him. She knew that his place was here in Maine, just as strongly as she recognized that her own place was on the opposite coast.

Now the wedding was behind her, she’d said her good-byes to her family, and she was on her way home.

Home. San Francisco. Three-thousand, three-hundred and sixteen miles from the spot she’d called home for most of her life. Completely cross-country from Ethan.

But, if Riley had learned one thing in the past decade - and she’d learned plenty - it was that she never felt closer to Ethan than when she was on her knees.

Prayer was the one place where it all made sense. Where confirmation flowed again and again that she was in the perfect willl of God, as was Ethan.

The younger Riley would have fought to have it all, and did, for quite a long while. But the more mature Riley had found that great peace comes with great acceptance.

Acceptance of God’s will.

Nothing else mattered.

She remembered the day her aging grandmother had pulled out a beautiful piece of tapestry, and pointed to the ornate flowers and trees that formed an oasis around a rambling white farmhouse.

"See how perfectly these threads form this picture, Riley?" She had searched Riley’s face, making sure she had her full attention. Then she had turned the tapestry over and lovingly fingered the delicate strands of brightly colored threads that ran like little rivers in all directions, with no apparent purpose or direction.

"This is the real beauty, Riley. This side is where the story is." Bony fingers had pointed to the various knots and bits of thread that seemed to start and stop and then start again.

"Life is like the backside of this tapestry, Riley. We have starts and stops. We encounter snags and bumps and even breaks. But if the person who created this beautiful tapestry had given up in defeat, then look at the beauty that would have been missed."

Grandmother had looked at Riley then and, though she didn’t fully understand it that day so many years ago, Riley had sat spell-bound by the wonder in her grandmother’s voice.

"We won’t necessarily see all the beauty life is gifting us with right away. Maybe never, this side of heaven. But we have to trust that with every dropped stitch, with every start and stop, that something magnificent is being created on the tapestry of our life."

Now, as the plane leveled off somewhere high above the place she’d called home for so many years, Riley finally understood.

She had no idea what the eventual picture of her life would look like. But with God as the master artist, she trusted that all the pieces of thread that seemed to often not make any sense to her were, instead, forming a most marvelous tapestry.

"Go live your life, Ethan." She whispered the words as the cinch around her heart seemed to loosen, allowing her to once again breathe deep and free. "Be the man God called you to be."

Riley wanted it no other way.

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an excerpt from Raising Riley