Redemption Read Online Free PDF Page B

sounded from down the hallway. Okay. Get it over with quickly.
    Kari entered the living room through a side door, and Tim felt his words hit a logjam somewhere in his throat. There were streaks on either side of her face, and her eyes were red and swollen. Yet her beauty still caught him off guard.
    Pure, wholesome beauty, the kind that no longer excited him.
    For a long moment they stayed that way, their eyes locked. No words were necessary. The expression on Kari's face told him everything he already knew-that his affair had caught her by surprise and slammed her heart into the ground.
    Tim bit his lower lip and decided it was best to get to the point. "I'm sorry, Kari." His heart skipped a beat as he exhaled long and slow. "I don't want to be married anymore."
    His words made a direct hit on Kari's heart and knocked the wind out of her. Not in her wildest nightmares had she thought he would start the discussion like that. This was the part where he was supposed to apologize and beg her forgiveness. She reminded herself to breathe. Help me, God.
    She hadn't wanted to believe it, even after seeing him run from the apartment the day before. And after her initial breakdown, she had decided to withhold all judgments on the matter until he got home, until they could talk about what happened and why Tim wasn't at the conference as he had said he would be. In the meantime she'd had no choice but to act like nothing was wrong.
    She'd gone to church that morning and taught second-grade 27
    Sunday school as always. For every question about her puffy eyes, she blamed allergies, saying nothing about the situation with Tim even when her mother asked twice if something was wrong.
    After church she stopped to fill up the car. Every time thoughts of Tim came to mind her heart would race, her breathing suddenly fast and shallow. There's a reason, she told herself. There's a reason . . . there's a reason. . . .
    And the anxiety would subside.
    Three hours before Tim got home, she was putting away laundry, still insisting that somehow the situation couldn't be as bad as it seemed, when she walked by their wedding photo on the living-room bookshelf. She searched his intelligent eyes, his friendly face, soaked in the love that clearly existed between the two of them, and she remembered the caller's words from the day before.
    Your husband's having an affair . . . having an affair . . . having an affair..
.
    In less time than it took her to inhale, the reassuring pretense disappeared.
    Choking sobs erupted from her angry soul and spewed hot tears down her face.
    Immediately, the situation became clear. Yes, her husband had a reason why he had lied to her and spent the weekend at a student's apartment. It was the same reason the caller had given her, and no matter what lies she wanted to tell herself, the truth was blatantly obvious.
    Tim was involved with another woman.
    In that moment, the sorrow and anger in Kari's heart became fury. She grabbed the wedding photo, hurled it across the room, and watched the glass shatter into dozens of pieces. Then slowly, as if she were in a trance, Kari sank to her knees and began to pray.
    "I hate him, God!" She shouted the words, weeping harder than before. "How could he do this to me?"
    At the end of two hours, Kari's anger and sorrow, her sense of 28
    betrayal, were no less than before. But somehow a determination.! had come over her, and with it a clear and holy reminder of a truth-that same one her parents had lived by, the one she and Tim had agreed on before they married.
    The truth was this: Love is a decision.
    In the wake of Tim's unfaithfulness, her heart urged her to hate him, tell him he wasn't welcome back home, and then never see him again. God wanted something else. He wanted her to hear her husband's explanation and be willing to forgive, willing to find counseling and make things work. Not because she felt like it, but because it was something she'd decided to do nearly six years ago.
    So,