Beneath the Surface (Dive Team Investigations, #1)

by Lynn H. Blackburn

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. ~ Psalm 19:14

His mentor in the department had stressed to him the importance of making the time to worship. To refocus on the One who was beautiful and true in a world of darkness and lies.

Miss Edna’s love language was bossiness.

just because she didn’t agree with someone didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends. Or more. It also taught her that true, meaningful, long-lasting relationships were built more on the way a couple handled conflict and adversity than on romantic dinners and moonlit strolls.

They had believed. When they couldn’t have biological children, they chose to adopt. Mom never shied away from the truth that barrenness had broken her, and yet she always said she wouldn’t have had it any other way. That she’d never ask God to change it because she got Kirk, and Leigh, and a relationship with her heavenly Father that could only have been forged through struggle. “You can let it drive you away from him or you can let it drive you to him, Leigh,” she would say. “I let it drive me to him. And he was faithful.”

“I will never leave you, nor forsake you.” The words learned long ago in Sunday school wormed their way into her mind.

“Life is hard, Parker. Everyone has tough stuff. There’s no perfect relationship or perfect job or perfect house that will somehow make your life easy. What throws us for a loop is when life is hard in ways we weren’t prepared for. Divorce. Illness. Disability. Money problems. Rebellious kids. Reporters who blow undercover ops. Friends who don’t have the good sense to see they are messing up something really good that has fallen in their lap and they’d better fix it before it’s too late.”

Both of her parents always said if they’d had any idea what it was like to live out adoption, they would have done it earlier. But then they might not have found her, so they knew God’s timing was perfect. Was his timing in all this perfect too?

She knew the truth. She’d known it all along. But believing God truly loved her, truly had her best interests at heart even when it didn’t look like it? She didn’t know if she could muster that kind of faith. The best she could do was whisper a humble “Help me.”

“They’re all different kinds of deaths. Deaths of loved ones. Deaths of dreams. Deaths of relationships.” “And so death entered the world,” Ryan said under his breath. “What?” “What you said, about the deaths, it made me think of that verse where it says that when sin entered the world, so did death. I guess I’ve always seen it as physical and spiritual death, and of course it is, but all those other deaths are also the result of sin.”

“I don’t think he cares so much about what we say. I think he mostly just wants us to talk to him.”

“Trust me on this. God’s got you whether you are trying to be gotten or not. He’s working something awesome out of all of this. I don’t know what it is. But I know—” A