Beneath a Southern Sky - By Deborah Raney Page 0,14
smells of Colombia. She now felt more a foreigner here than she had felt at first among the Timoné.
“Daria! Daria!” She heard her mother before she actually saw her face. Margo Haydon’s tremulous voice rose above the din. Then a gasp. “Oh, honey, you’re so thin!”
She fell into her mother’s embrace, grateful for someone to lean on. Her father wrapped his strong arms around the two of them, and for several minutes they stood there, holding one another, too emotional to speak.
Almost against her will, Daria, flanked by her parents, was swept into the crowd and carried along the concourse toward the baggage claim. As they walked, her father took her carry-on bags from her.
“Are you okay, honey?” he asked, putting an arm tightly around her shoulders.
Daria nodded, managing a small smile for her father. “I will be.”
“You poor baby.” Her mother patted her back. “I wish you’d never gone to that horrible place—”
Erroll Haydon shook his head, and Daria’s mother clamped her lips shut. “Well, at least you’re home now.”
“Did…did Nathan’s parents come?” Daria looked around the terminal but saw no familiar faces in the sea of people that flooded the airport.
“No, honey, they wanted to give you some time,” her father told her. “They’re pretty broken up over this whole thing.”
Tears welled up in Daria’s eyes.
“Let’s go get your stuff and get you home,” Margo Haydon said, setting her lips in a hard line.
In spite of her sorrow, it was undeniably good to be back with her family. The river trip to San José del Guaviare had taken its toll on her. And there she had waited for two agonizing days at an airstrip crawling with paramilitary before flight arrangements to Bogotá could be finalized through Gospel Outreach’s headquarters.
And yet the farther her travels had carried her from Timoné, the farther she felt from Nate. As the plane had lifted from the tarmac at the airport in Bogotá, she had been overcome by panic, feeling as though she were betraying her husband by leaving him there. The mission had sent a search party into the region but had warned her that it was likely that, because so many had burned in the fire, they wouldn’t be able to identify Nate’s remains to bring them home. In a strange way it comforted Daria to know that Nate’s body had burned, that she wasn’t leaving flesh and blood and a grave behind. Only precious memories.
It seemed a lifetime ago that she had lost him, but in the presence of her parents, her grief was fresh.
Dead. It still seemed impossible. Nate had always embodied the word life. She pushed away the images of his lanky form, his pale blond hair whipping in the breeze, his crooked, winsome smile. She had to be strong in front of her parents, especially when she remembered how much they had been against her going away.
She recalled a late December day two years ago in this same airport. After all the years of planning and dreaming, she and Nate were finally going to Colombia.
Their parents had thought they were crazy. Both of their mothers cried for days when they realized that nothing they could say would make a difference. They didn’t understand the faith that compelled her and Nate to go, the desire to see a world in love with Jesus.
“But there are so many right here who need help,” they’d argued.
It was true. An hour from the Haydons, in Wichita, and only minutes from the Camfields in Kansas City, homeless people littered park benches and sidewalks with their foul-smelling bodies and battered grocery bags that carried the sum of their existence. Even in the small farming communities where she and Nate had been raised, there were those who had never truly heard the gospel message, had never understood the significance of Christ’s sacrifice for them.
But that was not where God had led them. And to go anywhere else would have been to disobey the One they loved most.
After a bittersweet Christmas with their families, they drove to the airport in a four-vehicle caravan. They stood at the departure gate surrounded by their parents and Daria’s brother, Nate’s sister, and five young nieces and nephews.
She and Nathan boarded the plane on a river of tears. They carried three bags apiece, filled mostly with cooking utensils and medical supplies, along with a few books and writing materials. In their pockets they carried passports and their marriage certificate and photographs of their loved ones.