The Widow’S Covenant

By Mettie Merryman

Your past can be as unpredictable as your future if you dont know what is following you.

Glenda was adopted as a small child. Her past had been effectively erased, and her future had been planned for her. It wasnt until after her doctor husband had been killed in a car accident and she and her daughter, Darla, were alone that she realized life had a dark side.

Having an orphans mentality, Glenda finds herself as many adopted children doseeking her identity, defining herself as a woman. Four years after her husbands death, she meets Loren, a lawyer, with a past of his own. Lies from the past and promises for the future prompt her to seek the Fathers love.

In whatever form the Tempter takesstalking cougar, deadly viper, or the beautiful green-eyed Deethe thief comes to steal and destroy. Sinister oak trees, including the courthouse hanging tree across the street from Glendas coffee shop, reveal the darkness of the human soul and lead to the cross where justice is demanded.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490832845

Mettie Merryman

Mettie Merryman and her husband, Larry, live in Salem, Oregon, in the beautiful Willamette Valley. They have four grown children and are foster parents to teenage boys.

Book preview

THE WIDOW’S

COVENANT

a Novel

METTIE MERRYMAN

42080.png

Copyright © 2014 Mettie Merryman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover design: by Fawn

WestBow Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-3283-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-3284-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014906086

WestBow Press rev. date: 05/21/2014

CONTENTS

I Don’t Hate Oak Trees

Dedication

The Ritual

City Church

The Coffee Station

Ladies Prayer Jam

Loren

The Oak

Buried Beneath

Sounds Of Summer

Sunday

Internal Raging

A Gibbous Moon

Shadow Of The Cross

Mystery Mountain

The Whisper

Mt. Pisgah

Taking In The Facts

Rental Agreement

The Hanging Tree

Escape

The Barbeque

Orphaned Mentality

Daren And Susan’s

Dim Light Of Before

Empty Nest

Golfing

Two Suns

Tree Of Death

Covenant

The Pear Tree

Every Man’s Hour

Affairs

Love

October

Monday Monday

Tuesday

The Serpent

Home Security

Cold Heart

The Storm

Lightning

Black Crow

Light In The Window

Rock-A-Bye Baby

The Cradle Will Fall

Fools Rush In

Prophetic Strike

Trust And Conviction

The Prophetic Word

Invisible Faces

I DON’T HATE OAK TREES

There is a controversy about the Polk County hanging tree. Some citizens say it was cut down. Some, according to the newspaper clipping I found, say it still exists. Oak trees are a theme throughout the story, depicting the curse of sin, and the New Covenant in Christ Jesus through His redemptive work on the cross.

I learned to love and respect the cross of Christ, and through my parents’ lives and teaching, not to be afraid of it. It is like Andrew Murray said, a mystery.

This novel is about divine intervention and revelation. I wanted to show how the bondage of the past, and the lies the enemy sows for the future, can be combated and defeated through God working in us.

All the characters in the The Widow’s Covenant are purely fictional. The Coffee Station, City Church, lawyer’s office, and the names of some business, are made up for the purpose of promoting the story.

Factual tid-bits about Dallas and Polk County are included as a note of interest.

MettieMerrymanPage.png

Mettie Merryman and her husband, Larry, live in Polk County, in the beautiful Willamette Valley. They have four grown children and are foster parents to three teenage boys. www.mettiemerryman.com

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my husband, Larry, and my children, Melanie, Kristin, Larry II, and Phillips, who have encouraged me to write as God directs my heart. This book is for those who need hope, and are looking for love and the language it speaks.

A special thanks, to Alice Pender and Joy Durham, members of my ‘Sisters Club’ for their dedication in editing, and to Phillips for his technical expertise.

THE RITUAL

August 1

THE RITUAL

A photograph of Ronald in his casket stared closed-eyed up at her. Glenda reached out and lifted the picture. It had been almost four years, four years in October. Photograph in hand, she sat cross-legged on the floor; decorative photo boxes towered beside her, some unopened in years. Inherent memories of herself as a child with her adoring new mother, sometimes with both adoptive parents, accumulated in random access. Always she was dressed to perfection, posed exactly so, choreographed in detail.

Glenda’s childhood had been falsified and distorted. It stayed that way through her early school days and into college. Then, her parents introduced her to Ronald.

She let the picture of her husband fall lifeless into her lap.

She looked at the next image. How big Darla had grown. A picture of the three of them showed Darla on spindly legs next to her father’s stocky frame. Darla was nine.

Glenda opened another box, a newer one, compounding misery. Darla’s graduation from Dallas High School showed no Ronald in these photos, no large groups, no colleagues or business parties, no mission trips or far away places with unknown faces.

Ronald was dead, a thin flat photo.

Her parents had introduced her to him in the same persuasive way they had orchestrated the other areas of her life. He was a doctor almost ready to start his own medical practice. He was newly divorced and needed a good wife to help him heal his hurts. She didn’t know him anymore. She didn’t know anyone, least of all herself. All was turning inward, aimed with precision at her own heart, her own inner self who now lay opened and exposed. Unprotected. Vulnerable. She had no emotional expression. There was nothing tangible to remind her of times in her life when she had been happy and positive.

It was with this recognition that she stopped. Her desperation had taken her back, almost back to her innocence, layers pealing away. Tears glistened on her face, her skin awash with memories.

Glenda replaced the picture of Ronald with the others and closed the box, closed the coffin lid, laid him to rest.

She put the boxes back on the closet shelf. Yesterday’s laughter and achievements had become today’s personal disappointments. The corrosive influence of chronic distress burdened her. She touched the light switch and flooded the room with darkness. Tomorrow was Sunday, Glenda needed to rest.

Wind rustled the leaves of the fuchsia bush on the ground below her opened window. The second floor gave her a feeling of safety. Random puffs of air came through with meager degrees of temperature change.

Just like the location of her home, Glenda was positioned on the periphery of life. The air conditioner was sterile and cold. She used it as little as possible. Through the window came the breath of the land. The ripening fragrance of wild blackberries on the vine, the scent of life as it pulsated through the leaves. Winged in flight, moths tasting the light, and deeper - the rustle on the ground of padded footsteps of beasts or man. It stilled the crickets’ song and made Glenda stop to listen in profound silence. The winds of change were blowing through the curtains.

Mom! Mom! Darla’s hushed whisper startled her mother awake. The finger she held to her lips alarmed her even more. There’s someone out there.

Glenda moved quickly out of bed. She grabbed her robe and wrapped it around her, her heart pounding, layers of tension armoring her. She peered cautiously into the shadowed room in case ‘the someone’ out there materialized in here.

Darla pulled the gauzy drapes away from the window frame. She moved the sheers, making a peek hole, and pointed out into the night. The beaded fringe on the bottom of the fabric jangled in hollow tones.

Glenda’s gaze skimmed over the manicured back lawn, past the fence, and strained to see the graveside of her husband. Her heart knew the way very well.

Somewhere she had read deep breathing relieved stress. She sucked in a belly breath of the dry August air. It didn’t.

No, Mom. Not Dad’s grave. Look! Under the oak tree. Darla’s hushed tones scolded, hinting of impatience.

There! Darla’s voice squeaked in fright. She grabbed her mother’s shoulder, jolting her gaze back to the isolated oak tree centered in the pasture.

What is it? Glenda rubbed her eyes, trying to focus. I don’t see any…

A gasp from the mother drew another frightened one from the daughter.

In the moon’s borrowed light; silent figures moved in a circle of swaying motion. Flickers of candlelight illuminated featureless faces. Details of identity were lost in the dimness of distance that separated mother and daughter from view of the secret ritual.

What do we do? Darla’s wide amber eyes searched the safety of her mother’s face. I hate living way out here.

Darla, there are houses all around us.

I know, but it seems so alone up on this hill. Looking out at night at all the stars with only a few lights of town. You can’t hear anything except a car now and then. It’s spooky.

Glenda silently agreed. They were inside the city limits, but it did feel like it was out of town.

There had been other fragmented things that had happened. Eerie, scary things, the dead bird on her front step; that could have been called an accident, but it looked like its head was half cut off. Just this week Glenda found a dead bat right on top of her morning paper. Some good citizen had put up several bat houses along the back fence line. Protect the bats! Someone did not protect that one!

Glenda had thrown the Itemizer-Observer away, but the headlines had stayed with her all week:

Cougar Attacks Four Month Old Puppy. The attack took place just a few yards from the parking lot at Oakdale Elementary School.

The article stated the cougar population in Oregon had been rising, making cougar and human encounters more frequent.

Oakdale Elementary School was only three quarters of a mile from Glenda’s back yard where she lived in Bridlewood Estates. You could see the school from the Dallas Cemetery, where last month a half buried deer carcass was found close to Ronald’s grave. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Field Agent said it was most likely the work of the same cougar.

I want to move. Cougars. Rituals. Now I’m even afraid of the cemetery. Darla’s eyes welled with tears.

As a child, Darla, without a fear, had gone there with her friends to read the names and dates on the stones, picked out her favorite types of polished granite, and admired the beautiful trees and shrubs that grew and flowered and decorated the resting place of the dead.

Mom, can’t you call someone? Darla wanted a quick fix.

Glenda was in a perplexing dilemma. Alone in a large house was reason enough for caution. Honey, I can’t just dial 911 and say, ‘I’m scared!’ After all I’m an adult, a mature woman, and a Mom.

The house was equipped with a good security system, but the most that would help was after the fact.

No one is knocking at our door or peering through our windows. Let’s check the locks.

Glenda took Darla’s hand as if she were a small child instead of almost twenty years old. The little routine security check was made without changing the regular night lighting of the house. They could walk it with their eyes closed. Many times in the last few years since Ronald Drewer’s death they had made the check together. At times the house seemed big and eerie, a long way from the busy, friendly home welcoming friends and colleagues when the doctor was alive.

Darla’s bedside lamp shown out into the hallway - her perfectly made up bed layered in deep purple and rose satin. It was smooth and neat. Her clothes she had just changed out of were scattered on the plush lavender carpet. The computer screen saver flickered into the room, intensifying the shadow power.

In the kitchen, dimly lit by moonlight, Glenda made them each a cup of Chamomile tea. Put some honey in it. It will soothe and relax you.

Darla shrugged and rolled her eyes as she complied. Who are those people out there? Do you think they live around here?

Glenda shook her head. I don’t know - I’m not sure I want to know. Glenda stood up and pushed the stool back in place at the counter. Let’s go to bed and let the tea and honey work.

Together they curled up on Glenda’s big bed and huddled together.

Mom, can we please get a dog, a big one? Regina’s dog barks every time someone comes near their house.

Who is going to take care of it when you are at school or we are at work? Who takes care of Regina’s?

Her whole family does. Her younger brother, her dad… Oh yeah Darla shifted her position and turned away from her mom, turning her back on reality. I forgot - we have no family. They were alone and the two of them were all they had.

Car lights flashed on the bedroom wall, car doors slammed. It was hard to tell from Glenda’s center bedroom, which of two neighbors were coming home this late. Suddenly almost everyone was suspect. Were they a part of the ritual? No, couldn’t be, they were hard working, family people, or were they?

Throughout the darkened house shadows were dancing and playing deceitful games - while through gauzy drapes, moonbeams, like angels of light, were bending and kneeling. Saturday night slowly and stealthily ebbed away.

Darla slept and Glenda lay awake researching her thoughts, correlating her memories, trying to understand life and death, fear and its counterpart, anxiety.

Glenda got up and walked over to her dressing room. On the lamp table beside her comfy chair was an old-fashioned mason jar with a glass and wire lid, beside it was a pint jar filled with shiny long handled teaspoons. She spooned out the honey and apple cider vinegar mixture. It was a good sleeping remedy, better than sleeping pills because it was a treatment based on nature’s requirements for the body. In case of severe insomnia you could take another dose and it would not hurt you. Glenda took another dose.

She summoned up her favorite song. She was grateful at night when the lyrics got stuck in her head and played over and over. One or two lines of a chorus, Lord, we lift Your name on high. It drowned out the threatening doubts and voices. She lay halfway between sleep and awake - the ‘bewitching hour’, Darla was quietly sleep breathing beside her.

Glenda slid her hand under her pillow, seeking the coolness of the sheets and the security of her Bible. Her eyelids were finally getting heavy. She was wasting energy trying to get the fear to go away. If she were going to subsist there would have to be some answers. She needed artillery fully loaded.

CITY CHURCH

Glenda parked the car in the parking lot the church shared with Guy’s Hardware and Bollman Funeral Home. Bollman’s and Guy’s were family businesses that had grown up in Dallas. They had already celebrated their 100th birthdays a few years ago. Bollman’s had been family owned and operated since 1890. They had earned trust and a reputation for sincere caring over the years. The citizens of Dallas had shared in their lives and losses as well.

She and Darla walked side by side up the hard, cold cement, steps, rigid like the law, into church. Large polished cement urns filled with Ivy and fuchsia colored rose topiaries stood on either side of the mahogany and leaded glass doors, delicate fragrance drifted into the foyer of the church as they entered. The soft trickling of water tumbling over rocks in the fountain/baptismal echoed back from the picturesque rotunda. Wrought iron fencing surrounded the pool, and removable park like benches welcomed all, but mostly attracted the curious children or newcomers. Some well-wishers ignored the sign and tossed coins into the water, perhaps hoping it would return to them a hundred fold.

The sign in bold letters stated; Tithing Envelopes Are Available In Each Pew. Coins May Be Rolled Instead Of Throwed.

The City Church at Jefferson and Oak had gone through a lot of updating and beautifying changes. The church was under new management, so to speak. With the new pastor came almost an entirely new staff.

Years ago one of the town’s pastors had been the official Klan lecturer for the Northwest and speaker at the big konklave when Dallas Ku Klux Klan had received its official charter.

Many distinguished and interesting people also called this church theirs, but until it was called the Lord’s House it had been ineffective as a house of prayer and refuge for sinners and saints alike.

Even in the last ten years that Glenda had attended, many of the members had been disillusioned. Glenda had thought about leaving too, but this was her church, her family. Faith, Hope, and Love, the greatest of these is Love. How could she leave when they all needed each other?

Greeters stood just inside, Kathy and John, and unlike the air conditioning, they were warm; friendly, firm handshakes, cheerful welcomes, smiles.

As they entered through the doors to the inner sanctuary upbeat music ushered them in. The soft muted carpet in a rich neutral beige filled and enlarged the auditorium. A huge heavy tapestry hung to the side of the platform, jagged on one edge reminding the worshipers that they were in the Holy of Holies, worshiping at the throne of God.

Glenda and Darla, both in shades of blue, clung to each other like sisters or friends, age a secret that hid between them as they walked down the center aisle and sat in their usual place: same section, same row, four from the front, polished mahogany, mocha tweed seat.

Rainbows streamed through the small section of stained glass framed within each arched window. A rosy halo played tricks of color in Darla’s hair and turned her dress periwinkle and deep shades of royal purple.

Regina walked in. Darla spotted her friend. She gave her mom a peck on the cheek. I’m going to sit back there with Regina. She hurried off toward the back.

Glenda never admitted to herself that she was alone or lonely at church, isolated maybe. She was a successful business owner and she had been a doctor’s wife.

She never thought of herself as beautiful, even though she was. Her hair was blond and the few silver threads that had appeared in the last couple of years had been hastily pulled out, and the pain of it a celebration in defiance. The stylish, below the shoulder cut, gave her hair its fullness and slight curl, and accentuated the shape of her oval face. She had clear and perfect skin with very little make up except for the elaborate beauty of her eyes. Her mouth was nicely shaped, but her eyes captivated her audience with their dark lashed, blue-eyed appeal. Ronald always told people that she could look into the soul. Now Glenda’s eyes proclaimed her insecurity.

Where was Rena? Glenda looked over the faces in the congregation. The semi-circular auditorium gave her an adequate view of the parishioners. Rena, unlike herself, was never seated in the same place two weeks in a row. Rena looked for someone - someone who needed a word, an encouragement, a shoulder, a hug. Rena was grandmother to everyone, but even more she spoke words from the Lord - she was His voice, His hands reaching out, healing, life changing. Rena was a small frail widow and a giant, an ambassador for the King.

Glenda scanned the faces of the worship singers, her friend Julie was there.

She turned her eyes to the contoured metal cross that hung empty on the wall behind the platform, a stark reminder of the ultimate Sacrifice for mankind.

With her note takers journal opened she looked over her notes from last week’s sermon. Today Pastor Chuck was going to answer some of the questions raised by Andrew Murray over a hundred years ago; The Mystery of the Cross and how the Cross is the Wisdom of God in a mystery and the Cross is the greatest of all mysteries - their sum and center. Glenda had been particularly interested because she had in her possession a small cloth bound book, dated 1896, entitled Waiting on God, also by Andrew Murray.

A thin, cold hand slid across Glenda’s shoulder, startling her, making a chill ladder down her spine.

Glenda, Honey, are you okay?

Glenda put her warm hand over Rena’s cold one. Rena’s thin arms had little waggles of skin that remained from years when she was heavier and her skin was younger and unwrinkled. Rena was the official counselor of the church. Her years in the ministry, her work with all ages of Sunday school classes, but most