Wearing My Halo Tilted

by Stephanie Perry Moore

  Also by Stephanie Perry Moore

  Chasing Faith

  Perry Skky Jr. Series for teens

  Prime Choice (#1 )

  Pressing Hard (#2)

  Problem Solved (#3)

  Prayed Up (#4)

  Promise Kept (#5)

  Beta Gamma Pi Series for teens

  Work What You Got (#1 )

  The Way We Roll (#2)

  Act Like You Know (#3)

  Got It Going On (#4)

  Published by Dafina Books

  Wearing My Halo Tilted

  STEPHANIE

  PERRY

  MOORE

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by Stephanie Perry Moore

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1 - Wish

  Chapter 2 - Big Dipper

  Chapter 3 - Far

  Chapter 4 - Twinkle

  Chapter 5 - Shining

  Chapter 6 - Sparkle

  Chapter 7 - Glowing

  Chapter 8 - Darkness

  Chapter 9 - Falling

  Chapter 10 - Night

  Chapter 11 - Galaxy

  Chapter 12 - Breeze

  Chapter 13 - Dream

  Chapter 14 - Constellation

  Chapter 15 - Star

  Teaser chapter

  Copyright Page

  For Leon, Syndi, and Sheldyn

  (my three babies)

  I know you feel your parents are tough

  and sometimes wear their halos tilted.

  Though we aren’t perfect, we are believers.

  And always know we have perfect love for you.

  Even now we’re praying that your

  future-marriage unions

  will be blessed and built on God’s rock.

  As your dad and I daily work to straighten out our

  own crowns,

  may you and every reader do the same.

  Acknowledgments

  A tilted halo . . . doesn’t even the strongest Christian wear one at times? None of us will be perfect ’til we’re with God. But let’s admit that we can straighten ourselves up a bit. I loved telling this story of a struggling marriage needing grace to be whole. Maybe if we showed a little more compassion to one another, this world would be a better place. Let’s face it, it is hard to make it out here; and it’s hard to get along with people that act like they have no morals. But when it all seems hard to bear, bring your woes to God, and have faith that He can fix your drama.

  I’ve learned in my research why we fall short, and that most times the difficult moments draw us closer to the Lord. In other words, in our weakness, He is strong. So when we fall prey to temptation, we must allow Him to renew in us the right spirit of holiness, righteousness, and goodness. Though it is in man’s nature to sin, we can conquer the enemy and walk upright. Here is a heartfelt thank you to all those who helped me get to His business and finish this inspiring tale.

  Thanks, Dad, Dr. Franklin Perry Sr.; Mom, Shirley Roundtree Perry; brother, Franklin Dennis Perry Jr.; special author friends: Robin Jones Gunn, Beverly Jenkins, Vanessa Davis Griggs, Marjorie Kimbrough, Victoria Christopher Murray, Matthew Parker, Michele Andrea Bowen, Lysa Terkurst, Daaimah Poole, and Paula Chase Hyman; agent Janet Kobo-bel Grant; assistants Ciara Roundtree, Torian Colon, Cynthia Peace, Andrea Johnson, Nakia Austin, and Jessica Phillips; publisher Kensington/Dafina (especially Selena James and Adeola Saul); extended family, sorors, and friends; my children: Leon, Sydni and Sheldyn; husband, Derrick Moore; and my readers. I could have written something cooler, but I’m having a tilted halo moment. Seriously, you know I could not have done this without you.

  And thanks, Heavenly Father, for another opportunity to tell a story that will bring people closer to You. Keep helping us all because we’re so fragile. Personally, I do pray to become more like You daily. I can’t wait to be with You and finally receive the perfect crown in heaven that will always stay straight. ’Til then I know you’ll help me to push my tilted halo up.

  Chapter 1

  Wish

  As I balled up on the cold, hardwood floor in our master bedroom, I prayed that my irate husband wouldn’t come back upstairs and haul another lamp across the room, actually hitting me the next time. I was too afraid to budge from the corner, scared that my watery eyes would cloud my vision and I’d accidentally step on the shattered glass. Never in our contented four years of marriage had Dillon become so over-the-top angry that I felt threatened. But one time was one time too many for me to live with a man that handled conflict by screaming at me and punching the wall. I wasn’t going to go through mental drama with him. I had to gather my courage, compose myself, and figure out what was next for me and my girls.

  I was so sick of the downward spiral our marriage had been on. For the last six months, Dillon had managed to sleep in numerous places in our three-story contemporary house. Everywhere that was other than beside me. The truth was, he was tired of me asking him to perform his husbandly duties. Was it so wrong that I wanted him?

  Maybe I was overreacting, trippin’, or something. Maybe I was blowing this whole thing out of proportion. I was sure there were plenty of women who would love to have a faithful husband like mine. At least Dillon paid all the bills so that I could stay home, raise our two daughters, and write Christian novels. Even though he wasn’t in my bed and his insecurities took from me the best of him, at least he was home.

  Four hours earlier when his black Escalade had rolled into our circular driveway, I had no idea asking him to satisfy his wife would cause such trouble.

  “Alright, Lord,” I said, realizing I needed to find Dillon and address things rationally. “This isn’t what I signed up for. I’m just twenty-nine and Dillon’s thirty-one. Why are we fighting like this so early in our marriage?”

  After I’d finished moping, I quietly opened the door to the closest bedroom to ours, which happened to be occupied by our youngest daughter, Starr. She had just had her first birthday at the beginning of the month. I certainly didn’t want to wake her. I cracked the door just enough to see she was sleeping soundly and that her daddy wasn’t once again sleeping on the floor. I could’ve gone through the bathroom that linked one daughter’s room to our other daughter’s, but mad and upset, I wasn’t thinking. I took the long way around to the other door, which was Stori’s, my three-year-old daughter’s room. Her eyes sparkled as she called out my name.

  “Mommy, is it time to get up?” she asked in her most precious voice, which almost made me forget I was furious with her trifling dad.

  I walked around her hot pink room and saw she was the only one in her bedroom. I pulled up her covers, kissed her on the forehead, and said, “No, sweetie, it’s not time to get up. Get some rest.”

  “Okay, Mommy. Love you.” Stori rolled over and hugged her snow white teddy bear.

  My anger seeped back in. Even my daughter had someone to cuddle with.

  I continued the search, growing madder with each step. The door to the guest room across from Stori’s was open. However, I could clearly see my husband wasn’t in there. I headed down the winding staircase into the great room and then went to the keeping room. The TV was on, but Dillon wasn’t on our sectional leather couch. There was one other place he could be—his favorite spot—the basement.

  With every step I took, I became more and more ill. I thought, Why do I have to be the one that always tries to not go to bed with anger seething? Maybe I wasn’t the only one ready to call it quits. If I have to be alone in our bed, we might as well be separate
d.

  “Shake the thought,” I told myself as I passed the six framed NFL-team jerseys proudly displayed on the stairs. Those shirts quickly reminded me that maybe that was part of his problem.

  Dillon was still frustrated about not becoming successful in the league. Though he was there long enough to get vested, he never was a starter. And ever since he’d been cut, because of salary cap reasons, he’d been a little crazy. If it wasn’t mood swings, he was downing other players in the league. For a year, he had no job. Thankfully, we had savings, but mentally he was scarred. Sometimes he went off on me for no reason, or I’d find him in a corner crying alone. Seeing him go through that was unbearable. After finding our way to each other for comfort, we prayed and God came through. His old college coach from the North Carolina Tar Heels who was now head coach at the University of South Carolina, offered him a chance to be a position coach. If that hadn’t happened, who knows where my husband would be.

  He’d been out of the league for three years and the coaching world was difficult at best. The Gamecocks last two seasons had been subpar. I knew if they didn’t have a winning season this year, Dillon could be out of a job.

  If he did still have issues about not playing pro ball, he didn’t have to take it out on me. Plus, he didn’t need to be stressing anyway. This was June. Football season was coming up in two months. God had blessed him to still be a part of the game. He was known as the best linebacker coach in the Southeastern Conference. Though he wanted to be a coordinator and head coach, this job was a stepping-stone. The chump needed to be grateful. He might not be playing in the league anymore, but at least he had a job. God had blessed him and he needed to get over it.

  Flipping on the light switch, I saw his fat, funky self comfortably sitting in his La-Z-Boy with drool sliding down the left side of his face. I pushed his head lightly with one hand, while my other one rested on my hip. The jerk didn’t move.

  “What are you doin’?” I screamed, trying to startle him.

  He bounced up and became inches taller than me. “Shari, didn’t you get enough of messin’ with me?” he asked, as if he had no intention of apologizing.

  He looked meaner than an upset pit bull. But I’d been bummed out too long. I was as ticked off as a struggling single mother who hadn’t gotten paid child support in over a year. My jaw was tight and my eyes were squinted. If I was white instead of the caramel brown sister I was, I would have been red hot.

  “I really don’t think we should talk right now. Let me just go to bed. You really need to head upstairs and leave me alone,” he said, clutching my hand and turning me toward the stairway.

  I jerked away from him. “Don’t pretend like everything is okay.”

  “Don’t bring that up again.” His voice stiffened, like I was the one with the problem because I was mentioning it. “You’re beginning to be a little intolerable. Don’t make a big deal out of it.” He turned away and went to lay back down on the couch.

  With frustration, I pouted and headed up to the main floor. I heard Dillon behind me, but I wasn’t waiting on him. When I stepped foot into the kitchen, I decided to let him know that he was no longer welcome in our bed.

  Huffing, I sighed. “I hate you. You know what? Don’t even come upstairs. I just need to bring your stuff down here.”

  “This is my house. I can go anywhere in it I want to go,” my husband argued back.

  “You’re right. It is your house, and it’s mine too. But since we need time apart, let’s be apart for real.”

  With eyes more malicious looking than I’d ever seen, he said, “Shari, don’t tell me what to do. I’m grown.”

  I was beginning to hate him. I never used those strong words before, but that’s how I felt now. Boy did I wish my current experience was just a nightmare, but this was my reality. I hadn’t really pushed him to please me for months now. He thought everything was cool, but it wasn’t.

  “What? Why you standin’ there like that?” he said, looking at the smug glare I’d pasted on my face. “What’s your problem?”

  That was all I needed him to ask me. “You’re my problem! You call yourself a good Christian man, but every time I question you on stuff I feel you’re not doing right, you go off on me, screaming and yelling.”

  “You’re screaming now,” he cut in.

  “I have to scream so that you can hear me! When we do have sex every other month, it’s not that good. I’m not even thirty yet, Dillon. Why are you treating me like you’re gay or something? Are you into me? I don’t understand.”

  “You’re pissing me off again, Shari! You better watch your mouth,” he said.

  He came closer to me and I backed up. I wanted to be tough, but the sane side of me instantly recalled I wasn’t sure what he was capable of if provoked. The last thing I wanted was to be dead. Who’d take care of my girls with his butt in jail for murder?

  “You know why I don’t want to be with you? Because you nag me too much!” he yelled as he punched a picture in the wall. “Go on upstairs and get out of my face!”

  As the tears ran down my cheeks once more, we heard a little voice cry out, “Daddy, Daddy, please don’t yell at Mommy.”

  Right around the corner was our three-year-old, Stori, trembling uncontrollably. Dillon went over to pick her up, but she ran to me. “No, I want Mommy!”

  I knelt down, looked at her, and said, “It’s okay, sweetie.”

  Stori cried out, “Mommy, why are you crying?”

  I realized I couldn’t even console her. No way could I tell her it would all be better, because frankly I didn’t know. I stood up and looked at him viciously.

  I wiped my face. “Don’t be scared. Mommy’s okay.”

  I jogged up to my room with Stori in my arms. We laid in my bed, and I didn’t move until she drifted off to sleep. However, I couldn’t rest. I got out of bed and my knees just buckled to the floor, as if my body wanted to cry out to God. I used to pray every night growing up as a child, but when I got married, I stopped. Maybe that was a major reason why I had so much marital turmoil.

  My husband was a strong believer. He was an awesome speaker. He’d been discipling some of his players, leading them to the Lord. Why then did it seem he was leading his family more to hell than heaven? We didn’t tithe. He always found some reason or another why our money needed to go somewhere other than God. I’d catch him on the phone lying to people about why he couldn’t make an event he promised to speak at. We didn’t have family meals together anymore, so the girls and I blessed the Lord for our food alone. We didn’t have quiet times like we used to in our dating relationship. We never even prayed together. So in a way, I had strayed away from praying alone.

  With a breaking heart, I prayed out, “Lord, you gotta help me. You gotta help us. My heart is turning so hard toward him. Only you can soften it. Or am I supposed to leave him? I know you don’t want this for me.”

  I got up off my knees and wiped my cheeks clean. I joined my oldest in bed. Snuggling with my child, I inwardly felt more messed and alone.

  “Shari, baby, why you got that mad face on? Smile, girl! You in church!” my eighty-two-year-old grandma said to me, as I sat beside her the next day, in the front pew, reluctantly watching my husband preach at my granddaddy’s small Baptist church.

  I’m not saying Dillon was a hypocrite or that all men and women in the pulpit should be perfect. But in my opinion that morning, Dillon McCray should’ve been sitting beside me listening to somebody telling him how to get himself right versus telling other people how to walk with God.

  My husband wanted to be a preacher just as much as he wanted to be a head coach. So when my granddad came to him with an opening on youth Sunday, just once a month, Dillon jumped at the chance to see if his passion for the pulpit was legit.

  His sermon was taken from Acts chapter one, where Jesus told the disciples to go and be witnesses for Him, but my husband wasn’t a witness at home. He couldn’t even talk to his wife with compassion. He had no
business giving advice. If I could’ve gone up into that pulpit and knocked him upside his head so that he would start confessing to everybody he needed to practice what he preached, I would have.

  But my grandma had me on lock down. She had her hand on my hand, making sure I didn’t move. Though my grandma was up in age, she had fire. She had spunk. She had wisdom. She had instinct. By the way I squeezed her hand so hard, she knew I was mad at that man I wished wasn’t mine.

  “You don’t want the whole congregation to know your business, baby,” she leaned over and whispered to me. “It’s all in your eyes, girl. You hear me?”

  I nodded. Even my husband must’ve noticed I was frustrated, because he said what I wanted to hear. He confessed to the congregation that he was frail and weak and needed God just as much as the next man.

  But he said, “At least we’re trying. At least our halos are on even if they’re tilted.”

  What a crock, I thought. I strongly believed that if the halo wasn’t on straight what was the purpose of wearing it. Some of us needed to quit hiding behind the fact that God gave grace.

  Obviously, I was in the minority, because afterward he got huge applause from the members and a bunch of “amens.” When he sat down, he looked at me and smiled. I wish I could say that gesture melted my heart, but it didn’t. I was in God’s house and I had no forgiveness inside my heart. I was only there to keep up appearances. I also came to see my folks. With my grandparents on their last leg, any day could be their last and I didn’t want to ever let them down. But I wasn’t gonna be a hypocrite in the Lord’s place.

  A part of me wished I felt differently. I wished I could feel like he did a marvelous job. I wished I felt full that he acknowledged me as his wife at the beginning of his sermon, but that was too small. I was tired of the little crumbs he threw at me every now and then.