A little more cautious now, she turned the page. Here she found "Luke 9:62".
And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
Below, she read:
Qa eszenab Lubhu dovthedas kue du qa fuorb kuza ën hien vafhradd, phûas náva ïd su vanvain.
***
She saw a white comedian on the television, talking about how though he loved his wife to death, the questions sometimes crossed his mind, as he figured they must for everyone, of whether he had married the right woman and why on Earth he had ever chosen her. The woman next to her on the couch asked, "Have you ever had those questions? You can be honest."
She was about to reflexively say no when she stopped herself and consciously pondered the question, just to make sure that her answer wasn't pat or defensive in nature. The Netflix special rolled on and she never quite gathered the steam required to interrupt it and give her final answer, but the answer remained the same: No.
There were plenty of weaknesses to deal with here, but wavering loyalty was not one of them. It made no moral sense to withhold the very thing she demanded: commitment, come hell or high water. While it was true that she had picked up the Queen of Spades in the game of Hearts (a profoundly dangerous move), it was also true that doing precisely that was how you shot the moon, achieving the absolute best outcome, and when she looked back, she saw a string of minor events over the years that seemed to suggest that this was where He had been leading her all along.
Either way, she had asked God for reckless faith, knowing she would desperately need it as a husband, and He had clearly provided it. God had spoken and that was final. Though she might make mistakes, He did not. As it said in the song with which she had begun the relationship:
O reckless faith is my plea
God, give me the courage
That it takes to believe
When my heart is faint
And the flesh is weak
When the world says no
But the Spirit speaks
While the others play it safe
Give me reckless faith
Her prayer had been answered and that was all the proof she needed. Where she was going, there was no retreat, so why play what if? What did she have to gain by doing so, and how could the fantasy ever stack up to what she already had?
***
A lump formed in her throat. Such sweet thoughts, made all the sweeter by the fact that they went unspoken. He had counted the cost, felt the fear, and done it anyway, never permitting himself to falter in his commitment. Was there any truer measure of a man than that?