He’d first met Fredericka at one of the city choir competitions. Dawn already knew her husband, Walter, since she was choir director for Faith Central’s gospel choir and he was choir director for his church, Berean Bible. The couple of months leading up to the city competition were always hectic for them, with Dawn spending a great deal of her free time with the choir. Many a night Sly found himself eating dinner alone, and since he didn’t enjoy his own cooking, many of those meals were taken in local restaurants. On one such evening, Fredericka had run into him while she too was out and her husband was at choir practice. Instead of eating alone, they’d shared a meal.
They’d commiserated over their busy spouses and made plans to share dinner again. None of this had been done in secret. He’d told Dawn about it and she’d been glad that he and Freddie didn’t have to eat alone. Things had changed during that second meal. Fredericka hadn’t been the lively woman he’d known her to be. Instead, she’d been distracted, upset. He tried for over an hour to find out what was wrong with her. When he had, he’d almost wished he hadn’t. Fredericka had told him about her ailing marriage. Apparently, Walter spent more time at church than he did at home. He wanted children, but Fredericka was concerned that he wasn’t there enough for her so how could she expect him to be there for their children? She wanted children, but she didn’t want to bring them into a weak marriage. She’d admitted her thoughts of divorce. Sly, who thought she was being overly emotional, had tried to soothe her. She’d seemed to get better with his counsel, and by the end of the evening, she’d had him promising not to tell anybody about her lapse. Not even Dawn. He realized now that Fredericka’s request for secrecy should have been his signal.
They’d continued to eat dinner together, off and on. Fredericka often complained about Walter’s devotion to the church and lack of devotion to her, and she began to question Sly, asking if he felt the same way with Dawn. He hadn’t. Not at first. But Fredericka seemed to plant a seed that grew. Maybe Dawn was taking him for granted. Over time, he began to resent the time Dawn spent with the choir, whereas before he’d understood it was just for those couple of months leading up to the competition. Things had come to a head when Fredericka had called him on an evening that Dawn and Walter were rehearsing with their respective choirs. She’d sounded distraught and had begged him to come over before she did something drastic. He’d gone over to comfort her and had ended up betraying his marriage vows on the couch in Freddie’s living room. That had been the beginning of the end. After the first time, the second time was easier. Then when the competition was over, they’d started meeting at hotels.
Sly could see the pattern now, how sin had overtaken him. No, it hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment thing. It had been gradual, so gradual that he hadn’t seen it coming. Or had he? If the words written in First Peter were true, and Sly knew they were, then the devil walked about as a roaring lion looking to destroy the people of God. If Sly was caught unawares by a roaring lion, it had to mean that his heart had been far from God even before the sexual act with Freddie had occurred. How else could he have missed the attack of a roaring lion?
“Sly.”
Sylvester knew who it was before he turned to her. He’d seen her in the church, but he hadn’t spoken with her or acknowledged her presence in any way. He knew he never would have approached her the way she was approaching him. A part of him wanted to end the interaction as quickly as possible. He didn’t want word to get back to Dawn that he’d spent time talking to her.
“Fredericka.”
“So formal,” she said, and he felt the pain he saw reflected in her light green eyes.
“That’s the way it has to be between us.”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“How are you?” he asked.
“You really don’t want to know, do you?”
He really didn’t, but he couldn’t tell her that. “Tell me.”
“Not too good.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I heard about you and Walter.”
She nodded. “He won’t take me back. He says he never will.”
“He needs time.”
“Is that what Dawn tells you?”
“I can’t talk to you about Dawn,” he said, not wanting to hurt her, but needing to protect his wife’s privacy.
“We used to be able to talk about anything, everything. I miss that. I miss you.”
She was right. She had been a friend to him, but that was a road they could never travel again. “You should be having this conversation with Walter.”
She looked away. “I know.”
The crew was finishing up and Sly knew he couldn’t be left alone in this cemetery with Fredericka. He felt her pain but he wasn’t the one to ease it. “I’m sorry, Fredericka, for everything. If I could go back and undo it, I would—”
“But you can’t,” she said with a wry smile. “It really wasn’t worth it, was it?”
He shook his head sadly.
“I don’t think so either,” she said. “So why did it seem like it at the time?”
He shrugged. “I have some ideas on that, but I’m still trying to figure it out myself.”
“Well, you let me know when you do.”
Sly couldn’t commit to that. He could make no promises to her. As if she realized that, she smiled and said, “Be good to yourself, Sly. I hope you and Dawn make it through this.”
“You too,” he said, wanting to give her more, but having nothing more to give her. When she turned to walk away, he headed toward the crew.
~ ~ ~
Francine’s head throbbed as Dolores related the story of her relationship with her pastor some fifteen years ago, a relationship that she’d resumed when she’d moved to Atlanta some six or seven years ago. The story struck her deeply because of its close resemblance to Toni’s story. Only Dolores’s story had two major differences. First, unlike Toni, Dolores had chosen to have her baby. Second, Dolores had known she was alone and had not looked to anyone beyond herself for help. Those differences demonstrated that Dolores was a fighter, a survivor. But Francine’s mind mostly focused on the key similarities. Both Toni and Dolores had been young women who’d been seduced by pastors they trusted. In both cases, the pastors had gotten off scot-free, while the women had been left to deal with the fallout all alone. That was an injustice Francine didn’t think she could bear twice.
“He can’t shirk his responsibility like this,” Francine declared. “He has to think about Monika.”
“That’s what I told him,” Dolores said, “but he refuses. He’s afraid he’ll lose his ministry.”
Francine wanted to scream her unbelief, but she held herself in check for Dolores’s sake. “How can he seriously think he has a ministry that’s blessed by God when he refuses to acknowledge his own daughter? Who is he?” she demanded.
Dolores shook her head. “I don’t feel right giving you his name.”
“Why do you want to protect him?”
“I’m not protecting him,” she said. “I’m protecting Monika. If he loses what he has, he’s going to take it out on her. I’d rather she never meet him than realize he doesn’t care about her.”
“But—” Francine began, but Stuart cut her off by putting his hand on her wrist. “It’s your decision, Dolores,” he said. “But there are biblical ways for us to approach this man—minister —and deal with this. When you’re ready, we’re ready to deal with him God’s way.”
“I’ll think about it,” Dolores said. “Maybe I’ll talk to him again. He may change his mind after he has time to think about it.”
Francine really didn’t think so, and she pitied Dolores if she was hanging her daughter’s happiness on a man who hadn’t done the right thing in fifteen long years. Stuart’s hand holding her wrist made her keep her mouth closed.
Stuart suggested they pray and he led them. Afterwards, the three of them joined the others outside. When Dolores went to see what Monika was up to, Stuart pulled Francine as
ide. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“No, I’m not all right. I’ll never be all right as long as there are people like this guy and Bishop Payne still in pulpits. How can this be, Stuart? How do these men get in pulpits and how do they stay there? I don’t get it.”
He tossed a leaf into the wind. “Churches, people, are looking for leaders, Francine, and there are many leaders out there who see the church as a good career path. But a pastor is more than a leader, he’s a shepherd. The shepherd leads, but he also teaches, comforts, protects. All those things that God does for His children, He expects for His shepherds to carry out with their flock. I think a lot of churches look for good leaders rather than good shepherds. Churches are big business, and people want to make sure business is taken care of.”
“So it’s the congregation’s fault for picking bad preachers?”
Stuart shook his head. “Of course not. Most, if not all, of the blame lies with the leaders themselves. Many of them enter the ministry for the wrong reasons, while others of them are tempted and led astray by the power and position. It happens, more than I want to admit, more than any of us want to admit.”
“There ought to be some way of getting those men out, or stopping them from getting in those positions in the first place. We’re talking about souls here.”
Stuart nodded. “There are ways of getting them out, but that’s only after the damage has been done. Truly repentant leaders easily land other congregations, and unfortunately, so do many of the ones who are merely good actors. People in church want to believe that people change, so they’re always willing to give a person a second chance.”
“So, what’s the answer?”
He looked down at her. “What the answer always is: obedience to God. Just as there are men entering the pastorate for the wrong reasons, there are other men who don’t enter it when they should. They feel they can reach more people out of the pulpit than in it. These men make the same mistake as the men who think a mega-church means they’re doing great work for God. It doesn’t. The only great work a man can do for the kingdom is to be obedient to what the Lord has called him to do. If that’s pastoring a congregation that never grows above a hundred, so be it. The same if it means pastoring a congregation that’s above twenty-five thousand. The same for the guy who thinks he can touch more hearts or make more of a difference as a teacher, or doctor, or lawyer, or judge. The obedience is the measure, not the occupation, not even the results we reap on this earth.”
Francine considered Stuart’s words. While they sounded good, they really didn’t address the issue, not in her mind. “Okay,” she said, “I can see that we need to get good people in the pulpit, but how do we get the bad ones out?”
Stuart led her to a picnic table, where he picked up a can of soda on ice after handing one to her. “Easy, we confront the sin in three steps, the way Jesus lays it out in verses 15 through 17 of Matthew, chapter 18.”
“Easy to say,” Francine muttered.
He tipped his can to his lips. “You’re right, but it’s only hard because there’s a lot of cover-up going on in a lot of these churches with bad preachers. People know, but they don’t say anything. Sometimes it’s because that ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ mentality paralyzes them into inaction. Or maybe the ‘judge not, lest you be judged’ mentality. Or maybe they’re like Dolores, and don’t want to get caught up in all the fallout. Whatever the reason, the inaction of people who know allows it to go on.”
“So what about Dolores? When I tried to press her for the minister’s name, you stopped me. How will he ever be confronted if nobody knows his name?”
Stuart gave her a smile that reminded her of an indulgent parent dealing with a precocious child. “Sometimes our timing is not the Lord’s. His primary goal is not to get that minister. He’s concerned about Dolores and Monika and how they come out of this. He’s always concerned about souls.”
Francine waved her soda can in frustration. “So the pastor gets off scot-free? That’s not right. How can that be right?” She was thinking as much about Bishop Payne as she was about Monika’s father. Both men still led churches, suffering only minor setbacks, while the women they abused had their lives ruined.
“He won’t get off scot-free. None of them do. First Peter 2 and 8 makes it clear that God both delivers the godly out of temptation and reserves the wicked for punishment. The thing is, the Lord may not use us when He exacts his payment. We can be there for Dolores and Monika, loving them with the love of the Lord and encouraging them to trust that love. In time, Dolores will make the right decision and do what the Lord would have her do regarding this man. Besides, he’s not going anywhere.”
Francine thought about Stuart’s words, and though she wanted to exact payment now, she knew he was right. “It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this,” she observed.
“I have. At one time, I thought I was destined for the pulpit.”
“I can see that,” she said, and she could. Stuart would be one of the good pastors, a true shepherd to his flock. “So what happened to change your path?”
“Life,” he said, and she understood he didn’t want to talk about it. That made her sad because she thought they were becoming friends. She didn’t respond, so they stood together watching the kids run across Mother Harris’s backyard. “My vision of my future always included me in the pulpit and my wife, Marie, by my side,” Stuart explained a short while later. “That vision died when she died.”
“I’m sorry, Stuart,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
He shook his head. “It’s all right. I can talk about her. We had a good life.”
“You loved her a lot.” She glanced at his ring. “You still wear your wedding ring.”
He twisted it on his finger. “I haven’t been able to take it off”
“Because you still feel married?”
He tossed his soda can into a garbage pail about five feet away. “I don’t think so. I think it represents a part of my life that I’m not yet ready to let go.”
Francine thought about the life he’d shared with his wife and compared it to the loves in her life. Sly was the closest she’d come and she knew that hadn’t been the same kind of love Stuart felt for Marie. She wondered what that love felt like. She wondered if Dawn and Sly had experienced it, if they still did. “So if you’re not going to the pulpit, how do you see your life playing out?”
“The Lord is opening a lot of doors for me now. I lead a teen fathers’ group that meets each week and I have a job that gives me a lot of satisfaction. Beyond that, I’m taking it day by day. What about you?”
She drank the last of her soda. “I’m not even taking it day by day yet. I’m still at the moment-by-moment pace. I really don’t know. A lot of my life was tied up in Temple Church, and my plans for the future all involved playing some role in that ministry. Now that I’m no longer there, I’m not quite sure what the future holds.”
“It sounds like we both need to hold on to the Lord’s words to Jeremiah,” Stuart said. Then he quoted, “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for good and not for evil, plans to give you a hope and a future.”
Francine turned to him. “Thanks,” she said. “I needed to hear that. I’ve read it many times, but I needed to hear it. Right now, it feels like the Lord is rejuvenating my spirit by allowing me to make peace with my past so I can walk in the future He has for me, if that makes any sense.”
“It makes a lot of sense.” He twisted his wedding ring on his finger again. “Maybe I need to make peace with the past myself.”
Francine knew he was thinking about his wife. She reached over and touched his hand with hers. “I can’t even imagine how it feels to lose someone you love the way you obviously loved your wife, Stuart. Losing my grandparents was worse than anything I’d ever imagined, even though I knew they were going to be with the Lord. Of course it’s going to take time for you to see and be excited about a future without
her.”
Stuart turned his hand over and squeezed hers. “Thanks for saying that.”
~ ~ ~
Sylvester pulled into Mother Harris’s driveway about fifteen minutes after Fredericka left him. He had an overwhelming desire to see Dawn, to tell her about seeing Fredericka. Surprise didn’t quite capture how he felt when he saw her and Walter engaged in what seemed to be serious conversation in Mother Harris’s driveway. Jealousy raged in him like a roaring fire. He could hear Dawn’s taunts of another man playing in his mind and he could see how it could happen. It could happen for Dawn and Walter in much the same way it had happened for him and Fredericka. Walter would plant seeds of doubt and offer a strong shoulder of support. One thing would lead to another and they’d end up horizontal somewhere. With that image in his mind, Sly jerked his car door open and stalked toward the couple.
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” he said, though he really hoped he was. He held out his hand. “It’s been a while, Walter.”
Walter looked down at Sly’s hand, but he didn’t take it. “Not long enough,” Walter said.
“You seem to have a lot to say to my wife,” Sly said.
“Not as much as you had to say to mine,” Walter countered. “Then again maybe Dawn and I are doing more talking than you and Fredericka did.”
Sly took a step toward the man, his hand balled into a fist, itching to wipe that smirk off Walter’s face.
“Your husband is a very physical man,” Walter said to Dawn. “So physical I can almost understand why he thinks he needs two women.”
Sly raised his hand. “You—”
“Stop it, both of you,” Dawn yelled. “Sly, stop behaving like a child, and Walter, stop taunting him.”
Sylvester dropped his hand and rolled his shoulders to let go of the tension that had bunched there. “Let’s make a deal, Walter. You stay away from my wife. I stay away from yours.”
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