More Than I Can Bear

by E. N. Joy

  Rudy still had some final parting words. “Now, you can take everything back to your client that we just discussed. In the meantime, I’ll have an agreement drawn up and a courier will deliver it to your office by the end of the week. Until the next bar association shindig, you and your wife and kids take care.”

  “I’m uh, not married. I have a life partner and a golden retriev—”

  “All set?” Rudy said to Paige, displaying the fact that he truly hadn’t the slightest concern about the man’s family life.

  Paige nodded and allowed Rudy to escort her to the door. Paige stopped once she made it to the conference room door. “Can I just ask you one thing?” Paige said before they exited the conference room. “How did you even find out about Adele?”

  “From you,” Blake’s attorney replied.

  Paige was confused. She’d never talked to the man or, to her knowledge, anyone who even knew the man.

  “Well, you didn’t tell me exactly,” he clarified. “It was the conversation you had with the prison doctor. You mentioned something about getting an HIV test during your pregnancy. That information was passed on to your ex-husband and the rest, as they say, is history.”

  Well, there Paige had it. She and her attorney left the conference room cool, calm, and collected. Once Paige and Rudy were on the elevator and the doors closed, Paige threw her arms around Rudy.

  “Oh my God. You were wonderful in there. You were great. You saved my baby. You did it.” She released him from the tight hug.

  “Yeah, well,” Rudy said, sounding modest. “But I’m just glad we got out of there when we did.”

  “Why?” Paige asked.

  “Because I was out of control. You saw me. I mean, who was that guy in there? In five more seconds I was either going to turn into Al Pacino and start yelling, ‘You’re out of order. ’ Or I was going to get my Jack Nicholson on and shout out, ‘You can’t handle the truth.’”

  On that note, both Paige and Rudy laughed the entire elevator ride all the way down to the lobby. Everything had worked out for Paige’s good in the end, even with all her truths being on the table. Blake Dickenson or his attorney would not be picking on her anymore. Game over!

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “You preach, Pastor Margie,” Naomi shouted as she stood to her feet. She looked over at Paige, her eyes willing her to join her in agreement. Paige simply smiled and nodded, not even thinking twice about getting on her feet.

  It was only obvious to Paige that she wanted to be anywhere but in church right now. The outside world only saw the smile she wore that peeked out from underneath the brim of her church hat. Or the clapping of her hands to one of the popular church songs the choir sang on a regular basis. Even today as she clapped from the pew instead of the choir stand, no one saw through the mask. No one saw how jaded she was with church and the whole God thing. She didn’t even want to lift her voice up in that place, let alone lift her butt up off that pew.

  She’d told the choir director she didn’t feel well and was trying to nurse away a sore throat. She didn’t want to get anyone else sick by being up there in the choir stand breathing all over them. She’d put the nail in the coffin when she added, “Because if I didn’t know any better, I’d think I’m coming down with the flu. I seem to have all the symptoms.” With the choir scheduled to perform in a local gospel choir competition, the last thing the director wanted was for Paige to be in close quarters with the other choir members and pass on the bug to them. So while everyone else sang praises to God, Paige just sat and quietly countered their every word.

  “God has been so good to me,” the choir sang.

  “Lucky you,” Paige groaned under her breath. “Wish I could say the same.”

  “The struggle is over,” they sang next.

  “For who?” Paige seethed. “Surely not me.” She sucked her teeth and thought, Even if my struggle does end, you best believe there’s one waiting for me right around the corner.

  “Don’t give up on God.”

  “Tah.” Paige almost laughed on that one. Even if she had, no one would have heard her. No one could make out what she was saying over the tunes of the music ministry behind the choir’s vocals. To them it just looked like she was singing along with the choir. “I should have given up on this whole ‘trying to stay saved’ thing a long time ago; then maybe the devil would have left me alone.”

  Finally the choir had made it through its usual three songs: two fast, one slow. Now it was time for Pastor Margie to preach. Any rebuttals that Paige had about the Word that was about to go forth, she’d have to keep in her head. This was going to be hard. She didn’t want to hear the Word of God. She didn’t want to hear anything He had to say, no matter who He said it through. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even want to be here in the church. She’d done nothing but curse God since she got home from her meeting with Blake’s attorney this past Wednesday.

  Sure she’d gotten the victory that day in the conference room. Rudy had drafted and delivered the two-page document to Blake’s attorney personally on Friday. Blake had been in attendance this time. Blake received a cashier’s check from Paige in the exact amount she was awarded in their divorce. It was arranged for a third-party accountant to be there to set the fund up for Adele. Everything went off without a hitch. When Rudy left the conference room, the document was signed. Per their signed agreement, Blake would not press the issue of custody of Adele. Informing the child of her biological father’s identity would be left to Paige’s discretion. Everything had turned out in Paige’s favor, but she refused to jinx herself and celebrate. And she also refused to give God the credit. Who cared if things always appeared to turn out well for her? What did it really matter knowing God would see to it that another trial would arise to break her down?

  In this instance, she gave the credit to Rudy. It was he who stood up for her against Blake’s attorney. It was him Paige saw working it out to get her out of the lion’s den. It was God who allowed her to be placed in it. She’d leave it to the rest of the world to give God credit for stuff. She was sure He wouldn’t miss her. She was sure He wouldn’t have missed her today in church either. But when Naomi had called her last night to confirm dinner after church today, she’d ended the phone conversation with, “See you in church tomorrow.”

  Well, Paige had already told Naomi she and the girls would be over for dinner, so she felt put on the spot and couldn’t come up with a way out of going to church quick enough. What would it have looked like if she made her way over to the Vanderdales’ to feed her face but didn’t go to church? Paige felt it was much easier to sit through this two-hour torture than explaining her absence from church to Naomi for two hours.

  Pastor Margie was already ten minutes into her sermon when Paige had no other option but to tune into the program already in progress. She’d already read through the church bulletin twice. She couldn’t find anything else to divert her attention to.

  “So, saints, with all that being said,” Pastor Margie said, “if I were to give you a title for today’s message it would be ‘You Ain’t Sick; You Just Got the Symptoms.’”

  Paige began to cough, and not to play along with her little white lie about being sick. It was a real cough. Her saliva had gone down the wrong pipe. She was swallowing when Pastor Margie spoke the words that convicted her about the lie she’d told about being sick.

  “You okay?” Naomi whispered in Paige’s ear.

  Holding her throat and swallowing to moisten her pipes, Paige was only able to nod.

  “Now I usually never preach behind anyone else or recycle someone else’s sermon, but today, for the first time in all my years of ministry, I’m led to share a message I received over at Power and Glory Ministries by the house prophetess. Now some of you may say, ‘She’s preaching somebody else’s word.’ But at the end of the day, when God’s using you as His servant to speak for Him, it’s His Word.’”

  “Amen,” several congregants called out.

&nb
sp; “Whose word is it?” Pastor Margie asked.

  “God’s Word,” was the congregation’s reply.

  “I’m not going to say everything Prophetess said verbatim, but I will speak it however the Lord gives it to me.” Pastor Margie smiled and continued, briefly glancing down at her notes that lay next to her open Bible. “Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve been delivered from some things in my walk with Christ. Even as a pastor, I’m still getting delivered from some stuff.” She stopped in her tracks. “Oh yeah, y’all go on and let out y’all’s gasps. I know that some folks do what we like to call people pedestal worshipping: making folks out to be more than what they truly are, which is human. But y’all’s pastor is human. Can someone say human?”

  The congregation obliged. “Human.”

  “I know there is some big stuff some of you have had to get delivered from, stuff like drugs, alcohol, fornication, pornography, adultery, et cetera. But can I share the number one thing folks who come to the Kingdom have to get delivered from? Well maybe I shouldn’t say Kingdom. Maybe I should just say the folks who come to this church. But nonetheless, the number one thing is that old cussing demon.”

  There was laughter and chuckles throughout the sanctuary.

  “Ummm, hmmm. I hear you laughing now, but I know some of you don’t even make it out the church parking lot good without letting that tongue rip.”

  Again there was more laughter.

  “You know you right, Pastor!” someone shouted.

  “So let’s just say you got delivered from the cussing demon and you never said a cuss word for an entire decade. Because as you know, you do choose to cuss. Cuss words don’t just slip out. Amen?”

  “Amen,” a few members replied back.

  “So after all these years,” Pastor Margie continued, standing behind the podium, looking down at her notes every few seconds or so, “someone gets on that one nerve that’s been at the bottom of the barrel for the last ten years and now it’s the last and only nerve. That nerve that had been your saving grace gets jumped all on and battered. The next thing you know you choose to let loose all those cuss words that have been suppressed, piling up under that last nerve. I mean you cuss that person out left and right. Even if you don’t cuss them out in their face, you are walking the floor of your own home just letting it rip while you talk about them.”

  Folks couldn’t help but laugh because they knew Pastor Margie was telling the truth. A few of them were guilty of what she was speaking about.

  “Umm, hmm. I hear y’all laughing because you know I’m telling the truth.”

  “Speak the truth, Pastor,” someone called out.

  “So you finish dropping F-bombs and everything else and then all of sudden, you feel awful. All unholy. And you feel . . . empty. Something’s missing. It doesn’t take long for you to figure out that the Holy Spirit had to get to stepping. He couldn’t be a part of that. He couldn’t reside in that filthy dwelling. That’s not who the Holy Spirit is. I don’t care who you are and what you say, the Holy Spirit is never going to tell you to cuss or to cuss someone out. Period, point blank.”

  Members began to clap.

  “I know some of y’all like to use the comparison of Peter cursing in the Bible. ‘Well, the Bible said Peter cursed,’” Pastor Margie mocked with a know-it-all expression on her face. “But come on, saints. There is a difference between cursing, cussing and swearing. ‘I swear to God,’ which we all know we are not supposed to do or say, is swearing. ‘God D word,’ or sending somebody to hell, if you know what I mean, is cursing. But just outright reading somebody with every profane, vulgar obscenity that exists, to include but not limited to the F-bomb and the B-word, now that’s cussing!”

  “Teach us, Pastor.”

  “Help us!”

  “Oh, I’m going to help somebody all right. Somebody is going to get set free today,” Pastor Margie said, taking a handkerchief that rested on the podium and dabbing the corners of her mouth. “And I know some of you will even try to say when Jesus turned those tables over he was going off. Well even if he cussed, even the Bible didn’t print the cuss words for you to say, now did it?”

  “You right about that,” was heard from the back of the sanctuary.

  “Getting back to my message, so now that you done cussed like a sailor, feeling empty and convicted, you start to feel alone . . . like God is no longer with you. Then you start questioning things. You start saying to yourself, ‘I know I got delivered from that cussing demon. I remember lying right out on the floor at the altar, kicking and screaming and throwing up in the trashcan . . . running around the church sanctuary. I thought I was delivered because I went ten whole years without cussing.’” She shrugged her shoulders and made a goofy face. “‘Guess I didn’t get delivered after all.’”

  There were some sighs and head nods.

  “But I’m here to tell you, saints, don’t you question the power of God!” Pastor Margie’s voice grew loud as she whipped from around that podium. “When God delivers you, you are delivered. God does not fail at what He does. You are still delivered. You are still saved. What you experienced was just an impression of who you used to be that the devil finally achieved at bringing forth. See, the devil knows he has no power over your future so he has to keep a tight grip on your past, of who you used to be, to mess you all up. But let me hear you shout out ‘I ain’t me no more.’”

  Naomi had recalled Pastor Margie having a sermon about that when she’d first attended New Day. That sermon had helped usher her into the understanding of who she was in God. She was glad to jump to her feet and shout it out like she’d done before. “I ain’t me no more.”

  “You know how you meet someone for the first time, you two go your separate ways but they might leave an impression of themselves on you? Or if you wear a ring for a long time and you take it off, there is an impression of the ring on your finger. Now the person is not there anymore, but the impression they left behind is in your mind. Now the ring is not there anymore, but there is an impression of it left on your finger. But it’s not real. It’s gone. Just like that demon is gone. That spirit is gone. But there is an impression that Satan has put on your mind. Oh my God, your mind . . . the battlefield!”

  “You say that, Pastor. You say it!”

  The congregation went crazy while some pumped their fists, did a Holy Ghost dance, and even ran around the church sanctuary. Some just sat with silent tears rolling down their face.

  “So what I need you to do is rid yourself of that impression of whatever that thing is right now. Impressions are reminders of a thing even though it’s long gone. Declare that thing long gone and to stay gone and to take its impression with it in the name of Jesus. It wasn’t real. God saved you. God delivered you. No one can beat Him. He is the most powerful and the most high. Hallelujah! That impression of yourself the devil is placing before you trying to convince you that is who you really are cannot beat who God made you to be. Who God made you to be: a wonderfully made child of the King who is holy and acceptable unto Him . . . and who does not do unholy things and that includes cussing!”

  Members began to cry out and some even rebuked the devil. Pastor Margie did a little dance while a couple other members joined her.

  Pastor Margie used her handkerchief to wipe her mouth again and then continued. “I don’t have to tell y’all that this ain’t about no cussing demon. I’m just using that as an example. That’s just a thing and we all got something. That thing had some of y’all in a funk because it had you doubting the power of God. Had you doubting who God says He is . . . and even who God says you are. Had some of you backsliding, walking around talking about, ‘Well, since I wasn’t really delivered, I might as well go on back to my old self, my old ways. Since I cussed, I might as well get drunk. Since I cussed and got drunk, I might as well sleep with old boy from around the way . . . even though he got a wife. Fornication and adultery; might as well kill two birds with one stone.’”

&nb
sp; There were a couple chuckles.

  “So do you see where I’m going with this, saints? Do you see what just one impression of something can lead to? But I’ll say it again. It ain’t real. It’s a façade. A mirage. An illusion. In other words, it’s a lie. Don’t you believe it. The devil is a liar!” Pastor Margie shouted. “Don’t you let the devil trick you into believing that you didn’t get delivered and that you can’t stay delivered.” The New Day congregation was on their feet. It was rare that Pastor Margie got loud during her sermons, creating such an emotionally charged service. That wasn’t her typical style, but she was out of control today. God was in control.

  God was in control and anyone in that sanctuary could see it, including Paige. Paige knew that woman who had just preached was not her usual pastor. If it wasn’t her usual pastor, then it could have been only one other thing: God. Paige couldn’t argue, or come to any other conclusion, than God was now using Pastor Margie to deliver a message with power and unapologetic boldness. And that’s when Paige also put two and two together and concluded that she’d witnessed the same actions in Rudy.

  “God was there,” Paige said under her breath, a tear streaming from her eye. God had, in fact, been there for her. He had been in that conference room that day acting on her behalf, through the appointed person, Rudy. And today He was doing it again through Pastor Margie.

  “So once your heart, mind, body, and soul is filled with doubt,” Pastor Margie said, now using her regular soft tone, “don’t nothing look right anymore. Everything is wrong. Everything looks wrong. All this bad stuff is happening to you and you use that as confirmation that God isn’t who He says He is. God doesn’t love you. God isn’t there to protect you. If He was, then why does all this bad stuff keep happening to you? Why is nothing going right? Why, when it rains, does it pour? And the big one y’all: ‘why is more being put on me than I can bear!’”