Beyond Absolution

Copyright © 2014 Thomas Kidwell.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-0215-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-0216-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014909172

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 5/21/2014

CONTENTS

Other Books by This Author

Foreword

Author’s Note

Introduction

Why Me, Lord?

Where Now, Lord?

The Fine Art of Barter

Josiah Returns

Learning The Ropes

The Wildflowers Of Spring

Confronting Our Worse Demons

One-One… Two-Two

Reconciliation

An Irrevocable Compromise

The Fruits Of Our Labors

Rendezvous

Gardens Of Wolves

Returning

Seasons Pass Too Quickly

The Long Journey Home

Epilogue

Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

John 8:12

OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR

Novels:

Above The Red© 2013 ISBN 978-1-4817-6761-3

Loweja© 2013 ISBN 978-1-4817-6763-7

A Certain Superstition© 2013 ISBN 978-1-4817-6765-1

A Parting Of The Clouds© 2013 978-1-62994-687-0

The Wolves Of Calamity© 2013 ISBN in production

Beyond Absolution© 2014 ISBN in production

Lang’s Paradox© 2014 ISBN in production

In The Shadow Of War© 2014 ISBN in production

Non-Fiction:

Just Another Old Bowhunter© 2009 ISBN 978-0-692-00281-0

Another Old Bowhunter© 2010 ISBN 978-1-4575-0977-3

The American Feral Hog© 2012 ISBN 978-1-4575-1405-0

First Footsteps West© 2013 ISBN in production

All rights reserved

Edited by Dr. David Landis – Lititz, PA

Although the characters, places, and events portrayed herein have been inspired by true events, and actual places, the content is intended to be conveyed as entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or places is purely coincidental. Any slanderous or otherwise offending insinuations between the characters portrayed within this book regarding ethnics, do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the author, and are described herein only to illustrate the climate of relationships between ethnicities during the era portrayed.

FOREWORD

A lmost everyone who has ever lived has experienced, if not outright disasters, at least a certain amount of heartache in their lives. When it happens it is as though we are the only ones who have ever had to deal with it, and when others reach out to us in sympathy it sometimes does little more than irritat e us.

The hero of Tom Kidwell’s novel, "Beyond Absolution," describes a person who has lost everything that matters to him, and how the attempts of consolation by those who love him are repulsed because of the bitterness and anger that he feels, not just towards those who influenced his decision to move to an inhospitable land, but to God for seemingly ignoring him in his hour of need.

The story as woven by the author reminds us that God never promises exemption from life’s difficulties, but does promise His presence in the midst of them. The young man has an encounter with a man of God during his sojourn of discovery which reminds us all that God is always available to heal, comfort, and give us strength to endure.

My friend, Tom Kidwell, is a man who loves and respects God’s creation and who spends much time outdoors appreciating it. But the spiritual side of Tom is the thing that I, as his pastor, am the most familiar with, and I can attest that his love of God exceeds everything else. I am privileged and blessed to call him my friend.

REV. CHARLES ROY MCCONNELL

AUTHOR’S NOTE

T he Foreword of this book was most graciously written by my good friend, Rev. Charles Roy McConnell. Mr. McConnell himself is an accomplished author, having penned an autobiography of his own interesting life in 2012 entitled, " Cleared To Climb. " (Authorhouse – ISBN 978-1-4772-74 31-6)

His book is an extremely interesting and well-written portrayal of his life as a young man, the compulsions which steered him toward a career in aviation, and a sundry of entertaining reflections as a corporate pilot for Halliburton. He was the personal pilot for Halliburton CEO, Dick Cheney prior to his vice presidency of the United States, and Charles’ colorful career as a pilot has provided him with insights of which he would have otherwise been deprived.

It seems ironic that during his four-year term in the U.S. Air Force, a term in which they would not accept him as a pilot, that they would later hire him as a civilian – to give Air Force pilot candidates their basic flight training. I have only known Charles for four years, but I strongly suspect that God has always given him the optimism and foresight to overcome life’s occasional adversities.

Charles is currently the pastor of Hastings Baptist Church in Hastings, Oklahoma. Knowing him as I do has been a blessing in my life. His love of God, love of Country, and his love of people is an inspiration for all who know him. Throughout the ages, it’s been redundantly overstated that God works in mysterious ways… which indeed He does. That God would bring a misguided soul such as mine, all the way from Virginia to meet a man in the remoteness of southwestern Oklahoma who would lead me back to my Lord, is a miracle in and of itself. I shall be eternally grateful for his friendship, his counsel, his leadership, his understanding, and his love.

Amen.

INTRODUCTION

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. 1 Peter 5:10

G od never promised us a perfect world. He only promised us His perfect love. It’s been mankind’s natural proclivity throughout the ages that when a tragedy befalls us, or an injury or illness overcomes us, or we lose someone very near and dear to us, that we tend to ask God that eternal question, " Why me ? It has probably been among the most frequently asked questions to God. That question is usually followed very closely by another in which we ask, What did I do to deserve this ?"

We go through life sometimes as though we were living in our own carefully sanitized little world, thinking ourselves to be immune from all of the types of infirmities and tragedies that frequently fall upon "other people. Health and prosperity sometimes causes us to become smug and even arrogant in our attitudes of immunity after a period of time in which we have successfully dodged the bullet" for so many years. When times are good and our families and friends are healthy, and we are free from the torment of pain or oppression, who among us really needs God then? During those good times we’re so engrossed in having fun, and we’re so caught up with doing the things that we think will bring even more fun or more money into our lives, we tend to push God aside… with a token promise, perhaps, that we’ll get back to Him when we have more time, but not right now, God… I’m just too busy right now.

Then, one day, some sort of tragedy strikes, and you can bet your bottom dollar that sooner or later it will. We lose a son or a daughter to a terrible accident, our spouse suddenly dies, or we are diagnosed with a serious or even terminal illness, or any number of other life-altering events, and soon, we are asking God, "Why me? If we’re very fortunate, and have the time and the inclination to think about it, we’ll collect our thoughts, and eventually figure out that we needed God all of the time. All of the time! To have brushed Him off during the good times" is one of the biggest mistakes that we can make in our Christian lives. Yet, some of us have even brushed Him off during the times when we have needed him the most – blaming God, as if He had orchestrated some particular tragedy solely for His own amusement, and at the life-shattering expense of our personal heartache and suffering.

Such is the case in the humble portrayal of the life of Lucas Nobel that follows. As a misguided young Virginia farmer, in the year of 1823 he confronts a tragedy in his life of such great magnitude that he cannot deal with it alone. He blames God for the tragedy, turns away from Him, and wanders off, not caring if he lives or dies. His only way of striking back at God is to defy and curse Him. Lucas Nobel is not so different from many other young men in the early 1800’s, and he’s not really so different from men of today. He was reared in a Christian home, married a Christian woman, and was raising his young daughters in the same Christian manner in which he had been raised. But how solid and secure is his faith? How secure is anyone’s faith during the "good" times? Leaving his paltry Virginia farm behind, he follows his brother’s encouraging paragon and moves his family westward to seek what he thinks will be a better life for him and his family on the new western frontier.

We are but mortal humans, every one of us, and we all fall short of the glory of God. We all go astray from time to time. What characterizes us in our Christian faith is how quickly and effectively we can alter our errant course and return to the pathway of righteousness. Like so many of us, Lucas Nobel had gone astray. He might have remained astray, and been lost forever had it not been for the chance meeting of a man that would change his life. If we have lived long enough to one day achieve that ominous status that we have come to call, ‘senior,’ we can undoubtedly recall those precious few people that have made such a dramatic impression on us that they have ‘changed’ our lives. In that respect, Lucas Nobel is no different.

Herein lies his story; his own personal separation from God, his pathway back, and his ultimate journey beyond absolution. It’s a story that is best told by Lucas himself, and best told in his own humble words.

WHY ME, LORD?

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. – John 14:1

W inter had not yet begun to inflict its full ferocity upon my family and me, even though the nights had already become intolerably cold and bitter. It was only October, yet the night air had already become an unpleasant precursor and cruel harbinger which forecast that the miseries of winter would be upon us soon enough. Soon, there would be snow coming in from the north and we would be frozen into a life of constant struggle just to keep our livestock fed and our firewood gathered. It seemed as though the demons of winter had somehow conspired with my elder brother to bring as much undue cruelty and suffering into my life as they could possibly introduce. At least my embittered mind recognized the possibility of such an evil conspiracy. In my eyes, my brother had become the primary orchestrator of all that was against me in life. He was my brother, and I was supposed to love and cherish him, but how could I love him in my current state of reckoning? At his relentless persistence, my wife and our two daughters, Cynthia, age seven, and Phoebe, age nine, had helped me pack our every humble belonging and move from the safety and security of our small eastern Virginia farm to this ‘ God-forsaken wilderness ;’ a land where we had nothing, save for the items that we had labored to bring with us from Virg inia.

Had my brother not pestered me with such diligence and dogged determination, my family would have likely remained in Virginia, and carried on our lives in the manner in which we had become accustomed. He was my older brother, and had always played as much of a guardianship and leadership role in my life as my mother and father… perhaps even more. I had always looked up to him. I trusted him. I spent the years of my youth seeking his approval in everything I did. My family and I could have been happy there in Virginia, and in truth, we had been happy there. By comparison, we had been much happier in Virginia than in this desolate western, wind-swept prairie which we now found ourselves.

But for my brother’s continual ranting about the surety of achieving a better life in the west, we would have stayed in Virginia, continued to grow our crops each year, and Elizabeth and I could have basked in pride as we watched our daughters grow into womanhood. Under our loving influence, they would have matured into beautiful young ladies, married into good families, and bore us many fine grandchildren. In looking back, I could see that my long days of toil on my Virginia farm had been relatively burden-free when compared to our miserable life here on the prairie. The well-being of my family had been more than adequate compensation for my difficult hours of toil in the Virginia dirt. There had always been food for us to eat, a roof over our heads, and seemingly endless hours of happy embraces of love and affection at day’s end. Here, on the prairie, our house was not yet completed, every waking moment was spent in hard labor, and the evenings found us too exhausted to share affections or enjoy lighthearted moments together. Yes, my loving brother whom I had loved and trusted had led me to such a place as this.

Mother and Father had always managed to suppress and somewhat mitigate Adam’s insatiable appetite for wanderlust when we were children. Since boyhood he had possessed a restless spirit, and was ever-ready to engage the childish adventures that we pursued as young boys. More than once I had received a thrashing as my reward for following my brother’s lead. But there were few harsh consequences to the mistakes that we made as children. Father and Mother were always there for us, and they would always make things right when Adam or I would err. Adam had always been the leader, and I the follower. Father had been able to alleviate Adam’s boyish dreams somewhat by telling him that ‘the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence,’ but Father’s warnings were seldom effective in the long term. Adam was his own man, with a mind and restless spirit of his own. Once an idea had entered his head, hell could stand aside, because Adam was going to do his own will.

Mother died in the spring of 1820, and Father, having effectively surrendered what remained of his miserable life to the possessing forces of strong spirits, breathed his last just before Christmas that same year. With no one to restrain him, Adam became relentless in his attempts to persuade me to pack our family’s belongings and trail along behind him and his family on a westward oddessy. I was emotionally weak and vulnerable in the months following Mother and Father’s death. Adam’s words were convincing, and I lacked the courage to defy him. He made the western frontier sound as if it was heaven on earth… another ‘Garden of Eden.’ He was so driven by this desire that he was going to go west whether I went with him or not. To me, he symbolized the only surviving figure in my life that represented a link to my father and mother’s family. Not wishing to see him disappear from my life, the following spring found me, along with my wife and our two daughters, plodding along in our schooner wagon behind Adam, his wife, Charlotte, and their two boys. My family was moving west – if for no other reason than to satisfy the frivolous longings of my older brother.

Even with the hardships that we encountered along the way, Adam was still able to convince me that there was a better life awaiting us in this new land, somewhere west of the great Mississippi River. His colorful campfire narratives are what kept me going each day, and I believed every word that flowed from his mouth. I was ever the naïve and subordinate brother, and Adam had little difficulty convincing me to do anything he wished. That was especially true now that Father was gone from our lives. My family and I had been relatively contented with our Virginia lifestyles. Albeit lives of austerity, we always seemed to have the necessities that our lives required. My wife, Elizabeth Anne, always took great pride in the dress and appearance of our daughters, especially on the Sabbath when we attended church. To a great extent, Elizabeth had willingly deprived herself in life, preferring to attend to the needs of our children before attending any such selfish needs that she might have had. Such devotion to our children was one of the many reasons that I loved her as dearly as I did. And it was with the same love and devotion that I had felt so encouraged to seek a more prosperous life for them in the great new western frontier of the United States. I felt that it was my duty to provide them with the best that life had to offer. Adam had successfully enlivened that spirit within me which drove me toward such a promising new life. I became enthusiastic and even obsessed with improving my family’s situation in life. The more that Adam persisted, the less contented I became with our mundane lives in Virginia. As a result, my enthusiasm became embedded in my family’s determined dispositions, and despite the hardships that we encountered along the way, we kept our eyes on the horizon and our mules moving westward. With two milk cows in tow behind us and our eyes always looking ahead, we moved onward each day. If I had only known at the time, that I was leading my precious family toward their premature deaths, I would have turned my wagon back to the east and returned them to the safety and security of our small Virginia farm as quickly as I could. But I was unaware that the future could have held anything other than the grand new life that Adam had promised. He was my brother, and surely he would not mislead me. My head always seemed full of the enticing promises made by my brother.

I had never heard the terrible word, ‘cholera,’ before my family and I had arrived and began settling in the western prairieland of Kansas. It was only after I had begun working on the structure that was supposed to have become our family dwelling in this new land that I heard the word. No, I had never before heard the ugly word. Yet just four months after our arrival and filing for a section of land in a place called ‘The Kansas Territory,’ I became woefully familiar with both the word and the indiscriminant, horrible way that it took the lives of so many helpless and innocent people. There were only a handful of other settlers living about us on the prairie, when we began to receive word that members of many families had succumbed to this strange new sickness. I kept my family close to our new home at all times. Elizabeth and I were vigilant in protecting our daughters, and I warded off the approach of all strangers as a precaution, and yet my efforts proved to be in vain.

Just three months earlier, I had been a man with a dream to fulfill. My innocent efforts had been directed toward securing a better life for my family and myself. Yet in the wake of their tragic deaths even the worse memories that I had of our lives in Virginia were immeasurably preferable to the permanency and irrevocability of death. Adding greatly to my pain and despondency was the horrifying fact that I had been the one who had led them there to their fate. I, above all others, had brought them to their deaths. Me, the very one who had sworn to love, watch over, and protect them! I could have ignored my brother’s pleadings and dismissed his colorful promises of a better life, had I only given the matter greater thought. I could look back now and see the folly and error of my decision to move westward. I was humiliated and ashamed of my selfish and irresponsible actions. My own foolish follies had cost my precious family their lives.

Elizabeth’s enthusiasm to move westward had been based solely on my influence. She was merely being the proper and obedient wife, as she had always been. She had always been supportive of all of my decisions in life… even the ones which she disagreed with. It was I, under my brother’s persistent encouragement, who had willingly allowed him to mastermind the destruction of my heretofore happy family. I would never see my darling Elizabeth again. I would never see my daughters grow into womanhood and bear us grandchildren. I would never be able to embrace either of them again. My arms were empty now, my heart was empty, and… my life was empty.

Elizabeth would have been the perfect grandmother. She absolutely doted upon her daughters, and she would have done likewise with her grandchildren, I’m sure. I would have basked in the pride of knowing that I had provided them with both the means and circumstances for them to live rich, full lives. We had only been pursuing our dreams when we had moved west. And now those dreams were shattered and our future destroyed. I was left with nothing in life but an unfinished dwelling, and the memories of times when our lives had been spent in the adoring love and companionship of one another.

My loving wife, Elizabeth passed away on a steamily tepid early fall afternoon, my daughter Cynthia, two days later on Sabbath morning, and my oldest daughter Phoebe just before meridian hour on Monday. In a matter of three terrifying days I had lost my entire family. I was never affected by the illness itself… only the dreadful aftermath. In my grief and despair, I used wood planking that I had intended to use as batten boards for our house and constructed their coffins. It was the most sorrowful task that I had ever performed. My brother’s family was fortunately not affected by the horrible epidemic. I was thankful that he and his loved ones had been spared the same horrible nightmare that had consumed my family, yet things seemed a bit unfair to me at the time. It was solely because of my brother’s persistence that I had moved my family to this new place called Kansas. I could not help but wonder why his family had been spared and yet my family had been completely destroyed. Over and over again I asked God for answers, yet He ignored me.

In attendance at the burial, were Adam and Charlotte, four men and two women neighbors from nearby, and me. Everyone but I wore moistened bandanas over their mouths and noses so as not to breathe any unnecessary contaminating elements. I had refused to take such precautions. If the horrible illness wanted to claim my life as well, then let it come forth and do so. If God wanted to end my life here and now, then let Him strike me dead where I stand. What did I have to live for now anyway? In my confused mind, my life was already destroyed.

Without the benefit of a clergyman’s attendance, one of our neighbors uttered forth the ecclesiastical words that he probably felt were appropriate for the occasion. In my tormented mind, however, there were no words needed… especially worthless words directed toward God. If God had existed, surely He would not have permitted the deaths of my wonderful wife and my two perfectly innocent daughters. A fair and just God would have taken me instead. My heart was not as pure and innocent as the ones He had taken. No, I thought, there could be no fair and just God that would have permitted such a thing. Therefore, there is no God.

The abstemious ‘thudding’ sounds made by the shovelfuls of dirt falling upon their meager coffins sent chills of desperation through my body and soul, and seemed to add emphasis to the finality of their departure from this world. With one shovelful at a time, earth was thrown into their graves until the task was completed. For the first time in ten years, I stood alone in life. My brother and his wife stood silently nearby without saying a word while the graves were being filled by two of our neighbors. Charlotte wept, but Adam stood there stoically stone-faced and perfectly silent by her side until the graves had been fully covered over. I could not, and did not look Adam in the eye. I was afraid that my emotions would overtake my senses, and I would do physical harm to him. Nervously, he stepped forward to endow me with some superfluous words that were somehow intended to miraculously heal my grief, I’m sure.

Lucas, Charlotte and I are truly sorry for your loss. Is there anything that we can do to…

"Shut up! Say no more to me above the graves of my family, Brother! This is hallowed ground