Altar Call

CBN.com Altar Call is an engaging and entertaining look at how a wedding...even someone else’s...can turn rational women into irrational creatures. And how sometimes a woman’s path is about finding Mr. Right—and sometimes it is about having enough faith to do the right thing. Read an excerpt below.

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Dating the Boss

Mari, would you tell your boyfriend that this rotation schedule is killing my love life?” One of my coworkers, Lysa, rubs her red eyes and adjusts her tousled Golden Horizons Retirement Center uniform, which is on backward.

“Maybe your lack of dates has a little more to do with your faulty closet- eye coordination,” I suggest, laughing.

“Or the fact that you started taking night classes again,” Sonya, the yoga instructor, chimes in as she enters our small office area.

“Yeah, you are probably right.” Lysa takes a gander at her misfit outfit.  “But I prefer to blame someone else, if you don’t mind.”

Sonya and I raise our hands in submission. “Go right ahead,” I say. “You can blame Beau anytime.”

“Hey, I heard that.” Beau strides down the hall toward us. As he gets close to me I stare into his eyes but then force mine to drop to his name tag, which says “Director.”

Overall I’m starting to feel more comfortable with the idea of sharing my life with someone. Even this too-close-for-comfort scenario has begun to reveal benefits. When we are not able to go out after work, we see one another throughout the day. We steal glances and sweet conversations about life, my friends and their latest antics, and our favorite residents at Golden Horizons. When I go to bed at night I try to recall our best exchange of the day. Lately, I have been going to bed mentally balancing my checkbook. But every relationship has a natural dip after the initial, mutual wooing.

In the past I’ve engaged in relationships that had little chance of surviving.  Sometimes they had a natural expiration date, like college graduation. Other times they were such absurd pairings that they just had to end…a Julia Roberts, Lyle Lovett kind of thing. But this…this thing with Beau pulls the real me to the surface. Fighting and screaming at times, but deep inside I know this is the adult relationship I have always been afraid to hope for.  And as sappy as it sounds, my belief in love came alive the day I let my guard down.

Beau heads toward his office, which has no door. His first decision six months ago, when he became director and subsequently my boss, was to declare an open door policy forevermore. In a mock-ceremony our small staff gathered around while Beau dismantled the hinges. Party favors from the dollar store were involved.

As I get back to my file purging, Beau spins on one heel and backtracks two paces. He gives me a smile, steals a kiss, and grabs the remaining maple bar from the Sugar Fix box before disappearing into his doorless den. “As you were,” he says.

I doubt that is possible.

Taken from Altar Call, Copyright © 2006 by Hope Lyda; Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, OR; Used by Permission.