by Olivia Wild
Too many hours of slaving away during first or second service only to be met by a couple of thankless and complaining parents drove me to leave that volunteer job.
And now, it seems, I am back.
What other ministry would a woman automatically assume she’d fit into at church other than the knee-jerk reaction of always choosing to be the one to take care of kids?
Oh well, God, put me where You want me. I am here to serve.
“Wait,” my cute new sister-in-Christ says, raising her hand to beckon Pastor Evans.
Suddenly, the “head man in charge” is in the row behind us.
“Do you have anyone to put up YouTube video clips of your sermons?” she asks him.
“I don’t know…do I have anyone to put up YouTube video clips of my sermons?” he repeats, smiling.
“Yeah, because we were wondering if they could put more of your sermon snippets online,” I clarify, looking up at him as he looms tall, standing behind me.
“Do I have anyone to put more snippets of my sermons online?” he asks once again, laughing easily.
We get it, and laugh along with him.
As we’ve all been taught from numerous years at church, wherever you notice a lack – that’s your ministry. Hate the way the cars get backed up before and after service? Join the parking lot ministry. Burdened to pray all day? Get with the intercessors.
All our technical talk has led us straight away from that dreaded childcare team and onto something right up my alley.
“Yes, you do,” I tell Pastor – as us Christians are known to call our leaders while fondly dropping their last names – or “PE” as this man will become known to us in the context of short text messages that seek to shield his privacy.
Excitement is growing at the thought of using my geek-girl skills in an area of church that I’ve never used them before. Possibilities beget more questions.
“So how do they actually get the sermons recorded onto DVD in the first place?” I wonder aloud in his direction.
Pastor Evans looks up and over to my right.
“Let me introduce you to the leader of the Tech Team, and he can fill you in on all the details,” he says.
“Devin—” he begins to yell out before stopping himself. “No wait, that’s not his name…”
He pauses and looks skyward, then down.
“Paul! That’s it. Paul Sinclair.”
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“Meet your first two team members,” Pastor Evans says after names are exchanged and introductions made, leaving us to get down and dirty in our fresh exciting ministry as he makes the rounds with other churchgoers.
Paul S is seated in the row behind me, and the first thing I notice – beyond his slick and shiny bald head and skin-covering colored the hue of a McDonald’s sausage patty – are his eyes.
They are small and tight and yet come-hither-like all the same, with lids so slightly swollen that they barely reveal the dark irises behind the vertical curtains.
Coupled with the appearance of his sclera, which is painted with streaks of red curvy highways of capillaries, Paul S’s windows to his soul make me entertain a thought that hasn’t crossed my mind since hanging out with my weed-head friends in high school – or from the time I devoured the book Revelations by the rapper formerly known as Ma$e, wherein he details going to church high before getting saved.
Did this guy smoke weed before coming to church?
Alas, my nose detects no scent of marijuana, and the neat appearance of his yellow-beige polo shirt and grey-toned slacks tells me he has recently come from a long day at a corporate job whereby many hours spent staring at a computer monitor have given his eyes the same wearied appearance my own husband often brings home.
Plus, this guy is sharp as a tack.
“I put up ads on Facebook advertising opening day,” I tell my recently appointed earthly leader, recalling the ad-runs aimed toward the populous of our area in an effort to get a massive crowd to come to the latest church location.
“I saw that,” Paul S responds immediately, surprising me.
“Really?” I beam like a schoolgirl.
“Yeah,” he says, smiling back, displaying a set of straight teeth highlighted ever so slightly by a gap of millimeters betwixt the front two prominent ones. As his full and generous and flat lips close around them, I look away.
He is actually kind of cute. Right?
It feels really odd to be talking to him, to even have an attractive black man this close in my space – heck, all of these good-looking and so-so people surrounding me for that matter.
I haven’t worked in a ministry inside a church for a few years now, and it’s the fifth year of the eighth month since I left my last job in software quality assurance in corporate America, on that New Year’s Eve night when I bemoaned my sadness to a girlfriend via phone over leaving my married Italian crush at the job.
Most of my daytime hours now are spent like a hermit, trying to squeeze in as much writing as I can while Paul J is at work and the kids are at school. I’ve grown accustomed to blogging and churning out news stories to earn an income in isolation – without the distractions of any cute young cubs chatting me up in my cube – or Christian guys staring into my eyes (nor me theirs) for extended periods of time.
No, that was back in 2004, when I felt like a big old hypocrite for displaying a King James’ version of the Bible prominently next to pics of my kids on my cubicle shelf while I did nothing to discourage the male attention coming my way – and in fact, encouraged it initially – especially with the Italian believer whom I felt I could speak to about scriptural things that I couldn’t with my own husband.
When the company head that contracted us took our group out to lunch to let us know our jobs would be done at year’s end, I took it both as a relief and sign from God that I was being punished for “blowing my witness” as a living epistle that’s read by all men.
Not “blowing” in the literal sense, praise Jesus…but not as Sarah-like and modest as a married Christian woman should act.
On the other hand, maybe my time served is ending, and now I’m getting another chance to hang out with a dynamic group from the body of Christ in a way that I’ve never done so before.
“The uniform is a red polo shirt and khaki pants,” Paul S tells me.
“Oh man, I’ve gotta go shopping,” I say.
“Yeah, that’s what I had to do too, when I first joined the Tech Team at Central Base,” he says, perpetually pleased.
I offer my own near perfect line of whitened teeth back to him. As our eyes meet and I dart mine away once more to escape his overwhelming countenance, I wonder if he finds me attractive as well.
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Pastor Evans is once again behind me, getting accustomed to the first three members of his center’s original Tech Team ministry.
“I just can’t have my mic ringing,” he says instructionally. “I hate that feedback sound.”
What the heck? Two seconds into this ministry and I’m supposed to know how to prevent screeching feedback? I know nothing about soundboards and audio mixing!
“Oh boy,” I say, fear prompting a sharp intake of breath into my lungs and painting my face with dread.
“Let’s serve, but not with nervousness,” Pastor Evans says, gauging my frightened response and placing his right hand on my left shoulder for a few seconds.
I know what he is doing – the same thing I do when I feel led to pray for someone: I may reach out a hand to touch a person who’s going off about their spouse or “sumpin” or ‘nother and pray to God through Christ for the anger to leave them, or depression to lift off a sad spirit.
The mixture of hope over this adventure that has entered my life gives way to thoughts of vanity as Paul S and Pastor hang out behind me.
I hope they can’t see any thin spots through the weave in my hair.
Scene #3: “Who is he and what is he to you?”
&nbs
p; “What did he look like?” my husband asks me, taking a break from the black Toshiba laptop perched on his outstretched thighs on his side of our big bed.
“He looked high,” I say, chuckling with uneasiness as I busy myself taking off my clothes and throwing them in the hamper.
“Mmm hmmm,” he responds, affecting an accusing tone.
I catch a glimpse of my café au lait physique in the full-length mirror situated in the corner of the bedroom before grabbing my super-soft grey robe from the closet.
My stomach is doing that odd tickly flip-floppy thing it does whenever Paul J reverts to his jealous stance that I haven’t seen much since the starting years of our nearly 12-year marriage. It’s a weird and wonderful and nasty sensation all at once.
I cluck back.
“If you’re so concerned about the people I’m hanging around at church, why don’t you come check it out?”
He drops his head back toward the Fantasy Football stats on his screen and mumbles something incoherent.
I knew that’d shut him up.
Scene #4: “Come on and go with me…”
Friday, August 20, 2010
“Do you have a brush?” I ask Vanessa, who is buried beneath a mound of alabaster sheets and a beige blanket on the supine hospital bed.
The sound of machines whirring and beeping and voices outside at the nurses’ station penetrates the room.
“There should be one in my bag over there,” she replies, pointing to a narrow beige locker on the wall.
I rise and rumble through the clear plastic bag that contains all the stuff she had with her when the paramedics rushed her here, the day I couldn’t get ahold of her and thought she was dodging my calls to come and join me at the church meeting.
Finding the brush, I stand over her and begin to gently swipe at the ends of her straight black hair, removing the tangles as I move the direction of my downward shaft strokes upward toward her densely packed and tightly curled roots.
“That feels good,” she groans. “You can do it harder if you want. I’m not tender headed.”
“Okay,” I laugh. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Brush on, my friend!”
Our snickers pierce the private room as the sun fades into a glowing magenta shield dipping below the brown-bricked building displayed through the massive rectangular window.
I haven’t brushed another woman’s hair since my sister and I would sit on either side of our “GranSadie,” playing with and combing our maternal grandmother’s clavicle length, silver-black hair, which emitted the ever-present scent of Afro Sheen grease and singed pressing combs.
And I’ve had no need to brush Vanessa’s hair in all these years I’ve know her – since the day in 2003 when I first came eyeballs to eyeballs with her singular stare, peering unblinkingly at me through her invisible rimmed glasses as we sat on the floor in one of the classrooms of the megachurch we both attended while she told me her tragic-turned-triumphant testimony for a church magazine article I was composing.
“It’s what I’d want someone to do for me,” I say.
Indeed, it is good to see my “bestie” smile again, like she did a few days ago when I cracked a joke as the nurses lifted her from a bed to a wheelchair in order to transport her to the MRI room.
It was the first indication that I knew she would really be okay, unlike the initial days when I visited her in the triage unit, where she winced with tremendous pain and was so bogged down in morphine that she didn’t know I was there, let alone who I was.
“She’s gonna come home from that hospital,” Vanessa’s grandmother told me, sounding like she was trying to convince herself more than make a proclamation.
As days ensued and I read aloud passages from a black hardcover Bible to a seemingly comatose Vanessa – leaving the room to give her husband David some time alone with his wife – I sat in a nearby waiting room and let thoughts of the worst dance around my psyche.
But all those fears are allayed now that my BFF of 7 years is looking more like her cherub-faced golden wheat colored self.
“Oooh! Let me show you something.”
I drop the brush onto the bed and reach inside my own duffle sac beneath the chair. Unfurling a miniature poster with gentle care, I tilt the front image down to face Vanessa.
“Oh wow,” she says, taking in the photo of a smiling Pastor Evans in front of his wife, to the left of words in white bold letters:
Join us on Opening Day!
Sunday, August 22, 2010
True Love Center #1 – Greenville Grand Opening
“I’m telling you, Vanessa, it’s going to be amazing.”
“I know,” she says, exhaling. “I plan to be all up in that mug.”
“Yay! Maybe you can join the Tech Team with me,” I grin, rolling the poster up once more.
“Whatever God’s will is, I’m there. As soon as the doctor clears me and releases me, I’m ready to go serve.”
I plop down hard in the mauve chair next to her bed.
“You look tired,” she says.
Gee thanks, I hate it when people say that to me.
“I’m all good. But you don’t know I’m headed straight over to Huge Hawk to get a bunch of fruit after I leave here,” I say. “I’ve been dreaming of fruit for days.”
“Hmmm,” she intones, thinking of my words, watching me, studying me like a seasoned detective, such as she does everyone.
I don’t tell her that it is the final day of a 3-day fast, where I’ve eaten nothing in preparation and prayers for both her health and the success of the new church launch.
I am so ready for food. I feel weak.
“I mean if you think about it, this is like a brand new church. We are helping to plant a church in our city,” I say, taking in the deep spiritual meaning of our actions.
“It’s true,” Vanessa says.
“Well, I’m glad this attack of stress on you is over.”
“Me too… me too…”
We let the space between us sit silent for a few seconds, something we rarely do in our legendary series of gabfests that have been known to close down many an Applebee’s and Olive Garden restaurants around town.
I can’t hide my elation over the fact that she has once again chosen to follow me to another church as we sensed God moving, like when the Lord led the Israelites around from place to place by a pillar of fire at night or cloud by day.
I’m not playing it all “cool beans” like when we first began visiting TLC together in the wintertime of 2007, two women in our late 30s, thicker than thieves, seeking something more via the Saturday night services of the huge megachurch that we didn’t feel we were getting at our home church.
The decision to make the leap to the more modern place of worship with a younger crowd and concert-like venue was easier for me, because my husband had only attended my baptism and a handful of services that I begged him to attend.
Paul J hasn’t yet joined any church with me after all these years.
Vanessa’s husband David, however, has been a longtime churchgoer, so changing houses of worship was a much more difficult choice for her, taking into consideration all the biblical and cultural implications of following your husband and waiting for him to take the spiritual lead of the home.
“God will let you know where He wants you,” I would tell Vanessa on our half-hour long jaunts down to check out the larger church, trying to stay as objective as possible and not unduly influence her actions.
But I’ll admit, it was kind of nice when our Saturday night visits turned into Sunday afternoon committed membership and service attending. It made the big transition easier not to have to do it alone.
And now, I’m even more grateful that after some hemming and hawing and side-eyeing about the Center #1 launch, Vanessa has finally made up her mind to once again move forward with me toward a fresh quest.
Maybe Vanessa doesn’t like change, I think, slumping farther down into my seat, willing the midnig
ht hour – when I plan to break my fast with the watermelon and cantaloupe of my dreams – to come quicker.
Or perhaps her spiritual “Spidey senses” are telling her something I don’t yet see.
