SECRET RADIO blog

SECRET RADIO scheduled for re-release

2008-05-08T04:55:00.000-07:00

Secret Radio, the book that started it all (at least for me), is scheduled to be re-released later this summer through Jupiter Rising Books. The novel, which chronicles the senior year of Grace Jovian and her friends at Greater Independent Baptist College, should be available in a less expensive, more conventional book size. Its estimated retail price is $15.

SCHIZOPHRENIC CHRISTIANITY now available on AMAZON

2008-05-08T04:37:00.001-07:00

Schizophrenic Christianity: How Christian Fundamentalism Attracts and Protects Sociopaths, Abusive Pastors, and Child Molesters
Using case study after case study of Independent Fundamental Baptist pastors accused, indicted, or convicted of child molesting, the author shows that these men continue to serve in the ministry unhindered. With surprising quotes from public leaders of Christian Fundamentalism such as the late Jerry Falwell, the author shows that many ultra-conservative Baptist churches grant their pastors total immunity and blame and isolate their victims instead. In easy to understand language, Massi explains the theology of American Christian Fundamentalism and shows how it has departed radically from historic Christian belief into a gender-based, externalized pietism that evaluates spiritual success in terms of numbers and political power. She paints a frightening picture of a religion gone horribly wrong, in which child molesters can easily pick up the lingo, amass a following, and hold themselves above accountability by merging into a system that refuses to police itself or institute rules of behavior for its clergy.

The Lambs Workbook - for Victims of Clergy Abuse or Church Abuse

2008-05-07T04:50:00.000-07:00

The Lambs Workbook: Recovering from Church Abuse, Clergy Abuse, Spiritual Abuse, and the Legalism of Christian FundamentalismAn interactive study book designed for victims of clergy abuse, this book is based upon Bible study to help Christians overcome abuse from churches or clergy. Appropriate for either group study or private study, this book supplies six weekly lessons and a seventh, closing review lesson. It also supplies six weeks (42 days) of short, daily devotional studies to help the reader understand that God Himself, as Jesus Christ, has shared in suffering unjustly at the hands of false religious leaders. This book is a good starting point for abused Christians who ask, "Why did God let this happen?" The Lambs Workbook is excellent for individual use, group study, or even book clubs.

EOS

2006-04-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

And that's all you can see right now of GRACE TRIUMPHANT. Thank you for reading.

For the present time, this blog is on hiatus, and GRACE TRIUMPHANT will be removed shortly.

The latest news is that THE CONFERENCE OF THE LAMBS is scheduled for June 15-16, 2007 in Charlotte, NC. This is a conference designed to minister to victims of church abuse. You can sign up to receive the free newsletter by Clicking here

Also, please consider tuning in to the Recovering Fundamentalist podcast. Each broadcast is 15-17 minutes long, about 13-15 MB per podcast. The podcasts feature music, devotionals, comedy, and commentary.

You can visit the podcast web page by clicking here. Or you can click the podcast chicklet and be subscribed automatically.

And if you are really hooked on Grace, visit the bookstore, which carries the two prequels to GRACE TRIUMPHANT: SECRET RADIO, and A STANDARD CHRISTIAN. Click here to vist the book store. Bookmark it! Lord willing, GRACE TRIUMPHANT will go into hard copy by late September 2006.

Grace Triumphant 024

2006-02-16T03:04:00.000-08:00

March 22, 2005

Hillary lived through the first surgery. But the doctors confirmed pseudo mesothelioma, one of the most devastating forms of cancer known. Her children were still on their way to North Carolina during her surgery, so David acted on her behalf.

I waited at the hospital with him while she was in the operating room. At first we talked about her chances, the prognosis, the symptoms she had shown for the last several months, her uncanny strength that had kept her going when most people would have been down from weakness and pain after only a couple weeks.

But there were intervals when we talked about ourselves. Now that I'm several years older, I think Dave Fringe had one chief concern, and that was to help Hillary. If that meant finding a way to get along with her rabidly right wing friend, then he would find a way. Maybe it surprised Dave to find out that, as a Christian Fundamentalist, I wasn't a fire breathing klans woman. I know it surprised me to realize that he treasured his friendship with Hillary with a commitment I'd seldom seen in anybody, including myself.

I was also surprised, partway through that unbearably long morning of her first surgery, to see John OHara come walking into the waiting area, his eyes casting around in search of me.

"John!" I stood up. "What are you doing here?"

"The prayer chain contacted everybody this morning," he said. "They said your friend's surgery was first thing this morning. I thought I would stop by and get an update." Then he offered a cautious nod to David.

I made introductions. After a minute or two as all three of us exchanged small talk, I could see the confused, slightly panicked look in John's eyes as he began to wonder if Dave was gay. Dave didn't talk with a lisp or behave in an overtly feminine way. He wore a tiny gold stud in his left ear lobe, sported a tuft on the very tip of his chin, and had such an even complexion with no stubble showing that I suspected some type of cosmetic, but if he used any it wasn't caked on. His hair was more meticulously groomed, and oiled, than you'd see on most men. It was short, slicked straight back; one thick curl, like a forelock, spilled onto his forehead.

I knew he was gay because, in the past, Hillary had mentioned running into him and his male partner at different events. It took John a few minutes to work it all out.

John asked me if I would go down to the hospital cafeteria for a cup of coffee with him, and Dave said to go ahead and take a break. We would trade off when I returned.

So John and I walked down the long corridor, its floor pale green and the walls dull white. Why do sick people have to stay in such bleak places? I thought. If we could just get Hillary back into her cheerful mountain cottage, she might improve.

I often thought that way early in her illness.

"Actually," John said, interrupting my thoughts. "I brought coffee for you, Grace. Mr. Beauchamp said once that you like Barnie's coffee, so I brought you a cup from there."

It was astonishingly thoughtful of him. He walked me out to his truck and gave me the cup. Then he passed over some powdered creamer and a plastic stirrer, so I could fix it the way I liked. He'd brought a cup for himself. We leaned against the truck in the brilliantly sunny and cold morning and had our coffee, surrounded by the incredible vista of those mountains. They looked gray, smoke-blue, and pale green that morning, with strips of black where the trees were not yet blanketed in new green leaves.

How could anybody be dying on a morning like this? I thought. And I realized that John really did want to go out with me. Hillary would be so pleased, if she lived through this week.

"I know it's a bad time to ask, Grace," John said, thrusting his free hand into his pocket. "But it's never a good time to ask you out. Somebody always wants your time, or there's some other calamity brewing."

"We've had our share," I said.

"The farewell for Steve and Julie at church is this Saturday. If things are okay here," and he nodded at the hospital. "I'd like you to go with me."

"Sure, John," I said. "Really, I'm honored that you would ask me."

He shot me a quizzical half smile, and then we had our coffee.

Grace Triumphant 023

2006-02-15T02:59:00.000-08:00

March 21 2005

Beauchamp warned me, years ago, that time is a river without banks. There's no holding on. You can only move forward.

He'd been gone only two weeks, and things were getting more dismal at Simpsons Department store as the winter gave way to spring. And one afternoon I got a call on my office phone from David, the openly queer theater manager who was one of Hillary's best friends.

"This is David Fringe. Is this Grace Jovian?" he asked in his precise voice.

"Yes it is," I said in my cordial office voice.

"Ms. Jovian, Hilary has asked me to call you. I'm at the hospital on Forest Street. Do you know where that is?"

I straightened up. "Yes. What's wrong?"

"Hillary is being admitted. You should come at once. Is that possible?"

"Yes," I said.

"I'll meet you on the oncology floor," he said.

"All right." I forgot to thank him, hung up, grabbed my hat and coat, and ran for my car.

The hospital lobby was quiet in the middle of a weekday. But once past the lobby, I entered the time and world of the hospital itself, a world unto itself.

The nurse's station on the Oncology floor was just opposite the elevator doors, and as the doors opened, I saw a tall, very thin man with a soul patch on his chin. He had short, neat, slicked back hair, artificially darkened to black with chestnut highlights. But his grasp when he shook my hand was as firm as I could have asked.

"Miss Jovian, I'm a dear friend of Hillary's," he said. "She's waiting to see you, but perhaps we should talk first."

"What's happened?" I asked. "What's the Oncology floor for?"

He quieted his voice. "Oncology is the cancer ward." He still had hold of my hand.

"What's happened to her?"

"The doctors believe she has cancer---"

"Where?"

"In her lungs. She's scheduled for surgery first thing in the morning-"

"So quickly?"

Like Hillary, he was far older than I, but he lived in that world where youth mattered more than anything, so I couldn't determine if he was in his mid thirties or mid fifties. But he had a firm grip of my hand, and for all his cosmetic good looks and overly groomed manner, there was something fatherly in him. Or at least calming, like a man who has been through something like this before and knows exactly what must be done.

"I want you to understand that it's serious," he told me. "That's why surgery has to be so quick. Her lungs have filled with fluid, and the doctors are draining it out. And as soon as they're clear enough for surgery, the surgeon is going to remove at least part of one lung. He's hoping she'll be ready by tomorrow morning."

I stared up at him. He still had me by the hand. "Hillary is afraid," he said to me. "And she's in pain. She tells me that you have a lot of faith. If you can help raise her spirits for tomorrow, please try."

"Is she awake?" I asked him.

"In and out, from the morphine they gave her to help ease the distress from the respiratory trouble. You know she was a drug addict?"

"Yes, pills," I said.

"She's worried that the morphine will make her go back to that. She's been asking the nurses about that---" He caught himself and looked me in the eye. "Can you help her?"

I calmed down as he looked at me. We both had to be calm. "I can try to help her," I said. "I want to."

He nodded and let me go. "It's this way. We'll enter quietly. She's been sleeping the last few minutes."

My Hillary, the one I knew so well, who was young and lively and filled with sudden outbursts of poetry, corny jokes, puns, ironic commentary, and enthusiastic hugs, disappeared that day. The new version of her, gray roots showing under the colored hair, haggard eyes, and fearful expression, came in her place. Every now and then in the months to come, I would see the old Hillary appear at her eyes like an elvish shadow at a window, looking out again for a brief moment before fading away.

But both versions, as Beauchamp would have said, were mere parts of the whole: faces that the outside world saw, part illusion, part concession, part outright deception. Only God Himself first of all, and then Hillary, knew the real Hillary. According to Beauchamp, you spent your life going through version after version, either trying to get closer to the real person or trying to get away from it. And sometimes, in situations like these, the divine hand pushed you in the proper direction. And that divine hand could be pretty ruthless. Truth is ruthless. Cutting cancer out of a person is ruthless. But it has to be done.

When Hillary slowly roused from the drug-induced stupor, she tried to grasp my hand, and I helped her.

"I've taken drugs today," she whispered. "I said I never would again."

"You had no choice," I told her. "You probably didn't even know they were doing it."

"No, God. I never knew. They just did it. Will you forgive me if I didn't know?"

"Hillary dear," Dave said gently from the other side of the bed. "It's not God talking to you. It's your friend, Grace."

"Grace is here," she said. Her fingers tightened on mine. "They made me high on drugs. I'm still high, and I'm sorry, I apologize. Ask God to forgive me."

"God forgives you," David said.

"All right Hillary," I told her. "I'm going to ask God right now. But God sent me to you. You know that, don't you? God sent me."

She paused. "No," I didn't know that," she said.

"Well He did. Hold onto my hand, and I'll ask Him." I didn't know if David would be embarrassed or if he would walk out of the room, but he stayed there and looked down as I prayed for her with quiet clear words. Her eyes would start to close, so I would wait until she came back, and then I would pick up the prayer. When I had finished, I said to her, "God has commanded that everybody who puts their faith in Jesus Christ will have all their sins forgiven. Do you believe that, Hillary?"

"Yes," she said. "I did ask Jesus to save me. Years ago. After an AA meeting."

"Yes, but then you became a Buddhist," I told her.

"They make the best doughnuts," she replied sleepily, not knowing what we were talking about.

"Oh Hillary," I rested my hand on her head.

"Jesus, would you forgive me if I didn't understand?" she asked. "Don't go away."

"Hillary, I'm not Jesus. I'm just Grace," I said gently.

"Help me breathe, so I don't need so much morphine," she asked. "Just do that, please. I don't want to be a drug addict. I'm sorry about all of that. Please don't let it get me again."

"Jesus sent me to help you. I'm Grace," I told her. "Your friend Grace."

"Grace hold on." She tightened her hold on my hand again as her eyes closed. "I'll get us through this one, and then you get the next."

Grace Triumphant 022

2006-02-14T02:30:00.000-08:00

March 20

Dear Madam,

I have been reading your journal with a great
deal of interest. I am happy to tell you that
your husband has not really committed adultery
in the bibilical sense because the girl he took
is not married. If you think through the story
of David and Bathsheba, you will remember that
God, through Nathan the prophet, told David
that God Himself had provided David with many
wives. And if David had wanted more women, God
was willing to provide him with more.

For a man to have more than one woman is not a
sin. Polygamy is not a sin, because God wouldn't
have given and offered David more wives to have
relations with.

Why do we fundamentalists draw our lines away from
the biblical model?

You should understand that your husband's only sin
was slight dishonesty with you and failing to provide
for the woman he has taken. You women should understand
that your role is to accept what men have to do to be
satisfied and be thankful for a good provider. I urge
you to reconcile with your husband as quickly as
possible.

Brother Dave
All for One and One for All Baptist Church
Burning Sands, Utah

The children have gone to Sunday School and church with Greg. I can't face church. People know. Greg called Friday night, and I got my ultimatum into words: He has to leave that job. Now, at last, I can be angry with him more than sad. He certainly does love that job more than he loves me.

He hasn't closed down the credit card account, and I can see by the online bill that there have been no more motel visits. From the credit card, our checking account, and a small savings account we've kept for emergencies, I've extracted $35,000 and put it into my own account. Greg has a 401K, and we've created several small investment funds over the years. He'll have to cash out some of them to pay off the credit card debt I created. I don't want to ruin us financially, but I know I need some type of protection, some means of my own if we legally separate, until I can begin to work.

And tomorrow, I must visit a lawyer. I don't feel ready for divorce, but I also understand Greg's mind. It's better for me to astonish him at the very beginning with a show of strength and preparation. And I have to learn, like it or not, how to go about the process of securing a life for myself and the children.

The house is still dark because I haven't drawn back the curtains. We gave Tahlia back to Terri yesterday. She is house sitting an English Setter, a good sized dog (though smaller than Tahlia), who was more outright playful with the children yesterday than Tahlia has been. The Setter is a neutered male, white with black spots, a descendent of the line that is still used for hunting, rather than show.

Yesterday, Ben kept throwing a ball for him when we all went to the park together, and Jack (the dog's informal name), only stared after it and then looked expectantly back at Ben. English Setters point, but they don't retrieve. Terri had Jack on a flexi-leash. She passed it over to Ben and told him to just run, and Jack would run with him.

That was an understatement. Jack easily kept up with Ben and then Ben let him out to the full extent of the flexi-leash. He really is a beautiful dog, with a beautiful gait.

"How long are you keeping him?" I asked Terri.

"Probably a few weeks. He's retired from the field competitions. We just need a family to take him in." She said this with such elaborate off-handedness that I suspected her right away.

I was about to say something to remind her that this is no time to get a dog when Rachel blurted, "Mom, couldn't we have him?"

"Honey, Jack is a hunting dog. We can't keep him."

"Well, we're looking to settle him in with a family," Terri said with that annoying blandness. "He won't pine for hunting or field trials if he's exercised for about thirty minutes a day."

"Terri!" I said sharply. And she stopped. But I had another horrible night last night. I wake up all the time, and I feel frightened. I was thinking of having more locks and a new alarm system installed. But the children love Jack. And he seems very good with them, more genuinely interested in making friends with them than the gentle but business-like Tahlia.

There's no use in moping around here while Greg has the children. I'm going to call Terri and ask if I can take Jack out for a walk.

Grace Triumphant 021

2006-02-13T02:28:00.000-08:00

March 18

Grace,
Where are you? I've been calling your cell phone for days. I finally decided to run down to the library and use a computer that doesn't have all those doggone security filters that we have to use now, just to make sure you get this. So I'm sending you an e-mail, but if you reply to it, I may nor see the reply until I get access to another less secure computer. Please call me if you get this.

Cinn

I realize that I simply cannot go back to our church. First of all, Greg may be there, and I don't want to see him for anything longer than five or ten minutes, and certainly not in public. And second, I just can't face everybody we know. It's too humiliating.

I'll look up another church in the phone book. I'm supposed to meet Greg at 1:00 for coffee in town. What do I say to him? I need to take Tahlia out for another walk before I go, to make sure she gets her exercise in for the day.

Apart from four walks a day, two of them fairly long, Tahlia is an excellent companion. The house feels less empty when she's here. For the first time I am looking at this blog and remembering that it's supposed to be a continuation of my story of getting out of Fundamentalism. And now it's turned into this chronicle of surviving adultery and trying to make sense of it. I'm not sure I'll do either, successfully.

I want to get back to what I started to write almost three weeks ago. That story needs to be told.

March 18, Addendum

The children will be home soon. I'm a mess, all over again. When I got to the coffee shop, Greg was already inside. It's some consolation to see that he looks horrible. He's actually wild-eyed.

But when I saw him through the glass walls of the shop as I pulled up, I felt real grief, a piercing vulnerability, as though I had to face an ordeal of hearing every reason that he had chosen another woman over me. That now-familiar wringing sadness of not knowing how I lost my own husband got hold of me again. In fact, as I got out of the car, my legs were quivering.

He hadn't seen me pull in. He was looking through the glass on the opposite wall, staring hard. And then, with a transformation that was abrupt and seems almost impossible, the closer I got to the door, the angrier I became. Not the anger that threw dishes and glasses at him, but something more like Jim expressed. I am almost 40 and have had two children. I've done my best to please my husband, but no woman my age can compete with a 24 year old girl. There has to be more to marriage than sex, and there has to be more to a man's love for his wife than her youthfulness.

I still felt a gnawing fear that I had done something to alienate him, that it was my fault and I could never repair what I had done wrong. But something else, some insight born of Jim and seeing how much he loved his own wife, made me more forceful than I ever thought I could be. A sudden wind caught me as I opened the door to the shop, and Greg looked up and saw me. Above all else, I could not be the woman Greg expected me to be. I could not be out of control of myself. I could never let him see how sad I was.

I entered, and he stood up. He was pale, his face worried. But his clothing was ironed, and he was wearing a collared shirt and business casual khakis. He'd been to work that day. Where she worked, too.

"Sit down," I said to him. He sat. Then I sat.

"Don't you want anything?" he asked me. He had a coffee cup in front of him.

"You've been wanting to talk to me, so talk," I said.

"Grace," he began, but he paused, thinking I would volley out my own words, but I only looked at him, my purse in my lap, my hands knotted together the way my little Rachel's hands were when she was so afraid. I spread out my hands over my purse.

"Talk, Greg," I said. "This is what you wanted, and it's not going to last long, so you better say what you have to say."

Now he was uncertain. A hint of caution came into those panicked eyes. He had expected blame, grief, words. My demand that he speak, and my ability to wait until he did caught him off guard. "I want you to know I'm sorry," he said. "It was a one-time thing---"

"For just about 30 days," I added. "Stop lying to me."

"I mean a one-time fling. It was crazy. It was an insanity. And she threw herself at me Grace---" He was still talking, but my mind went back to my own parents, my adulterous father. For so long, I thought the affair when my mother had caught him had been his first. It took years for me to realize that my father had been cheating on my mother all their married life. I looked at my husband. He was still talking.

"So you're going back there, after I say goodbye to you today?" I asked him. "Back to where she is?"

"I broke it off with her, Grace," he said. "It's over. Try to understand, she doesn't mean anything to me."

I stood up. "Nobody means anything to you, Greg. I'm starting to realize that."

He jumped up. "Where are you going?"

"Home." I turned and walked away. The coffee shop was nearly empty, but the young man behind the counter kept one eye on us as he wiped up.

"Grace I have to go to work," Greg called after me. "Don't you understand that?"

"Sure. Have a nice day." I pulled open the door without looking at him.

"What about the children?" he called. His distress was real, and I felt that call like an arrow through me. They were suffering.

"You can take them to church on Sunday, and to your mother's if you want," I said. "But you better bring them back."

He looked from me to the open door. The wind outside had died down. It was like everything around me was just waiting. "This isn't a way to solve anything," he said. "We have to talk about what's happened."

"Not while you're working there, with her." Now the young man at the counter was openly staring at us.

"She won't leave, Grace. I asked her."

I gave him one look of open disgust and walked out. He came after me then, but my car was right at the door. I got into it and pulled out while he stood on the sidewalk, staring at me.

He is the most selfish man I've ever met. Did he really think he would do what he did and then just keep his life as tidy and neat as it's been?

I knew that in a sense I did the right thing, met him the right way, gotten him off balance. I have his attention. And the confrontation pushed me to a new understanding. We won't talk until he's out of that office. I played the fool once, but not twice. He has to leave her behind.

But none of my new insight, nor even the small victory I'd gotten, stopped me from crying and sobbing all over again when I got home. I sat on the floor in my bedroom, my back against the bed, my knees to my face, and cried. Tahlia, not understanding, came and sat next to me, then lay down and dozed. The children will be home soon, and I have to get myself together to meet them and give them some type of calm and orderly world.

Grace Triumphant 020

2006-02-10T02:09:00.000-08:00

March 17

You are a hypocrite writing about all this love and tears and sorrow for your children. What about Johnny Mack and all the harm you have done to him by reporting of abuses at his church that you have never proved. That court case that put Deacon Hardchild in jail should have been tossed out on appeal. And there is no evidence that Preacher Mack was having an affair with a deacon's wife, but now you know all about affairs. You drove off your husband, you frigid femi-nazi.

Don't preach to me about this turn the other cheek stuff. I've tried this Rodney King "Let's get along thing" but it doesn't work so I AM NOT trying it again. God is punishing you for your vile blogs and journals, and I want a front row seat. I've never seen anybody who would dare find men of God like Johnny Mack, Marky Schemer, and me to be funny.

Well, the joke's on you. The she-bears have found you. Grace Jovian, you are vile.

Pastor John Wally Johnson
Clarksville Independent Fundamental Baptist Temple
Clarksville Ohio.

The locksmith is coming today to change the locks and inspect our home security.

It was getting onto ten last night, and the children were in bed. I was just feeling that uneasy, over aware feeling I suffered the night before when a knock at the door almost made me jump out of my skin. But I looked through the kitchen window, and there was Terry! I pulled the door open, and sitting in front of me, on her lead, was Tahlia, with a cloth pouch of dog food hanging on a string from her mouth.

"Tahlia felt like a sleepover with you and the kids," Terry said. "And she brought her own food!"

"Come in! Come in!" I was so relieved. Terry came in, and I took the dog food. I invited her to use the guest room, but she told me that she has to fly out tomorrow for a three day visit to a seminar.

"I have somebody come in and walk the dog," she said. "But if you'd like to keep her for the three days, maybe that will be better for you and for her." Then she cautioned me: "Tahlia does need a lot of walks."

"Terry I don't know how to thank you!" I exclaimed. "Please sit down. Tell me how to take care of her."

There is a science to Anatolian shepherd dogs. They actually do comprehend a sort of formal introduction process and can work out who they should protect, who they should tolerate, and who is an intruder.

"They prefer to bark and drive off intruders," Terry said. "But if anything really were to attack something they protect, they would fight to the death." She patted Tahlia's head. "But they make decisions for themselves. They're really amazing dogs. A good Anatolian shepherd can actually figure out some situations and make decisions."

She showed me how to give commands to Tahlia using my voice, and then how to do the same things with hand signals. I have some lunch meat in the refrigerator to use for rewards for her, but I can get dog biscuits that she likes. Terry gave me the exact brand and flavor, as Tahlia is smart enough to know when she's getting substandard stuff.

And Terry cautioned me that I would have to be assertive with Tahlia, always in control of myself and the situation. Guard dogs, even exceptionally gentle ones like the Anatolian shepherds, need a hierarchy. If they don't recognize anybody at the top of the hierarchy, they will claim the top spot. It's just part of the same instinct in them to protect.

So we went through some commands and praise of Tahlia, and she got the idea. I don't think we "bonded" in the way that Terry and Tahlia bonded. But Tahlia is used to Terry leaving her in the care of others for a few days on occasion. And she understood that she was being passed into my care. We're already acquaintances, and she's always been good with the children.

Last night I had my first real night of sleep. I woke up once or twice as Tahlia got up from alongside my bed to go patrol the house, just as Terry said she would. In the morning, I went to Ben's room first and woke him up. I told him about the dog and told him not to squeal or jump up and down around her until she felt comfortable with him. I explained to him that she's actually a working dog, and even though she's beautiful and can be a lot of fun, we have to let her be a working dog. He agreed and came at once to be formally introduced. But Tahlia greeted him with polite tail wagging and a lick.

Then I woke Rachel and did the same thing. Tahlia accepted her the same way.

I've dropped the children at school, and Tahlia and I are scheduled for our first walk. I can see that she's ready to go. The house really is too confining for her. Me too!

Grace Triumphant 019

2006-02-09T02:32:00.000-08:00

March 16

I opened the front door this next morning to a world that knows what has happened. I mean, I really opened the front door to take in the mail I missed. But the image holds.

I drove the children to school instead of putting them on the bus. By now the bruise has healed, but when I went to talk to the school administrator to explain that I had taken the children out of school to take an emergency trip, she already had a good idea about what had happened. I intended to give out no details, but I realized she is already close to the mark in her guesses.

She listened to me and practically clucked with sympathy as I talked. I kept touching my forehead, wondering if she could see any mark from the bruise. Neither of us used the word adultery, but she listened to my lame explanation of why I'd had to take the children out of town for a few days. And then she put a sympathetic hand on my sleeve and suggested that I get counseling or consider a support group.

Then I came home and saw Terry out front, walking Tahlia up the street. I went out to say hello and realized that Terry also knows what has happened. Even Tahlia nudged my hand and wagged her tail in a sort of apologetic way. Again, nobody said the word adultery, and neither of us referenced Greg. But she knew. She told me she was glad I was back home, and she asked me if I needed anything.

I wanted to ask how in the world she knew my husband was out of the house, but I didn't. I just took for granted that she knew, so I might as well be realistic about it.

"You live alone," I told her. "Do you have an alarm system? I kept waking up last night. I don't feel safe."

She glanced down at Tahlia. "That's my alarm system. She's a very sedate dog, but she's very protective. If anything comes near the house, she sounds an alarm." She dropped an affectionate hand to Tahlia's broad, cream colored head. Tahlia looked up, mouth open, and wagged her tail. "And she patrols the house every few hours. She's very thorough."

I had such a bad night last night, full of fears I had not expected. The thought instantly struck me that perhaps I should get a guard dog. But I didn't say anything. It's such a huge step, and Greg's dislike of a dog in the house still hangs over me. And a dog is a big step, a great responsibility.

Later in the day, I took my car down to the service station around the corner to see if they had time to do an oil change. Our service station sells Exxon gas and is run by Phil, a gray haired man who has owned the place for years. He's seen my car grow from one baby seat to two, then back to one and now none, and he's called me Ms. Grace ever since we moved into our house and started taking our car to his shop.

Phil was in back with the cars, so I gave the key and the car information to the young man at the desk. Phil came in as the paperwork was being filled out. The young man walked back into the work area to pass off the key, and Phil followed him. As one of the other mechanics came into the front room, the door swung open, and I could hear Phil: "-and say yes Ma'am and No Ma'am to her. " Then the door closed.

Phil has always been courteous to the point of deferential, but he's never given his workers lessons in etiquette before. I saw the truth: Phil also knew what had happened to me. And now he was sensitive to how the young men spoke to me. That means that he not only knows Greg is no longer in the house; I think he knows why.

The realization that the story in such detail has gotten around made the flush come up my cheeks, but at least Phil, like Jim, clearly sympathizes with me.

When the car was finished, he brought me the key himself. "And if there's any trouble, Ms. Grace, you just bring it right back, and we'll look at it, first thing," he said. His eyes, hazel eyes with many fine wrinkles at the corners, held mine for a second, and I knew he was sad for me. "You tell them beautiful children of yours that Phil says hello," he said.

"Thanks Phil!" I tried to sound upbeat and breezy. But I feel mystified by all of this. Everybody knows. Phil, so much like Jim, takes another man's adultery like an affront.

I never meant to be anything other than what I am, but in our culture, especially here in the conservative South, a mother with two children is a sort of icon. I do what a lot of people believe in: I raise my children to know the difference between right and wrong. I have them in church. I teach them Bible verses.

I realize that, whatever started the information campaign, it's spread so quickly for no other reason than sympathy and the shock that a man like Greg would do such a thing. But now I am afraid all over again. Night is coming, and I feel like half the town knows I am alone in the house with the children.

Grace Triumphant 018

2006-02-08T01:32:00.000-08:00

March 15

Oh why did I come back on the unluckiest day of the year? Surely that's superstition. (Well, it was certainly a bad day for Caesar!)

From far away, the house was merely home. But now that we're here, the emptiness is huge. We all feel it that Greg is gone. The children are suddenly in tune with the fear they felt that horrible night, with the inexplicable mystery of what happened between their mother and their father. And half the dishes are gone. Greg may have taken several for himself, and I have no idea how many I broke.

His clothes and shoes and jackets are gone. The house is immaculate. There was a single note, sealed and addressed to me with the words "Mom only" on it, so that neither of the children would open it. Benjamin brought it to me, and both of them waited, almost looking like characters from Japanese cartoons with their eyes so big and anxious that I couldn't open it in front of them. Poor Rachel had her little hands knotted together.

"Children," I said. I crouched down to get on their level. "I want you to put your things away. You're both old enough to unpack your own things."

"What about Daddy?" Rachel asked. Her voice was reduced to a whisper.

"Children, your father and I are having a difficult time right now. But we both want you to be happy, and we both love you. We'll work out the best solution for everybody. But you have to give us time, and you have to let us work and let us make the decisions."

"But where is he?" Rachel asked.

"He has to live someplace else for a while."

"Will we see him again?" Ben asked.

His innocent question, another marker of my failure to assuage their fears, brought tears to my eyes. "Yes darling, I promise that you'll see him soon. I promise. In fact, that's my most important promise right now. You know he wants to see you, and I don't want to keep you from seeing him. But for now, we're going to live here, and he has to live someplace else."

I didn't want to cry in front of them, but those tears that I can no longer control came down my cheeks. I couldn't look into their faces and say it without tears. To hold my children close and look at their frightened faces and tell them their father could not come home. No pain in my life has been worse. In fact I don't think I knew pain until I inflicted this pain on my innocent children today.

And Benjamin said again, with that uncanny intuition, "Mama, has Daddy stopped loving you? Were you mad, or were you sad, that night?"

Poor little Rachel's face went stark white at reference to that awful night. For her it had been an incomprehensible nightmare.

"Son, I can't discuss it with you because there are things between parents that they don't discuss with their children. You'll understand when you're married. You and Rachel have to work on loving both of us and loving each other." I stroked their heads. "I am so sorry that you saw what you saw that night. I hope you can forgive me---"

"We do, we do!" they exclaimed, and they threw themselves into my arms. We did what we hadn't been able to do at Jim and Amy Carmichael's. We cried together. In fact, we sobbed, our arms around each other, our grief at last coming out into the open. They were so frightened and they've been suffering, and I am causing it, but I don't know what else to do.

"Mama, we love you both," Rachel said. "And we'll be good."

So we got through the day. They cleaned their rooms, and I tried to get life back into a recognizable routine for them. With practically no dishes left, I ordered pizza. We looked over their neglected lessons, and I did laundry and got things ready for them to go to school in the morning.

Only after my poor children were safely tucked up in their beds, and I had kissed them and looked in on them a dozen times over, did I open the note. It simply said, "I am sorry. I love you, and I want you back."

You don;t want me; you just want your life back to normal, I thought.

Grace Triumphant 017

2006-02-07T02:40:00.000-08:00

March 14

There is life after adultery, Ms Jovian. My wife left me last year for another man. But I have learned to rebuild my life through faith in God. By the way, if you write back, could you please tell me what you are wearing? Do you own a pair of stiletto heels? Do you ever wear chiffon? Please write back.

John Calvin Mack
House of Peace Halfway House
Longview, Texas

We had two more great days with Jim and Amy Carmichael and their family. Greg did call in the evenings to talk with the children, and when he was finished, Ben would say, "He wants to talk to you, Mom."

"And I would say, "Thank you, Son," and then step out of the room, end the call, and turn off the phone.

I did speak with my mother-in-law. She told me Greg had moved out and only wanted me to come back home and try to work things out. Greg was angry about the money I had withdrawn, not raging angry, but very annoyed at what he called my impetuousness. "Let him take money from his 401K and repay it," I told her. "I want an escape route. And he made that necessary."

"All right Grace, all right." She hurriedly backpedaled from expressing his displeasure to me. She didn't want to hear what he had done, and I didn't blame her. We were putting her in the middle, and this also had to stop. I did apologize to her the day we left.

In a way that reminded me of Greg in his better life, she said, "It's not a trouble, Grace. There has to be a calm way for you to think through everything and clearly tell him what he has to do to win you back."

"And determine if he can really do it," I added gently. "I'm not sure he can. But I'll be back in a day or two, and you won't be in the middle any more."

The one odd thing was that the morning after Greg's first phone call to the children, I couldn't find my cell phone. I had set it down after turning it off and felt sure I had put it on the mantel over the small fireplace in the front room. But it wasn't there when I came down in the morning.

"I think it's over the sink in the kitchen," Jim said. He retrieved it for me. Then he went off to work. Only later did I wonder if Jim had yielded to the temptation to give Greg a call and tell him exactly what he thought. After all, there's automatic callback on my cell phone. After Greg called the children, anybody could push a single button and contact Greg.

The next day, before we left, Jim said, "Sometimes when a man thinks of a woman like a sister, Grace, he might act like an older brother even if she hasn't asked him to." He hesitated. "You know, it's not easy to just stand by and do nothing. Some men can't watch a woman cry and not try to pull a rescue, or at least say something."

His eyebrows were knit. There is not a subtle bone in Jim's body, I thought. "Jim, when a man treats me like his own sister, I don't think I can object if it's across the board. I came to you and Amy Carmichael because I trust you to help me and do the right thing."

So I never asked him if he'd called Greg, and he never told me.

We packed up my car, and Jim and Amy Carmichael both told me to come back, especially if things went wrong. Jim is still worried that Greg might physically hurt me. Greg has never, ever raised a hand to me, never threatened me, and probably raised his voice to me few enough times for me to count them on the fingers of one hand. But for Jim, Greg's adultery has changed all that. At this point, Jim honestly thinks Greg might do anything. I don't think Greg will hurt me, even when I take into account the fact that I never thought he would have an affair.

I promised Jim and Amy Carmichael that I'll keep my cell phone with me. And I promised that even if Greg just threatens me, I'll pack up the children and leave right away.

Later tonight, we pulled into the Best Western for my two little fish to swim one last time before we go home. And I realized why I don't fear Greg that way. He's too pompous to be a wife abuser. He couldn't take the disdain. If every moral restraint leaves him, I think his vanity would still keep him back. But I'm not going to say that to Jim.

Grace Triumphant 016

2006-02-06T02:31:00.000-08:00

March 13
Addendum

It struck me today that I am not telling the story I set out to tell. But this has happened. I'll probably never put this on the web or publish it. I'll just excise these parts about Greg and print "only the news that's fit to tell."

Anyway, Benjamin surprised me again last night. When the boys came back from the workshop, all cold and chilled through, he must have felt that he ought to contribute something to his new friends. So as they came in from the cloak room, I heard him say to the boys, "You know, my dad was a champion wrestler in college, and he's shown me some things. Maybe I could show you." Then he lost some of his confidence. "If you like wrestling, I mean."

"Oh Benjamin," I exclaimed, coming in from the kitchen. "Somebody might get hurt." But Jim perked right up, and so did all his sons.

"I'll stay with them, Gracie," Jim said. "I've always wanted to learn a little about wrestling," he added. And he was being sincere. He looked at my son with new interest.

And Benjamin, with the same skill and patience Greg has always shown when he's teaching our son how to wrestle, used Charles Lee and showed Jim, James Jr, and Peter some of the basics. I went back to help Amy Carmichael in the kitchen, but we could both hear his voice, a little loud, but very calm, and yet anxious to get the ideas across.

I was proud of him. Greg had told Ben right from the start that show-offs and bullies lose pretty quickly when real wrestling competition begins. Wrestling requires a calm, ready mind. Remarkably like his father, Benjamin can think when under pressure.

"You see, wrestling is a thinking man's sport," I heard him say, the exact thing his father has told him since he turned six, when Greg gave him his first lesson. Jim's deep reply held no irony or joking: "Yeah, I see what you mean. Jim Jr, try this with me. I want to see if I can do that shrimp-out thing."

For nearly half an hour we heard the thumps and bumps I've gotten used to when Greg is teaching Ben. I can determine from the cadence if they are practicing or rough housing. They put a quilt down to protect against rug burns and tried some of the arm bar drills.

The wrestling did turn into rough housing, but that was because of the girls. They came down from playing upstairs and they wanted to learn wrestling too. It turned into a minute or two of Mad Dog, as Jim chased them on hands and knees and they ran screaming from him.

Then we heard him send everybody out to wash up for dinner. "You have great children, Gracie," Jim said as he came in to help carry the platter to the table.

After dinner, true to his promise, Jim and Amy Carmichael popped popcorn, and then Jim settled into his easy chair with Rosie on his arm and the children sat all around him.

"Your mom and your Aunt Gracie went to this college up in Indiana," he told them. "And the man that ran it treated everybody up there like prisoners. He made the girls dress like farmgirls from a hundred years ago, every day of the week, and none of them could do anything like we let you kids do every day."

"Like what, Dad?" Mark asked.

"Like ride bikes down to the Tastyfreeze---"

"Well I can't do that!" Rosie piped up on his arm.

"You can when you're older," Amy Carmichael said gently. "Don't interrupt, Rosie."

"They couldn't even go walk around the block, not without signed permission and somebody watching all the time."

Ben, not sure how to conduct himself when seven children are sitting around a story teller, raised his hand, then looked at me, puzzled, and then at Jim.

"Yes son?" I asked.

"I thought you went to a Bible college," he said.

"They called it a Bible college," I told him. "But your Uncle Jim is right. It was more like a prison. We never did learn much Bible."

"Except what a real church had to unlearn in you," Jim added. Then he returned to the story. "So Ben, your Aunt Amy and I decided we wanted to get married. I was living here and she was there, far away. So that rascal that ran the place read one of my letters to her in front of the whole college of students, just to humiliate her."

James Jr stared at his mother, horrified. "How many students?"

"Oh, a few hundred, I suppose." Amy Carmichael glanced at me.

"I think back then that GIBC ran about 1500 students," I said.

"And he read the letter in front of everybody?" Jim's oldest son looked at him. "Dad, can you tell us what the letter said?"

"Sure," Jim said. "I told her I loved her and I wanted her with me. I wanted her to leave that horrible place and come marry me and live in this house with me. Her father, your grandfather, and I agreed that I would help her finish some kind of degree program so that if anything ever happened to me, she could find work. But once everybody up here was willing for us to get married, I didn't see any reason for her to stay in that jail for one day longer."

"Mom why didn't you just leave?" Peter asked.

"They wouldn't let me," she said. I helped her out. "They had ways down there, rules, ways to stall you and argue and tangle everything up," I told him.

"So how did you get out?" James Jr asked.

"Your Aunt Gracie got her out," Jim said with a grin at me. "She'd already told me once before she was my friend and she thought your mother and I belong together. She called me up, and she laid out a plan."

Then he went on and told them the story of how Amy Carmichael and I hid in a Saturday morning until the campus was empty, and then Jim came on schedule and got Amy Carmichael out of there.

"Remember that silly security guard?" I asked. "What was his name?"

"Gracie, that silly security guard had a gun on his hip," Jim said.

Amy Carmichael and I burst out laughing.

"Mama, don't laugh," Rachel said to me. "He might have hurt Uncle Jim."

"Children, he was so afraid of Uncle Jim, his knees were almost knocking." I glanced at Jim. "I didn't know your Uncle Jim very well yet, and when he got out of that car, ready to get your Aunt Amy out of there, I thought he would swallow that security guard whole."

"Ricky something," Amy Carmichael added.

"Dad what did you do?" James Jr asked.

"I told him I didn't want to fight, but I was getting my girl out of there," Jim said. "And I wanted your Aunt Gracie to come too." He paused. "I felt like it was the worst thing I ever did, to leave you there, Gracie."

"I needed to stay, Jim." I glanced at James Jr. "Your father just took charge. That guard---Ricky's the right name---just stood there. He sent somebody off to go get help. But we had everything ready and there weren't many people on the campus, so we just put the suitcases in the car and your mother and father drove off."

"What happened to you, Mama?" Rachel asked.

"Nothing, honey," I told her. "Your grandfather Jovian was an important evangelist back then. The school was that sort of place, that if you knew somebody important, you could get away with anything."

Ben was shocked. "That's not right."

"No, and I knew it, but I used it to get your Aunt Amy out of there," I said.

"Good for you, Aunt Gracie," James Jr said.

"If you hadn't gotten her out of there, we might not have been born!" Charles Lee exclaimed with that youthful sense of awe that parents very nearly had messed up the critical importance of having the right children.

Jim burst out with a laugh. "Son, it was God's will for you to be my son. You were born to your mother and me because God has carved you on the palm of His hand, like a craftsman."

"But Dad," James Jr said. "What if Aunt Grace had been caught before you got there?"

Jim shook his head. "No, son. God our Father put the exact right person there, son, to make the exact perfect plan to help us get your mother out of there. God was at work in all of it, and He's at work right now in all of us."

"And that's the sort of thing they never taught us at that Bible college." I added. I was sitting next to Amy Carmichael on the sofa. She took my hand. "But it's true," she said. "In the darkest moment, God is still at work on our behalf, because He gave His Son Jesus Christ to save us. The love that died for us intercedes for us and won't leave us alone in a time of trouble."

My eyes filled up, and I saw Benjamin look at me, and again he looked astonishingly like his father, his father back when Greg could be tender hearted, sorry for me. This little boy who had innocently asked the right question without knowing it, Has Daddy stopped loving us Again, with that rare insight, he knew I was shaken in a way that can only shake grown ups. But I smiled at him and nodded at Jim to tell Ben to listen to him.

Jim's saw the look between us, and his glance rested on my son. The Cherokee eyes were sobered for a moment. Then he said, "Now I want everybody ten years and younger to get into pajamas and slippers and come down to watch the rest of the Incredibles. Older children, I want you to get on coats and salt the walkway and then lock up."

I knew later, as I watched them watching the animated movie with such delight and wonder, that it couldn't stay this way. I had to face the reality of what had happened. I had to make all the hard decisions. I had to let Jim and Amy Carmichael get on with their lives.

But after the DVD had played through, as the children went up to bed, James Jr thanked Ben for teaching them the wrestling techniques. Jim was behind them, and as his son and my son shook hands, Jim added, "That was great, Ben. I appreciate it, too." And Ben turned around and held out his hand and looked up at Jim. I knew he wanted to shake Jim's hand very much. It had never been important to him before. "Good night, Uncle Jim."

Jim shook hands with him. "Good night, young man. I'm proud to have you in my house."

There's a way, I thought, as Benjamin scrambled up the steps, that only a man can fix what's gone wrong for a young man. I decided that even though I needed to go home and face reality, maybe a day or two more with Jim and Amy Carmichael would be wise.

Grace Triumphant 015

2006-02-03T15:40:00.000-08:00

March 13, 2005

Greg's mother was clearly more nervous than I. I walked into the short walkway from front room to kitchen to speak with her.

"Grace, Greg told me that he's upset you very much," she said. "But he wants to know if you and the children are all right. He's very worried."

"Had he told you what he's done?"

"No," she said, and I believed her. I could tell from the shaking in her voice that she was pretty certain, but I respected her too much to tell her this way. Greg's parents and sisters are like something out a storybook, all kindness, good manners, and a certain refined and genteel quality.

"Thank you for calling to check on me," I said. "I'm not ready to talk to him. But the children and I are fine. They're out playing with some other children right now."

"Will you let him speak to them later tonight?"

I paused. "I don't know."

"Do they miss him?"

"Yes," I said. "And I don't want him to make it worse for them by trying to get to me through them."

"Grace." She tried to keep her voice gentle. "He is their father."

"He should have thought of that a few weeks ago when he did what he did. I'm not ready to let him hurt me through them. He's hurt me enough. And they've been frightened and are confused. But right now they're calm again and happy. I don't want that happiness interrupted this soon."

"What if he just says good night to them?"

I paused. I had made a lot of bad decisions while still in the first shock. But now I realized that I had to obtain the good wishes of Greg's family. Not to get their help, but to stop this from turning into a war. Whatever happens, this is where the happiness of my children really hangs in the balance: a peaceful transition.

"I have two conditions for Greg," I said.

"All right, Grace. What are they?"

"That he not bring the children into this. I haven't blamed him to them. I want them kept out of it."

"All right," she said. "I'll tell him. What else?"

"He has to get out of the house. I won't come home if he's there. Tell him to move out."

"Are you sure, Grace?"

"Yes, I am. I plan to see a lawyer when I get back."

"Oh Grace!" And now her voice was filled with genuine shock and sorrow. "Please think this over."

"I just want to know whatever I should know," I said. "I didn't say I'm going to divorce him."

She began to cry. "Please, just give him a chance to make things right with you, Grace. Please think before you do anything."

"I will," I promised her. "I want to prepare quickly and then act with deliberation. But I have to have the advice of a lawyer."

It took her a moment to get hold of herself. In the hesitation, I said, "I am sorry that what I said caused you so much pain."

"I don't know what we did, what we could have done---"

"He's a grown man. He made this choice. It's not your fault. I've been wracking my brains too, wondering how I lost---"" And then I stopped because anything I said after that would be telling her expressly that he had been unfaithful, unfaithful with a 24 year old girl. I'd been thinking about how beautiful 24 year old girls are. But suddenly I thought about her as a real 24 year old. Greg is 41. Not quite old enough to be her father, but getting close. I realized that the utter loathsomeness of fornicating with a mere girl would horrify his mother. Jim's words came back to me: "He's a pig."

And suddenly I realized that, even if perhaps I had lost Greg's love without realizing it. He didn't love this 24 year old child with the tattoo on her lower leg and the tiny jewel embedded in the side of her nose. Everything about her said that she thought sex was cheap and recreational, so he had taken what had so little value to her. And then a new thunderbolt hit while his poor mother cried on the phone and told me she was sorry: I would have to be tested for STD's. He'd been with her for a month and also with me. If she'd been carrying anything infectious, he had passed it to me.

"Tell him not to call tonight," I said suddenly. "But he can call tomorrow night, after I get the children ready to talk to him. I'm not going to blame him, and I expect him to leave me out of any conversation he has with them."

"Yes, that's wise, Grace. Thank you. You're in our thoughts and prayers, and---I'm, I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry." And then she cried again. And for the first time, without it having anything to do with me, I hated and despised him for what he had done. And I hated myself for not knowing the wise thing to do: the exact right thing that would have protected the children, unveiled all his motives, made the situation perfectly clear, and shown me the only right choice. I wonder if such a knowledge even exists on the face of the earth. Adultery is the beginning of all confusion. It doesn't make you understand anything; it only shows you everything you don't understand.

Grace Triumphant 014

2006-02-02T02:37:00.000-08:00

March 12, 2005, Addendum

Today was the closest to normal yet. Amy Carmichael does much of the family shopping at second hand stores, although she can turn out beautiful new clothes on her sewing machine and sometimes makes the jeans that the boys or Rosie wear. Mark, nine-year old Peter, and little Rosie all have long legs and are hard to fit from the store.

"I made the boys denim jackets just like Jim's from the time they could walk," she said. "Before denim jackets came back into style."

We picked up a few bargains. My little Rachel has never shopped in a second hand store, and she wrinkled her nose when we went inside. But she was curious. She is her mother's child, so the idea that you could save money by purchasing second hand goods in excellent condition and end up with money afterward strongly appealed to her.

It surprised me, when we got back into the family van, when Amy Carmichael entertained Rachel by telling her stories from college as we drove on her round of errands. They opened a brand new world for my little girl.

"Do you remember the Cap'n Crunch fight?" Amy Carmichael asked me.

"Tell me, tell me!" Rachel exclaimed.

"Amy Carmichael you cried when Polly and Marcia got into that fight!" I exclaimed. After 15 years I still felt reticence, for her sake, to discuss it.

"Well I'm not going to cry now," she exclaimed, and she told the story, with even more embellishments than I ever added to it, about how Polly and Marcia back at GIBC had started a fight over access to the mirror that ended with Cap'n Crunch flying everywhere. She described the way Marcia had stuffed it all back into the box after Polly had stormed out, including a generous amount of dust, hairballs, nail clippings, and pieces of dead insects from the carpet. The truth came out the next morning when Polly poured her cereal.

Little Rachel howled with laughter, and I saw Amy Carmichael's eyes alight, a smile playing on her lips as she glanced in the rear view mirror to see my daughter laughing herself to tears in the seats behind us.

"Mama," Rachel asked as she got control over her laughter. "Did you really break up the fight?"

"I don't remember it quite that way," I told her. "From what I remember, I went in to make sure nobody was dead."

This sent my daughter off into peals of laughter again. Amy Carmichael smiled again as she watched the road. "I thought you broke it up, Grace."

"No, they were finished. Don't you remember that Polly was in her slip and heels and she wrapped up in her coat and went right to the Dean of Women's office, ripping out curlers as she went down the hall?" Then I added, "I was pretty brave, but even I wasn't brave enough to get between Marcia and Polly when they were fighting toe to toe."

"Mama were you brave?" Rachel asked, startled.

'Your mother is still brave, darling," Amy Carmichael told her, and suddenly she looked like her old self, the young woman of high ideals who discovered that she loved Jim and had to get away from the machine at GIBC. Her eyes became huge, not with fear or emotion, but like she suddenly saw again the same things she realized then: there's only love and its labor that makes a marriage work; there's only love that works for any Christian. "And your mother is wise, dear," she added. Because I had been telling her that all along.

We did more shopping and had lunch at a little family restaurant. I paid for my host. Jim and Amy Carmichael are generous, but they live on a tight budget, and I want to be more aware of ways to be generous with them.

Jim came home at three to work with James Jr and Mark on a cabinet project out in his workshop. He got in ahead of the boys, so he had coffee with us in the kitchen. But when the boys and Rosie came home from school, Rachel met them with the exclamation, "Aunt Amy says Mom is brave!"

Jim strode into the front cloak room that the children use to hang up their coats. "Of course your mother's brave," he said. Then to the boys and Rosie he added, "Aunt Gracie got your mother out of horrible place where she was a prisoner. I came and got her, but it was Aunt Gracie that planned the whole thing and pulled it off."

Even James Jr stopped on this. He was pulling on his work jacket to wear in the unheated workshop. They all stared at me. "For real?" Mark asked.

"Absolutely for real," Jim said. "Your Aunt Gracie's about the bravest woman I ever met. I think she's braver than I am."

Rosie giggled. "No,"' she said with a laugh. She thought he was teasing. Big tall Jim smiled down at his daughter for her unquestioning confidence in him.

Before he could make an answer, James Jr said, "Dad, you never told us that story."

Amy Carmichael came in then and he put his arm around her. "That's because my life began when your mother married me," he said. "We knew God was going to give each one of you to us; and for us, that was life and happiness, to have each other and all of you. So I never told you about things before then."

"Will you tell us now?" Charles Lee asked.

Jim put his fists on his hips. "We all have work to do. Boys, we have to work on those cabinets, and everybody has homework, and Mom and Aunt Gracie will see to dinner. So let's put in our work and eat dinner, and then we'll have popcorn and I'll tell everybody the story."

I admired Jim. His sons think so highly of him that they don't complain about working with him, and the prospect of hearing him tell a story after dinner interests them. Ben wanted to go along and watch the wood work, and Jim said yes.

Amy Carmichael told me, as she sorted through ingredients to pick something for supper, that Jim's own father had "worked" Jim and his brothers for two hours after school every day from the time they were in junior high school. That was how Jim had learned to build houses.

Jim had learned woodworking on his own, and during slow times at work he would come home early to instruct and assist his older two sons as they learned the craft. Otherwise, as long as Amy Carmichael was nearby, they could carry out specific tasks they had already learned.

Amy Carmichael laughed outright when I commented on how nice it was to see that the boys didn't mind working with their father.

"James Jr has been pestering his father to hire him part time in the summers," she said. "And Mark says that if James gets to work with him when James is sixteen, then Mark has to be allowed to when he's sixteen. I think every one of them wants to work with him. Of course, Jim and his own brothers still work together. Dolux and Robert have regular jobs, but they come in and help Jim on Saturdays if he needs them."

Dolux and Robert are just two of Jim's brothers. I have no idea what the name "Dolux" means or even if I am spelling it correctly.

It had been a peaceful day, and I felt more like my old self. During our excursion I had turned on my cell phone to check the time, and I forgot to turn it off. As Amy Carmichael and I chatted and peeled potatoes in the kitchen while the early winter night fell, the cell phone suddenly trilled at me.

Honestly, the trilling of the tone actually sounded frantic. I knew it was Greg. Amy Carmichael looked at me. "I can't speak to him" I said.

"Just look to make sure it really is him, Grace."

I plucked it up and looked at it, but it was a number I didn't recognize, a North Carolina number but not one that was familiar right away. Then I realized who it was. "It's Greg's mother," I said. I looked at Amy Carmichael. But Greg's mother is a good woman, and I have always respected her.

I put the phone to my ear. "This is Grace," I said.

I will write more tomorrow, Lord willing.

Grace Triumphant 013

2006-02-01T18:21:00.000-08:00

March 12, 2005

Dear Ms. Jovian, I pastor a small Baptist church about 50 miles away from GIBC. When I started in the ministry I had many hopes of building a great work for God among the largely Roman Catholic town where I live. But in the last 20 years my ministry has been taken up with mending the spiritual injuries of people who have escaped from the ministry of Preacher Mack.

Sometimes I think you are too hard on us Baptists. I can say that anybody who really tried to address the problems caused by Johnny Mack will soon discover he is in full time work and has not yet scratched the surface on the number of people harmed one way or another. The idea that any pastor could set Fundamentalism back on its proper course is, perhaps, naïve.

Please be patient with us! But I am sorry to read of the great sorrow you currently face. I have been in prayer for you since reading of this devastating sin. With your permission I shall ask our church members to keep you in prayer. But if the Lord moves on your behalf, faithfully record what He does. You have written about the suffering of so many. And you posit that God is gracious. Now that you suffer among the number, record the grace of God, and we will pray for your eyes to be open to see Him in His glory.

Prayerfully,
Pastor John Goodman
Cuppola Baptist Church
Cuppola Indiana

Last night, Jim, Amy Carmichael and I talked late into the night. I surprised myself by how readily I fell into tears once the children were safely asleep. But I gave them the whole story. And I asked Jim the question that has come to be the most prominent.

"How did Greg stop loving me?" I asked him as we sat at the table. "Can a woman really fight for her man, Jim? Can I get him back?"

His square jaw dropped, and his eyes, so much like the eyes of a Cherokee Indian, actually got round with surprise. Then he stood up and hitched his hands in his back pockets.

"Stop loving you?" he asked as he strode to the oven, agitated. "Do you really think he's in love with 24 year old air-head he was flinging with?"

It stopped me cold. This is what I mean by everything you don't know flying at you all at once when there's been adultery. You never quite get a handle on what actually has been going on, not with your husband, not with his motives, not with anything in your entire life with him. You never really know anything once there's been adultery.

"Well it's been going on for a good month," I said.

He set his eyes on a distant wall as a man does when he knows he has to explain something that is abundantly obvious to him, and the woman he's talking to still doesn't get it.

"As if that pig ever loved you or anybody!" he exclaimed.

"James," Amy Carmichael said quickly.

"He did love me when we started out, James," I said. I realized I had called him James.

He looked at me, and now he wasn't angry. He was sorry. "Gracie, this girl doesn't mean anything to Greg."

"Come back to the table, dear," Amy Carmichael said gently. "We have to be calm and everybody behave with dignity. Right from the start."

"That's where I went wrong from the start," I told them.

"All right," Jim said as he came and sat again at the table. He looked at me, those eyes still passionate with his anger. "Gracie, he was horny and arrogant," he said. "That's all there is to it. A man who wants to work on his marriage goes a long way before he gives in to adultery. His wife knows way in advance that he's not happy. That's not what happened here." He paused. "I'm sure you tried to make him happy. In everything."

"I certainly tried to make him happy in every way," I told Jim. "And I honestly thought everything was fine."

"I know you did," he said. "You have to understand, a well-fed little boy can still steal from a bakery. A wealthy man might steal a watch or a ring. It doesn't mean the little boy was badly treated or hungry, or that the rich man didn't have more than he could spend. They got greedy for a trifle. None of us know what that girl offered Greg. But whatever he got from her, it was just a trifle to him. He just never thought you'd catch him."

"How can you know this?" I asked.

"Because that's how men are. A selfish man takes what he wants no matter how much he already has. But when a man wants his marriage most of all, he actually will put up with more abuse and trouble than you women give us credit for. And he'll stay faithful. Just because it matters to him."

"Oh sure," Amy Carmichael said saucily as she stood to clear our plates. I'd never heard her use this tone with anybody, and it made a sudden laugh pop out of me.

"Nobody knows the abuse I put up with," Jim said as his eyes followed her to the sink and a smile played on his lips. "But I'll deal with you later."

Later that night, after I was in the double bed in the guest room with Rachel sound asleep next to me, I heard them come up the steps, and Amy Carmichael, in her gentle way, was chiding him for what she thought was strong language.

"Sensitive feelings" I heard her say, and "not call him a pig, even if you're angry with him, James."

I heard his voice, deeper, reply. I think he was saying that Greg had behaved like a pig. Then more clearly, I heard Jim's lament, "How could he treat her like that?" The universal lament of all good men who respect their wives. I heard it a lot after GIBC, and my mind touched on Buck Redblood and what he had done to his poor wife, Kaeron. She'd divorced him.

Then, making up for her rebuke of him, I heard her sly laugh. "Good thing you're never horny and arrogant."

Then their bedroom door closed. I got up after a moment and softly closed my door.

Today, Benjamin wants to go to school with "the boys." I saw Jim, after breakfast, giving 11 year old Charles Lee a short lecture in the niche by the stove. Jim was crouched down in front of him, talking intently. It wasn't from anger. I could see that Jim was telling him that we were all going through a hard time, and Ben needed a friend. James and Mark must have already been clued in, because they treat Benjamin with that offhand, casual generosity that men, even young men, have when they determine to be kind to somebody out of genuine concern.

Rachel wanted to stay with me, and I'm just as glad to keep her with me. We're going to have a day out with Amy Carmichael, once we get through morning chores.

Grace Triumphant 012

2006-01-31T16:57:00.000-08:00

March 11, 2005

Ms Jovian, I have read your other journals, Secret Radio and Standard Christian. Your experiences helped me put my own past in an abusive church in perspective. (If you can believe it, my preacher back then preached against sugar. How's that for Biblical?) Then the police arrested him for stalking young men. He did some time in jail and has disappeared. He was a GIBC grad. Did you know him? Tommy Brush. Some people say he has changed his name and is preaching again.

I am sorry to read of your troubles. I am praying for you. We have a share group that meets on Sundays through my church, and we are praying for you. I feel like I know you after reading so much of your experiences. May God bless you with wisdom and be your constant consolation and companion in a time of sorrow.

Best wishes,
J.J.
Anchorage, Alaska

++++

You are a sad, sick person Grace "Jovian". Your world is one of delusion where you are both the victim and the avenger. You offer nothing here but scorn and heresy. Your theology is a mixture of biblical truth with feminist propaganda. I had you pegged two years ago when your first disgusting Secret Radio story came out, and nothing has changed.

Your obsession with Preacher Mack and GIBC, which has brought more people to the Lord than you can even count is a sign of your insanity. You are either titilated by recounting these same accounts over and over and over OR you have never overcome the abuse within your own life. Those miserable suck-ups who write to you about their miserable lives as second-class Christians can flatter you and support you while vilifying godly men like me and that's fine. If anybody truly cared for you they would pray for you to get the help you so desperately need. But nobody does care, not even your own husband.

Pastor Gary Flowmont
Whirlwind Harvest Independent Baptist Church
Whirlwind Harvest, Pennsylvania

We dawdled through Pennsylvania. We passed a sign that boasted a real Amish restaurant with "shoo fly pie" and both Benjamin and Rachel, my little gourmands, wanted to try it. So we found the place, a good 45 minutes out of our route, and stood in line for nearly an hour.

But everything was served family style, and it amazed me to see all the men in the place with the square-cut beards of Amish culture. Waitresses brought loaded plates to our table. They ask groups of fewer than four to share tables, so we ate with a middle-aged farm couple.

I am so proud of my children sometimes. They were on best manners, and they asked that dear couple all kinds of questions about horses and cows and tractors (Ben's current favorite topic). I think the man and his wife were just as pleased to talk to well-mannered children who were so interested in them. At the end, the children were too full for pie, and the man told me he would be pleased to give us a pie from the restaurant's little shop, to take on our way, and he did. Rachel kissed him and his wife goodbye.

There are still some places, I thought, where adultery has not set foot. There are places where the chief thought of the day is to get the work done, where team work in marriage is not just a beautiful idea but a necessity, a way of life, so valuable that people understand they need it like they need air and water.

We reached Amy Carmichael and Jim's steep driveway just before five. The entire family came piling out of the house, not wearing their Sunday best, but dressed in clean clothes, everybody groomed and tidy. Even Jim was there, home from work early to greet us, his face welcoming but his eyes slightly anxious. I had told them why I was coming.

Before I had even unlocked my car door, James Jr and Mark, their second born at 13, were at my side, ready to help with the luggage.

The boys toted all our things into the guest room while Rose Sharon, or "Rosie" as they called her, took my Rachel to her room to show her the toys and games. Rosie is a year younger than my nine-year old Rachel and is two inches taller. She has her father's tall, slim build and his coloring as well.

Amy Carmichael took me by the hand after we hugged and kissed, and she kept hold of my hand while she cheerfully directed the mob of seven children.

They got everybody settled, and Jim stood in the middle of their small front room, his fists on his hips, and said, "Now children, the grown ups are going to get dinner ready. And we have things we have to talk about. Who's got homework?"

The three older boys did, and the other two had finished theirs. So Jim told the older boys to do their homework, and he had the younger ones settle down to watch The Incredibles, which has just come out in the last few weeks on DVD and which he had purchased that day as a special treat for everybody. Even though Ben and Rachel watched the first half the night before, they were just as keen to see it again and reach the end this time.

Amy Carmichael, Jim, and I went into the kitchen, and then Jim had me sit at the table while he got plates and silverware and everything else. And Amy Carmichael stirred the great crockpot on the counter and put frozen slabs of garlic bread under the broiler to toast.

"All right Gracie," Jim said. "We can talk about any details you want to talk about after the children are in bed. But I want to know if you'd like to stay here with us. We have a little house I built with my brothers when I was first learning. It's just down the hill. You could live rent free, and be safe with us nearby."

The invitation made my eyes wet. No, I thought, Jim had never forgotten his promise. He still wore denim jeans and a clean, untattered black t-shirt. His high cheek bones and slightly squared-off eyes looked older from years of wind and sun in outdoor work. But he was still tall, with shoulders that were deceptively broad because his height lessened the image of that raw strength. His one concession to age and the luxuries of Amy Carmichael's cooking and his easy chair was a small pot belly. It made him hitch up his pants if he stood still for too long.

"Jim, to be honest with you, I don't know what to do."

"Are you afraid of him, Gracie? If you are, you have to stay here."

The question startled me. "Oh Jim, Greg's never hurt me that way. He would never hit me."

He stopped his journeys between cabinets and table to put his fists on his hips and stare at me, his square eyes suddenly helpless. And Amy Carmichael turned from the oven. "Grace," she said. "Your face is bruised."

"What?"

She crossed to me and touched my forehead about halfway between my eyes and hairline. The place was sore. I put my hand to my head, stunned. How had I not seen it? But maybe the bruise had needed time to develop. Adultery, I thought, is full of the impossible at every turn. All the things you never thought of start flying at you like meteors, coming faster and faster. All the things you stare at and never see are pointed out to you by others. I'd been walking around with a bruise on my face. With a smarting sense of realization, I instantly wondered at the kindness of the man and his wife back at the restaurant.

"Greg didn't hit me," I said quickly. "He was trying to get into the house, and I was holding the door closed. He jerked it so hard towards himself that I flew through it and hit him with my head in the chest. It knocked me all the way down to the kitchen floor."

"Did he help you up?" Jim asked.

"I started throwing things at him. I threw plates and dishes at him, Jim." I said it guiltily, still ashamed of my insane rage, and what I had put my own children through.

"Well, did you get him?" Jim asked. And I saw in those sparkling dark eyes the resentment he felt for Greg.

"James," Amy Carmichael said gently.

He checked himself.

"I terrified the children," I said. "They were there. I don't know for how long. They were so afraid."

He came over to me and took my hand. "Your children can deal with this, Gracie. We'll help them."

I felt those obstinate tears start again. "But I want them to have a real childhood. I don't want to force them to grow up. My parents got me into the middle of their problems---"

"You can keep your children out of it," Jim said quickly. "You won't make the mistakes your mother made." He started to set out the plates.

I stood up to help him, even though they had told me not to do any work. "We all make the mistakes our parents make," I said. And my voice, again, sounded like somebody else's voice.

"Yes we do," Amy Carmichael said quietly.

Jim glanced at her. "And then we see what we're doing and catch ourselves," he said emphatically.

"Well yes." She nodded. But I had the sense I had referenced an ongoing matter between them. I changed the subject slightly.

"Jim, I think they're both---traumatized. They seem all right now, but-" I shook my head.

"We'll help them." He gave me a nod, and we pulled out the table so he could set up the leaf.

Grace Triumphant 011

2006-01-30T02:43:00.000-08:00

March 10, 2005

You deserve what you get for being a man hater and probably a lesbian. Your husband had to take what he could find because you weren't giving it to him. God has brought you down for being a lesbian man-hater and totally frigid. You're really sick and twisted. You and your journals.

Pastor Marky Schemer
Dry Bush Independent Baptist Church, New York.

The drive to the northern part of central Pennsylvania took almost 13 hours. I didn't want to wait, so while the children still slept I packed their things and then my own and loaded the car. Then at about 8:00 I woke them up, gently, and told them we were going to see Uncle Jim and Aunt Amy. Ben just barely remembers Jim. He actually remembers Jim's grand tractor more than he remembers Jim himself. Though Rachel has heard me talk about them, she has no memory of her last visit with them five years ago.

Still, the thought of seeing that tractor again certainly revived some of my Benjamin's spirits, as Jim let him steer it, and Ben has never forgotten that.

They dressed, and I promised them breakfast on the road, and they could pick the place. It was almost a relief to hear them argue about it as we pulled out at nine. I stopped by the bank and withdrew the cash limit on my ATM card. Then I took the credit card, which I have always handled with the greatest care, and withdrew the upper cash limit. I netted 10,000 dollars.

We visited a different bank, and I dealt with a woman representative. Ben and Rachel were fidgety, but I hushed them and she prepared to deposit 10,000 dollars in cash in a private account under my name. She knows exactly what I am doing. I am leaving my husband. And I am doing it in the most strategic and legal way possible, by making him pay for it through our joint accounts. I feel that I have no choice. I can't be at his mercy. And I think the woman at the bank, as I reminded the children to thank her when she gave them peppermints, agreed with me.

As she closed the transaction and I stood to go, she said, "You may want to consider putting a lien against any property held by anybody in debt to you, so that nothing is sold from under you."

I didn't even know what that meant, but I supposed Jim would know. I nodded and thanked her. Then as the children, ready for a road trip and all kinds of adventures with Uncle Jim and Aunt Amy, urged me to hurry, she and I looked at each other. She was sad for me, with a sincere sorrow. How many women have been through this, I wondered. And then I hurried out with my road warriors.

I thought we would get there today, but by five o'clock they were tired and cranky. More like normal children, thank God, I thought. They are no longer afraid of me. Ben complained that I always do what Rachel wants. I nearly rebuked him, as he is always insisting that I like Rachel more. But then I saw him in my mind, terrified of seeing me hurling plates and screaming at his father, asking me with huge eyes and shaking voice if I'd had a bad dream.

"What do you want, Ben?" I asked. "Tell me what you want to do, and I'll try to do it."

"To stop at a motel with an indoor pool," he said. The road always means adventure to Ben, and adventure carries with it promises of certain luxuries not available at home.

"You don't have your bathing suits," I said.

For answer, my two munchkins pulled up their shirts. Ben had his trunks on under his pants, and Rachel had her one-piece on under her clothing. My children are brilliant, I thought. Smarter than Mom. And for the first time, I felt a pang like an arrow going through me, because the instinct is still there to tell Greg and laugh about it with him. But Greg is hundreds of miles and another world behind us.

So we found a very nice Best Western with an indoor pool. And I let them swim as much as they liked. But they are both tired. In less than an hour they were finished. We microwaved popcorn in the room and watched The Incredibles on television via the hotel's movie selection options. I'm spending a boodle, but they deserve some happiness on a journey that is going to be a long and difficult for all of us.

Now it's sinking in on me. And I don't know what to do. I don't know how he could have done this to me. I don't know how or when he stopped loving me. And I feel incredibly stupid. Thrown over.

I just popped the children into bed, and even though the movie is still playing, they are asleep. They both look small and vulnerable, too small for all of this.

So I sat and wrote this. I added Greg to my spam filter. Any emails he sends me are sent into the internet ether before I even see them. I see from the cell phone that I have messages, but I am not answering the cell phone. Before I talk to him, I want to talk to a man who respects me.

Grace Triumphant 010

2006-01-27T04:48:00.000-08:00

March 9, 2005

After a long, long time I realized that I was in bare feet on broken pieces of plates and glasses. The house was cold. I was crouched down, but I didn't know why. And then I looked up and saw Benjamin and Rachel, holding each other by the pantry, crowded into a corner, their eyes enormous, their faces white.

"My children," I whispered.

Benjamin, with a courage I'll never forget, made the first move towards me, his voice shaking. "Mom?" His voice shook. It was only that rare determination, his father's determination, that kept him going "Did you have a bad dream?" He was terrified. Of me.

"Son," I said. "I'm so sorry. Stay there. You'll cut your feet. Stay right there."

I stood up and with careful steps I picked him up first. I told Rachel to stay until I got her, and she nodded and then her eyes filled up with tears. I carried him to the living room, and then I came and got her.

"Mama what happened?" she whispered as I set her down. "Where did Daddy go?"

"Mom don't you love Daddy any more?" Ben asked, his voice still shaking.

"Let me turn the heat on," I said, but they wouldn't let me go. They held onto me and kept saying they weren't cold. They were crying for me not to leave them, even though the thermostat was only up the hallway. So at last I bundled them onto the sofa with me. I held them both and felt them shivering.

"Benjamin and Rachel, I love you very much," I said. "Don't be afraid of me. That will never happen again. And I'll never hurt you, children. I love you more than anything."

"Mama are you mad at Daddy?" Rachel asked.

A sob got out of me. Benjamin, with an innocence and yet an insight that actually frightened me for a moment, suddenly asked, "Did Daddy stop loving us? What did Daddy do?"

"Children, it's all right." I rocked them both. Realization dawned on me. I had to protect them. I had to keep them out of this. "Mommy and Daddy have things they have to settle. But we love you. We'll always love you. But you have to let us work things out." Did Greg love them, I wondered. Or had they lost his love as well? My precious children, the most beautiful children in the world.

The tears started down my face as I held them and rocked them.

"Mom, will Daddy come back?" Rachel asked.

"Shh, darling. Daddy won't be back tonight. Don't be afraid any more. You're both so cold. Just let me get up and turn on the heat."

"No I'm not cold!" Benjamin exclaimed, clinging to me. And Rachel clung to me from her side. "I'm warm, Mommy!"

"Children, I'm sorry that I frightened you." I kissed their heads. I pulled the sofa cushions over us to make them warm.

"Don't cry," Ben said. "We love you."

I held them and waited, and after five minutes, Rachel nodded and dropped to sleep, her head on my lap. And then Ben fell asleep. Ben has a spare bed in his room, for sleepovers. I carried them, one at a time, to his room and put them to bed, and then I sat in the dark room with them to make sure they slept. After an hour passed, I went to my room and put on my slippers and my robe, and then I swept everything up in the kitchen and made sure the door was locked,

By then it was after three. I went into Ben's room and climbed into bed with Rachel. I held her in my arms. In his bed, Ben talked in his sleep a couple times, and I said, "Benjamin, I'm right here, Son," whenever he was troubled.

"Mommy it was just a bad dream," Rachel said, her eyes closed, at about five thirty. What have I done to my children? I thought. I couldn't pray because I was too ashamed. But I hoped God still knew and would protect them. Greg had fallen into adultery, and I had gone insane. It was still too much to take in. I couldn't take in anything more than the next minute. I couldn't think further than that.

And then, as the sun came up in a watery and cold dawn, I remembered Amy Carmichael and Jim. I remembered Jim's words to me so long ago. "You've been like a sister to me. You'll always be welcome in my house." I never doubted for a moment that after 15 years it would still matter to Jim, the man who had built a house for his betrothed with his own hands. Greg might abandon the most sacred of his promises, but Jim, I knew full well, would never abandon the least of his.

Like any badly used woman, I was going to run with my children to my trusted friends.

Grace Triumphant 009

2006-01-26T04:46:00.000-08:00

March 9, 2005

It's five a.m. There's nothing to do but write. I have been up all night.

Greg has been having an affair. I caught him last night. He left his wallet home, and when I called him on his cell phone, after dinner, the young woman who does the drawings for the firm answered. I think I knew then. They weren't at the office at all. And I heard Greg say, before he thought, "That's my cell phone. And she said, "Yours is on the dresser." But she was wrong.

I hung up, and I ran to my computer. Greg handles our finances with a software program these days. But I know the password for his online account on his credit card. I logged on and looked at the bill. There it was, in a neat little column: one charge after another for a motel room in town, night after night. And flowers, and wine, and room service.

By that time, Greg was speeding home. He knew it had been me, and he knew that I knew.

In the short stride from our room to the front door to dead bolt it, I passed the photo of him and me on our honeymoon, another of him with the children, one of the four of us at Table Rock state park. They sat next to his certificate from the Bible Study Alliance.

I dead bolted the front door and closed the garage door, locked it from the inside by turning the handle so that the bolts slid through the slots, and came through the door to the kitchen. Then I made sure the broom handle was propped in the sliding glass door in back. Then I disconnected the door bell buzzer.

I went back to our room and pulled open the drawers. I yanked out all his things in the first drawer, opened the bedroom window, and shoved them right through the window onto the bushes.

That was when I heard him knocking on the front door. I pitched his undershirts especially hard through the window, and he saw the white silhouette fly through the dark night. I heard him run around from the front door to the bedroom window.

"Grace, let me explain---"

"Get out of here!" I heard myself scream at him. It sounded like another person. "Getoutgetoutgetout!"

I heard Rachel suddenly wail, because I was screaming, and I'd never screamed before, not like that. But the wail from her sounded almost like something predestined, like Rachel, deep in her mind, was wailing at some great fear she had always feared.

"Grace, you're scaring the children! You'll wake the neighbors---"

"Get out!" I screamed at him "Get out of here!"

Then I remembered the rear garage door. It opened onto the back yard, and the lock was broken. If he got in there, he would come in through the kitchen door, which I'd left unlocked. I abruptly turned and ran to lock it, and I heard him turn and run as he realized I'd left the back door unlocked.

I heard him race into the garage. He got to the kitchen door just as I did and for a moment we wrestled, with him trying to get in and me trying to hold it closed. He finally jerked the door towards himself so hard that I came with it and bounced off his chest. I fell backward onto the kitchen floor. I heard screaming and didn't know who it was.

"Grace," he began, because he thought I might be hurt. Then I was up on my feet, throwing things at him to drive him back through the door: dish towels, dish cloths, plates, glasses, silverware, the salt and pepper shakers, anything in reach.

Then the door was closed, and I saw the last of my dessert plates explode against the smooth surface. He was gone.

It was hard to write this. I have to stop now.

Grace Triumphant 008

2006-01-25T04:44:00.000-08:00

March 7, 2005

And in the streets, the children screamed;
The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.
But not a word was spoken;
The church bells all were broken.

The war for Sundays continued. Within a single month, every competitor of Simpsons opened its doors on Sundays from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM. We alone remained closed.

And profits dropped. But Simpsons was not a public business. It was owned by the Simpson family. They governed decisions by means of their hand-picked board, mostly family members and a few financial officers who handled loans for the store.

The first losses in profits were determined to be within a range that didn't threaten the store. In fact, it was possible that the losses were temporary. Once the novelty of shopping on Sunday wore off, people might just ignore the department stores on the Lord's Day. Or the expense of staying open might outweigh earnings.

But as the weeks went by and the second quarter started, it became evident that the franchise stores were prospering from opening on Sunday, however marginally, during the slowest quarter of the year. At an executive meeting in April, Mr. Simpson announced in a staff meeting that I had been promoted to Buyer. Everybody applauded, and then we got down to business.

Abraham Stultz spoke right away, as everybody knew he would.

"These profits will expand for the competition as the sales growth expands over the year, Robert," he said to Mr. Simpson. "We are losing ground and sliding down a slippery slope."

"Profits are down only two percent from last year this time," Mr. Simpson said.

"In a year when we should be five percent ahead! We're seven points in the negative for earnings expectations. And you know that!"

The room was crowded, and at this clear rebuke of the head of the store, you could almost hear everybody draw in a breath and hold it. Nobody ever spoke this way in meetings with senior staff present.

"I don't have reason enough to violate my conscience on this, Abraham," Mr. Simpson told him. "Or to ask my people to violate their consciences."

"Listen to me Robert; you have created a nice community of working people here," Mr. Stultz said. "Think about what you might be doing to them if you don't ask them to work on Sunday. If the store slips in sales, we will have to lay people off. And this community of people will be broken up. You have a good business and happy workers. You have to adapt to the times."

"As always you raise excellent points for consideration," Mr. Simpson said. "Thank you. Let's move on."

But it was no surprise, later in the week, when Mr. Simpson scheduled meetings, in groups of 25, with all the staff from the retail floor to poll them on their opinions about working on Sunday.

Anita kept me updated about the people out on the floor. Most preferred not to work on Sunday but offered no real objection if the store chose a seven day schedule. There was a strong but small minority who opposed breaking the Sunday Sabbath. But the store's most experienced floor managers were among that minority. They were Sunday School teachers and youth workers for their churches. Opening on Sundays would devastate ministries they had cultivated for decades.

After all, staying open on Sundays would not effect those of us in the offices. We worked Monday through Friday. It affected our floor people.

The majority of senior staff said we had no choice. But April dragged on, and still Mr. Simpson would not make the decision.

Anita, even though she was merely a minor manager out on the floor, had been with the store for years. She had a grapevine that she used. She told me that the board was pressuring Mr. Simpson to open on Sundays. We heard that some local churches were praying for him in their prayer meetings, and they were praying for God to honor the man who honored him, by giving the store prosperity.

One day before the staff meeting started, somebody told him about the churches that were praying for him. And I heard him say, "God will honor the man who honors Him, but it may not be in the way we want."

I spoke up. "But we should ask Him," I said.

"Grace, if it didn't cost anything to be true to what you believe, then serving God would be the assurance of worldly prosperity," he told me. "And people would follow conscience just to make money off it."

"So you won't open the store on Sundays?" I asked.

He hesitated. "I have to know that it's the right thing to do," he said. "Then I would open the store on Sundays. But these people, our retail staff, many of them, work here simply because they don't have to work on Sunday. They use Sunday to honor God. I'm not ready to take that from them. The store is still profitable."

* * * *

The purchasing cutbacks that ensued as our store stopped expanding its inventory became noticeable. But I had other changes that demanded my attention. As things worked out, Beauchamp left us before Steve and Julie did. He sold his house two days after he put it on the market. And true to his word, he let me have all the glassware, dinnerware, and flatware I wanted for my little place.

Hillary, who started to feel better as April began, orchestrated a magnificent sendoff for Beauchamp. He knew so many people, from the waiters and waitresses down at Shoney's to the mayor of Black Mountain, that it was impossible to have a single dinner in his honor. So Hillary and several friends rented the lobby and dining area of one of the hotels, and we had an open house for him. People left gifts and signed a book of memories for him, paid their respects, and enjoyed a free buffet.

I stayed for the entire event and acted as a hostess, while Beauchamp, immaculate in white shirt, black waistcoat, and tails, bowed and spoke to the people who came to say goodbye to him. Bus drivers, the cashiers from Piggly-Wiggly, prominent lawyers and businessmen, the head of the rescue mission, the staff at the local news stations, the high school debate team, the morning crew from Shoneys, and scores of others, all attended.

Hillary and I both wore evening gowns, and I was surprised, and charmed, when all of the men from the Breakfast Club showed up in tails. Steve, Kazzazz, John, Alf, and a few others from the gym came all decked out in rented finery. Kazzezz, his bulging arms and chest straining against the tight black cloth, looked like he could barely breathe. I wondered how anybody had ever fitted him. He had arms like tree trunks.

They had their photographs taken together with Beauchamp. He did his best to smile broadly, a trick that forever eluded him.

Beauchamp never understood the effortless grins that Americans could flash. He always smiled with his eyes, but otherwise his expressions were subtle. In the group photo, he looked almost silly, with an artificial grin on his face. But in the photo with me, taken by Hillary, his eyes are alight and the rest of his face quiet, the way I will always remember him.

Grace Triumphant 007

2006-01-24T04:38:00.000-08:00

March 6, 2005

Greg surprised me with flowers last night. He's never done that before, except on the usual occasions. Then he told me I've always been the most important woman in his life. Then he dropped the bombshell: he wants another baby.

I was amazed that this is what's been bothering him. I wondered why he would carry on so much over the last few weeks. I've never been adamant that we had to stop at two. In fact, it was Greg who made the decision after Rachel came to stop having children in order to provide for the children we had. I was always willing to have more and let the future take care of itself.

After all, I worked my way through two colleges, and it never hurt me. So I thought it unnecessary to have the children's education completely paid for before they even got to college. But Greg has always been prudent.

But last evening he started crying when he told me how much he loves me and loves to see me with the children and what a good wife and mother I am. He's still not himself, but he's always been a great provider, and as long as he has peace of mind about Baby Three, I have peace of mind as well.

He went off to work late this morning. I've had laundry to do and a million errands. He just called to say he has to stay late again tonight, but he promises that the overtime should end before the month ends. He says that he should get a bonus and maybe we can go off for a weekend to a bed and breakfast. We could leave the children with his sister.

Greg's always pretty glib about leaving the kids with his family. I don't like to impose, but maybe we should. He's been worried about the new Associate VP position that's about to open up. But really, there are three entry engineers in the company. And there's a young woman who does the drafting for them. She comes to work in midriff sweaters and has a diamond chip on the side of her nose. Greg is the only senior engineer.

If the two men who run the place promote from inside the small company, I can't think of anybody else but Greg who's ready for the position. But it seems to be worrying him a lot. He's hardly been himself.

Still, on with the story!

The coffee place was tucked inside an upscale strip mall in Asheville. Only after I had coffee and Beauchamp had hot tea and we had secured a table to ourselves, did he speak about the "changes in the wind."

"Steven's announcement truly amazed Beauchamp," he said quietly. For the cold Saturday shopping he wore his long black wool coat and the light gray hat, which now sat with his short cane and gloves on the chair next to him. Saturday or not, he still dressed with his customary European meticulousness and style. He was wearing cufflinks. The day would not come when Beauchamp failed to dress as an educated gentleman before the world at large, where ever he encountered it.

"What was that idea you told me about," I said. "Change is constant?"

He nodded. "Yes. Time is a river without banks. All is change. There is no holding on; no going back. We can only move forward."

He had sparkling dark eyes that carried most of his expression, for he rarely smiled and never showed any strong emotion with his voice. He lifted his eyes and I saw that he was sad.

"What is it, Mr. Beauchamp?"

"My elder son has called upon me, dear Grace. He reminds me of many things I put away when my wife passed away."

"I thought you sold your house over there?"

"He reminds me of my duties, Grace. He wants me to come home."

"Home?" I asked. "This is your home now."

He hesitated and then said, "No, dear. Even with you, my American friend, this is not home. I have two sons. Now they have children. I have hurt them by this distance. I will only hurt them more if I stay here. I must go and be a good father and a good grandpapa."

For a long moment we only looked at each other. "Will you come back here? To visit?" I asked.

"I will always want to, Grace."

I looked down.

His voice continued: "But the boys must have their due. They will want me and my time."

I kept my eyes on the tabletop. Hilary herself had warned me months before that Beauchamp was hiding from his own past. But a good woman could make a man brave by respecting and admiring him. She had told me that. She and others had said that I had changed Mr. Beauchamp, helped him.

But now that he had become brave, a huge gap opened up in front of me. No more happy lunches and conversations. No more learning. And worst of all, Mr. Beauchamp really was only an ordinary man, haunted by his own fears, unable to live up to his own ideals of being a "rational theist." But I pushed that thought away. He had been kind and generous with me.

"Mr. Beauchamp, I really don't know what I'll do without you."

"If that is so, then I have not been a good teacher to you. For I should have told you from the beginning that all life changes. You must try to adapt to change."

I even felt a flicker of annoyance with him. He hadn't adapted to change very well. He had, quite literally, run away from home when his wife died. Maybe he knew the thought that crossed my mind.

"We shall always have this great friendship in our hearts, dear Grace," he said. "I have never had the delight of a young person---a young woman---who has so listened to me and pondered the ideas that I discovered and treasured."

He paused. "Would you have me stay, knowing that I have abandoned my children?" he asked. "I don't think you would."

"No, of course not." But I still couldn't look at him.

"My own frailty has caused pain to many people, and now to you," he said. "And for that, I am very sorry. For you deserve to be happy. You are a fine young woman and a friend whose every action has been praise worthy."

Then I looked up at him. "No, it is life," I told him. "A part of life." I hesitated. "You've enlarged my mind," I said without thinking.

"You have enlarged my soul."

He was always so kind, but this declaration startled me, and I stared at him. "Now I have the strength to go home, to face all the places I dreaded to see again," he said. "If I find you have worked this change in me simply because you are a beautiful young woman I shall feel a fool. But I think it was more than that."

"What was it then?" I whispered.

"You have given me a beautiful demonstration that knowledge must unfold, Grace. But how can I know anything until I take the risk to learn? You have been an excellent student, and you have taught me all over again to continue to learn. I must learn to live the life I tried to leave behind. I must be brave about all things and expect to see the wisdom of the Providence that guides us."

Grace Triumphant 006

2006-01-23T04:34:00.000-08:00

March 5, 2005

At the Breakfast club the next morning, the windows at Shoney's were foggy from the hot food inside and the crowded tables. But we had our weekly table reserved. I was still on Christmas break from night school, so I felt energetic and cheerful.

Steve, his wife Julie, the red haired and fair skinned John, the dark haired and dark skinned Kazzazz, middle-aged Alf and Cindy Rogers, the small and dapper Beauchamp, and I crowded around our dishes from the breakfast bar.

"Julie and I have something to tell you," Steve said as we passed the salt and pepper, sugar, and hot peppers back and forth.

"Speak up or get drowned out," Alf said with a smile.

"You better listen," Kazzazz said gently. He and Steve were the best of friends. We all looked at Steve.

"There's a small church up in Camden New Jersey---" Steve began.

"Camden!" Cindy exclaimed in horror. "Camden New Jersey? That's a drug haven!"

"Well not all of it, but yes they have their problems," Steve said. Cindy already knew what he was going to say. I should have guessed, but it never crossed my mind.

"I signed on here to learn the ropes," Steve said. "Julie's been patient, but we always thought we were called to the Northeast. It's a hard, cold place that needs the love of God."

"You're going there?" I asked. I was stunned.

Steve glanced at his wife. Julie, by the way, was what people called "a sturdy wife." She always encouraged Steve, always spoke highly of him, always kept their tiny mobile home spotless, always cooked the Polish food that he had grown up eating, always worked in concert with him. She was plain and tall, with huge brown eyes as her one beauty. Her nose, like Steve's had an extra curve in it from being broken when she went face first off a bicycle as a little girl. She and Steve had very little use for beauty. They preferred fun. They had fun together, and where ever they went, fun followed. They played games with their children: hide and seek in that tiny mobile home, or tag outside, or keep-away when Julie needed the salt for cooking and Steve would pass it off to four year old Jacob who would pass it off to two year old Juliette and all of them laugh as Julie fussed at them.

"Steve, Camden is an incredibly impoverished and crime-ridden place," Cindy said. "Have you gone up there to look it over?"

He nodded. "I preached there two Sunday nights ago, Cindy, and I stayed and preached the next Wednesday. It's a bad place with some very godly people who aren't willing to give up on their neighbors. Julie and I---" And he took her hand. "Think we should go."

Cindy said nothing after that. But she had a stricken look in her eyes. I got the impressions that Steve and Julie were going to the gates of Hell to pastor a church.

"We love the people up there already," Julie said quietly. "They need a permanent pastor."

"They need somebody who won't run out on them," Steve said. "Julie can make a home out of nothing. We can live with the poverty."

Alf took his wife's hand, the way a gentle husband quiets his wife's objections. "All right, Steve, Julie. You've always been careful and circumspect. We'll pray for you to prosper up there. When do you leave?"

"A month," Steve said. "Four weeks exactly."

"We'll miss you," John said.

"We may decide to go with you," Kazzazz added. He laughed when he said it, but I knew he meant it. Steve and Julie were good friends with Kazzazz and his wife.

Beauchamp never sat right next to me at the Saturday morning breakfasts. We always downplayed our friendship, even well after everybody knew we were friends. From across the table, he nodded at me, a signal that we should speak in private afterward.

For the rest of the breakfast, everybody talked about Camden and what Steve and Julie had seen of it. The tiny church up there had already provided living quarters for them in what Steve called a "mixed" neighborhood. At first we all through the meant a racially mixed neighborhood. But he really meant a neighborhood on the border of the drug territories. Some houses were used by dealers and some were occupied by decent, blue collar families. All kinds of deals had been offered to Steve to get a pastor and his family onto the block, as it was seen by the locals as a means of reclaiming the neighborhood. "All kinds of opportunities," Steve said as we stood to go back to the breakfast bar.

"All kinds of trouble, too," Kazzazz said. "But you were born for trouble, Steve."

John had needed a ride from me because his car was in the shop over the weekend. But I asked Kazzazz to give him a lift home. John shot me a look of disappointment when I told him Kazzazz would drop him off. So, I thought, John really had been angling for time with me. Hillary would be so pleased. But I was amazed. I really thought John was out of my league for anything beyond two friends going out together to see The Messiah or a play.

In my twenties, after several months diligent work in a gym, I was slim, strong, and a size seven. My job at Simpsons gave me an inside track on sales and bargains for terrific clothes that were well made and attractive. But I had only average looks: brown eyes and blondish hair that John had once called the color of clover honey, but that I also called "dirty blonde". Not golden enough to be really blonde, but light enough brown to keep trying to pass itself off as blonde. I was only average, and John was outright handsome.

Beauchamp was waiting for me after I said goodbye to John and Kazzazz. "Shall we go shopping as you like to do?" he asked.

"Yes, is everything all right?" I asked him.

"Change is in the wind, dear Grace. But we shall find bargains first."

I always had a list of things I needed. Only a few months before I'd moved into a huge old house in town. It had been divided into neat little apartments, still in view of the mountains. But the paper thin walls allowed almost all noise to pass through, and my neighbor appeared to be enamored of Jesus Christ Superstar, which I loathed. He played it at full volume, over and over again. So I was always looking for music to play in my headphones to drown out the noise through the walls.

We went to the grocery store and I picked out all my groceries. And then we visited the music store so I could look over the selections of second hand CDs. After that, we took a quick trip to the Dollar Store. Beauchamp hated the Dollar store. He said it smelled, but I always found good bargains there, especially on housewares.

But that day when I found useful six-piece sets of glasses, he insisted that I not buy them. He practically forbad me from one purchase after another, though it was January and sales were great. And my new place needed housewares.

"You shall have as many glasses, dishes, and plates as you like," he promised me. "And all better than these. Come, let us find that coffee store you like so well. What is it, Barry's?"

"Barnie's," I told him. This was before Starbucks, and Barnie's with their light, aromatic blends of coffee, had taken the southeast by storm. Everybody who was anybody hung out at the local Barnie's sooner or later in the week.

"You really do have something to tell me," I said as we walked out to his car in the chilly Saturday morning.

"Yes, but nothing that cannot wait until you have coffee in your hand, dear Grace," he said.

Grace Triumphant 005

2006-01-20T02:35:00.000-08:00

March 4, 2005

Hillary's house sat near the summit of the mountain. On the outside, it looked like an ordinary but attractive cottage. But it went further back into the trees than was apparent, so that when you stepped inside you entered a bright, expansive country home, with light colored woods and cheerful braided rugs, wool throws, and every comfort imaginable, all in a place that felt like home.

When I knocked on Hillary's door that night, she appeared in her robe and let me in. The cough that she'd had for months was worse again. It never went away, even after rounds and rounds of antibiotics. She insisted that once spring came she would be right as rain.

"The winter has settled in my chest," she told me as she led me inside. "Oh dear, I am so tired. Do you mind cooking, Grace?"

"Not at all." My cooking was never equal to Hillary's but I could turn out canned soup very well.

"I've been in bed all day. No energy. But I'm so glad to see another soul," she said. She settled onto the sofa and I covered her with one of the many comfortable throws that decorated the sofas and chairs. Then I explored her refrigerator. She had a rice pilaf mix and plenty of veggies, so I cooked up stir fry for us. My own mother had always kept me away from bread and milk when I had a cough, and I followed her example. And Hillary's appetite was certainly healthy enough.

I had to remind myself that Hillary was the same age as Anita and my own mother. Not that Hillary ever said her age. But she had two children who were older than I, both actors trying to get a break: one in New York and one in Hillary's natal town of London.

Face lifts, constant dieting, and more homeopathic and natural remedies I'd ever seen before all kept Hillary in a nether world between teenager and middle-aged mother. She wore jeans that were a size or two smaller than my own, kept her hair colored light brown with blond streaks, and usually moved with boundless energy and enthusiasm.

"You know, when you crash, you crash all the way," I told her as I settled on the floor with my back against the sofa where she lay.

"I'll call that doctor up and give him a good piece of my mind," she said. "He's supposed to get me better."

"Doctor who?"

"No, Jenkins, down in Asheville. Oh and it's so far. So much trouble to go. Don't do the dishes now, Grace. Let's watch something."

So I turned on the VCR and we watched Double Indemnity.

"Oh and that young man John called to see if you would be here tonight," Hillary said while, on the screen, Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray were eying each other up and down and plying each other with double entendres.

It just figured that the thought of matchmaking would revive Hillary. She didn't take marriage seriously for herself, and both children had been born between husbands in her multi-stage marital history. Yet she lived in the hope that I would find a "sincere young man" and settle down, forever happy like a character from a fairy tale.

"Did he really say he wanted to know if I'd be here?" I asked.

"No, what he said was that he wanted to remind you to pick him up before the gym tomorrow because his car is in the shop," she said. "But he was really calling to get a chance to talk to you."

Barbara Stanwyck was telling Fred MacMurray how unkind her husband was, and I wanted to listen to it, but Hillary said in a singsong voice, "John likes you, Grace!" Then she coughed into her hand.

"Hillary, John has dated every girl in that church," I told her. "I am not going to date him. We're just trophies to him. He dates a girl for a few months and then gets rid of her. Well not this girl."

"But you have to date to know if you should marry," she said. "He's not willing to settle until he finds the right one."

"The odds alone say I'm not the right one."

"Oh, you pessimist!"

"We had one date, and while we were sitting in a concert, I had this great spiritual revelation," I told her.

"The Messiah?" she asked.

"Yes, when he took me to The Messiah. John thinks I'm a girl who has visions or something."

"Even a girl who has visions needs a good man. He may have figured that out by now."

"Hmm, only been two months---"

"Oh, you're impossible!"

I liked John enormously. He was the most handsome man I'd ever dated. But I didn't want to admit it to anybody. I really doubted that John would fall in love with me. A serious dating relationship just didn't seem like a good idea, because I didn't want to lose his friendship.

Grace Triumphant 004

2006-01-19T02:40:00.000-08:00

March 3, 2005

Greg says he's not mad at me, but he's busy doing other things. I don't know what's gotten into him, but this isn't the time to ask.

Still, I want to write about what happened after college. I learned the hard way that salvation and sanctification alike are born of the grace of God. And here's how:

By the time I was 24, I was an assistant Buyer at Simpsons. I worked "upstairs," in the small office suite behind the retail floor. I had a savings plan and a pension plan and knew people who had worked at the store for 30 years. I traveled several times a year, attended shows, meetings, and seminars.

Asheville was building up, and even Black Mountain had increased its population. South of us, Greenville's metro area was beefing up for a new BMW plant, and Michelin and BMW had both donated huge grants to the local technical college to spruce up its academics. Up in the mountains, we caught some of the overflow of the beneficence. More tourists and visitors came for weekends.

We launched successful campaigns to bring visitors into the store, and the Ad department sent newspaper inserts as far away as Greenville and Spartanburg to coax buyers to come to the mountains for weekend junkets.

In January of that year, I thought Simpsons was good for another 50 years at least.

But then the Blue Laws were, once and for all, revoked.

Everybody had been buzzing about it for months. The Carolinas subscribed to exceptionally strict Blue Laws, forbidding stores to be open on Sunday. These lasted for decades after the stores in other states started to open on Sunday. Local people challenged the laws continually until at last the state dropped them back to a local matter.

Pressure built within our community for the malls and stores to open on Sundays. As a community we were losing money, they said, because customers were going to other cities for weekend jaunts where they could shop both Saturday and Sunday. Gatlinburg, not far to the west, had hotels and outlet stores. Greenville and Spartanburg were modernizing as well and offering bed and breakfasts with access to outlets.

Simpsons had a huge churchgoing work force. We didn't want to be open on Sunday. Some people argued for the Sabbath, but others argued on a more modern basis for the practical necessity of letting people worship.

Compromises were proposed. The malls would not open until 1:00, allowing Christians to worship, and nobody could be forced to work on Sunday of it violated their conscience, nor could they be fired.

The news cameras invaded the stores; there were flame wars on the editorial pages of the newspapers long before they were invented on the internet.

In executive staff meetings, for weeks, the issue came up at every meeting.

"This store has always honored the Sabbath," Mr Simpson said on the first meeting of the new year, when we went into our customary slump and sell off period. "I am not ready to abandon my thanksgiving to God merely because of bad press and a few dollars."

He stood at the head of the huge exec table, crowded with buyers, accounting staff, and others. The staff was so numerous that it was standing room only, and men in ties and jackets, women in business outfits and heels, stood against the walls. Seating at the table was full.

"This is all well and good," Abraham Stultz, one of the most senior buyers and a tremendous friend to Mr. Simpson said. He had a place at the table. "But we're not all Christians, you know. And we Jewish people, we invented the Sabbath!"

The comment sounded light hearted, but it stunned Mr. Simpson. "Abraham, I have never asked you to work on a Saturday," Mr. Simpson said.

"No, of course not. But I come in when I have to, Robert," he said. "Saturday or not. And you know that I will if I have to. Don't excuse good people from the same responsibility. The ox is in the ditch as you say. You may have to ask people to work for five hours on a Sunday."

Mr Simpson shook his head. "It hasn't come to that. We had an extremely profitable Christmas." And several people nodded.

But Stultz, who had worked at the store as a young man when Mr. Simpson's own father had been living and managed the place, said, "You are living on the plateau. It's beautiful and perfect up here. Now. But look higher. Look around. We're hedged in, and we can't get out."

Nobody understood what he was saying. He looked around the table at all of us. Abraham Stultz had a high forehead, with long wrinkles across it, and the last vestiges of short, wavy hair at his temples and around his head like a tonsure.

"Retail is not about what happens now, young people," he told us. Back in those days, senior management often addressed the whole group that way. "Retail is about two years from now. We are in very great danger, as a business unit. Bankruptcy is staring us in the face."

Several people gasped. We were rolling in money, I thought, with more customers coming in than ever before.

One or two people murmured disagreement loudly enough for Mr. Stultz to hear. But this was never tolerated at Simpsons. "Come to order," Mr. Simpson said. I raised my hand, and at his nod I stood up.

"Mr. Stultz," I said. "I know you're right to warn us of the future, but even the retail experts are saying that we're in a sellers market right now and it will speed up again by summer sales. Can you point us to some type of indicator or documentation that supports what you're saying?"

I sat down. He inclined his head to me and didn't bother to stand, but he never did. "Miss Jovian, you always ask the best questions. I wish that I could open a report that says 'In two years the bottom will fall out.' I can't, young lady. I base my conclusions on two things: an advantage that other stores will have to acquire our customers through Sunday sales if we do not stay competitive; and the emergence of new competitors. We have been guilty of standing still in an evolving marketplace."

All eyes turned to Mr. Simpson. He looked truly troubled and even hurt that Mr. Stultz had been so candid in an open meeting. But he said, "Abraham, your opinion is always valuable. I'll take everything you say into account, and I want to meet with you directly after this. But I cannot violate my conscience or ask my people to violate theirs on a danger that is two years away. We may find another way."

The meeting progressed to other topics from there. But later I had lunch with Anita, one of the floor managers, and her friend Helen. Each was old enough to be my mother. Helen may have qualified for grandmother. I'd known Anita since my first day as a manager trainee. She was a Christian, a Southern Baptist, and she was praying we would stay closed on Sundays.

They were both curious about the meeting. I didn't tell them everything, but I did tell them of Abraham Stultz's prediction.

"Well he's Jewish, so he doesn't understand," Helen said.

Anita, her large brown eyes fixed on her coffee, added gently, "He told me once he liked working with such a religious work force. He came out of New York as a young man, and it was already horrible up there."

"But God can keep this store in business," Helen told her. "We don't have to worry like other folks do."

Anita shot one glance, gentle, at her friend. She looked at me. "What do you think about what he said, Grace?"

"I don't know. I come from a long line of doomsayers," I told them. "I'm used to predictions of destruction that never come true."

"But?" Anita prompted me.

"Did you ever read the Laura Ingalls Wilder books?" I asked.

Anita nodded and Helen said, "My grandchildren read them."

"There's a scene at the beginning of The Long Winter, where an Indian comes into the general store and warns the towns people that a savage winter is coming, and they don't know what he's talking about."

"Did you think of that today?" Anita asked.

I nodded. "The Indian was proved right. I keep remembering that, but all the signs are good for the store right now."

"It's a good cautionary tale," Anita said. "We should pray for Mr. Simpson to have wisdom and foresight." She smiled at me: after years of rearing her own children and working nearly every week of her life, Anita still had beautiful eyes, unmarred by age. "Everything will work out for the best."

I nodded, and for the moment my fears were allayed.