Wrapped In Rain

by Charles Martin

love is like that. Light doesn’t have to announce its way into a room or ask the darkness to leave. It just is. It walks ahead of you, and the darkness rolls back like a tide.” She waved her hand across the room. “It has to ’cause darkness can’t be where light is.”

“Life is a battle, but you can’t fight it with your fists.” She gently tapped me on the chin with my fist and then put her hand on my chest. “You got to fight it with your heart.”

“If your knuckles are bloodier than your knees, then you’re fighting the wrong battle.”

“you can whip it and beat it senseless, you can drag it through the streets and spit on it, you can even dangle it from a tree, drive spikes through it, and drain the last breath from it, but in the end, no matter what you do, and no matter how hard you to try to kill it, love wins.”

Listen here, child, that’s God’s little girl, baggage and all, so don’t go judging the cover. He doesn’t care what she looks like. He’ll take her and us any way he can get us. Just like the woman at the well. Best you switch lenses and start seeing her that way too.

“The devil is real. He’s as real as water and he’s only got one thing in his sick little mind. He wants to rip your heart out, stomp on it, fill you full of venom and anger, and then pitch you into the wind like fish scales.”

“I’m trying to build you boys up straight . . .” She paused, thinking for a minute. “With strong walls, square corners, and able to stand when the storms come. But I can’t do it without a plumb line. So”—she patted the pages again gingerly—“this is it. Our reading at night is so that—”

“Child, you listen to me, and you look me straight in the eyes when I’m talking to you. I may be just old hired help, and a country woman to boot, but I’m a human. And you know what? God thought of me. He actually took the time to dream me up. I may not be much to look at, but what you see first started in the mind of God, so don’t stand there and ignore me like I don’t exist. You remember that.”

“You can’t choose your parents, child. The only thing you can control in this life is what you say and what you do.”

‘There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.’

He was Salt Lake, and she was Niagara Falls.”

Child, in the end . . . love wins. Always does. Always will.