Read Online Healing Sands by Stephen Arterburn, Nancy Rue - Free Book Online

this job, but I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to tell you what your ministry has meant to me.”
    Sully slid Kyle’s file from his desk and opened it. He was already familiar with Kyle Neering’s fairly impressive credentials. He just needed an excuse to get away from that practically idolatrous gaze.
    â€œThat your family?”
    Sully’s head came up. He followed Kyle’s point to the photo on the shelf behind his desk, and he felt the familiar cave in his chest.
    â€œMy wife and baby,” Sully said.
    â€œThey’re both beautiful. You’re obviously blessed.”
    Not by a long shot, pal, Sully wanted to say to him.
    Instead, he crossed one leg over the other knee and said, “Let’s talk.”

CHAPTER SIX
    B y the Sunday after Jake’s hearing, I had discovered that soccer can eat up your life the way termites consume your woodwork.
    I was at Burn Lake all Saturday morning and all Sunday afternoon. So, unfortunately, were the other soccer moms. I wasn’t sure at first whether Victoria and J.P. were there to watch their respective sons practice or to scrutinize my lack of understanding of team-motherhood.
    I got the snacks right, and I’d made a vow not to yell anything until I’d had a crash course in soccer terminology. But J.P. didn’t hesitate to tell me that Alex’s shin guards were too big for him and that she saw him picking his nose when he was supposed to be watching the ball. If it hadn’t been for Poco continually changing the subject while we sat, interminably, on the bleachers, I probably would have told her to take a look at her own kid.
    Because even with my uneducated eye, I could see that Cade wasn’t doing so well down there. He was a pudgy boy, for starters, and his cheeks remained an almost neon shade of red at all times, as if just walking were an exertion. He never had the ball longer than two seconds before someone else snatched it from him, and when one of the other boys yelled, “To you, Cade!” he was usually gaping off in the other direction and missed the thing completely.
    By Sunday, even J.P. was admitting he was a mess. “I think he’s starting puberty,” she said.
    â€œAt ten years old, J.P.?” Poco said, more gently than I ever could have.
    â€œI don’t know what else would cause him to suddenly turn into a complete klutz.” J.P. shoved the trickles of graying hair back from her forehead. “It could be his weight, I guess.”
    Whatever it was, it hadn’t improved since the day before. Halfway through practice, J.P. fretted that Dan was going to eliminate him from the team. I laughed out loud.
    â€œI don’t see what’s funny,” J.P. said.
    Poco put her hand on J.P.’s arm. “I think Ryan was just—”
    â€œI can speak for myself,” I said. “Dan would keep a quadriplegic on the team if it meant he could avoid a conflict.”
    â€œI don’t think that’s funny either.”
    â€œAnybody want a drink?” Poco said. “I brought a cooler.”
    J.P. shook her head and gazed dismally at the field. Victoria ordered a water. Poco grabbed my hand and pulled me with her. My plan was to tell her when we got to the bottom that I didn’t need her to play mediator—that J.P. could bring it on as far as I was concerned.
    Poco opened the cooler, thrust an icy bottled water into my hand, and had me sitting with her several sections over on the bleachers before I could protest.
    â€œI thought a little space would be a good thing,” she said.
    â€œThanks,” I said, “but if I need space, I’ll make some.”
    â€œI wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about J.P. You intimidate her.”
    I grunted. “I don’t think she intimidates that easily.”
    â€œShe doesn’t.”
    â€œSo are you the protector of the psyches in this group?”
    â€œYes,” she said