"Are we game to go on?" Josh asked after dinner. "Or shall we play Scrabble or something this evening, and save the rest for tomorrow?"
The chorus of protests made it clear where the interest lay. "Okay, Mike, crank up the recorders. Who's first?"
"I'll go," volunteered Karen.
“Okay, Karrie, your turn.”
Like Mike, Karen was a little daunted before the grown-ups, but she soon came through. "I didn't really want to leave Portland, either, but it was mostly because I was kinda scared. It sorta sounded fun, to have a new adventure with the family all together. But Mike was really sad, and everybody seemed mad at everybody, and I really worried about Daddy not being a pastor, anymore." A few tears came to her eyes.
"Thanks, Karrie, for worrying," Josh affirmed her. She smiled, bravely.
"Anyway, I prayed a lot and tried not to worry too much, and pretty soon everything was okay, again." She paused. "Now I really like it here." She made a little gesture of conclusion. "That's all. Oh, I forgot to say what I learned. It's just to pray a lot, and trust God to hear you. Now, that's really all!"
They all acknowledged her message. Then Ev spoke. "I guess I'll continue the Felton women lectures. After all that food, I'll try not to put you to sleep."
"Fat chance," Beverly muttered.
Evalyn laughed. "I guess that's right. My story isn't dull, is it? I'm tempted to start out with ‘it was the best of times, it was the worst of times' because, honestly, this has probably been the very best - and the very worst - year of my life, so far."
Josh groaned. "Don't say 'so far,'" he pleaded. "I! don't think I could handle another one like this one!"
"Oh, you're tough now. We can handle anything."
"Sure we can, but let's not test it, okay?"
She held out her hand, and he solemnly took it. "Agreed. Well, I guess I'll go back to the very first of all this for me, which is really over a year ago, in Boise. I think that prior to that time I pictured myself as 'The Total Woman' - wife, mother, helpmate, domestic help, and all around support for my husband, The Pastor. I don't mean that negatively, really. I was happy enough, and I didn't know there was any other way to be. It was damned hard to keep it up all the time but, hey, that's what ‘Total Women’ do!
"Those couple of weeks in Boise, while God was preparing Josh for all the things to come, changed everything for me, too. Milt Thomas preached every sermon just for me, and they were all about a personal and individual life in Christ, with me still part of Josh and the kids, but also separate and free to relate directly to God. The sermons were also about a life with power in it, not just 'trust the Lord’ and someday everything will be all right, but a life in which we could get real answers from God, right now." She paused, and remembered. "My emancipation was pretty hard on Josh, at first."
"Tell me about it, sister," Josh strongly agreed.
" But after we got into all this, it was exactly what he needed. In just a couple of weeks, God gave me what I can only describe as a 'holy boldness.' I was able to support Josh and question him and exhort him and tell him when I thought he was wrong. He thought maybe someone had switched wives on him, but it got pretty good once he got used to it."
"Amen, sister," Josh confirmed.
"As I said, I really did well at first, helping Josh keep things in perspective and balancing his worst ups and downs. But then things started to get really crazy, and our job and our home were threatened, and I pretty well lost it. I forgot that God was in control, and gave Josh a hard time for a lot of things. Then, I got a second touch... "
"No more seeing men looking like trees walking?" asked Harry.
"Pretty good, Harry. God did let me see things again as they really were, and I was able to help Josh bring things out in the open with the group, and get some things clarified and resolved. As soon as we started acting as a body, rather than as individuals, it all came together pretty fast.
"So, here we are one year later, in a new town with a new house and a new career. Who would have believed it? Josh's job has worked out extremely well - I'll let him tell that. We didn't go to church for several months - just coming down, I guess. But now we've found a pretty good one, and it has small groups that meet outside the church. We're enjoying that, getting to know some other Christians. We go to services, but just to praise and listen, for now."
"We haven't joined," Josh commented, mostly to Bev and Harry. "And we probably won't."
"I've taken up some public service-type work," continued Evalyn. "I'm teaching English to people who can't speak it, and teaching reading to those who can't read. I'm finding I'm pretty good at both, and I like them both really well.
“As for what specifically I learned this year, I guess the main thing is that you have to be an individual in Christ before you can really be part of the body. You have to be aware that you - me, everybody - we all have unique talents and characteristics that need to operate if the body is going to work right. I love being a wife and mother and part of the family, but I've found that I love being me, too!"
There was a pause. Josh took the opportunity to speak. "And I need to say to you, in front of all these people we love, that the ‘Total Woman’ was great, but the ‘Total, Total Woman’ is terrific! I love you."
"And I love you, Josh Felton," she replied, quietly.
Harry finally broke the ensuing silence. "I guess we're down to Josh and Paul. Who wants to go first?"
"Let me," Paul responded. "And you can finish up, Josh. In a lot of ways, it's really your story, so that seems appropriate."
"I disagree about it being my story. It's definitely our story, and yours as much as anybody's. But go ahead, anyway. I'll bat clean-up."
"Agreed. Well, to say that this has been quite a year for me would be the ultimate in understatements. Looking back on it, I still feel like pinching myself to be sure I didn't dream it all. So much has occurred - so much has changed ~ since that fateful day Josh came into my office with this really strange idea that he was going to write the definitive Christian soap opera."
"It wasn't a strange idea," Josh protested. "Besides, you encouraged me."
"I did, didn't I? Now, that was strange! I wonder what I was thinking about."
"Besides, I never wrote it, so why are we even discussing the subject?"
"No, you didn't write it," observed Bev. "You got us all to live it, instead.”
"Touché," Josh responded, amid various expressions of agreement from the others.
"But you're right; enough said about that," continued Paul. "I only brought it up because that was the start for me, a little ahead of where the rest of you got involved. The funny thing is, looking back on everything - and realizing how late I was in making a real commitment - I think the wheels were in motion for me, even then. I did encourage Josh; I even suggested that he pray for guidance, long before that would have been my normal response to the situation. I can see now that God had me set up to be a key player from Day One.
"Because I was a big wheel in the church... "
"No brag, just fact," interjected Pete.
"Certainly. Anyway, because of that, I had a hard time reconciling our fairly rigid church structure with the free-wheeling God who seemed intent on messing things up. Of course, for a long time, ! didn't realize it was God who was doing the free-wheeling; I thought it was Josh. It took a long time for me to see that what was really happening was that I was trying to defend the church from God! As I said, I didn't know that at the time. I thought that I was trying to keep the pastor responsive to the congregation, and to keep him from going off the deep end. You know me; I've always believed that organization is better than dis-organization, and it seemed to me that we were getting pretty disorganized. And I was right about that, but what I wasn't able to see was that the structure that I was so faithfully defending wasn't necessarily the structure that God wanted to preserve. He needed to shake me up quite a bit before I was able to change my perspective for His perspective."
"How did it happen?" asked Harry.
"What, changing my perspective? Well, that's interesting. It certainly wasn't any Damascus Road experience, with instant conversion or a sudden clarity of perception. It happened over a period of time, and really came through two specific realizations: one, that those who were fighting the hardest against Josh were doing it for all the wrong reasons; and two, even though I couldn't understand or agree with everything that Josh was doing, I could see that he was doing everything for the right reasons. In the end, I just couldn't resist the good that was being generated by Josh and the ‘Tuesday Night Club'."
"And were we ever glad to have you join us!" exclaimed Josh.
"Thanks, friend. Well, to summarize, I was doing all the wrong things for the right reasons. I was seeking order where God wanted a little healthy chaos - mind, I said healthy chaos. I was defending a church that didn't need defending, and I was alienating myself from people I love, and aligning myself with - what's your term, Donna? Brain dead knot-heads? Other than that, everything was just fine."
"How about this new endeavor that you and Jenny are into?" prompted Harry.
"That is one of the real pleasures in my life, right now. It arose from what I consider one of my biggest failures: my inability to get Betty and Ed straightened out, or at least to get Betty away from him." He had to stop for a moment to let the emotion die down. "Sorry, that one is still pretty hard on me. I tried to talk to Betty three different times, to no avail. She was scared of him, but also scared to leave him, and feeling like a great Christian martyr, to boot. Then I tried to confront Ed, which was probably one of my bigger mistakes. He told me to go to Hell - in much more colorful language, however - and then made Betty resign her job. I never saw them again after that, but I heard that Ed got transferred out of state a few months ago."
"So, as far as we know, she is still a battered wife," Donna mused. "That makes me very angry!"
"I imagine she is. We've done a lot of praying about it since, and I know we planted some good seeds, so maybe God has helped her get some treatment. But she needed to take the first step, and I don't feel confident that she has.
"I had a lot of thoughts and a lot of emotions brought out by the situation with Betty. There was horror that it could actually be occurring, and there was frustration that I couldn't do anything about it. But there was also amazement that it could have been going on without me having the slightest inkling of it. I started to wonder about my discernment, and about whether I was really in tune enough to see what God wanted me to see. I also started to question the message that we in the church must be putting out, that in essence it is honorable to stick around to be a punching bag for your husband - that it's the Christian thing to do!
"Jen and I had a lot of talks about it, and we finally decided we needed to do something. So, we both served a two-month apprenticeship in a clinic specializing in domestic violence. Now, with Pastor Donaldson's blessing, we're starting up a training session for the church. We're trying to integrate the scriptures with the clinical 'how to's.’ Right now, it's just awareness training, but we hope to really become intercessors if - God forbid! - other cases come to light."
"That's terrific!" Bev exclaimed. "And that's really putting your faith to work, really letting your light shine in a practical way. Like Ev teaching English and reading."
"We feel good about it. It is something positive we can do. Well, that's it. Your turn, Brother Josh."
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