A little later in the morning, Mrs. Spencer showed up with four cartons of eggs and other supplies donated from Puck’s Grocery store. Aisha came in just a few minutes later. While Mrs. Spencer set about making breakfast for the rescue workers, Aisha took Jade into Pastor Reggie’s office to pray.
Over half a decade after leaving Pastor Mitch’s church, it was still difficult for Jade to remember that she didn’t need a pastor’s permission or an elder’s blessing to lift her requests up to God. She’d been trained so thoroughly by the Morning Glory leadership to rely on church hierarchy to grab heaven’s attention that it took her years to learn to pray on her own. Even now, with the stress and anxiety so heavy on her, she found it nearly impossible. Having Aisha with her helped a little. Aisha was a newer Christian, having come from a Muslim background before she got saved and moved to Glennallen, but Aisha seemed to excel at the gift of prayer. As she raised her requests to God, Jade felt a fraction of the weight she’d been carrying lift from her shoulders. As soon as they said amen, the burden returned, but at least the short reprieve convinced her that God was listening.
He had to be. There was no one else now to watch out for her daughter. No one else to guarantee her protection. What was Dez thinking right at this moment? What fears or tortures was she enduring? It was too horrific to fathom. Jade had done everything in her power to shield Dez from the details of her past. Whenever her daughter asked who her daddy was, Jade told her that God was her Father and for now that’s all she needed to know. The thought that the same people who had witnessed Jade’s most humiliating abuse had now kidnapped her daughter was inconceivable.
Ben was still holding onto hope that Elder Keith was trying to contact her with a ransom demand, but Jade knew Morning Glory better than that. The church and its leadership had all the money they wanted thanks to a guilt-inducing tithing system. To remain in good standing, church members had to pledge up to thirty percent of their annual income and even provide tax statements to verify their faithfulness. It was more likely Dez’s kidnapping was about power, the real currency Morning Glory’s leaders cared about.
To continue to wield their power, Morning Glory enacted policies that could have been taken straight out of a dictator’s rulebook. If a church member questioned the pastor, if they fell short in their financial giving, if rumors circulated regarding some petty offense, they were paraded in front of the congregation for public shaming. Once a young nurse was excommunicated simply because Lady Sapphire had a dream accusing her of a spirit of lust. When anybody was forced out of the congregation like this, their history was completely purged from the church records. Even their tithe statements — public record from Morning Glory’s earliest days — were altered, their contributions listed anonymously. Jade was sure her own family had been erased as well, probably even more zealously given the way they had exposed Morning Glory’s ugliest secrets to the world.
How many times had she been told to respect her leaders, not to question their authority? What she and her family had done was unforgivable. She wasn’t sure what kind of changes had taken place after Pastor Mitch’s recent death from cancer, but if things were anything like what they were before, it wasn’t difficult to imagine the church finding a way to get back at her.
But why now? If Morning Glory was so angry with Jade and her family, if they were bent on retribution, why did they wait five years after Jade’s pregnancy to act? What had changed? Was it because Jade had shared her testimony in public? Last night’s audience couldn’t have been larger than forty. Besides, her testimony was far more about God’s grace delivering her from a life of church dictatorship and legalism than it was about besmearing Morning Glory’s reputation.
It didn’t make sense.
And how was Elder Keith involved? Even though he hadn’t wanted Jade’s family to get the police involved, he’d always been soft-spoken, docile, and in most cases completely unintimidating. Had his rise to leadership after Pastor Mitch’s death corrupted him?
Jade hated to confront these questions alone. She longed for a word of wisdom or encouragement from her parents more than ever. It wasn’t fair that God took both of them away. They never saw their granddaughter crawl or walk or eat solid foods or babble her first words. Why had God added sorrow upon sorrow in Jade’s life like that?
In the book of John, Jesus promised his disciples not to leave them as orphans, but that’s exactly what happened to Jade. She was an orphan, a single mom doing her best to provide for her daughter, working a menial job because it was the only thing she could find that would allow her to stay (mostly) on top of the bills and keep her daughter nearby. She’d tried so hard, working herself ragged, agonizing over every one of Dez’s cuts and scrapes and ear infections and cold viruses. How many times had she begged God to give her strength to handle life as a single mother?
And now Dez was gone. Had God forsaken her? Was such a thing possible?
She thought of Jesus’ words on the cross. If the Son of God could feel abandoned by his heavenly Father, why couldn’t she? All Bible promises aside, Jade had never felt more betrayed. Here she was doing everything she could think of to live a godly Christian life. She brought her daughter to Sunday school, to Glennallen Bible’s midweek services. They read stories from Scripture together each night before bed. Each night, that is, until last.
And if Jade felt so abandoned, how must Dez feel right this instant?
Mrs. Spencer handed Jade a paper plate with scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. Jade had no appetite but picked at the food methodically, hoping it would get her mind off her troubles.
By the time she finished breakfast, she was still just as tormented as she’d been before, but now she had a stomachache on top of all her other worries.