Trusting Him to Lead

by T. K. Chapin

  “No, a Bible study.”

  Laughing lightly as he sighed again, his father looked him in the eyes. “Don’t lie to me, son. Be a man and speak truthfully.”

  Opening his arms, West raised his eyebrows. “Dad, I just don’t want to go. I’d rather go hang out with Frankie and Connor and Alex. Those are my real friends. Not these kids from youth group.”

  “Have you ever heard of the saying, ‘you are who you hang out with’?”

  “Yeah.” He thought for a moment of his friends. “I don’t mind that.”

  “Didn’t Frankie run away from home for a week a while back?”

  “Yes, two years ago. That was because his stepfather beat him. What are you trying to say, Dad?”

  “And that thing with him last year with the pornography. You have to be careful who your friends are. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

  “Gosh, Dad. You always talk about forgiveness. How about a little forgiveness for me? And for these guys?”

  His father was quiet.

  “Can I go to Frankie’s or what?”

  “I need you to come with me to the church tonight. You can go to Frankie’s another time.”

  “What? Really?”

  Standing up from the bed, his father headed for the bedroom door. Stopping, he turned back toward West. “Maybe next time, you won’t try to lie to your mother and me.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  As the door closed, West’s anger boiled inside him. How could his parents do this to him? How could they be so mean and cruel? Furrowing his eyebrows, he glared at the door to his bedroom. I won’t have any fun at church tonight, he said in his heart. I promise that.

  A few weeks later, West made a plan to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night. He and Connor were going to go skateboarding at the school. The clock struck eleven on his alarm clock in his bedroom and he pushed off his covers. Slipping into his jeans and hooded sweatshirt, he grabbed his skateboard from his closet and went for the window. He felt a nudge not to go, but he ignored it and pushed open the window. His eyes fell on his friend Connor just outside his window and adrenaline dripped into his veins.

  In a whisper, he said, “Here, take my board.”

  Handing Connor his skateboard, he then got up into the open window and quietly maneuvered himself out. As his feet hit the cold, wet ground, his heart pounded and more adrenaline coursed into his bloodstream. West felt like he was on top of the world right at that moment.

  “Come on.” Connor’s voice was soft, and he handed West his skateboard. Knees bent, West and Connor went around the house to the front, and soon, they were off down the sidewalk. Freedom blew in his face as he skated down the sidewalk toward the school.

  “This is so crazy!” West let out a cheer as he lifted a fist in the air.

  Connor laughed. “Freedom is nice, isn’t it?”

  Smiling, West nodded.

  They arrived at the school and skated around the parking lot beneath the streetlamps. Those two hours of skateboarding were sublime, and West never wanted it to end. Arriving back at his driveway at about one thirty in the morning, he crouched as he went around to the back and to his window. Pushing open the window, he climbed in. As he climbed in through the window, his father’s voice boomed from the shadows in his room.

  “Where were you?”

  Falling onto the floor, his face hit his skateboard, scuffing his cheek. His entire body trembled as he set the skateboard against the wall, shut the window, and jumped into bed. Slipping under the covers, he looked at the outline of his father in the shadowy corner of the bedroom.

  “I was skateboarding.” His eyes stayed on the outline in the shadows, then his father emerged into the moonlight cascading in through the window. His father’s face was half shadowed, half-lit.

  “Next time, I’ll lock the window, West.”

  His father exited the room, shutting the door behind him as he went out.

  No spanking? He thought to himself. Though West’s heart ached with knowing his father’s disappointment, he was glad to not have received a belt across his hindquarters. Turning beneath the covers, West snuggled in and went to sleep.

  A few days later, he went skateboarding again in the middle of the night. This time, he made sure to tuck pillows beneath the covers to make it look as if he was there. He hoped his father wouldn’t notice this time. Upon arriving back at the window, though, he found it to be locked. His father had figured it out. Cursing, West turned and left the backyard and tried the back door. Locked. Front door. It, too, was locked.

  Venturing down the street, he went to his friend’s house and hoisted himself up onto the roof. Tiptoeing over to Connor’s window, he lightly tapped on it.

  Connor emerged from his bed and came over, pushing the window open.

  “What’s up?”

  “I’m locked out. Can I crash?”

  “Yeah. Come on.” Moving out of the way, Connor let West into the bedroom.

  Connor retrieved a blanket and pillow from the hallway and fashioned a bed for West on the floor of his room. “You can crash whenever here. My parents wouldn’t care.”

  “Sweet. Your parents are way cooler than mine.”

  The next morning, West’s father, Charles, took him out to breakfast and had a long talk with him. He explained to him that people make choices and there are consequences for those choices. His consequence was his father installing a security system on all the doors and windows that would sound a blaring alarm upon someone entering or exiting the house at night. That ended his sneaking out adventures. That was until the following year when Charles was suddenly taken to an early grave in a car crash. The night his father died, he ran away from home. His mother found him the next morning at his friend Connor’s house. Not long after losing his father, his mother had to move him and herself to an apartment.

  Shortly after moving, the sneaking out picked back up. Instead of skateboarding now, West began going to parties, drinking, and doing drugs. Losing his father was difficult, and he sought whatever he could find to numb the pain that invaded his soul. Then, one evening, a year and a half after losing his dad, he had arrived home drunk and high. His mother was usually asleep upon his arrival home, but not this time.

  Walking in through the front door, he stopped cold in his tracks. He could hear his mother crying in her recliner in the living room. His heart sank. His steps staggered as the world spun.

  “Mom?” He walked further into the living room.

  “Where were you?” Her words weren’t sad but angry. The memory of his father in his bedroom almost two years ago flashed through his mind. His heart sank lower.

  “I was out with friends. Why are you awake?”

  Turning toward him, she wiped her eyes and furrowed her eyebrows. “I went to look in on you and you were gone. After everything I’ve lost, I can’t lose you too, West.”

  He took a step back and shook his head. “I can’t be what I’m not, Mom.”

  “Then you need to leave! Get out of here! You’re no good to me this way!”

  West turned and reached for the doorknob of the apartment. He twisted it as she continued to rail on him about his behavior.

  He left.

  West didn’t return home ever again. After that night, though he wanted to go back home, his mother refused to take him back in. After wearing out his welcome at Connor’s house, he became homeless and wandered the streets. Thankfully, his grandparents in Spokane were willing to take him in and paid for him to take a one-way bus from Vancouver to Spokane. His grandfather, George, was a man a lot like his father, strong in the faith and firm with structure. It was at his grandparents’ house that West began to feel alive again. He worked hard tending to chores around the house and helping out at his grandfather’s hardware store after school. Moving away from his friends in Vancouver had helped West significantly and had started him down a new path, but there were demons in his past that hadn’t been laid to rest. His mother’s rejection of h
im, his introduction to pornography, and his tendency to walk away when everything became too difficult would be battles that would reach into the years to come.

  Chapter 8

  Two months later in June, West decided to clean and organize the garage one weekend. It had been three months since everything happened, and he found himself more depressed than ever, seeking any chance to avoid confrontation with Rachel. She still hadn’t forgiven him, and their fighting was increasing more by the day. The children often heard their arguments now, which in turn resulted in their having behavior issues. Weekends were a dreaded affair for West, and he made sure to find time away from her presence in order to keep his sanity.

  Starting on one side of the garage, he began to sort and stack boxes, organizing tools, toys, and everything else he came across. Upon moving one of the boxes, he knocked into another box and caused the contents to spill out across the floor, a picture frame shattering in the process.

  Letting out a sigh, he set the box he had in his hands down and went over to the mess. Getting down on his hands and knees, he started placing the items back into the box. Picking up the picture frame, he turned it over to see his first twenty-dollar bill he had ever made working for his grandfather at the hardware store. He smiled as he recalled the day.

  He hadn’t been living with his grandparents for more than a couple of weeks. It was late August, and the heat of Eastern Washington was at its peak. His grandfather pulled him aside and handed him an envelope. Inside, he found five crisp twenty-dollar bills. It was the most money he had ever had in his possession up until that point. Adrenaline dripped into his bloodstream as his thoughts went off like fireworks at what he could do with that kind of money. He felt like he had control of his own life for the first time since losing his dad.

  Pulling the twenty-dollar bill out from underneath the shards of glass, he nicked one of his fingers, causing it to bleed. Shaking his finger, he sucked on the tip of it to stop the bleeding. Then he thought of his mother, Helen. She hadn’t crossed his mind in a serious thought in some time—not on purpose, anyway—and not with him allowing her to linger there for long. He hadn’t spoken to her since Grandpa died and he saw her at the funeral almost eight years ago. She didn’t say more than a handful of sentences to him at the funeral. He wondered if she still lived out in Suncrest, just a few miles from Spokane. She had moved there during his senior year of high school. Shaking the pain of thinking of her away from himself, West got busy in the garage once again.

  As he worked his way through the garage, his mother kept swinging back into his mind. The rejection he had felt that night she told him to leave. He was drunk and high, yes, but he was just a kid.

  Slamming the box in his hands down on the stack of boxes, West clenched his jaw as he peered over at the doorway leading into the house. He thought of Rachel and how cold she had become since finding out about the pornography three months ago. It wasn’t a strange coldness he felt in his soul but a familiar one that had come back to haunt him.

  He kept moving, trying to escape his own prison of thoughts. An hour passed, and then the door leading in from the house opened.

  Stopping as he set a screwdriver down on the workbench, he turned toward the open door.

  It was Rachel.

  “Are you going to sit out here all day until we go to counseling or come inside and spend some time with your family?”

  To West, it seemed as if Rachel could detect when his spirits were at their lowest, and when she did, she’d only kick him harder. Clenching his jaw, he shooed a hand through the air and turned away from her.

  “I’m just trying to organize the garage so you can park your car in here.”

  “I never asked you to do that.”

  Before he could respond, she slammed the door. More uneasiness settled within him.

  West was convinced he couldn’t go any lower in how he felt when he looked upon his wife’s face the day she found out about his betrayal. But that was only proved wrong day after day since it all came into the light. Her looks of disappointment were killing his soul and there appeared to be no end in sight. The books pastor Matt gave to them that first day, in addition to the ones he recommended later in counseling, didn’t help. If anything, they made everything worse. Rachel expected him to act like the men of valor who triumphed and overcame their difficulty with ease. West was no man of valor, no man of great significance, no man like the ones in the books. He was merely a man who had made a terrible mistake he’d spend a lifetime trying to make right.

  At four o’clock, Rachel’s mother came over to watch the children, and West got in his car with Rachel and went down to the church.

  Sitting in the chair of Pastor Matt’s office, West stared blankly forward as his wife cried and complained about him to the pastor. He tried to pay attention to what she was saying, but every attempt to listen was pushed back with more numbness.

  “West?” The pastor’s voice broke through to him.

  “Yeah?”

  “How are you doing?”

  Shrugging as he slowly shook his head, West forced a smile. “Just fine.”

  “You seem quiet and distant.”

  “I don’t know what to do anymore. Nothing pleases her. There are pockets of time in the day where everything seems okay, but then it’s not anymore, and she starts crying and we start fighting . . . It’s the same thing on repeat every single day. I just feel like I’m dying a little more with each day.”

  “It’s a hard process. Are you reading your Bible? Are you praying?”

  Guilt pulled at him, dragging him further into despair. “No, pastor. Not much of either. Honestly, I don’t think God wants to hear from me. I don’t think He is too keen on sexual sin. I’m a disappointment to God, to my wife, and to everyone.”

  Shaking his head, the pastor leaned across his desk. “West, God loves you. He has forgiven you.”

  “What about her?” West looked over at Rachel.

  “Have you forgiven him, Rachel?” The pastor directed his gaze on her.

  “I can’t. I’m blocked up in my heart. I’m trying. I just don’t know how, Pastor!”

  “Okay.” The pastor let a moment of quiet fill the room. “Susan said she invited you to the ladies’ group on Thursday nights, but you never went?”

  Rachel sniffled and wiped her eyes. “I want to go, but it’s just so hard with the kids. They’re taking on the stress they sense between West and me, and it’s causing them to act out. I can’t leave them to go to the study.”

  “Kids are welcome to come along.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to risk them overhearing anything from me.”

  “The more isolation you trap yourselves in, the worst this is all going to be. God’s love starts with community. Think about it. Before the world was created, there was only the Trinity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Community is important. The ladies are meeting tonight, Rachel.” His gaze went to West. “Also, there is a men’s Bible study that meets at our church on Saturday mornings.”

  West laughed. “I remember you mentioned that.”

  “What’s so funny?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. It’s just . . . a group of men sitting around at the church. What? Reading their Bibles and talking about how great God is in their life? You think that’s the solution for me?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “How? God isn’t that great in my life right now. I feel that listening to other men talk about how great He is would only drive me to more bitterness.”

  The pastor lifted an eyebrow as he paused briefly. “More?”

  Pausing, West realized what he said and pondered it for a moment.

  “What are you bitter about toward God, West?”

  Taking a moment to think, he shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “I suggest that you figure that out. I also suggest the community groups for both of you. You don’t have to get plugged in, but it’s better if you do. It’s been mont
hs, and you two need to take movement forward.”

  After dinner, Rachel asked Jeremy to clear the table of the serving dishes. Ignoring her request, he walked into the living room and sat down on the couch beside West.

  Frustration pulled at Rachel and she took a few steps into the living room. “Jeremy!”

  “Whoa. Why are you yelling at him?” West furrowed his eyebrows.

  “He ignored me.”

  Jeremy sat up and opened his arms wide. “No, I didn’t!”

  “Why did you walk away when I asked you to clear the table?”

  “I didn’t hear you.” Jeremy got off the couch and shook his head. “You always think the worst about me, Mom. Jeez!”

  As he walked by her into the dining room, she found West still looking at her.

  “What?”

  He shrugged and shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Crossing over to him, Rachel placed a hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong? Talk to me.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He wasn’t fine. West was lying to her. He was talking less and less every day. Glancing toward the dining room, she thought of Jeremy. Her son was lying too. Feeling overwhelmed and uneasy, she went up the stairs to the bedroom and sat down on the edge of her bed near the nightstand. Folding her face into her hands, she cried. A few moments passed, and she wiped her eyes.

  Lifting her gaze to the nightstand, she saw her Bible. The pastor’s words echoed through her thoughts. Are you reading your Bible? The comment had been directed at West, but she felt a sting in her own heart for her lack of time in God’s Word. Then, she peered up at the alarm clock. Pastor Matt’s words echoed once more through her thoughts. They’re meeting tonight. You need to take movement forward. Maybe the pastor was right. She looked at the alarm clock again.

  Turning her head, she looked at her bedroom door. She thought about her family for a moment, the lack of care she felt radiating from her children. They didn’t respect her anymore. Not since everything with West had happened. They’d managed to control their fights in front of the children early on, but it had spiraled out of control. She was yelling more than ever, not just at West but at her children. Her husband had grown cold as well. A cold quietness had descended upon West. He still spoke to her but was always dodging and avoiding. Anytime she tried to investigate, he’d deny it. A part of Rachel felt as if she were going mad and there was nothing she could do to combat it. Maybe community really is the solution . . .