Promise Kept (Perry Skky Jr.) by Stephanie Perry Moore Page A

let’s get you a burger.”
    “Cool.”
     
     
    An hour later I was sitting with C. Moss. Savoy was with his wife.
    “It’s just hard to get this dating thing right. She has such high expectations and sometimes my motives are so impure. It’s like I can’t be with her, but it’s too hard to be without her. I just don’t know where we fit in. If it’s in the cards for us at all. I think I did the wrong thing by bringing her here for Valentine’s. She’s really ticked at me.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with thinking outside of the box and making sure that y’all don’t cross any lines that y’all don’t need to. You know what I’m saying,” he said to me.
    “Yeah, I got you.”
    “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel either. Just keep God in prayer, get on out of here and take her to a movie or something. You can finish the night doing something that makes her excited. Stay on your prayers and the Lord will continue to show you where to lead in this dating relationship. You’ll figure it out, stay open. There’s nothing wrong with recruiting new ideas.”

Showing True Feelings
     
    “I ’m sorry, can you forgive me?” Savoy said to me as we left the Moss’ home after dinner. Because her attitude had been chillier than the February air, I was taken aback that she was apologizing, and honestly I didn’t know what exactly she was seeking forgiveness for. There was a grocery store nearby so instead of driving right to the movie theater to see a romantic movie to salvage our Valentine’s evening, I pulled into the parking lot. I figured we needed to talk and I wanted to look directly into her eyes and listen to what she had to say and speak from my heart.
    “I’ve been angry at God!” she said to me.
    Wow , I thought. She was one of the most solid Christians I knew.
    “Yes, He saved my brother. Yes, He put us back together and yes I should love Him just because He’s God, but I’ve been really upset with Him. Because I am upset with Him I have been mad at the world, particularly you.”
    “So do you feel like your brother, that I let you down after the big game?”
    “No, you explained everything that happened and it makes complete sense and I can’t blame you for any of that anyway. You know I blamed myself for trying to make you jealous. And I guess that is just it. I guess what makes me so angry is that as much as I prayed to the Lord to have Him try and help me stay on the right path things come up, and it’s like Satan is able to come in my mind and corrode it. I feel like frazzled wires connected to nothing, and every time I try to tell my brother about God he says so many other things that make me doubt salvation is real, and that scares me. I just found out that my dad’s sister, Tad’s mom—”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “—She has cancer,” Savoy told me with teary eyes.
    “Oh man, are you serious? I hadn’t even talked to Payton.”
    “I’m sure she knows because Tad is real torn up about it. We sort of just found out but I don’t think she has long to live.”
    And all of the things that I really felt to tell her—it’s okay, this is not where we are supposed to be, that we live here to get to Heaven, that God is going to take care of us, that it’s all going to be fine—I’m not sure of it myself. Some mornings are shaky, just thinking about my body being underground in some box that I can’t get out of.
    “I’m just afraid. The Lord is not giving me any comfort or any answers and if He was really real don’t you think I’d have peace?”
    I hugged her, I really appreciated her being vulnerable and sharing her concerns with me. I didn’t know if I had the answers that she was looking for but I did know that I truly understood where she was coming from. I mean, not too long ago I was questioning my own salvation, battling with God for the things I felt He wasn’t doing right. Thankfully He brought me to a place of comfort, because I had to just trust and have