Single Dad Cowboy. Brenda Minton

hadn’t planned on attending church; it just happened. At some point during the long, sleepless night while pacing the living-room floor, she’d decided to give faith a second chance. She’d stood at the window watching the sky turn from inky darkness to gray to palest pink on the eastern horizon, and realized she’d been empty inside for a long time.

      In the stillness of early morning she’d leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window and thought about being fourteen again. Fourteen and knowing what she wanted out of life. Chasing calves as she helped her dad with immunizations, dozing in the green grass of the field as bees buzzed and a horse grazed nearby, her brother somewhere close playing the guitar and singing an Elvis song.

      She’d known herself then. Her faith had taken her to Cooper Creek with several other members of Dawson Community Church for a late summer baptizing service.

      As she’d packed her bags to come to Dawson, she had said she needed a place to be alone, without family and friends invading every quiet inch of her life. It hadn’t been the complete truth. She’d come to Dawson to find joy in life again. Dawson was the place where she remembered being happiest.

      She’d been hoping that coming here would help her bring the pieces of her life back together. And one of the missing pieces was the faith she’d walked away from.

      Several hours after that revelation, she stood in the parking lot of the church looking up at the white building with the steeple reaching to the sky wondering what she’d been thinking. How had this been a good idea? It wasn’t that easy, to fix a life. Church wasn’t the bandage she could put on the last seven or eight years of mistakes and expect them to be instantly fixed.