Blue Heart Blessed (26 page)

Dear Harriet,

I called Vanessa.

It was late, a little after eight this evening, but I called her and told her she could have my wedding dress. I explained to her why I was suddenly able to sell it to her. She practically cried when I told her.

She’s coming in the morning to pick it up.

Ramsey asked me, while we were still sitting on the floor of the chapel, if I thought it was too soon. He said maybe I needed to give it some time. I told him time is all I’ve had for the last year.

Time isn’t what heals all wounds, Harriet. It’s love that heals.

And I know now it wasn’t the dress itself that held me prisoner. It was my yearning to be wanted, cherished, and preferred that kept me chained to those simple yards of fabric.

I suppose you’re thinking it’s too soon for me to know if Ramsey is the only man I will ever love. I’ve only known him such a short time. I can’t believe that he isn’t, but even if you are right, even if it is too soon to know such a thing, I still can’t see the value of hanging onto a dress whose meaning is slipping away like a vapor. Every day since Daniel left me my wedding dress has represented my longing to go backward in time. That gown belongs to a dream that has been remade. I only have eyes for the future.

Vanessa will look lovely in it.

I cannot sleep.

I don’t want this day to end and yet I can’t wait for tomorrow.

I’m surprised how I feel tonight considering that Ramsey’s kisses linger on my lips and the slippery feel of his tears still tingle on my fingertips.

I feel very close to heaven. To a place of unqualified holiness and perfection. Does that make sense?

Dear Daisy,

The Voice of Reason cannot fully know what faith alone reveals, but I have to say I am reminded of that line from the movie,
Les Miserables
. You know, that one you like so much: “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

Enjoy the view,

Harriet

S
omeday I will have to explain to my children why I married their father after knowing him only four months. When they are young, like Liam was when I married Ramsey, they won’t care. Months can seem like years to a child. But when they start to wonder about the way of love, when they start to look for that one special person they are meant to be with for all their earthly days, then I will tell them that there is no planning it. It is not something you organize and measure by the number of times the sun goes down. Love finds you. Even when you aren’t looking for it. Even if you are looking in the wrong place.

I will tell them that I married their father on a brilliant October day on the rooftop of the old Finland Hotel in Minneapolis, in a garden that he made the summer I met him. There were only a handful of people there, just the people I loved most in the world. Grandma Chloe and Grandpa Reuben, who were married six months after me, and Grandpa Laurent and Aunt L’Raine, who married three months after that. Shelby and Eric, and Uncle Max the Mad Magician and Bettina were there. And their real uncle, Kellen, and Aunt Laura and Mia. And Wendy and Philip, who were expecting their first child, and Solomon, and Mario and Rosalina. We all stood in the center of the roof where a path in the shape of an infinity knot meets itself. I’ll tell them that their Grandfather Laurent married us and that he could barely get through the ceremony because of the tears that kept blinding him to the words in the little black prayer book he held in his hands. I’ll show them the pictures Max took of their Uncle Kellen giving me away and I’ll tell them their big brother Liam was their Daddy’s best man. Solomon played his violin as I walked toward their Daddy on the stone pathway.

I’ll tell them I wore a beautiful hundred-year-old dress worn by a woman who had been a mail-order bride back when the West was untamed. I’ll show them the dress and the little blue heart sewn inside, blessed by their grandpa and carried in my pocket for the many weeks I was learning what it meant to truly love someone.

I’ll tell them I carried a bouquet of daisies, my father’s favorite flower, and how much I wish they could’ve known him.

They will ask if we can go see the roof garden where I married their papa, and I will say, “Of course.”

And we will drive from our house on the shore of Lake Superior to the busy Uptown street in Minneapolis where the Finland Hotel is and where Uncle Max and his wife Bettina still live. I’ll show them the beautiful garden where I fell in love with their daddy and where he married me. I’ll take them downstairs to the shop I used to run, and that Bettina runs now, and which is full of wedding dresses. I’ll tell them Bettina sends a box of little blue hearts every month to Grandpa Laurent in Arizona so he can bless them and send them back, and when they ask why he does that, I’ll tell them a heart is the shape of hope. And that blessings come from God alone. A blessed heart is showered with hope and the favor of God. Who doesn’t want that?

Perhaps someday they will ask me when it was that I fell in love with their father and I will tell them it happened when I really wasn’t looking. When I was searching for something else entirely.

I’ll tell them how our romance mirrored the love of God for all of us when he plunked his plan of redemption smack-dab in the middle of a world that was only looking to get its census done right.

I’ll tell them love wasn’t something I fell into; it was something that covered me.

I’ll tell them one minute my socks were on my feet and the next I was running barefoot.

And that their daddy was running barefoot right alongside me.

1. What other options did Daisy have for her wedding dress besides opening a boutique to sell it? Which option would you have chosen?

2. Why do you think Daisy addresses all her journal entries to an imaginary advisor? Is that one of Daisy’s strengths, weaknesses or merely a quirk?

3. What is the significance of the little blue heart? To Daisy? To everyone else?

4. Why do you think Father Laurent agrees to bless the hearts? Do you think he believes they make a difference?

5. Were you hoping that something would spark between Daisy and Max? Why or why not?

6. Which of the tenants in the old Finland Hotel did you identify with the most?

7. Daisy feels cheated out of having more time with her father. Can you relate? How do you think this longing figures in to her choices before she opened Something Blue. And after?

8. What kind of significance does the rooftop play in this story? Does this setting detail matter to the story? To you?

9. At one point, Daisy imagines her father having a conversation with Daniel in which her father says this: “Marriage isn’t about what makes sense, Daniel. It’s about what completes you. If you and Daisy complete each other, then marriage isn’t what makes sense. Marriage is that which seals what is already whole.” Do you agree or disagree?

10. Father Laurent takes on the obvious father role in Daisy’s life. Do you think Daisy also meets a need in their relationship? How?

11. Daisy calls the little blue hearts “an emblem of hope.” What are some other emblems of hope? What has been an emblem of hope in your life?

12. Daisy and Max have a conversation in Chapter 19 where Daisy suggests that special thing that sets true love apart is something akin to magic. Max says this: “No, it’s not magic. Every trick I do is just manipulation and misdirection. I can’t believe that’s what true love is like.” What do you think sets true love apart? Is Max right or wrong?

13. Father Laurent says this to Daisy in Chapter 26: “. . .You’ve been designed for a deeper love than you are looking for. We all have. The love you find in God and the love he gives you to give away to others is what you’re really after, Daisy. It’s what we all long for. And no one can keep you from having it and having it in abundance. No one but you.” What are your thoughts on this statement?

14. What is the significance of the wedding dress that Daisy acquires in Chapter 46 now that you know how the book ends?

15. At the book’s conclusion, did you have a different expectation of what Daisy should have done with her dress?

Susan Meissner
is the multi-published author of
The Shape of Mercy,
named one of the 100 Best Books in 2008 by Publishers Weekly and the ECPA’s Fiction Book of the Year. She is also a speaker and writing workshop leader with a background in community journalism, and is the leader/moderator of a local writer’s group, a pastor’s wife and the mother of four young adults.

When she’s not writing, Susan directs the Small Groups and Connection Ministries program at The Church at Rancho Bernardo in San Diego. She also enjoys teaching workshops on writing and dream-following, as well as spending time with her family, listening to or making music, reading great books, and traveling.

Susan says, “I write fiction for the restless reader. I love the power of story to plumb the depths of who we are and Whose we are.”

Visit Susan’s webpage at:
www.susanmeissner.com

In All Deep Places

A Seahorse in the Thames

The Remedy for Regret

The Shape of Mercy

Lady in Waiting

White Picket Fences

Blue Heart Blessed

Copyright © 2008, 2011 by Susan Meissner

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Greenbrier Book Company

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First eBook Edition: September 2011

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, New International Version
®
. NIV
®
. Copyright
©
1973, 1974, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Amazon Kindle eBook eISBN:
978-1-937573-15-7

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Cover photograph by
Kim Hyeyoung