All This Love (Stoneworth Series Book 2)

by Michelle Stimpson

  She lay on the bed and closed her eyes.

  They always start off perfect.

  Jada remembered how happy their mother had been when Sam brought Patrick over for Thanksgiving dinner four years ago. He was a handsome catch—broad chested and ripped with muscles. He had been a perfect gentleman. He’d even said grace before they cut the turkey. Their aunts had congratulated Sam and told her she needed to hold on to him, especially since he was ex-military with benefits.

  “He’ll be a good provider,” their mother had said to Sam after Patrick excused himself to the bathroom. “Paying bills is the most important thing in a marriage.”

  Jada wondered, even then, how her mother would know what was most important since she’d never been married. She’d never even been in a functional relationship, in Jada’s opinion. Yet, somehow, it appeared that Sam was about to beat the odds. She was in love with someone who appeared to be a great guy.

  Jada knew better now.

  What if Knox is the same? She would much rather be single and rooted in reality than marry a fantasy that turned into a nightmare. You can’t trust people these days.

  But even as she thought those damning words about Knox, a tear rolled from the corner of her eye.

  It was nice to imagine.

  Jada must have drifted off because half an hour later, she jumped from the bed at the shrilling sounds of Sam and Patrick arguing again. She couldn't put on her headphones, though, because she had to listen to make sure things didn’t get physical again.

  This is crazy.

  Jada checked the time on her phone—10:45. Thankfully, Patrick needed to leave in the next five minutes or he’d be late for work. Jada waited this one out with a watchful ear.

  When he left, she crept out of her room like a soldier coming out of a foxhole. She found Sam sitting at the dining room table, sobbing. “Sam?”

  Sam didn’t even try to hide the tears. “What?”

  Jada rushed to the table and pulled up a chair beside her sister. “Oh, Sam. I’m so sorry you’re in this mess.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “What are you going to do? I mean, you can’t go on like this forever.”

  Sam wiped her face. “I don’t know. I don’t have a job. A place to go.”

  Jada laughed. “That makes two of us. I’ve been thinking about moving back with Momma. We could go back together. Start over, just like the day after graduating from high school.”

  “I don’t want to be eighteen again,” Sam said. “I couldn’t be if I wanted to. I have a child now. He deserves his own room. A backyard. A father. A nice house.” She waved her arm around the nicely decorated kitchen. “Momma can’t give us anything in that one-bedroom apartment except a couch.”

  Jada added, “And love. And safety. And a sense of self-worth.”

  Sam rubbed her forehead. “Don’t go there, Jada. I have my self-worth.”

  “No, you don’t. Not if you think your face is a punching bag for your own husband.”

  “He has never actually hit me,” Sam stated. “Bad words, yes. A restraining move, yes. But Patrick does not hit me. He knows the law and he knows I’m not a liar. So when I try to explain what he’s doing to file a report, it gets thrown out.”

  This explanation made no sense. “What if you walked in and saw the daycare worker restraining your child the way Patrick restrains you? Or cussing him out the way Patrick cusses at you? Would that be okay with you?”

  She shook her head.

  “You know, what he does to you is almost worse than hitting. I mean, at least if he hit you, you’d know exactly what happened. But these restraining moves…mashing your face into the floor…it’s like, he’s playing sadistic mind games. Trying to break you.”

  Sam sobbed again. “But Patrick used to respect me. He used to treat me like a queen. I don’t understand what happened to him.”

  Jada sat in disbelief, wondering why in the world her sister was crying over this man. Maybe it was beyond her understanding, as Sam had suggested after the fight. Maybe since Jada had never been that strung out over anyone, she couldn’t fathom what it was like to be so in love with the memory of who that person used to be that she couldn’t see who he was now.

  Quite frankly, Jada hoped she’d never be “in love” to such a blinding degree—if that was the true definition of love, which she doubted sincerely.

  “Look, Sam, I don’t know what went wrong or when, but obviously somewhere the two of you got off track. Do you think maybe you guys can fix it?”

  “I already asked him to go to counseling and anger management. He says he doesn’t want anybody in our business. He won’t go to either one.”

  Jada closed her eyes as she processed this new information. What does he mean he won’t go? She fought the urge to tell her sister it was past time to pack up and catch the next bus back to Memphis. Somehow, deep within, Jada didn’t feel it was her place to tell a woman to get a divorce. Only Sam could make that decision for herself.

  Once, when their mother was dating the postman, Jada had seen him snuggled up at the club with another woman. When she told her mother about what she’d seen, her mother had accused Jada of “keeping up drama.” She broke up with the guy for a while, but they eventually got back together, which put a strain on Jada’s relationship with her mom. It wasn’t until her mother got tired of being played and came to the end of her own rope that she finally broke it off with the guy for good. She did apologize to Jada for being too far gone to listen to reason, and Jada accepted her apology. But the situation taught Jada a lesson. People believe what they want to believe, especially when romance is involved. There was no need in trying to run interference for somebody who didn’t want a relationship “interfered” with, no matter how dysfunctional it is.

  Jada placed a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Sam. This is your life.” In the middle of her big speech, Jada forgot what she was going to say. Or maybe she never knew what to say at all. What could she say to someone set on living in misery for the sake of her child? Was Sam wrong to make such a sacrifice? Was it so much different than single moms who torture themselves, working three hard minimum-wage jobs and putting up with abusive bosses so their kids can have a roof over their heads?

  “And?” Sam interrupted Jada’s thoughts.

  Jada racked her brain for the right words to complete the lecture. Suddenly, she saw the face of one of Sam’s previous boyfriends in her mind, a guy named Mike. Mike had been a drug dealer with an explosive temper. He’d slapped Sam around a few times. Even threatened her life. Now that Jada was thinking about it, Sam’s boyfriends were always a little…different. What good would it do if Sam moved back home only to enter another abusive relationship—this time with a kid in tow?

  In that short moment of revelation, Jada realized that her sister’s problem was bigger than Patrick. The only words Jada could offer were the ones Knox had spoken. “I’m going to pray about this situation.”

  “I’ve already begged God to change Patrick.”

  “Maybe Patrick’s not the one who needs the most changing.”

  Sam’s face crinkled. “What are you saying?”

  “Hear me out. I’m saying you’ve been in a string of abusive relationships.”

  “I know. Pretty unlucky.”

  “It’s not a matter of luck, Sam. I can’t put my finger on why you end up with these guys. I only know that my prayer starts with you.”

  Sam rolled her neck to the side. “You need to pray for yourself while you’re at it. You’re the one without a job, without a place to stay. If you ask me, right now we’re both in the same boat. Stuck in dead-end situations without a way out except back to our tiny little square ones in Memphis.”

  Unwilling to argue with her sister, Jada nodded. “Then I guess I’ll be praying for both of us.”

  Chapter 7

  Knox raised his hands as his youngest brother, West, led the congregation in praise. With their father out of town celebrating his
thirty-fifth anniversary, church attendance was a little lower. People wanted to hear Pastor Reth Stoneworth preach, and for good reason. His father could whoop and holler with the best of them, but only after he thoroughly brought knowledge of God from the Bible.

  This Sunday brought Rev. Eli Whittaker to the pulpit to give the sermon. He wasn’t much older than Knox. And Knox was only a year older than his bother, Braxton, whom everyone had pegged as the next pastor of their father’s church, New Zion.

  Knox glanced down the row at Braxton and his fiancé, Tiffany. He wondered if Braxton was ever going to get comfortable in his role as a man of God. And would Tiffany be able to handle the pressure of being the first lady of a mid-sized church? She was teaching now at a charter school, but would she be able to teach and lead the women of New Zion through the next several decades?

  After watching his own mother struggle with the role, Knox could only pray for Tiffany. Women in the church could be downright nasty. And it didn’t help when some of them wanted to take his mom’s place.

  He laughed, thinking that if Jada were ever a pastor’s wife, she’d put her “hoodness” to good use.

  Rainey poked Knox’s side. She whispered, “What’s so funny?”

  “I was just thinking about something.”

  “Or someone?” Rainey hinted.

  Knox gave his sister the slant-eye. “Who are you—the next prophet in the family?”

  She elbowed him harder.

  “Stop being so violent.”

  They both laughed as Rev. Whittaker called the building to prayer in preparation for his sermon. When he instructed the congregation to turn to Isaiah 43, Knox spread open his Bible while Rainey scrolled through her cell phone.

  He teased her by shaking his head.

  “What? There’s nothing wrong with looking at the scriptures on your phone.”

  Knox said, “Not the same as having it right here in your hand.” He patted his tried and true leather-bound sword.

  Rainey pointed at herself. “Truth be told, you’re supposed to hide the word in your heart.”

  She had him on that point. “What are we going to do with you?”

  Rainey laughed and Knox had to join her. His little sister was becoming quite the young lady.

  Rev. Whittaker spend the first fifteen minutes of his sermon giving them the context, then he read verses 1-7. Knox reread verse seven as the Holy Spirit seemed to pull him aside for a mini-sermon. Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.

  Everyone was made for God’s glory. Everyone? Somehow this was sinking into Knox’s heart real deep for the first time. He knew he had already been reconciled to God through Christ—but the idea that everyone else was on earth to glorify God? Including Jada? Including Dominique?

  Everyone sure wasn’t acting like they belonged to God. Everyone doesn’t agree.

  Knox rejoined the main sermon, giving Rev. Whittaker his attention. “My brothers and sisters in the Lord, the problem is that we live in a very deceptive world, particularly in this country. We are bombarded with false philosophies and made-up truths that have no foundation in the Word. We’ve confused the American dream with God’s dream and we’re preaching that God also wants everyone to own a piece of land, build a house on it, throw up a white picket fence around it, and put two-point-five children and a dog in it.”

  “Dogs belong in the back yard,” Knox heard one of the older ladies behind him ad-lib.

  “The problem is,” Rev. Whittaker continued, “what if the American Dream and God’s Dream aren’t the same for you. What if God would rather you, your spouse, and your seven kids live in a remote village caring for orphans?”

  “Seven kids?” Rainey and half the church balked.

  “Uh huh,” the preacher continued, “what if what God wants for you has nothing to do with things and everything to do with Him? These verses tell us that He gathers, He reconciles, He created His people for Him. Not us. Him.”

  Knox felt an “ouch” coming, though he wasn’t sure exactly where he’d been hit.

  “Let’s take for example romance.”

  “Uh oh,” somebody exclaimed, which caused a round of laughter in the building.

  “Speak on it!” someone else yelled.

  “Thank you. I do believe I will,” Rev. Whittaker joked. “You ever heard of the term soul mates?”

  The church affirmed him.

  “Let me explain. A soul mate, by most definitions, is someone who gets you. They understand you without verbal communication. You can finish each other’s sentences because you think alike. The two of you possess an inexplicably chemistry—you just clicked when you first met. In short, you were created for one another—destined for one another. You feel me?”

  Everyone agreed.

  Knox listened with both natural and spiritual ears now. He had spoken to the Lord about Jada after he dropped her off. Anything said about relationships between a man and a woman would definitely be logged in his system right about now.

  “Well, let me tell you a little something about soul mates. Y’all ready?”

  “Yeah!” the people roared.

  “Soul mates is nowhere in the Bible.”

  Rainey gasped. “Say it ain’t so.”

  Knox glanced down at her shocked face.

  “There is one reference to ‘the one’ in Song of Solomon chapter three, which is largely a picture of God’s love for us. But this notion of a ‘soul mate’ does not have its roots in the Word. The history of this term goes back to Greek mythology. In a book entitled The Symposium by Plato, he records the dialogue of several men at a party, as told to him by someone else. So first of all, Plato wasn’t even at the party.

  “Anyway, Plato writes that these guys, including his mentor Socrates, got tired of hearing the woman at the party playing her flute. So one of them decided—hey! Let’s everybody give some speeches about love! So after a while, this guy named Aristophanes—who had been drinking at this party for two days straight—spouted off his theory. He said that a long time ago, people had four legs, four arms, and two heads. They were shaped like balls. They kind of walked-ran, twice the speed that you and I can walk. I don’t even know what that looks like, but I can tell you right now we’re already a long way from Genesis.”

  “Huh?” Knox huffed.

  “So one day,” Rev. Whittaker said, “the two-headed creatures got an idea. They would find a way to ascend to the gods. Of course, Zeus didn’t like that idea. They thought about killing the people, but then there would be no one to make sacrifices. So Zeus came up with a plan to split them in two and give everyone two arms, only two legs, and one head. With the help of Apollo, the people were restructured and reordered into separate beings. According to this theory, people will never be satisfied in life until they find their soul mate, their other half. The person they used to be connected to but Zeus split them apart. That, my friends, is where we got the notion of soul mates.”

  “Wow.”

  Rainey took the word right out of Knox’s mouth.

  Rev. Whittaker cleared his throat. “Now. Fast-forward twenty-five hundred years or so, here we are today. We’ve got people—Christian people, too!—getting married because they believe they’ve found their soul mates. And we’ve got people getting divorce because the person they thought was their soul mate turned out to be…not. And we’re making covenant decisions based on the second-hand account of a philosophy spoken by a drunk man at a party!”

  The saints grumbled and oooh-ed at this news.

  “Saints of God, this is what the Bible calls ‘deceptive philosophies’ in Colossians two and eight; cooky man-made concepts that we’ve failed to cross-check with the Word of God!”

  Rainey whispered to Knox, “Did you know this?”

  “No.”

  “Oh my God—and I don’t mean that like in vain! I can’t believe we all bought into this,” she shrieked, which blended in with the sou
nd of scales falling off eyes and crashing to the floor for all the other believers in the church that morning.

  “Now, let me bring this on back to Isaiah chapter forty-three. You see, no one was made for you. No one was made for me. We were all made to glorify Him. If the soul mate theory were true, that would mean unmarried Christians could never be complete, and that can’t be true because Jesus wasn’t married and Paul didn’t recommend marriage for everyone. Christ is our completer. When two people who are complete in Christ get married, the purpose is two-fold—to paint a picture of Christ’s love for the church, and to accomplish a God-given task that turns around and honors Him some mo’!”

  The members and guests were getting riled up now, standing to their feet and waving at Rev. Whittaker.

  Meanwhile, Knox was still back at the party with Plato’s drunk friends. Having taken a few electives in psychology, Knox was familiar with the noted Greek philosophers, who were known for their wine, their long speeches, and polytheism. Knox was also familiar with the Socratic method of questioning, which always leads a person back to themselves as the ultimate source of knowledge and truth. It made perfect sense that those men would sit around giving speeches to one another as a form of entertainment. What didn’t make sense was how this “soul mate” theory had lasted for centuries and even been adopted by Bible-believing Christians without any investigation whatsoever—himself included.

  When compared with the light of the Word, the soul mate theory couldn’t be true.

  It would take Knox a minute to digest the sermon. He had to re-think his marriage game now. He’d wanted someone to be his wife. He wanted to be the object of her affection and vice versa. And it wouldn’t hurt if she was a beauty to behold.

  But now, thanks to Isaiah 43, Knox felt led to submit his mind to renewal. His marriage would have a mission even greater than experiencing the favor of God and raising great kids. If and when he got married, it would be for and to God’s glory, the same way it had been for his great-great grandfather, Isaac Stoneworth, when he and his wife, Evelina, became a pillar of strength in their community after Emancipation.