Vicious Cycle (30 page)

She met his eyes. “Somebody like you?”

“Somebody a little less stupid, hopefully.”

“You’re not stupid. You’re brave.”

He wanted to believe that. But he’d gotten into so much trouble lately. He’d been to jail, and now he could no longer say he’d never used drugs. Even though he hadn’t chosen to use, he still felt tainted, damaged. But if he believed what he’d just told Jordan, God would overcome that. Still, he didn’t like what he’d seen. Gunfire … dead bodies … his own veins being shot full of a lethal dose of drugs.

Salvation had new meaning. Jordan had risked her life to save Grace. Kent had risked his life to save Lance … just as Christ had done for all of them.

It didn’t make sense.

Yet it was true.

T
he night Lance was released from the hospital, Barbara made a special dinner. Kent’s arm was outstretched in a brace to keep his shoulder immobile, but he tried not to complain. He wanted Lance to be the celebrated hero, the center of attention. He and Barbara laughed through the meal as they told stories of their childhood, and the kids talked about what they wanted to study in college. Lance was more certain than ever that he wanted to go into Criminal Justice and be a detective. He’d already taken a bullet, after all.

Afterward, Kent took Barbara outside, and they sat on her backyard swing under a jasmine-covered arbor. She laid her head against his good shoulder as they swung, clearly allowing herself this moment of unhindered joy.

And then he ruined it. “I guess I have to go home tomorrow.”

She met his eyes. “I don’t want you to go. Why don’t you stay here and let me take care of you?”

He smiled. “That’s nice to hear. But I have bills to pay.” He kissed her, then gazed down at her. “There’s still that job opening, though.”

Barbara was silent, and his heart sank. Didn’t she want him to stay? He didn’t know how to respond to her silence, so he pulled his arm from around her shoulder.

She touched his back. “I don’t want you to give up your job and come here,” she said. “I don’t want to take you away from everything you’ve built. You have a life in Atlanta.”

“Not much of one, Barbara.”

She slipped her arm through his, laced her fingers through his fingers. “The thing is, I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s not such a good idea for us to stay here.”

He squinted, not sure where this was going. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, there are a lot of bad memories here, and a lot of triggers for Emily. Lance … I don’t know. He’s been exposed to some bad stuff. I feel like I need to get him out of here and start over clean.”

His heart locked. “Where would you go?”

A soft smile changed everything. “Emily talked about applying for school in Atlanta. So maybe we should think about going there. I have a lot of reasons.”

He looked into her smiling face and realized he was one of them. Suddenly, his throat was tight. Swallowing came hard. “I hope you can tell how crazy I am about you.”

“Really, I can’t,” she teased. “Why don’t you tell me in words?”

Tears stung his eyes. “I’m absolutely in love with you.”

“I know,” she said. “I love you too.”

“Then we can move forward with this relationship and not just try to do the long-distance thing?”

“I hope so,” she said. “If I were to move to Atlanta, get a house there, get Lance into school and Emily into college, maybe I’d have more opportunity to get back into the interior design business. It’s a bigger city with more opportunity. You and I could date … see how it goes.”

“We know how it’ll go,” he said.

“Then let’s let it go that way. We’ll take a little time to see if you can stand having me around more often.”

“And you can see if you can tolerate me. Especially as I heal. I can be pretty grumpy.”

She shook her head. “I know how I’ll feel about that. Having you around is always a joy. I’ve never felt so safe or so loved.”

“Yet every time I’m around, you or your kids are in mortal danger.”

She laughed. “Does seem that way. But it’s not because of you.”

He sat back, pulled her against him, and kissed the top of her head. “Lance isn’t gonna like it,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, he won’t be happy about moving away from his friends. But he’ll be happy about being around you more. He needs a man in his life, and you’re his hero.”

“Then you’ll call the realtor tomorrow?”

She laughed. “I called her today.”

I
f you’ve read many of my books, you know some of the life issues I struggle with on a regular basis. There are times when I feel life coming at me in unwarranted and inexplicable ways, offering crises where my best-laid plans had promised only peace. As a Christian, I often try to make sense of those times, searching for God’s purpose among the fallout of my shattered plans, struggling to understand how God will use this one day.

As part of my never-ending quest to find those answers, I take Bible courses to help me better understand the nature of my Creator, and His interest in my life. But sometimes the more I learn about Him, the farther away He seems, and the smaller and less significant I feel. However, in a recent lesson about the dimensions in which God lives, as opposed to the dimensions I live in (width, height, depth), I began to understand that God isn’t bound by those dimensions or by time or by gravity. He lives in many more dimensions—some which my mind can’t even comprehend. He can go through walls and fly across the universe; he can hear everyone’s thoughts at once; He can know us before we’re even knit inside our mother’s womb. He is the One who builds
and breaks down nations across the world, rescues desperate and war-torn refugees, makes the sun come up each day, and keeps our feet on earth’s ground by maintaining the perfect gravitational force to keep us from hurling into outer space … and still He cares about the prayers of a child in his bed.

God is not bound by time or space, as I am, so my thinking about God’s dimensions is limited by my own experience. He can be everywhere at once and attend to billions of problems at once. He can be touching me and also touching you. He can be so close that His breath is sweeping my skin, yet He can be that close to you as well, even if you’re across the world from me. He can hear all my prayers and not just give me what I ask for, but thankfully, He can assess what’s best for me given His purpose for my life and the desires of my heart.

I find this comforting, especially when I pray for things and can’t see immediate answers. If I think of my life in human terms, as a parade, for instance, and God hovering over it in a helicopter, able to touch down at the beginning and the end and any point in between—seeing the end
from the beginning,
and the beginning from the end, and the end from the middle, then I can trust that all my prayers have been answered at some point in that timeline. My frustration at what I see as unanswered prayer is unwarranted, because He has already sent those answers even though I may not have caught up to them yet. Daniel prayed for Israel and his prayer was answered immediately, but it took three weeks before the angel came to tell him.

No one living in America can deny that our culture has changed. The drug culture alone is killing our kids. In times like these, it’s easy to throw up our hands and declare that there must not be a God, that if there were, why would He allow people to suffer this way? Why would He allow children
to be born into dysfunctional and dangerous homes? Why would He allow substances on earth that destroy us? Why would He allow such evil to hold us in bondage?

But if you see this life as a training ground for a greater purpose that has everything to do with eternity, and if you see that Jesus came to offer us an escape from the hell that was calling to us and threatening to swallow us whole, by taking the consequences of our dysfunctional, dangerous choices (which he calls sin), and enduring our punishment so that we could emerge whole and flawless, then you’ll see how everything has meaning. Everything has a purpose. You are an important part of God’s plan, and you have a purpose in His eternity. If you understand and accept that Jesus Christ took away your sin by taking it on Himself, then you too will someday live in a sinless heaven of miraculous, immeasurable dimensions—where human limitations are taken away, and nothing inhibits us from living up to our eternal purpose.

Just imagine …

Thinking that way makes my parade a lot more joyful, even when I’m at a place on the timeline where things aren’t going like I’d hoped. This place in time is not all there is to my life … or to yours.

There’s so much more.

Terri Blackstock

For more information about this concept of God’s dimensionality, read “The Extra Dimensional Nature of God” at
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/xdimgod.html
. (I haven’t read everything at this site so I can’t vouch for it, but I agree with this article.)

Predator
Double Minds
Soul Restoration
Emerald Windows

Intervention Series

1 |
Intervention
2 |
Vicious Cycle

A Restoration Novel Series

1 |
Last Light
2 |
Night Light
3 |
True Light
4 |
Dawn’s Light

Cape Refuge Series

1 |
Cape Refuge
2 |
Southern Storm
3 |
River’s Edge
4 |
Breaker’s Reef

Newpointe 911

1 |
Private Justice
2 |
Shadow of Doubt
3 |
Word of Honor
4 |
Trial by Fire
5 |
Line of Duty

Sun Coast Chronicles

1 |
Evidence of Mercy
2 |
Justifiable Means
3 |
Ulterior Motives
4 |
Presumption of Guilt

Second Chances

1 |
Never Again Good-bye
2 |
When Dreams Cross
3 |
Blind Trust
4 |
Broken Wings

With Beverly LaHaye

1 |
Seasons Under Heaven
2 |
Showers in Season
3 |
Times and Seasons
4 |
Season of Blessing

Novellas

Seaside

Other Books

Miracles (The Listener/The Gifted)
The Heart Reader of Franklin High
The Gifted Sophomores Covenant Child
Sweet Delights

ZONDERVAN

Vicious Cycle
Copyright © 2011 by Terri Blackstock

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-310-28920-3

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Requests for information should be addressed to:

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blackstock, Terri, 1957-

Vicious cycle: an intervention novel / Terri Blackstock.

        p. cm. — (Intervention)

ISBN 978-0-310-25067-8 ( pbk.)

1. Teenage boys — Fiction.  2. Newborn infants — Fiction.  3. Abandoned children — Fiction.  4. Children of drug addicts — Fiction.  5. Drug addiction — Fiction.  6. Human trafficking — Fiction.  I. Title.

PS3552.L34285V53 2011

813’.54 – dc22                        2010039776

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible,
New International Version®, NIV®.
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

The New Day Treatment Center depicted in this book is entirely fictitious, as are the characters that the author has created. They do not represent any real rehab center or any specific people, living or dead. If you or a family member is in need of a rehab center, evaluate them individually. For information about choosing the best one, see “Hope for Families of Addicts” at
www.terriblackstock.com/hope-for-families-or-addicts/
.

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Cover design: Michelle Lenger, Jeff Gifford
Cover photography: George Doyle, Getty Images
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