Of Stillness and Storm Read online

  Acclaim for Michèle Phoenix

  “For every woman whose religion has asked her to keep quiet and small, and made her believe her insecurities were all she was made of, Michèle Phoenix gives us a heroine to say, ‘Enough!’”

  —MELINDA SCHMIDT, RADIO PERSONALITY

  “A poignant, cautionary tale that peels back layers of the soul. This beautifully written, heart-wrenching journey takes us into both the familiar and unfamiliar, reminding us that no one is perfect or immune to life’s harsh realities and challenges. Raw and real, yet infused with hope, the beauty within this book will touch your heart and stay with you long after the last page is turned.”

  —CATHERINE WEST, AUTHOR OF THE THINGS WE KNEW

  “This moving story of one family’s struggle with the human cost of following God’s call will resonate profoundly. As is so powerfully illustrated in Of Stillness and Storm, sometimes the sacrifices we make for God can cause others to suffer in ways He never intended. Like Michèle Phoenix, I am an MK and am passionate about protecting children. I urge you to read this gripping cautionary tale, listen for God’s voice, and take to heart what is so close to our Father’s heart—caring for every precious child He has placed in our path.”

  —DR. WESS STAFFORD, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, COMPASSION INTERNATIONAL AND AUTHOR OF TOO SMALL TO IGNORE: WHY THE LEAST OF THESE MATTERS MOST AND JUST A MINUTE: IN THE HEART OF A CHILD, ONE MOMENT CAN LAST FOREVER

  “You will be captivated by this story of heartbreak and triumph. Of Stillness and Storm is an important book for anyone who has heard that still, small voice saying this is not right—and mustered the strength to make a change. A must read.”

  —ANITA LUSTREA, PODCASTER, SPEAKER, MEDIA COACH, AND AUTHOR OF WHAT WOMEN TELL ME

  “The Poisonwood Bible for a new generation, stark yet with a subtle hope. Michèle Phoenix’s hauntingly beautiful prose depicts a family in deep turmoil as they try to follow God’s will. Of Stillness and Storm is a disturbingly poignant look at how godly people can become dangerously dysfunctional. This novel touched deep places in my soul, as a thirty-year-veteran missionary in Europe who works in Member Care. Michèle got it right and unabashedly shares the horrors one family descends into as they seek God’s will. A must-read for those contemplating missions and for all those who pray for missionaries and their children (MKs) who are scattered around the world.”

  —ELIZABETH MUSSER, AUTHOR OF THE LONG HIGHWAY HOME

  “In Of Stillness and Storm, Michèle Phoenix bravely tackles what appears to be a great paradox in Scripture—that Jesus says we are to follow him despite the cost to self or other relationships, yet later we read that those who do not care for their families are worse than infidels. How can both principles be operative at the same time? Through a beautifully written and compelling account of one family’s struggles to understand the implications of these statements within the context of ‘real life,’ Michèle causes us to take a fresh look at our own stories as well. You will be both challenged and encouraged as you read this gripping tale.”

  —RUTH E. VAN REKEN, INTERNATIONAL SPEAKER AND CO-AUTHOR OF THIRD CULTURE KIDS: GROWING UP AMONG WORLDS

  Copyright

  © 2016 by Michèle Phoenix

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  The author is represented by MacGregor Literary, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Phoenix, Michèle, author.

  Title: Of stillness and storm / Michèle Phoenix.

  Description: Nashvillie : Thomas Nelson, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016028401 | ISBN 9780718086428 (softcover)

  Epub Edition November 2016 ISBN 9780718086435

  Subjects: LCSH: Self-realization in women--Fiction. | Married women--Fiction.

  | Marital conflict- -Fiction. | Domestic fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3616.H65 O35 2016 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016028401

  Printed in the United States of America

  16 17 18 19 20 21 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 71

  Dedication

  To my parents for the immeasurable

  gift of growing up MK

  Acknowledgments

  CHIP MACGREGOR, MY AGENT, THANK YOU FOR PAVING THE way to my new home at Thomas Nelson. Your tireless effort and belief in this novel made miracles happen.

  Becky Monds, my editor, your inspired expertise enhanced and refined Lauren’s story. I can’t imagine a more supportive or collaborative experience. Thank you.

  Chris, Leslie, and children, your love for Nepal shines bright and true. Thank you for introducing me to its bewildering beauty—and to its traffic, its monkeys, and its power outages.

  Prakash, my Nepali friend, your life is a testament to dreaming big and bold. Compared to what you’ve done to bring education to remote regions, your contribution to this book may seem insignificant to you, but it’s invaluable to me.

  Renée, Mrs. Dailey, Lauren, Greg, Myrna, Gail, and Mom, Of Stillness and Storm wouldn’t exist without you. Thank you for reading that messy first draft and encouraging me to persevere.

  I couldn’t possibly list all the Missionaries’ Kids who have breathed purpose, challenge, and beauty into my life—but you know who you are. You have galvanized and fulfilled me, and I thank God for each of you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Acclaim for Michèle Phoenix

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Part One: Absence One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Part Two: Presence Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Epilogue

  A Note from the Author

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  Prologue

  I HESITATED AT THE GATE, AFRAID THAT MY MERE PRESENCE would seem sacrilege to death’s inmates. This was a place of interrupted conversations, where lichen grew and strangled sculpted stone. Abbreviated eulogies etched like scars on granite graves denied death’s perpetuity. All words were mute here. Only the trills of hidden birds punctuated the dull hum of silence.

  A polished stone reflected racing clouds and filtered sun. I knelt and traced the contour of his name.

  Part One

  ABSENCE

  one

  FEBRUARY, PRESENT DAY

  THE SOUND OF THE FAN COMING ON BROUGHT ME OUT OF A heavy sleep. Its initial slow clicks accelerated into a whoosh that covered the growls of dogs facing off by the pasal outside our gat
es. I squinted at the battery-powered alarm clock on Sam’s side of the bed, its numbers barely illuminated by the moonlight shining through the window. Just after two in the morning.

  When the moon wasn’t out, nights were black in our part of Kathmandu. No street lamps. No lighted signs outside shops, along empty streets, or on deserted corners. When the electricity went off—and sometimes stayed off for ten hours a day—the windows of Nepali homes hung like empty eye sockets from the brick walls that held them.

  Living with unpredictable power was a skill I was still trying to master. Even after two years, I’d leave a light switch or two in their on position after the bulbs had flickered out. So when the fan hummed on and the old fridge shuddered back to life downstairs, I’d set off on my nearly nightly game of turn-off-the-lights. From the darkness of the house, I could tell that I’d done better than usual tonight, but I assumed the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling in Ryan’s bedroom would be on when I got there.

  As I reached for my robe, I wondered where Sam was, what he would see when the sun crept over the mountain peaks four hours from now. Though the weather was unusually warm for February in Kathmandu, I knew it was much chillier at the altitude where he lived during his weeks away from us. But the cold never seemed to bother him. Wherever this trek had taken him, he’d be lying in his tent or under the stars on his side, arms crossed, a thin blanket pulled shoulder-high, impervious to the temperatures, filth, and hunger that would have daunted lesser men.

  Though I’d gotten used to waking up without him, I missed the sameness of living alongside Sam. His routines were as familiar to me as my own. Every morning he was home, his eyes would open at dawn—those pale blue eyes that stood in stark contrast to the ruggedness of his features. He’d glance up and gauge the time from the brightness of the sky, ignoring the clock that sat on the nightstand next to him. Then he’d throw back the blanket and swing his legs out of bed in one smooth movement, pulling on the baggy Nepali pants he’d left stacked on the floor like a fireman’s uniform the night before.

  The lights and fans turning on in the middle of the night wouldn’t have woken Sam. They never did, when he was home. Nor was he bothered by the ringing of copper bells at six o’clock each morning, attempts by the pious to earn the favor of their gods. He slept like a sated baby, with two folded T-shirts for a pillow so he wouldn’t get “soft” during his days with us.

  I glanced at Sam’s picture on the dresser under the window. How little he’d changed in nearly twenty years. With age, his features had become sharper. His cheekbones more prominent, his mouth set off by deeper creases at its corners. The youthful glow of our first encounter had tightened into something less naïve—something more lived-in.

  Sam would be home in a few days. Back under this roof. Back in our lives. Back in my bed. I tried to muster up the swells of anticipation that had preceded his returns in the early stages of our life in Nepal. But I couldn’t manufacture the longings. Not anymore. They’d faded gradually, in almost imperceptible ways. On nights like these, I feared that I had too.

  I ran my fingers through my hair as I left the bedroom, expecting to feel sleep-tangles, but was surprised—again. The cropped hairstyle had been more resignation than aesthetic decision. It had underlined a shift in my worldview. A relinquishing. A submitting.

  “Cut it all off.”

  It was three months into our Kathmandu transition. I’d just stepped out of the shower and had called to Sam to bring me a pair of scissors.

  “Cut it all?” He looked puzzled. “Lauren, are you sure?”

  Appearance was utterly unimportant to Sam, but he knew my hair, thin and straight as it was, was one of the few features I actually liked about myself.

  “It’s too hot. And too much hassle. And it never really feels clean.” I gathered it, wet and dripping, into a tight ponytail and took stock. I looked different without its fullness framing my face. My skin looked paler, my neck thinner. I felt exposed, but I knew this moment had been weeks in the making. Months, perhaps.

  “Cut right above where I’m holding it,” I instructed Sam, “and I’ll fix it when you’re done.” My hand shook where it gripped the ponytail.

  Sam positioned the scissors, but his expression was still uncertain. “Lauren, are you absolutely sure?”

  I nodded. “New life, right?” I said, attempting optimism, trying to make of this action a decision—not a capitulation. “New life, new look.” The knot in my stomach contradicted my self-deception.

  Sam smirked. “And fewer hair products to pay for.”

  How typical of Sam to measure this moment on a financial scale. I stared at my reflection and felt a chapter slamming shut. There was a flutter in my chest that might have been excitement or dread. “It’s just a haircut,” I said—a feeble assertion. Then I nodded at Sam to begin cutting.

  I didn’t feel any freer as I took the scissors from his hands minutes later and saw the approval on his face. I combed my hair straight and snipped the ends into an even bob as change seeped its uncertainty into my resolve. Then I snipped some more. Out of victory. Or maybe spite. Resignation. When I was done, the bob had become a short, spiked cut that symbolized more than I was willing to admit.

  With a flashlight lighting the way, I crossed the threshold to Ryan’s room and tried the door. He lay spread-eagled under his pile of blankets, his mouth slightly open, one hand dangling off the edge of the mattress. With sleep softening his features, he looked his age again. Thirteen and vulnerable. He stirred as I turned off his overhead light and reached for his alarm.

  “Electricity came on,” I whispered.

  “What time is it?” His voice was sleep-rough and bothered.

  “A little past two. Try to go back to sleep.”

  He groaned and let his head fall back onto his pillow. “Can you make baked oatmeal?” Semiconscious and still thinking about food.

  “For breakfast?”

  “Yeah.” He burrowed deeper.

  “Sure.”

  He turned toward the wall and pulled the blankets close around his face, the way he had since he was a child. I smiled and resisted the impulse to find the edge of his bed in the darkness and sit there, listening to him breathe. I wanted to run my hand over his hair until he fell into a deeper sleep. But I couldn’t do that anymore, not even in the middle of the night, when slumber weakened his resistance.

  Though there were still moments of connection between us, they’d grown scarcer with each of Sam’s returns, and every time he left again, I lost more of our son. Ryan pretended not to miss his dad and went out of his way to let me know how little he cared. About anything. It wasn’t so much in words as in the absence of words—overfull silences.

  But he’d spoken to me without scowling just now. I felt my heart constrict as I pulled his bedroom door shut.

  There was no need to tiptoe as I headed downstairs in my rubber-soled slippers, though I did anyway. The floors and stairs were made of cement. No creaking boards or sagging steps—only cold concrete and colder feet. I circled through the living room on my way to the kitchen, pulling a blanket off the back of the couch and wrapping it around my shoulders to ward off the February chill.

  After two winters, the penetrating dampness still surprised me. We had no central heating, just a small electric radiator we used on rare occasions, when the cold got bad enough to warrant the power usage. Even then, it was only effective in the tiniest of rooms. I’d taken to wearing layers inside the house—sweats, long-sleeved T-shirts, zip-up sweaters, and fleece jackets. Sometimes, I’d add fingerless gloves to the vagrant look. All three of us slept with hot water bottles in our beds. Anything to ward off the creep of shivering discomfort.

  For our twice-a-week showers, we’d drag our radiator into the downstairs bathroom and use it just long enough to hop in and out of the cement tub. We kept mouths and eyes closed to the bacteria in the thin trickle of water drawn by gravity from a cistern two stories above.

  I flipped the s
witch that pumped water to the roof, knowing we would run out if I didn’t take advantage of our hours of electric power. Then I placed an empty pitcher under the filtration system that hung above the kitchen sink and turned on a slow stream to fill it, lining up several other pitchers for later use. I set a pot of filtered water on the gas stove to heat for tea and installed myself at the dining room table, lifting the laptop’s lid.

  One of my middle-of-the-night activities was using my laptop when the faster Wi-Fi signal from the NGO next door had fewer users sharing it. I knew Sam disapproved of my “borrowing” it, but I told myself the occasional midnight usage was harmless.

  I didn’t spend much time communicating with the past. It seemed healthier not to keep too connected to what had previously fed and defined me. But on nights like these, in the silence of a sleeping house and with much-needed water refilling our rooftop cistern, I had time to spare and nowhere to go.

  I opened my Gmail account. A couple of promotional e-mails about discounted photo books and vitamins. The weight loss ads I’d started receiving after clicking on a site hocking raspberry ketones. And a note from Sullivan.

  Sullivan.

  We’d met in Austria—her Southern belle exuberance an odd match to my Midwestern wallflower reserve. And for reasons still mysterious to me, we’d become friends. She was as self-promoting as I was self-effacing. As flamboyant as I was restrained. As outspoken as I was measured. She quoted Steel Magnolias like I quoted C.S. Lewis. And somehow, in a tiny Bible school perched on a mountain in a town named Sternensee, where our presence was as illogical as it was providential, we’d recognized in each other an odd-shaped missing piece.

  If someone had told me when I started college that I’d get to spend a semester in Europe studying theology in a chalet with twenty students from around the world, I’d have doubted the prediction. Granted, my growing-up years had been steeped in youth groups and church services and prayer meetings and outreach projects. But as I grew into my teens, my faith had become more circumstantial than intentional. There were moments along the way when something indefinable hinted at a soul connection. A flutter of spiritual yearning. A dependence on the divine. But those occurrences had remained mild and fleeting until college, when a new circle of believing friends had awakened my desire to learn and experience more.