Beneath a Southern Sky by Deborah Raney Page B

from her childhood and felt suddenly comforted, glad that something so far from Colombia finally felt familiar to her again, had the power to console her.
    The Kansas sun was just beginning its slow descent, and the colors were spectacular. Watching the vibrant shades of purple and orange and pink against the deepening blue-grey sky, Daria felt a tentative hope swell within her, and a sense of home filled her anew. As she trudged through the prairie grasses, following the natural path of the pasture’s rolling terrain, she prayed.
    “Lord, I don’t know what you want me to do now, but I know…you love me. I know you’ve been with me”—she tried to swallow the huge lump that rose in her throat—“oh, God, what will I ever do without him? I don’t understand why you took him. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why you sent us to Colombia only to have it end this way. I know I shouldn’t have to understand, God, but I want to.”
    In everything give thanks .
    She heard the phrase exactly as Nate would have spoken it—when the mosquitoes threatened to eat them alive, when half his medical supplies were lost when the boat overturned, when the rainy season imprisoned them in the hut for days on end. There’s something to be thankful for in every situation , Nate had always told her, even when she knew he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. She took in a sharp breath. How many times had she and Nate admonished each other with those very words?
    “Oh, thank you, God. Thank you for the years we had together.” She stopped at the top of a rise and looked around her. “And thank you that I have this place to come home to, Father. Just tell me what I’m supposed to do next, God, because I truly don’t know.”
    Immediately she was filled with thoughts of the child growing within her, and she knew it was her first answer. This child whom God had created of their love—hers and Nate’s—would be her most precious and immediate assignment for the next few months.
    She had not yet told anyone about the baby. She knew that she should see a doctor, make certain everything was coming along as it should. But something made her want to hang on to her secret. Her pregnancy was a blessing—a sweet remembrance of Nate and a tangible way for him to live on.
    “Thank you, Lord,” she whispered, laying one hand lightly over her abdomen. She stood on the hill, cradling Nate’s unborn child that way until the sun disappeared behind a distant hedgerow. Almost instinctively she turned to the south and looked up at the evening’s first stars. She remembered the night she and Nate had stood under a starry Timoné sky and said their goodbyes. They’d had no inkling that night that they were saying goodbye forever. The thought tore her heart in two. What might she have said to him had she known it would be their last night together?
    She didn’t know the constellations as Nathan had. She wasn’t sure whether the star he had pointed out that night was visible in the Northern Hemisphere. What had he called it? Spica . She picked out a bright star that seemed to blink at her from the southernmost sky. For a moment, she pretended it was their star, and her heart was wrenched between two continents. She was happy to be home, yet engulfed by an intense longing to be back in Colombia. She was homesick to be in their little hut, caressed by the gentle tropical breezes, lulled by the myriad songs of the rain forest.
    But even if she could go back, Nathan would not be there.
    She wished he had known of her pregnancy before he’d gone off that day. What a comfort it would have been to have the memory of Nate’s joy at learning the news. She knew he would have been ecstatic. It struck her that where he was now, he probably did know about his child, and the knowledge gave her peace.
    Tearfully she spoke aloud, “Oh, Nate! I don’t understand any of this. I miss you so much, babe. Oh, how I miss you. But I know you’re happy. I know