He’d only really ended up on the stage leading the eighty or so college students in worship because he was the sole staff member with even a modicum of musical skills. To be truthful, he hated leading worship. He hated the attention, all the eyes on him. It wasn’t in his nature. He would have preferred to be in the back of the small, overcrowded sanctuary, running the sound and projector equipment, and the PowerPoint presentation Pastor Nick would use during his message. But Nick was Stone’s buddy from way back, so when the previous worship leader got a paid, full-time offer at a bigger church, he asked Stone to fill in and there was no way to say no. Nick couldn’t carry a tune to save his life.
LifeBridge, the college-age ministry of Charlottesville Nondenominational Christian Church, was new, and had next to zero staff to speak of. Just Nick, who ran the program, doing the message, picking out the worship songs, and about 80% of everything else. Nick’s wife, Amy, organized the activities and outreach, while Jimmy, a recent college graduate, did the sound and helped stack the chairs at the end of the meeting. And then there was Stone. Four staff members and eighty students. A tad unbalanced, but it was better than having no staff, or no students.
The kids were there every Sunday night, and they brought friends. They soaked up Nick’s messages and sang with energy. They were eager and honest and passionate, and that was good enough for Stone.
Letting the last note hang in the air, he offered the students a small smile. This was where he was supposed to say something to them, something wise and Jesus-y and inspiring, the kind of platitudes that came to Nick as easy as breathing did.
Stone unslung the guitar and stared out at them, his throat clogged with nerves. He could sing without getting nervous, for some reason, but ask him to talk? Yeah…no.
He had to try, though. “Um. I—”
Nick stepped up beside him and clapped him on the shoulder. “Our God really is an awesome God, isn’t He?” The students cheered noisily, and Nick joined their applause.
Stone breathed a sigh of relief as Nick saved him from embarrassing himself. He stepped off the stage and put his guitar back in its hard black case.
It wasn’t that he didn’t believe, it was just that he always felt stupid when he tried to say things about God. Nick sounded so natural, so right—his words always came out smooth, with a readymade segue into his message.
When Stone thought about saying stuff like that, he felt like a hypocrite. Like the students would look at him and know he was a fake.
He wasn’t a fake. He just…sometimes he felt like one. He wasn’t good and holy and whatever, not like Nick. He didn’t have Jimmy’s earnest, eager personality. Nor even Amy’s kind, nurturing nature. He was quiet, stoic. Words didn’t come easily to him. They never had, and they never would.
Stone Pressfield was a soldier. A warrior. He’d graduated from high school at 17, gotten permission from his dad, and applied for the Navy SEALs. He’d passed the physical screening test with flying colors, aced the ASVAB, earned a SEAL Challenge Contract, and within months of graduation was mucking in the mud in boot camp. By the time he was 21, he was a hardened combat veteran.
He’d seen and done things no one in the sanctuary could ever comprehend. That was what made him feel like a fake when he was up there leading worship. He wasn’t a worship leader. He wasn’t a pastor. He wasn’t a good Christian. He was a soldier, and he believed because he’d seen the truth. He’d experienced death and felt the presence of God. He’d witnessed miracles. Bullets that should have taken his life, missing without any explanation. Grenades landing at his feet and not exploding. He’d seen the worst in humanity and dealt death to the scum of the earth. He’d also seen true heroism and courage, seen sacrifice and the power of faith. He’d seen the Gospel change lives. He’d seen acts of kindness transform entire villages.
So yeah, he believed.
But his was the kind of faith grounded in gritty reality, and it was tempered by an awareness of what went on in the world beyond the narrow field that these kids experienced.
Kids.
Most of them were only a few years younger than him. Some, like Jimmy the sound guy, were basically his peers, within two or three years of his age. But Jimmy, at twenty-three, was still a kid. He’d never left Virginia. He’d attended the private Christian school connected to the church where he now volunteered. He’d gone to a Christian college, graduated with a Christian degree. He was so innocent and well intentioned and naive that Stone almost couldn’t stand him for it. He was a good kid, a great kid. But Jimmy wasn’t even on the same planet as Stone, it sometimes seemed.
With a sigh, Stone rested his spine against the back wall of the sanctuary, near the doors that led out into the foyer. He crossed his arms over his chest and listened to Nick’s message about being genuine in a world where falsity was king.
When the message was over, Nick dismissed the students, and they gathered in the foyer and the sanctuary to socialize. Stone watched them, listening in to conversations, and wondering what it was like to be so innocent. He’d never been like that, even as a kid. Not growing up with the parents he did.
There was one student who always caught his eye. Stone had to make himself think of her as a student, because that was safest. He kept his back to the wall and watched her laugh with her friends, and he had to work hard to keep his thoughts pure.
Wren Morgan. Short and curvy, thick hair cascading in a loose cloud of raven wing black down her back, dark, happy eyes, tan skin. Wren was a joyful person. She exuded sheer happiness, no matter the situation, and she always, always had a brilliant smile for everyone.
Wren was the girl who would sit in the back with the awkward new kid and make them feel at home. She would befriend the lonely ones, and she would do it with the kind of easy grace that made it seem like she was the one benefitting. She would volunteer to do the things no one else wanted to, stayed late to help out, showed up early.
Stone never let himself get too close to her, talk to her too much. It wasn’t smart, or ethical. He was staff, she was a student. Sure, she was only a few years younger than him. Twenty-two, he was pretty sure, to his twenty-six.
It wasn’t easy, but he kept his distance.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he checked it, answering the text from his buddy Sam, who was a Recon on leave in DC. When he shoved the phone back in his jeans pocket, she was approaching him with that delicious sway to her hips.
She graced him with a smile so genuine and bright that he couldn’t help smiling wider at her. “Hi Stone! I was wondering if you’d help me figure out the chord progression for ‘Mighty to Save’. I just can’t get it right.”
A few months ago, Wren had asked him to teach her to play guitar, so every Wednesday night they’d sit on the stage together and he’d teach her. She’d grown proficient enough that he couldn’t teach her much else, but every once in awhile she’d still get stuck and ask for his help.
“Sure. Show me what you’ve got.” He set his case on the floor between them and lifted out his beat-up old Taylor, handed it to her and crossed his arms over his chest again.
He didn’t miss the way her eyes followed his arms, watched his chest as it flexed. He had to resist the urge to flex again for her. He did his best to keep his gaze where it belonged, on her fingers as she worked the simple guitar chords of the song she was trying to learn. Within minutes he’d identified her problem.
“Hold up,” he said. “You’ve got the chords right, but your rhythm is wrong. Here, lemme show you.” Bending toward her and taking the guitar, he couldn’t stop his eyes from traveling down the front of her V-neck shirt as she leaned over to hand it to him. He averted his gaze, mentally chewing himself out. She had on a small silver cross necklace, a delicate piece of jewelry with a tiny diamond in the center of the cross. It fell free from her shirt as she leaned forward, and she immediately slipped it back in between her breasts.
Forcing his attention to the guitar on his lap, Stone showed Wren the correct rhythm, then watched as she played it through a few times.
“Looks like you’ve got it,” he said. “I should go, though.” He had to get away from her before temptation had him looking at places he had no business looking.
Wren’s smile faltered for a moment as she tucked the guitar away and locked the clasps. “A bunch of us are
