A Warrior's Redemption (The Warrior Kind)

The next day I found Samantha in her flower garden, as I had expected to because that was where she usually was this time of late morning. I paused admiring the simplistic beauty of her flower garden before I approached her. She paused from her weeding, and glanced up somehow sensing my presence.

She smiled, "Good morning Roric, can I help you with something?"

"No. No, actually I've come to thank you for all the help and kindness you've already given me and to say goodbye." I choked out with more emotion creeping into my voice than I had intended.

She got up from her knees, where she had been weeding and motioned me over to sit on a bench that sat under an arbor, wreathed with several different flowering vines.

Sitting she took my hand and held it between hers and looked up at me and said, "Roric I would like to pray with you before you leave. Do you mind?"

Shaking my head no I watched as she closed her eyes and began to pray.

"Dear Lord, I thank you for sparing the life of Roric and for using us your humble servants to help him. Lord, I pray that you will go before Roric as he leaves us and help him to live a life that is pleasing to You. Help him to find the answers that he seeks and release him from the bitterness of his past. I pray that You would provide him a hope and a future as Your word says. May your will be done in his life all his days, in Your Son's Holy Name I ask these things, Amen."

We sat there quietly for a while listening to the bees busy at work on the flowers.

"I don't deserve everything you and your family have done for me Samantha. I really don't. I've done things that would cause my own mother to turn away from me." I said reflectively.

"Then you didn't know your mother as well as I did Roric." She replied.

"Roric, you must understand something about the Creator. The Creator loves you unconditionally. He has a hope and a future for each one of us, who believes in His name and the name of His Son and what His Son did for us. This is the case regardless of what we have done in our pasts, so long as we confess our misdeeds and live a life that seeks to please Him in the present. Roric something that will help you a lot is to work on building a personal relationship with your heavenly Father. The Creator isn't just up there." Samantha said gesturing up to the sky, "He's all around us, involved in everything seen and unseen."