Keithe arrived at church right on time. Everyone in attendance was in the midst of prayer. Falling in line with the others, Deacon Keithe, a title he’d earned at church and what the congregation lovingly called him, made his way to the altar.
“Yes, Lord,” his voice added to the others calling out to the Lord in a tuned praise. “Yes, Lord.”
The senior pastor of the congregation started off in prayer. “With our repenting hearts, Lord, we come to you and ask that you come in, Lord. Come into this sanctuary and have your way. Clear out the weeded path that crowded our week. That crowded our homes, Lord. For the mind that has been clouded by deception, come in, Lord, and take the pain away.”
“Come on in, Lord,” Keithe backed the prayer up. Knowing prayer never did anybody any harm, Keithe asked God to remove him so that the Lord could get the total praise. “Lord, come into my heart and my mind, Lord, for the understanding,” he whispered.
On his knees in prayer, Keithe swayed from side to side as the tears began to run down his face. When he felt the pastor lay his hands on his head and the liquid feel of the blessed oil running down his forehead, Keithe yearned even more for the power of God to come in.
“Help me, Lord. Help me,” he requested. It had been rough before. It was sad to even have to count, but he’d been through three other cheating episodes. With each time Michelle promising it would be the last, Keithe wanted the pain to officially be over.
There was only so much he could take and his heart had just about run its course. On his trip back from Dallas, Keithe had made up his mind to just leave. Or so he thought. It was just like Michelle to throw some loveless, superficial affection in the middle of the problem. Almost trapping him at the front door on his return home, he could tell Michelle had rehearsed all she would do while probably wanting to do nothing.
He tried. When he made his way back home, he tried to get his feelings off of his chest and let Michelle know that he couldn’t do it again. “No more,” was just about all he could get out before she kept shushing him.
“Michelle, no. I—” she had interjected again. That’s when he just silenced himself and listened to her recycled garbage.
On and on she went about making a mistake and knowing how she’d taken him for granted. Again. How she really, really, really loved him and didn’t want anyone else. Again. When she rehearsed what seemed to be made-up lines about having no love or peace growing up and having no one to love her in her childhood, Keithe just shrugged and walked past her. And there he was, again, stuck.
Before he’d left the house for prayer service Michelle wanted so badly to get him back under her wing, under her spell, by promising a visit to church. In his heart Keithe wanted to believe her, especially since she had never been one to bring up the subject of church in the first place. He didn’t know if he should even hold his breath on the whole idea, or just let it go.
“Lord, I need you like never before,” he added to his plea. “I can’t make this decision without you. I can’t figure this out on my own,” he prayed, wanting God to release him from the marriage. With divorce on his mind, Keithe wanted, needed an answer from God before making any sudden moves.
“You say it’s better to marry than to burn, Lord. I married, Lord. I married for better or worse, Lord, but the worse is killing me. I don’t want to give up on you, God, because I know you have never given up on me. Speak, Lord. Speak, Lord.”
Crying out to the Lord had never been a problem for Keithe. Being reared in a family where God was the beginning, middle, and ending of their being, Keithe loved to praise God. With admission, Keithe knew he had found his wife while still straddling the fence himself, and knew he should have been more than up front about his love for God and his backsliding condition at the time. But it was only after they’d married that Keithe found his way back to God like the prodigal son.
For years he had felt himself going through the motions, in a revolving door with Michelle. On days like today, he felt that if God didn’t move on his behalf, he’d lose it. Keithe was on the verge of breaking. The last time he had broken down was years ago when Michelle had pushed him to the limit. He had found his open hand gliding across her face, and because he didn’t want history repeating itself, he knew the only way out was to pull on the hem of Jesus’ garment.
“Excuse me, Deacon Keithe.” his pastor tapped him on his shoulder. “Can you come with me? Follow me.” his pastor didn’t wait, but walked away through the long sanctuary and down the hall until he arrived at his office doors.
With a somber face, Keithe asked no questions, not even when he walked through the double doors and sat in the chair in front of his pastor’s desk.
“How are you doing, Deacon Keithe?” Pastor Meeks asked.
On the verge of releasing the remainder of tears he held, Keithe silently thanked the Lord for intervention.
“I’m holding up. But I don’t know for how much longer.” Keithe no longer tried to keep the mannerisms of what the world classified as manly. He wept. “This hurts. It hurts really bad, Pastor. I can’t even believe it’s me sitting here crying about my wife cheating on me. And the bad part is I can just leave. I can just walk away from it,” he said, gesturing with flinging hands. “But then again, I can’t. It’s like there’s a hold.”
Never a revolving-door member, throwing all of his life’s woes on the senior pastor of his church over and over again, Keithe had long ago shared his marriage dilemmas with Pastor Meeks.
“Deacon Keithe, you know I’m all for keeping the family together.” he wanted to assure his dedicated parishioner as he always did whenever they were in each other’s presence. “But it takes a toll on me as well to see you so downtrodden. Believe that. What can I do to help you?” Pastor Meeks wanted to leave the healing process for Keithe, but definitely wanted him to know he was there for him.
Knowing he could give his own opinion, Pastor Meeks was no novice when it came to counseling, and knew all steps would have to be taken from whomever was seated across from him. Today it happened to be a long-time member and worker in the church.
With a slight shake of his head, Keithe knew better. “It starts with me. I know. I…I just can’t seem to get my thoughts to stick in one direction. I mean, Michelle is constantly avoiding our marriage with outside affairs.”
“Hmm.” Pastor Meeks listened.
“How can I compete with whomever she allows into our marriage? how can I get this woman to see that what she is doing is wrong? I mean, it’s just wrong.” his voice went up an octave.
“Go on.”
Fidgeting with his finger, Keithe crossed one leg over the other, and tapped his size-fourteen Nike. Figuring he should just release the pain, Keithe continued.
“I don’t want to compete. I want a wife who allows me to love God and follow him. I want her beside me, praying with me, praising God with me. I don’t want to walk this walk alone.” as if he thought he knew what Pastor Meeks was going to say, Keithe said, “I know God is there walking me through this trial, but I’m married. Why shouldn’t my helpmate be there? Michelle’s not there, emotionally or mentally.”
“And when you ask Michelle to become one with you, on this journey, what is her reply?”
Keithe explained, “In more ways than one she suggests I get out of her face. As a matter of fact, she tried to throw a dog a bone before I came out to prayer tonight, saying she’d start coming to church with me…but, of course, not tonight.”
Pastor Meeks sat up straight, confident that the Lord had placed a word in him to pass to Keithe. “Take her up on her offer. She may think she has one up on you, but show the enemy that you mean business. You want your wife, and you want your marriage to work. Bring her on in and allow the word to work its course in her life.”
“You think, Pastor? I haven’t seen Michelle pray since the early years of our marriage. And I’m sure she did so then only because I did so.”
“Oh, I know so. The word is powerful. Some people come to church and make it out to be a country club affair, or come because that’s what they know to do. If they stay long enough, the word can become embedded in their hearing.” nodding, Keithe understood what the pastor was speaking of. For him it had happened the same way. He had slacked in his walk himself once he left his parents’ home. By the mere fact that he continued to make his way to the house of the Lord, and taking with him what he’d learned, Keithe eventually gained his rightful relationship back with God.
“I tell you what: in a couple weeks, Bishop Perry will be coming for a three-day revival,” Pastor Meeks announced.
“Oh, okay. That’s wonderful. I always enjoy hearing him speak a word,” Keithe shared while feeling his joy return with the talk he and Pastor Meeks were having.
“Yes. Bring her then. You know, so she won’t think she’s being picked on, or pointed out. No visitor’s card or visitors standing those nights. That Sunday morning he’ll be presiding, and Monday through Tuesday as well.”
“Definitely sounds like a plan.”
“A plan from above.” Pastor Meeks pointed upward.
Upon leaving his pastor’s office and the church, Keithe drove around parts of the city until he settled on going to his office. Nothing interested him out in the world. Everything he had wanted was at home, but everything at home didn’t seem to want him. Just as he closed his eyes to rest at a red light, a vibrating jerk hit his hip. Detaching his iPhone, Keithe wasn’t at all surprised.
Chasity, his wife’s court reporter, had been in heavy rotation with her advances since she’d seen him back at the shindig that was a bust. Keithe wouldn’t have thought twice about how she retrieved his work’s cell phone number, since he was plastered all around town on billboards, offering his law expertise. But since she had texted his personal line, Keithe gave a thought on her contact.
Just that quickly, Keithe’s mind jolted in his thinking. The prayers that had still been lingering were in a downward spiral once he laid eyes on all the explicit details Chasity drove his way. Just that fast, he lagged in his thinking, and considered actually taking her up on her offer.
For all Michelle had done to their relationship, Keithe tried to hold on and not join the mess in which she put them. The one time he did stare too long at a woman in a courtroom, his wife made sure she walked right past him, landing her high-heeled footwear on the tip of his Crockett & Jones. Still, wasn’t he deserving of a mess up? especially with all he’d taken for the sake of being honorable to his wife?
The vivacious, mid-twenties, and full-of-nightlife Chasity laid it on thick, explaining how good of a woman she was and how deserving a man he seemed to be. To add to the cause, she made sure she let him in on how Michelle was a philandering and disrespectful wife. Not able to argue with any of it, Keithe raised an eyebrow, took his foot off the brake, and placed it on the gas. It was just that easy. Affairs happened all the time, and one of the reasons was because people thought they could do anything they wanted to. No foundation, no godly conscience, no thought of the next day or what consequences affairs bring.
The way Chasity displayed her no-holds-barred attitude for that which she wanted, Keithe wondered if it was as easy for Michelle to dip and dive as much as she did. With a person filling someone’s head to the max with what they could do, to replace what someone wasn’t doing, Keithe could see how it would be a struggle to stay righteous if one was not rooted in God’s word. Even if one was rooted in God’s word, for that matter.
While at the next red light, right as his payback thought was about to take over in his thinking, Keithe replied to Chasity’s text before he deleted it:
Please don’t text me anymore. Not interested. Never have been and never will be.
Just for a heavenly reminder, he added, What would Jesus do? and chuckled as he thought about what her reaction would be.
At this point, he knew that just as it was possible to slip up and begin an affair, it was also possible to remain as he had: steadfast, unmovable, and always abounding in the word of God. All he knew to do was to keep his prayers going up and Jesus would work it out.
“Jesus, take the wheel.” he declared his new catch-phrase as he continued his drive.