Time For Another Dispatch...

Sometimes the work we are called to do asks more of us than long hours or tired hands. Sometimes it reaches into our hearts and rearranges the shape of our lives. Matt and Emily discovered this the hard way. His choice to serve those in great need was not a career so much as an obedience, and obedience has a way of carrying consequences that echo far beyond the moment they are chosen. This is a story about love that mattered, paths that diverged, and the lasting truth that doing good in the world can cost us dearly, even as it shapes us into who we are meant to become.

Dispatches From the Edge & Other Stories From The Margins:

To Love & Obey

He was twenty-two, and people said he had potential.

Oh, that word. Potential. It sounds like a compliment (That boy has real potential) until you realize it is also a way of saying, "We are not sure yet, so please don't disappoint us." It's a blessing with a little skeptical eyebrow baked in.

Matt Cavanaugh carried that word around like a guitar case. Not heavy enough to crush him if it fell on his toe, but awkward enough to bump his knee into it every time life got crowded.

Back then, he worked at the record store downtown, the one that smelled like old cardboard album sleeves and with a steady onion breeze drifting in from the bagel shop next door. He could tell you which album pressing was worth hunting for and which reissue was basically a lie with a barcode. He also played rhythm guitar in a cover band that had played exactly two paying gigs and one wedding reception, during which the bride cried for reasons that did not involve romance. The band did OK, but Matt had started scribbling his own lyrics lately, the kind you write when you are trying to name a feeling that has no clean label. Sometimes words would form out of the ether like some sort of strange magic.

Matt was a church kid too, the kind who still prayed to God like he did when he was eight, even though the wider world kept rolling its eyes at him like a teenager being asked to help carry groceries. His jeans were faded, his dreams were bright from overuse, and his heart, oh, his young heart, was enormous. It barely fit inside him.

And then there was Emily Brooks.

Emily was the kind of girl whose name sticks in your mouth like a melody. You say it once, and your memory keeps humming it for weeks. She had grown up ordinary enough, good family, good grades, nothing flashy. Then, somewhere around her sophomore year, life hit the accelerator, and she bloomed like everyone else was standing still. She wrote poems on napkins. She listened to bands no one had heard of yet. She could talk about God, love, Kierkegaard, or pie crust with the same half smile that made you believe she had lived three lifetimes and remembered all the good parts.

Matt did not chase her. He didn't need to. They drifted toward each other the way certain things do when the magnetism is strong. He would see her at the coffee shop, her notebook open and an old Polaroid camera from 1984 beside her, like a pet that behaved. He would say something dumb about the weather or the song on the radio, and she would look up with those eyes that could see right through him, and his knees buckled like an atheist finding glorious faith.

People said she was out of his league. Too beautiful, too brilliant. But Matt was not intimidated by any of it, because every man who has ever trusted the sound of his own heart knows the same truth Matt knew in that moment. She was the girl. The one who could turn the weight of the world into a melody. The one who could make sorrow sound like something you could survive.

And somehow, by some small mercy that felt like God slipping a note into his pocket, Emily saw him. Really saw him. Not the shiny "potential" everyone talked about, but the quieter things beneath it. His steady goodness. The part of him that took people seriously.

For quite a while, she was content to be with him. They talked until the moon forgot its job most nights. And they kissed for long stretches in places that were not romantic at all but were theirs anyway, borrowed hallways, half-lit stairwells, quiet corners of the library, the front seat of her truck, the back seat of his car, parking lots that smelled like rain puddles and gasoline. She leaned her head on his shoulder and said she liked the way he made her feel safe in a world that did not slow down for anyone.

That about blew his heart clean open. It swelled and burst within his chest.

But here is where the story turns, and it turns in the way too many stories do.

Because Matt had a calling.

It wasn't a hobby or a phase. It wasn't a cute idea he could abandon when it got inconvenient. It was a calling that kept knocking, like a neighbor who knows you are home because your lights are on.

Matt had always felt drawn toward people in great need. The ones everyone else normally stepped around. People who could not repay kindness with anything shiny. Folks whose lives looked like a pile of receipts in the bottom of a glove compartment, crumpled and stained and hard to sort through, but still worth saving.

He did not exactly choose it. He discovered it the way you find your own heartbeat, by realizing it has been there the whole time.

The only choice he truly had was sharp and straightforward.

Obey, or do not.

And Matt chose to obey.

At first, it looked small. Volunteering at a shelter on Thursday nights. Driving a guy to a job interview because the bus system had decided to strike that week. Sitting with someone in the hospital who had no one else. Listening to stories that did not end neatly. Praying in his old childhood way to God, even when he was tired, even when he felt foolish.

And then his calling began to grow.

He started taking training. He started showing up at the shelter more. His record store shifts began to feel like the thing that paid for his real life, not the place where his real life happened. And he began talking about full-time work that would not make him impressive at parties but would make him useful in the world.

Emily watched this with admiration at first. She said she loved his heart. She said the world needed men like him.

But Emily was also twenty-two, and she had her own hunger. She wanted the big world. New cities. New people. New stories. She wanted to experience life before it tried to label her and shelve her like a book no one checked out anymore.

And then there was the other thing.

Money.

Not in a greedy, cartoon way. But more like a quiet worry that sat down in the room and refused to leave.

Emily had grown up with a certain steadiness. Not riches exactly, but comfort. Comfort one doesn't notice until they imagine losing it. She did not want to be shallow. She hated the idea of being shallow. But she also did not want to choose a life that felt like a constant struggle.

And she began to wonder, very softly, if loving Matt meant signing up for a future where the bills always arrived with their fists up, where vacations were always "maybe next year," where security was something people in other families had.

She did not say it like that at first. She said it the way people do when they are trying to be kind.

"You're the most beautiful man I've met. You are so good, Matt," she told him one night, tracing the rim of her coffee cup with her finger. "And you are so… devoted."

Matt smiled because he thought devoted was a compliment.

Then she said, "But do you ever want more? Like… more stability?"

He said, "I do. That's part of why I'm doing this. People need help. Real help."

Emily nodded. She meant it. She did not want to argue with goodness.

But she was not ready to settle down with anyone yet, and she felt the big world pulling at her like a tide. And, truth be told, she did not know if she wanted to build a life with someone whose obedience might always lead him toward the hard places.

It made her uneasy. Not because she did not love him. Because she did.

But great love is not the only thing people are afraid of. Sometimes they are also scared of the life that comes with it.

So Emily began to drift away from Matt.

It was not cruel. Though it felt that way to Matt. It was the kind of leaving that happens in inches, not explosions. Less texting back. More "I'm just tired." More looking past him when she talked about the future. It was heartbreak that happened in bits and pieces for Matt.

Matt tried and tried to convince her to stay, but he did not know how to compete with the wide world. And you cannot hold a person like a prisoner and call it romance. He knew that. He hated that he knew he had to let her go.

And then, almost two months later, there was the night at The Lantern.

The Lantern was a bar that smelled like spilled beer and weirdly like warm electrical wiring. Matt's band had just finished their set. He was standing near the pinball machine pretending not to care about anything, but Emily still occupied his thoughts.

His friend Joey knew Matt was still depressed, nudged him, and said, "Man, she's not good enough for the likes of you."

Joey meant well, but Matt felt like it was a lie told to make him feel better. Emily was good enough for anyone she wanted in her orbit.

A few moments later, Emily walked in with her hair pulled back, a denim jacket on, and that same half smile, paired with grace as if it were a birthright. Matt took one step toward her, then another, ready to say something, anything.

Then she turned and smiled as she drew her hair back with her finger behind her ear.

She turned, just not towards him.

But to the guy beside her.

And in that instant, Matt's heart did what hearts do all too well. It broke quietly, like glass you don't notice until later when the light catches it.

He drove home with the windows down, the summer air filling up the interior of his car. The air was heavy from the rain earlier. He tried talking to himself the way men do when they are desperate to become somebody else in an instant.

"You don't want her anymore," he said.

Then he repeated it, this time even louder.

But love does not leave politely. It will shut the door and then sit on the porch like it still lives there. And real love, the honest kind, does not have an on and off switch.

Weeks went by. Then months. Life moved forward like it always does, without checking whether you are ready or not.

Matt got a new job and a new haircut during that time. He started jogging before work, if you can believe that. Realgrown-upp stuff. And of course, he kept showing up for people in need, even on days when his own need felt sharp and personal. Matt kept obeying.

Not because obedience made him feel noble.

But because he could not shake the sense that this was what he was made for.

One afternoon, Matt pulled up to a stoplight and casually looked over at the car next to his. There he saw Emily again. She was driving a different car, but still looked as beautiful as ever. She lifted her hand in a small wave, uncertain.

For a breath, he felt everything at once. Joy, loss, longing, laughter. The whole mess of being human.

He waved back. He smiled.

Then the light turned green, and he drove on.

He did not look back, though his mind was racing.

And as they each drove on, they both wept a little behind the wheel until they got to their separate destinations.

And if you have ever loved someone you could not quite forget, you should know that isn't a tragedy. It means something good once lived inside you. Something real. Something noble. Even if they could not stay. Even if they could not choose the life that came with your calling.

Matt did not stop serving.

And he did not become bitter.

He learned, slowly, that some people are not so much rejecting your heart as much as they're just afraid of the road your heart will take them down. He also learned that persons calling is not romantic. Heading one's calling is obedience with consequences. And, in time, h

e learned that love can be true even when it cannot last.

And he learned something else, too.

He learned that a heart big enough to hold something that was once real and noble is a heart big enough to keep a little piece of forever within it.

Not as a chain.

But as a blessing.

Well, that’s today’s dispatch, from the dusty places, and the far off corners, keep the faith, friends, and pass it on!