To Live

A man stopped in front of Sam, reaching to take the plate she offered. Wrapped around the back of his hand was a tattoo of a red balloon. She looked at his face. 

The man looked back, recognition turning to startlement. 

Hidden within the humdrum of the soup kitchen, the plate hung suspended between two sets of hands for several moments before Sam released it and the man hurried away to take a seat at one of the tables. 

Her eyes followed him. 

Several days prior, Sam paused outside the small living room to steel herself before entering. Oh God, help me.

The cozy space held two small couches, a coffee table laden with snacks, and a small TV on the wall. Two sets of couples occupied the couches, their chatter bubbling. When they noticed Sam’s arrival, a woman in a plaid shirt stood up and crushed Sam with a hug. 

“Samantha Jean!” Lilly cried. Sam grunted. “It’s been too long. We were just talking about you – here, I’ll get another chair.” Hurrying out of sight, Lilly returned hefting a wooden kitchen chair. She wedged it between two couches and Sam sat on it. 

Matt, a curly-haired man on the couch to Sam’s right, clapped his hands. “Alright. Before we dive in, how’s everyone’s year been?”

“Busy.” A man in a Pokémon shirt beside Lilly let out a puff of breath. 

Lilly laughed. “Between Josiah’s work and my grad school, it’s been chaos. And not to mention-” She looked at Josiah. Something silent passed between the couple on the couch, and Josiah nodded. “-our engagement.” 

Cries of congratulation filled the room, and a chasm ripped itself through Sam’s chest. 

Brooklyn, the woman beside Matt, said, “You know, Matt and I made a wedding work on a Youth Pastor’s salary. We could share some tips.” 

“That would be great.” Josiah intertwined his fingers with Lilly’s. “Even with work going as is, saving a couple bucks never hurts.” 

Matt leaned forward conspiratorially. “You got that promotion, didn’t you?” 

Josiah grinned. 

“You did!” 

Wobbling awkwardly on her perch, Sam struggled to get comfortable. The guys went off on a small tangent about the highs and lows of web development while the women exchanged glances. 

“Enough about us,” Lilly said after a few minutes. “How have two been?” 

“A bakery down the road agreed to sell my soap with the other local crafts,” Brooklyn said. “And Matt baptized five youth this year.” 

Josiah whistled. “That’s amazing.” 

“Working at the church is such a blessing,” Matt said. He carefully placed a hand on his wife’s stomach with a small smile. “But we’ve got an even bigger blessing on the way.” 

There was a moment of silence. 

Lilly exploded. 

Shooting off the couch and dancing around the coffee table – nearly knocking it over in the process – Lilly cried, “No way. No way! You’re kidding!”

The chasm, a deep abyss, tore wider within Sam. “That’s great.” 

“It’s crazy how much time has passed.” Josiah watched his fiancé continue her erratic parade until she returned to her seat. “It doesn’t feel like we graduated high school six years ago.”

A hand touched Sam’s arm and she jumped. She looked at Brooklyn, who smiled gently at her. “How are you?” 

“Oh, I’m fine.”

“How’s work been?”

Sam forced a smile. “Still at London Drugs.”

As conversation whirled its way back into the topics of impending marriage and children, Sam found herself stuck between two very excited couples. Her head whipped back and forth, trying to keep up. Eventually, she stopped trying. 

A kettle whistled in another room. Brooklyn made to stand up but Sam beat her to it. 

“I’ll get it.” Sam hurried into the kitchen. 

Turning off the burner, Sam let her arms hand limp at her sides. She stared at the kettle, its image turning blurry, her eyes loosing focus. Living room chatter became a dull buzz. She stayed there for several minutes. The chasm tearing itself insistently – painfully – through her chest, grew wider with every passing second. Eating her from the inside out. 

Consuming.

“Sam.” A voice cut through. Lilly’s. 

Sam blinked, the kettle refocusing. “Uh, sorry.” She took the kettle and Lilly helped bring several mugs into the living room. 

Matt had an open bible in his lap when they returned, and once everyone had a hot drink, he began talking excitedly. “Since we agreed to do another bible study this summer, and I just finished going through Philippians for a personal study, I thought it might be a good idea for us to go through it.” He flipped through several pages and stopped. “Let’s take a look at Philippians chapter one, verses twenty-one to twenty-six.”

He read aloud, “To live is Christ, and to die is gain,” his voice taking on a soft but strong melody as he continued to the rest of the passage. 

Sam struggled to find her bible, lodged somewhere deep in her cat-patterned purse. By the time she found it, Matt had finished. 

Silence hung in the air for a few moments. 

“Do you guys have any thoughts?” Matt looked around at everyone. 

“Paul’s got guts.” Josiah stuffed a handful of Cheetos from the table into his mouth. “To have that kind of confidence is intense.” 

“Do you think Paul was ever depressed?” Lilly asked.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if he was,” Brooklyn said. “He went through a lot for the sake of the Gospel.”

Sam stared at her bible, the words blurring together. 

“Sam.” Matt’s voice had her looking up. “What do you think it means – ‘to live is Christ’?”

“I. . . I’m not sure. It sounds kind of vague.” 

Squinting at her bible, Lilly said, “In the New Living Translation it says, ‘For me, living means live for Christ, and dying is even better’.” 

“Living for Christ,” Sam echoed. 

Matt began speaking excitedly once more. Sam looked between husband and wife, noting the love-filled expression Brooklyn wore as she listened to Matt’s passionate explanation of what living for Christ meant for him. 

Sam forced herself to look elsewhere. 

The room grew larger around her as, left behind by the eager couples, Sam found herself a rock sinking to the depths of an ocean while they floated above her. Her eyes unfocused again, and the yawning chasm swallowed her whole, dragging Sam down into the abysmal depths. 

Dying is even better. 

The following evening, Sam had a late shift at London Drugs. 

She stood behind the register, staring into the near-empty store. After a fitful night of rest, the chasm, unabated, relished in her exhaustion with painful throbs. Sam rubbed her eyes blearily. 

A man entered the store and passed the checkout area, his hood pulled low. He disappeared into the store. 

Sam’s eyes drifted over the register keys. Grime, dust, and stray hair filled every gap and crevice on the thing. One key was jarringly different. Stolen from a different style of register to replace the key that broke, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Different in color, different in shape. On the counter beside the register, a small green clock filled the silence with a low tic-tic-tic.

The man reappeared in front of her, startling Sam from her thoughts. A mask covered the lower half of his face. 

He pointed a gun at her. “Give me all the money in the register.” 

Sam didn’t move. 

The man’s arm shook as he waved his gun closer. A tattoo on the back of his gun-bearing hand drew her gaze. It was a red balloon. “You deaf? I said open the fuckingregister.” 

She said nothing. 

“Do you wanna die?” 

The word slipped from Sam’s mouth before she could stop it. “Yes.” She looked him in the eye. The yawning chasm opened wider. Expectantly. Like a stomach growling for food or a child reaching for its mother. Sam yearned with it. 

He brought his other hand up to steady the shaking of his gun. “Please,” he said. “Open the register.” 

“I don’t want to be here anymore.” Sam’s voice was quiet. “Dying is better than living like this. I just want to go home.” Her voice dwindled to a faint whisper. “I want to be with Jesus.”

A moment passed. 

Wide-eyed, the man took a step back. 

Then another. 

He turned and fled the store. 

Tic-tic-tic continued doggedly into the silence that followed. The shelves in the store stood by as towering witnesses. The sound of her own shallow breathing filled Sam’s ears. Where terror and relief should have been, all she found was disappointment. 

Sam burst into tears. 

Standing numbly on the street outside her apparent several hours after her shift ended, better judgement urged Sam to go inside. It was cloudy, dark. Well past midnight. 

She looked angrily into the sky instead. 

Emotions rolled out of Sam in hot waves. She shook. The food to quench her hunger had been foiled, the answer to her longing stolen. The abyss wailed its disappointment, and Sam wailed with it. 

“Why?” All of her anguish came flooding out. “Why won’t you take me home?” 

I have more for you here. 

The sky above Sam spun. Sam reeled, sitting down hard on the pavement. The ground lost its solidness and she fell – words, not her own, sinking with Sam into the depths of her abyss. It was as when a hand reached to calm the frantic clattering of wind chimes caught in a breeze. A cacophony brought to abrupt silence. 

Sam whipped her head around, looking for the source of the voice only to found none. 

Her pocket vibrated. 

In a daze, Sam withdrew her phone and glanced at the screen. A text from Lilly glowed up at her:

Hey girl, I’ve been thinking about you and wanted to share a verse: “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he has planned for us long ago.” (Ephesians 2:10)

Sam looked into the sky once more. Stars winked at her through a part in the clouds. 

“I don’t know what this means,” she said, her voice earnest. “What does this mean?”

God remained silent. 

Sam returned to her position as a volunteer at the Salvation Army soup kitchen the following weekend. She watched the man with the tattoo take his seat at a table. As though sensing her gaze, he glanced Sam’s direction before quickly looking away. Something tugged on the inside of Sam’s chest and her heart beat faster. She frowned at the sensation. 

No matter how hard she tried, Sam couldn’t look away from the man. 

Okay then. 

After hanging her apron, Sam approached him. Sitting opposite the man at the table, Sam felt oddly calm. There was no fear. Only that insistent tugging. “I remember you.” 

He tensed. For a moment, Sam expected him to bolt. 

The moment passed. 

“My name is Sam,” she said. “What’s yours?”

“Justin.”