Who I Am With You (Imagination #10) - Staci Stallings Page 0,216

mind if I sit here?”

“Uh, no.” Lauren scooted over a little bit.

Sitting next to her, Taylor watched Wes and Greg. They had always been like that, so easy-going with each other but fiercely loyal as well. Maybe because she had practically been submerged in Hamilton all weekend, she pictured them like the characters in the play. Just starting out, stumbling and trying to find their rightful places in the world. Loyalty. Honor. Dependability. Yes, they embodied it all.

Nelson and Paige were the next to arrive, and Taylor noticed that Paige went the long way around to sit by Lauren rather than sitting by her. The Schuyler Sisters, so close they would sacrifice anything for the other’s happiness. No, she and Paige would never be Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy. That was too bad, and Taylor knew the blame for that fell squarely on her shoulders. She hadn’t been the big sister Paige needed, wanted, nor deserved, and now it was too late.

As she was listening to those thoughts, the guys started playing, tuning, warming up. Taylor smiled. How many times had she heard them do that in her life? A million? At least. They always managed to talk as they did it, too, and it was strange how she could gauge how all right each of them were by how they tuned up. She knew their rhythms by heart and not just the ones they played on the instruments either. She had missed that.

“Hey,” Clara said, suddenly appearing at her elbow.

“Oh. Hey.” Taylor started scooting the opposite way, forcing the other two girls to do the same. In seconds, they were all there, the four of them, with Taylor somehow in the middle. She breathed that in. It felt good. Good to be a part of something. Good to not be in the back looking on, wishing and hoping. Good to not be sitting all by herself.

She knew that Lauren and Paige weren’t necessarily happy about her being there, but they hadn’t told her to go somewhere else either. It felt like hope, but she wouldn’t let herself feel it because it was too new, too fragile, too likely to not be real. But tonight, it was something, and tonight, she would take it and pray that it was a start of something better.

“You are unique,” Pastor Dave said when the sermon came around.

Greg, as usual, was down front with the guys. He remembered the bar scene in the movie, the four guys drinking shots and dreaming of how their lives would go. They had been full of bravado and brashness. The four of them were going to change the world, and they did. Each in his own way. It was a strange thought.

“You are uniquely made by God for a certain purpose. You are made to uniquely love in the world the way only you can. Nobody else holds the keys you hold. Nobody else can give what you can give the way you can give it. Each person is given a gift, not for themselves but to be given away to make the world a better place. We are each God’s gift through our gifts to the world. That’s why envy and jealousy are so destructive, because not only do comparisons of gifts tear the other person down, they also undermine seeing and appreciating our own gifts and talents and those of others.

“You are uniquely and wonderfully made. You have gifts and talents no one else has. That’s why you are called to let your light shine for all the world to see, not hide it under a bushel basket. And the more you do that, the more you are courageous enough to let your light shine, the more courage you give others to do the same. Your light, God’s unique light in you, is waiting there, patiently, for you to simply let it shine through you. What an awesome calling God has put inside you. Never disparage the gift you were given by comparing it to someone else’s.”

“Are you guys going out to eat with us?” Clara asked Taylor after the service.

Taylor wondered at the young woman’s unfathomable grace. If it had been her… “Oh. Uh, I’m not sure.”

“Are we going?” Greg asked, coming up as if going or not was solely Taylor’s decision. Right behind him came Ryan, and Taylor’s face heated up with how careless she had been with all of them. No wonder they didn’t trust her.

“We can,” Taylor said, anchoring her arms around herself.