Divine Read Free

theater and music, but the other two she was here volunteering her time and energy to work alongside the team at the shelter. She had an uncanny way of connecting with the women, helping them feel safe and cared for from the moment they entered the building.
    And that was always the hardest part, getting abused women to step out of a harmful situation into the safe haven of the shelter.
    "What's her name?"
    "Emma Johnson. She's twenty-three with two little girls." Leah frowned. "I'm worried about her."
    "Me too." Mary took the file marked Emma from the corner of the desk. In their initial phone discussion, the shelter's staff counselor had written in the file that Emma had gotten into drugs as a teenager, and now she was bruised and battered because of her boyfriend.
    In addition, the counselor had noted that Emma was suicidal. "I feel trapped, like I'm in a prison and I can't get out," Emma had told the counselor.
    It was that part that had caught Mary's attention. Trapped in a prison. The words could've been her own once, a lifetime ago. Mary sighed. Dozens of abused women filed through the doors of the DC shelters every day. She couldn't meet with all of them, so for the most part she left counseling to her very able staff.
    But this one . . .
    Mary tucked the file under her arm and nodded at the door down the hallway. "I'll be waiting." She smiled at Leah. "Bring Emma to my office when she's ready."
    Inside the small room, Mary shut the door and studied Emma's file again. Once in a while God brought someone who needed to hear her story. Her entire story. Her story of gut-wrenching heartache and sorrow and finally her story of victory.
    Her love story.
    Without ever meeting her, Mary was convinced that Emma was one of those women.
    She stood and went to the window facing S Street. The sun was passing behind a cloud, and an anxious feeling plagued her. Days like this it all came back, the horrors that had trapped her and threatened to consume her. Fear and deceit, pain and addiction. Faithlessness and promiscuity and a desire to end her own life.
    In Bible times people would have called her possessed of those horrors. Demons, they would've said. People today were reluctant to use that word, but whatever the wording, the effect was the same. Bondage and helplessness, with no way out.
    Until she met Jesus.
    She was no longer a slave to her own seven demons but a willing servant, dedicated and indebted to the Master, determined to make every breath count for His purposes alone. Her devotion was that strong.
    Mary looked up and found a place beyond the passing cloud. What horrors did Emma Johnson face? In what ways did she need to be rescued?
    A long shaky breath left Mary's lips. Her job was easier when she stayed busy, stayed in the present day, making rounds between senate committee hearings and ministry on the streets of DC. But sometimes when the situation warranted it, she allowed herself to go back to the sad, sorry beginning. Telling her story was one way of underlining the truth, one way of making sure that the pain she'd suffered hadn't been without reason.
    She swallowed hard and leaned into the windowsill. What were people thinking these days? Jesus wasn't merely a good teacher, and He certainly wasn't only a man—the way the world saw men. There had been no marriage or family for Jesus Christ. He'd come to set people free. Period. And that's just what He'd done in her life. People didn't understand the power of Jesus—not the real power.
    It was her job to tell them. Her job to tell Emma Johnson.
    Jesus had rescued her, saved her from horrors that otherwise would've killed her. That wasn't something a normal man could've done. Her rescue hadn't come at the hands of a mere mortal—no way. It had come through the working of a mighty God.
    Mary felt her anxiety ease. She would tell Emma every piece of her story so the woman might understand the real Jesus, the one people often didn't know about. Her story alone was