Introduction
A short story about Ellie and how she finds a new Father. It will be published in two parts. This is the first instalment. The second will be published on Wednesday 14th January.
Ellie Higgins is 21. She has just completed her finals at Uni and is excited to see a new chapter in her life unfolding before her. But things don’t go according to plan – well, not her plan anyway!
This story retells some of the great Bible truths, and particularly how you can truly find God, your Spiritual Father. He is a God of awesome power and love. We see and understand His nature as we read about Him in the Bible. We also read about His Son, Jesus, and His miracles of healing and deliverance.
His resurrection power is still available in your life and mine today. You can find a God who gives time to you and treats you exactly according to your needs. Most of all you can discover a Father who shows compassion, forgiveness, justice and restoration to sinners and who understands what it is to be you.
Ellie Finds Her Father
Part 1
A walk in the woods can change the way that you see life. At least that was what Ellie thought as she parked the car. She put on her walking boots and then set off at a good pace into Dereham Woods. Ellie loved those woods. They have been her friend since she was just a few years old. All through her childhood, whenever life had seemed difficult and sometimes downright impossible, she had grabbed Lucas, jumped on her bike and set off to cycle the few miles to the woods. There, holding her teddy bear firmly, Ellie found the beauty of the place always helped her to get things back into perspective.
And so her walks in Dereham Woods, with Lucas as her constant companion, had marked each major step in Ellie’s march through life. With their help she had overcome every minor life hiccup and even the occasional major catastrophe. That’s why the place was special. It seemed to keep her unscarred and preserve her zeal for life. A zeal that her friends and family sometimes despaired about. Now 21 years old she still found the woods a solace when things were determined to go wrong.
********
Earlier that day Ellie had struggled to wake up after a late night party in her flat. Last night seemed rather a blur. She eventually opened her eyes, rather painfully, but enough to see she was lying fulling clothed on her bed. The sheets were crumpled, the pillows missing, the duvet somewhere else.
As consciousness slowly returned, Ellie realised that today the first part of her new life plan was about to start. She had set herself some goals, and her vision for the future was firmly in place – a future that would take her away from home and family and bring true independence. A new life, free from the crushing effect of her father’s mock benevolence and his impossible expectations. There would be no more jumping through hoops, no more family lectures, no more rejection.
She felt her immediate plans to escape her father’s influence were now firmly in her grasp. The plan was to graduate with a first class degree, get a good job and marry Paul, her long-term boyfriend. Paul – handsome, clever and the only real substitute she had ever found for the moth-eaten, dog-eared Lucas. For a moment Ellie even considered she might make her father happy!
And so she stretched, swung her legs off the bed and attempted to stand up. That was when the room started to revolve. Ellie became aware of a pain behind her eyes. She managed to swivel them to look at the alarm clock. They didn’t want to work at all, but she somehow forced them to. Through the haze Ellie realised that it was already gone 11 o’clock!
The results of her finals would already be published on the faculty notice board! There was no time to get down there, even though it was only a few minutes away. She needed to know now! So she staggered over to the table and switched on her laptop. The results should be there on the Uni website. The laptop flickered into life and Ellie focussed enough to hit the Favourites button that took her to the results page. She tapped in her student code and waited.
The laptop did not bring good news. Somehow she had blown those final exams and had ended up with a lower second class degree. Ellie looked again, hardly believing what she saw. In moments her hopes of getting that plum job had disappeared. Disappeared as quickly as the screen image on the laptop as, its battery flat, it powered itself down.
She picked up her phone and called Paul. He sounded distant and almost disinterested as, nearly in tears, she blurted out her bad news. When she stopped there was silence. Where were those words of support and love she had expected and now needed so badly? Ellie could almost feel his hesitation and embarrassment. Then he told her. His degree was so much better than he had expected – and then the bombshell. He told Ellie that he had decided to move to New Zealand – and that her presence would not be required. Ellie could feel the tears welling up. She asked him how long he had been planning all this without mentioning any of it to her before.
There was another long pause. Before he sheepishly admitted that this had been his plan for months. He couldn’t find an easy way to tell her. So he didn’t.
Ellie switched off the phone and collapsed in a heap on the floor, sobbing. She must have cried for at least half an hour. The tears kept coming. Then finally, all her energy spent and her tear ducts empty, she pulled herself up off the floor and dragged herself to the bathroom mirror. The sight was not a pleasant one. Ellie’s usually sparkling blue eyes were red-rimmed and her cheeks tear-stained. Her normally well combed hair was tangled in knots.
“You’re a mess, Ellie Higgins!” She said to the mirror, “For God’s sake pull yourself together!” Then she added as an afterthought: “Well not for God’s sake, but for my own. At least I am real, even if I am in a hopeless state. I’m no longer sure about God! In any case he can look after himself. And I will look after myself!
********
In the sitting room she heard her phone vibrating. Ellie knew immediately it would be her mother. She hesitated, and then walked into the room and grabbed the phone.
“Hello dear. Well, what’s the result?” The matter of fact voice betraying the expectation that failure was not possible, success the only option.
“Hello Mother. Thank you for asking – I’m very well. But if you must know, I got a 2.2.”
There was silence at the other end of the phone. Then: “Oh, dear! Are you sure? Your father will be very disappointed. That’s not a lot to show for the three years of encouragement and support we have given you. It’s a good job he’s not here at the moment. At least I will have time to break it to him gently!” Immediately Ellie could feel her emotions getting the better of her.
“Must go Mum, there’s someone at the door” she lied. “Speak soon!”And she turned the phone off and threw it across the room. It landed on the sofa.
Somehow Ellie managed to control the tears. She grabbed one of last night’s unfinished bottles of cheap wine and using one of the unwashed glasses lying around from last night, she poured herself a drink. Glass in hand she glanced round the room.
There were signs of last night’s pre-result celebrations on most of the flat surfaces. Empty bottles and crisp packets, discarded ties, even an odd shoe, they all reminded her of that stupid premature celebration.
In disgust she abandoned the untouched glass of wine and, grabbing a coat and her walking boots, she left the flat, slamming the door behind her. She paused at the top of the steps to breathe in the warm air of the early summer’s day. Then she hurried down the steps to her car; the car that was a bribe from her father. A “present”, given in return for the expected hard work that would result in a first class degree. Ellie smiled wryly as she unlocked the car door: “He’ll want this back,” she thought.
And with that she accelerated down the road, faster than she should, but determined to get away. Away from Uni, away from Paul, and away from the flat. And away from a father who had never understood her, and seemed incapable of showing her any of the love and acceptance she needed so badly. Yes, above all, Ellie needed to distance herself from her angry and unloving father.
********
Twenty minutes or so later, and feeling slightly more composed, Ellie parked the car in the Forestry Commission car park and set off into the woods she loved so much.
She guessed that back in the flat the phone would soon be ringing unanswered, as her father called to demand the explanation for her abject failure.
She strode down the well-trodden path. Ellie knew every turn in the path, every large tree that dominated the low, coppiced hazel that formed the wood. The early summer had been dry and as a result the ground was hard but even. The footprints of the other walkers had evened out the rough ruts left after a muddy winter. The shade was dappled and a gentle breeze rustled the leaves overhead.
Ellie saw the Speckled Wood butterflies chasing each other through sunlit clearings and the bright green, red-headed woodpeckers ant-hunting in the mossy green grass. She felt a little happier.
After a couple of miles, now deep in the woods, she reached a fork in the path. There she paused, unsure which of the two paths to choose that afternoon. Then, out of the corner of her eye she noticed another path, one that she had never seen before. It wound up the hill, skirting rocky outcrops becoming more and more hemmed in by stunted trees and bushes, clinging to the hillside.
It became a difficult path to walk, but something compelled Ellie to follow it. In fact she started picking her way up it almost without thinking. Ellie had only gone a few yards when out of the corner of her eye she saw something move.
It was away to the left, on the far side of a large clearing. Abandoning the path, she headed off, deeper into the woods. At first she thought it was one of the many deer that lived in the wood, or even one of the wild boars that she had heard about but never seen. She reached the far side of the clearing, then stopped and listened. But there was no noise and no sign of any animal either. Suddenly Ellie shivered.
She turned to retrace her footsteps back to the path she had so recently left. But the path was nowhere to be seen. Somehow everything seemed different now. It was almost as if she was in a different wood on a different hillside. In a different world even. Strangely perplexed, Ellie realised she was lost. She was lost physically, but she also felt lost emotionally; yes, lost in every sense of the word. She automatically reached for her phone, always so comforting to have – only to realise that she had left it back in the flat. The sun went behind a cloud and thunder suddenly rumbled around her. The first large drops of rain began to fall.
She looked around, hoping to see something to indicate the way out, but there was nothing, no clue in the view, no distant sound of traffic to guide her. Usually Ellie seemed to know the compass directions almost instinctively, but now she was completely confused. All she could see were trees and all around her she could hear only the sound of the strengthening wind. And then the gathering sound of the drip, drip, drip of raindrops as they coalesced on the branches, before depositing themselves down her neck.
Ellie felt cold, damp, footsore, weary, hungry – and completely lost. All those emotions she had experienced back at the flat, suddenly re-surfaced. At the top of the list was failure, closely followed by rejection. Together they rolled over her like the gathering thunderclouds.
********
A heavy rain set in. It was soon soaking through her coat and then flowing down onto her jeans, making them heavy and clingy round her knees. Water was cascading off her bedraggled hair and on down her neck in rivulets.
By now Ellie’s tears were adding to the dampness. For what seemed like hours she rushed deeper and deeper into the woods, stumbling over rocks and scratched by prickly shrubs, looking for a sign that she was safe, a way out of the mess she was surely in.
Slowly her pace slowed as waves of physical and emotional fatigue came over her. Ellie slowed to a stop, totally overcome with her desperate situation.
Then, for the first time in she don’t know how long, she suddenly found herself crying out to God; the God she had thought she knew when she had learned about Him, years ago, in Sunday School. At that time, Ellie had even repeated those vain words of promise and attachment to Him; promises that went unfulfilled as soon as she realised she didn’t actually mean them. At that moment she had rejected the God whom she imagined to be just like her father, forever demanding more of her than she could ever deliver. A God who was never satisfied. This was the God who she thought would quickly fly into a temper and say hurtful things that broke her down rather than built her up. A God who was just like her own father. And so she wanted nothing to do with Him!
And yet now, the God she had dismissed so angrily just a few hours ago, now seemed to be her last, her only hope; the only person who might hear her cries, and somehow come to her rescue. Ellie had no rational reason for doing what she did – except that in those woods there was no ceiling like the one in her childhood bedroom. Then, as she found herself starting to talk to God she remembered how as a small girl she had been commanded by her father to pray by her bed every night. The bedroom ceiling that was so familiar had always symbolised the way her prayers used to just bounce back at her, even when she had managed to voice them.
Back then, even as Ellie spoke those prayers out, she told herself that those prayers would surely never reach Him. And even if they somehow did, he would of course ignore them, just as her own father ignored her requests.
So now, lost in the depths of those woods, she found herself praying: “God, if You are there, please help me. I have nothing left of my own strength. I think I have reached rock bottom. Well, here I am God, no phone, no SatNav, no money, no friends, no hope! There is nothing, no-one left”.
And as she tried to find the right words to speak to God she carried on stumbling through the trees. In blind panic, but still praying, Ellie staggered on into the gathering darkness, tripping on tree roots, slipping on greasy leaves, getting wetter and wetter, and colder and colder.
Then, in the gloom, her foot dropped into a rabbit hole and she fell forward, her ankle twisting and cracking painfully. For some time she just lay there, sobbing on the wet muddy ground. She was in shock. She became aware of an increasing pain; her ankle was throbbing and sore.
And yet despite the pain, or perhaps because of it, Ellie continued praying, praying for help to the God she had long ceased to believe in. The physical pain was bad, but the emotional pain was even worse. Ellie just shut her eyes and howled.
To be continued …..
********
Part 2 will be published on Wednesday 14th January
All references are from the NKJV unless specified otherwise.
John Partis
bearing-kingdom-fruit.com
Text copyright © John Partis 2026
John Partis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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