Sharon Garlough Brown - Shades of Light

InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
ivpress.com

2019 by Sharon Garlough Brown

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges, and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, visit intervarsity.org.

Mark 9:14-20, Psalm 139:1-6, and Psalm 102:1-7 are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version. All other Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales, or actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design: David Fassett
Interior design: Daniel van Loon
Images: brush stroke background: pexels.com
blurred lights background: Peter Zelei Images / Moment / Getty Images
blue watercolor background: kentarcajuan / E+ / Getty Images
fairywren: Andrew Haysom / iStock / Getty Images Plus
wren: Andrew Bensch / iStock / Getty Images Plus

ISBN 978-0-8308-6526-0 (digital)

ISBN 978-0-8308-4658-0 (print)

This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

For David, my beloved son

You inspire me with your courage,
compassion, and wisdom.
Words cant express how much I love you
and how proud I am of you.

The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.

JOHN 1:5

If I say, Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,

even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you.

Its so beautiful here, if only one has a good and a single eye without many beams in it. But if one has that, then its beautiful everywhere.

I t was the sighing, the news article read, the awful sighing that caught the womans attention in the half-light of morning and led her down to the beach. She said the young whales were the worst, their splashing frantic, their moans tortured.

Wren Crawford closed her laptop and pushed her sandwich aside on her desk.

She knew better than to spend her lunch break reading stories about whales beaching themselves by the hundreds half a world away. She could barely manage her own daily intake of sorrow working with traumatized women and children at Bethel House. She didnt need to read about another potentially futile rescue mission. Her current therapist, Dr. Emerson, would agree: limit exposure to faraway tragedy and anguish as much as possible. Her job provided more than enough for anyone to absorb.

She fixed her attention on the many childrens drawings and paintings taped to file cabinets and tried to shake the whale image, but it was no use. All she saw were the volunteers with their buckets, laboring to keep the survivors cool and damp by dousing them with water, desperately cooperating with a high tide to turn the creatures upright and coax them out into safety. Then they would form a human chain and try to keep the rescued ones from stranding themselves again. Already the carcasses were strewn for hundreds of yards along the New Zealand coast. It would be several days before they could assess whether any of their efforts had succeeded.

She picked up her phone to text Casey, her best friend since middle school. He might tease her for being sensitive, but he wouldnt condemn her.

Need a mental reset, she wrote.

What for?

Beached whales in New Zealand.

How about kittens somebody dumped in the alley?

Wren punched his number. How many?

Three.

Where?

Inside the dumpster. Heard them crying when I took out the trash.

She would never understand cruelty. Not to animals, not to children, not to any who were vulnerable. Where are they now?

Playing with my shoelaces. And ow! Biting me. Hey, hey, Theo. Hereplay with this.

You already named them?

Just one.

Does Brooke know?

He laughed. Not yet. Not sure how she feels about cats.

Wren hoped his long-distance fiance would approve. Well, youre a good man, Casey.

Or a sucker for cuteness.

Either way... A coworker appeared in her doorway with the familiar Sorry to bother you but theres an emergency look on her face. Wren held up a single finger to indicate shed be there soon. Ive got to go. But maybe you can investigate whether theres a no-kill shelter or a cat rescue agency? And theyll probably need to go to a vet. Whats your schedule like? Ive got to work late.

Its okay. I got it. Were not shooting anything today. Casey, a freelance videographer, had been working for months on a project highlighting human trafficking in West Michigan. But come by after work, okay, Wrinkle? I need to talk to you about something.

Okay. She took one final bite of her sandwich. But if there isnt a safe place for them...

I know, dont worry. Then Ill keep them here until we can figure something out. And hope they dont destroy my couch in the meantime.

Thanks, Casey. Youre a star.

Each of us lighting our own little corner of the world, right?

Yes, she thought as she hurried down the hallway. In the midst of all that was crooked, dark, and despairing, Shine.

There was a sketch by her favorite artist, Vincent van Gogha pencil, chalk, and ink drawing of a gnarled tree with exposed roots, half torn up by a storm, yet clinging to the earth. Vincent had seen within the tree roots an image of the struggle for life, for hope. He understood it.

That was the picture that came to mind as she listened to her coworker recount the story of the latest referral: a mother beaten up by a boyfriend who had been pimping out her four-year-old to his friends. Shed come home from work early and discovered it.