by E. N. Joy
“So don’t beat yourself up about leaving your husband,” Deborah said. “Besides, the Word says—”
“I didn’t leave my husband,” Tamarra blurted out, interrupting Deborah.
There was silence as the women looked among each other with puzzled faces. Then the whispering started. Finally a bold sister shouted out, “Don’t tell us you got back with that sorry son of a gun.”
“Yeah, what about Brother Maeyl?” one of the women questioned. “He’s a good man of God. I know you didn’t kick him to the curb for someone with a track record of being a cheat.”
The fact that Tamarra and Maeyl were an official couple was now common knowledge. They didn’t dare do things such as hug up in church, hold hands, or anything else that would offend God being that the two were not married, but they no longer purposely hid their relationship. They frequently shared rides to Bible Study, and they ate out at Family Café at least once a week. But what they didn’t do was play husband and wife without the ceremony. Tamarra had even invited Maeyl to join the Singles Ministry. She felt they each could use the support as well as learn valuable information to aid them in their courtship.
Maeyl was unable to attend tonight, but he assured her he’d be joining her for the future monthly meetings. Knowing how Maeyl would soon be a male in a room that usually consisted of women where she could moan and harp on her past relationship, she knew that would have to come to an end. The last thing she wanted for Maeyl to have to endure was an hour of hearing about her past. Besides, her past and her separation from her last husband wasn’t really what she had allowed everyone to believe it was, including her best friend, Paige. And now that there might not be such an opportunity where she felt she could speak on it as openly, she decided tonight’s meeting was the perfect time to reveal the truth and put closure on her past marriage once and for all.
“Brother Maeyl and I are a couple,” Tamarra said proudly. “And there’s no way under the sun, unless God Himself showed me His face and I saw His lips moving telling me to let Maeyl go, would I trade that man in for the world.”
“Then if you didn’t leave your husband,” Deborah couldn’t help but ask, “does that mean you never divorced him, and all this time you’ve still been married?”
Tamarra took a deep breath, attempting to retain the courage she needed to tell these women the truth. Only if they’d keep quiet long enough to let her. “No, I’m not still married. I am divorced, but like I said, I didn’t leave my husband. He left me. I didn’t want the divorce. He wanted a divorce from me.”
Tamarra allowed the women a minute to take in her words and for them to register in their heads. Once their gasps of surprise subsided, she continued.
“Yep, that’s right, he left me,” Tamarra reiterated. She looked about the room, observing the shocking stares from the group. “He left me, and yeah, I was angry, mad, and upset in finding out that my husband had been living a lie, only I was the lie. That other woman and his child, that’s the life he really wanted. Not the life he pretended to have with me.”
Tamarra’s eyes watered. Once Paige noticed, she quickly grabbed a couple of tissues and handed them to Tamarra.
“No,” Tamarra refused the tissue. “I’m tired of holding back these tears. It’s about time I let them out. Maybe then they won’t keep fighting to come out.” Tamarra blinked, and for the first time since the night her husband packed his bags and left her, she cried.
“Now, now,” Mother Doreen stood up and said as she walked over to Tamarra and patted her on the shoulder. “It’s all right, dear.”
Tamarra quickly stood, jolting Mother Doreen’s hand from her. “It’s not all right!” she exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Mother Doreen. I know you are just trying to help, but it’s not all right. I’m not all right!” Tamarra declared.
Mother Doreen slowly made her way back to her seat as Tamarra continued.
“I’m a mess, y’all,” Tamarra confessed.
“Now don’t say that,” Mother Doreen stated. “God don’t make no mess.”
“I didn’t say God made this mess. I said I’m a mess. Everything God gives us is without sorrow, but then we go getting in His way and making a mess out of things.”
“Well, I agree with Mother Doreen,” the young twenty-something woman in the group stated. “I ain’t no mess. Now I got some things that need to be fixed and things God needs to deliver me from, but I ain’t no mess. God don’t make no mess. So if you want to claim that you’re a mess, go ahead and do that. But I’ma do me.”
“By all means,” Tamarra told her, “you go right ahead and do you. And while you are doing you, I’m going to be doing God, because He’s the only one who can fix my mess. I’ve tried to do me in the past. And that got me nowhere.”
“Amen!” a woman stood up and shouted, followed by several others. “I’m a mess, too,” the women began to proclaim. Some began to lift their hands to heaven and plead to God to fix their mess. Some repented and apologize for getting themselves into the messes they were in by not following God’s commandments or just simply being disobedient by going left when He’d told them to go right.
For the next few minutes some deliverance took place. Even the young twenty-something woman found herself crying out, “I am a mess, God. I’m the one who chose to sleep with man after man unprotected. To have child after child, each with different daddies. You didn’t create my body for that purpose. This body was supposed to be yours, dear God. A living sacrifice, holy and acceptable. And I made a mess out of it,” she confessed. “Forgive me, Lord.” The woman cried out and collapsed on the floor.
Mother Doreen, who had been comforting quite a few of the women, made her way over to comfort the young lady.
“See, ladies,” Tamarra stated. “I wasn’t claiming the title of a mess, I was confessing it. You can’t quit it until you admit it. God wants to hear you call those things out. The accuser is already up there tattling on you. That’s the accuser’s job.”
Mother Doreen nodded her head in full agreement, as she, too, had just recently told Deborah that very same thing.
“But God doesn’t want to hear it from Satan,” Tamarra stated. “He wants you to confess it. To man up. Well today, I’m manning up.” Tamarra looked up and shouted out at the top of her lungs. “Lord, I’m a mess. Help me! Heal me! Mend me! Fix me!” She then looked to the women. “Some of the messes I’ve gotten myself into I don’t even know how I got into them. But one thing is for certain and two things are for sure, I don’t know how I’m going to get out of it, but I know who is going to get me out. God is good, hallelujah!”
Several women co-signed Tamarra’s hallelujah with one of their own. All of this support and praise gave Tamarra the courage to continue with her testimony.
“My husband left me, y’all, and I’ve been running around here like I let him go,” Tamarra admitted, “too ashamed and embarrassed to speak the truth. But the truth is going to set me free from my mess. But guess what? It’s all right that my husband left me. It’s all right that I begged him not to go the day he packed his bags and headed out the door.” Tamarra’s mind went back to that awful night she’d never forget.
For the two weeks after Tamarra’s ex-husband’s secret of infidelity was revealed, she gave him the silent treatment. She wouldn’t cook for him or clean the house, let alone show him any signs of affection. She needed to heal, but she was too busy cursing God to seek Him for His healing power. She blamed God for allowing her to walk around like a fool for so many years. She blamed God for not revealing her husband to her for who he was prior to fifteen years of marriage.
“I’ve served you all these years,” she had fussed at God. “I’ve praised you. I’ve worshipped you. I’ve given you the last of my last in tithes and offerings. Where’s my harvest? This? This mess right here?” she cried out. “Even when I couldn’t get Edward to go to church but twice a year, on Easter and Christmas if it fell on a Sunday, even when he got copies of the returned checks from my
tithes and offering and we argued, I still praised you, Lord. I was obedient to you, Lord. I kept all my promises to you, Lord, and you couldn’t do the one thing I asked of you, to bless my marriage.”
In the middle of Tamarra’s outpouring, words her pastor had shared with her came to mind. “God don’t bless no mess. Now He will take your mess and make it a blessing to the rest of the world to keep someone else from getting into that same type of mess, but in the end, your mess is simply your testimony. Your ministry.”
Back then, Tamarra had just brushed those words off. The God she served was a big God and could turn any situation around, which is why she had gone on and married Edward in the first place. He was a good man, had been raised in the church as a child, but as an adult, he had strayed away and never went back. Tamarra, on the other hand, hadn’t been in the church very long herself. But she was on the road to becoming a true practicing Christian when she and Edward met. Listening to him talk about growing up in the church, Tamarra had just assumed that Edward was still a churchgoer. He would frequently talk about his current work in the church, so once again, Tamarra made the assumption that in reference to his work, he meant his ministry.
After only two months of dating, Tamarra was already head over heels in love with Edward. She was in love with the surface of Edward, so a few months later when she found out that Edward’s work in the church was as an accountant, simply keeping church books, but that he hadn’t attended church since childhood, she felt stomped. A prayer that should have gone something like this: “God, your Word says that one should not be unequally yoked, so if Edward is not the equal that you have sent to find me, remove him from my life speedily in the name of Jesus,” went something like this instead: “God, you know I’m already in love with Edward, so please let me have him.” Well, she got what she asked for.
It wasn’t even a year after meeting him that Tamarra and Edward were married. For some reason she thought she could eventually change Edward; get him to get back into church and all, but try as she might, only one person can change someone, and that’s God. But even then, they have to want God to change them. So Tamarra spent years often compromising who she was for the sake of her marriage. Once a faithful Bible Study attendee, when Edward decided to make Wednesday night his night with the boys, something about that didn’t sit right with Tamarra. She decided to cut down going to Bible Study to every other week, making the opposite Wednesday her and Edward’s date night. This meant a decrease in his time spent with the boys. This was just one of many occasions Tamarra would find herself putting God on the back burner.
Tamarra came to the conclusion that God got fed up with running a close second to Edward, so He eventually just had to move him out of His way altogether. This truth was something Tamarra had determined she’d take to her grave, but while living, it would eat her alive.
Now, Tamarra felt so much relief in getting out the fact that her husband had left her. All of that anger she had bottled up was finally being sent to the pits of hell where it belonged. It was anger that Tamarra really had toward herself, but felt better aiming it at her ex-husband. Anger that this evening, when the sun went down, would disappear; for good. And even though Tamarra was blessed to have one less burden to deal with, she still knew that she needed to pray for the strength to unload that one last burden that was weighing her down.
Chapter Thirty
“Mother Doreen, I sure am going to hate to see you go,” Deborah told her as the two of them remained in the classroom, straightening up after the meeting had come to an end and everyone else had left.
The meeting had gone over by a full hour after the sudden release of praise, shouting, and worshiping, thanks to Tamarra sharing her testimony. Chairs had been moved to make room for the dancing and shouting. Tissues were all over the place from the tears of joy the women had shed. Lo and behold, the major issues on the agenda, such as leadership replacement, hadn’t even been touched upon. So all of the women agreed that they’d hold two meetings that month, the next in two weeks. It would also be a goodbye potluck for Mother Doreen’s departure.
“I sure am going to hate to go,” Mother Doreen replied. “But God’s calling me down there to take care of my sister.”
“But doesn’t she belong to a nice sized church there in Kentucky? Seems as though with such a large church family to look out for her, you wouldn’t need to move there.”
“Oh, her church family takes care of her just fine,” Mother Doreen assured Deborah as the two got the classroom back in order. “Matter of fact, some of them take care of her almost too fine.” Mother Doreen stopped what she was doing and stared with a far away look in her eyes.
“You say that as though there’s something wrong with that,” Deborah commented after noticing Mother Doreen’s expression.
Mother Doreen picked up a tissue from the floor and pitched it into the trash can. “Umm, I could be wrong. But there is just something about that church’s assistant pastor. He’s always up at the hospital when she’s in there. Always calling and coming by the house when she’s at home.” That far away look returned to her eyes as she stood over the trash can.
“Mother Doreen, I don’t think that’s anything to really be concerned about. Surely nothing to pack up and move out of the state about. After all, your sister is what, around forty years old, and you said yourself that y’all were raised in that church. She’s probably like a daughter to them.”
“To some, yeah, but that assistant pastor ain’t been there but five years. I understand it’s the church’s duty to be there for the sick and the shut-in, but like I said, I just got a strange feeling.”
“Well, if the feeling is strange enough that you have to pack up and move across the country and leave your own church family, then so be it,” Deborah said, intentionally trying to make Mother Doreen feel guilty and change her mind about relocating.
“Across the country? Child, please. Kentucky ain’t nothin’ but a hop, skip, jump, and swim across the creek from Ohio.”
Deborah laughed. “I know, I know, but I thought I’d make one final attempt to talk you out of it.”
“No, you can’t do it, my sister. Like I said, I believe God is sending me down there to intervene on something. I can’t say no to God. It’s just like when Willie’s job with the railroad brought him here to Ohio.” She looked up. “God rest my Willie’s soul.” She drew an invisible cross across her heart with her index finger, and then continued. “As much as I loved my home in Kentucky, I knew I had to come here. Although Willie and I had only been dating for not even six months, God had showed me that Willie was the husband He had for me. I had to come. Well, now I’ve got to go back. But hopefully I won’t face all the trials and tribulations I faced going back home that I did leaving home.” Mother Doreen shook her head.
“Oh, come on now, Mother Doreen. Things couldn’t have been that bad. I’ve heard you say that you wouldn’t have traded that Willie of yours for nothing in the world.”
“And I wouldn’t have, but at the same time, I wouldn’t have wished my Willie upon anybody in the world either.”
“Mother Doreen!” Deborah had shock all through her tone.
“I’m serious, child. It took me a minute, almost not until his death, but I understood why God chose me to be Willie’s wife, because He knew I could handle it. He knew I was a strong enough woman of God that not even Willie’s cheating, drinking, gambling, lying, and what have you, could turn me away from believing in who my God was.” Mother Doreen sat down in a chair as she shared things about her marriage with her late husband that she’d shared with no one but the pastor, and that was usually during the counseling Willie would agree to have every time she had threatened to leave his behind.
“Then why did you put up with it?” Deborah asked out of curiosity. “I mean, the same way God gave you Willie, He would have given you another husband, one that didn’t drink, gamble, and cheat. The verdict is still out on the lying thing. I think that’s just somethi
ng that men can’t help.”
Both women let out a chuckle before Mother Doreen got serious and continued.
“That may be true, but God had work to do in Willie, and He did that work through me,” Mother Doreen told her. “Most women probably would have run off and left his tail in a heart beat, and don’t think for a minute that I didn’t want to, but I was very tuned in to what God was telling me. I was very tuned in to God when He’d tell me when to run and seek shelter, when He’d hide me, and when to stay and fight. Well, when it came to Willie, He told me to stay and fight. Just like David in the second book of Samuel, He’d let me know when He’d deliver the enemies to me, and that’s just what He did.”
“How so?” By now Deborah was sitting and hanging onto Mother Doreen’s every word.
“God used my faith to allow me to hold on, to believe that He could do a new thing with my husband. Man says once a cheater always a cheater. God says He was once a deliverer and He’s still a deliverer. Always will be a deliverer. I believed in Him to deliver my Willie. I prayed. I laid hands on my husband. I oiled up my husband’s personal belongings and prayed over them. I visited the inner and the outer courts–not the courthouse–to take care of my marriage. I prayed for the Jezebel spirits of the women my Willie would run around with. When I caught them in a hotel room, I didn’t take off my earrings, kick off my shoes, and look for the Vaseline. I removed my flesh, and put on my armor of God, and pulled the anointed oil from my purse. I didn’t scream and cuss out Miss Thang. I called out to God and prayed for her.” Mother Doreen stopped and laughed.
“What? What’s so funny?” A confused look crossed Deborah’s face.
“I’m just thinking about how God’s got jokes. Do you know one time He even had the nerve to use me to bring one of these women to salvation? This woman had never been to church a day in her life, and now she goes faithfully.” A proud look covered Mother Doreen’s face.