Free Seasons Under Heaven by Beverly LaHaye, Terri Blackstock

self-employment taxes, the poor health insurance, and everything else that came with self-employment. Being a cabinetmaker at home enabled him to help in the homeschooling of their children, to be there when Brenda had to leave, to spend time apprenticing his boys. Already, Daniel helped him in the afternoons. It was a situation that worked, and they didn’t want to change it. But at times like this, they both wished they had a company benefit program with health insurance.
    “We’ll get by, David,” she said. “The Lord will provide. He always does.”
    David averted his eyes, the way he always did when she spoke of spiritual things. He wasn’t a believer, and he considered her faith to be nothing more than shallow superstition. She tried not to let it bother her. “David, He will provide. You’ll see.”
    She knew he was thinking that he was the one who would have to provide. “We’ll get by,” he finally agreed.
    “Besides,” she said, reaching deep into herself and finding the optimism she was known for. “I don’t really think he’s that sick. It’s probably some fluke thing. We’ll get in to see that doctor, and he’ll take a look at Joseph and say there’s nothing wrong with him, that I wasted my time bringing him in. And we’ll find out that he just fainted because the sun was too hot and he’d had too many sweets. That his heart is enlarged because it’s so full of love…”
    David’s look told her that this was another one of those times when their faith didn’t match. He swallowed hard and got up from the table. “I know it’s early. It’s not even dark yet, but…I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day.”
    “Yeah, okay. I’m going to stay up until I get the kids into bed.”
    She watched as David disappeared down the hall, then turned her eyes back to the Bible again. Her thoughts were in such disarray that she didn’t think she could find words to take to God’s throne. She wished her husband could share this with her, and that they could pray for each other when one of them had a heavy heart. But David would have none of it.
    She sat back in her chair and recalled the night, almost thirteen years ago, when she had gone to a church service with a friend and had come home to tell David that something had happened. She had found Christ that night, and she’d been overcome with joy and excitement and couldn’t wait to tell him how the Holy Spirit had touched her.
    She had hoped that he would want the same experience, but she’d tried to prepare herself for his indifference. What she had not expected, what had come as a shock to her, was the rage that she had never seen in David before. It was as if she’d joined some evil cult…as if she had announced her intention to leave him and join her new friends. It was frightening and irrational. He had tried to forbid her to go back to that church, and insisted on her renouncing the faith that he found so distasteful. She had refused.
    That night, she had gone to bed in confusion while David stayed up watching late-night television in the other room. Shehad not been able to sleep, so she had wept and prayed. Those prayers must have reached right into that other room, because sometime after midnight, David had come to bed.
    With red eyes and tears on his face, he’d sat down on the side of the bed and asked her forgiveness for losing his temper. “I have reasons for hating church,” he’d said.
    She sat up in bed. The light coming in from the hall illuminated one side of his face, leaving the other side in darkness. In the half that was visible to her, she saw pain. “But…you were raised in church. I thought you, of all people, would understand.”
    “I understand more than you do,” he said. “Those people in that church you went to…they’re not what you think.”
    “How do you know?” she asked. “You’ve never met them.”
    “I’ve met people just like them.”
    Flustered and unable to find a defense, she reached