No Weapon Formed (Boaz Brown) (17 page)

“Amen.”

I sat completely engrossed in
her presence. Arrested by this contrast of a little woman with a big message on
intercessory prayer. As she read from the Word, I wrote the scripture
references furiously. Simultaneously, the Lord wrote this lesson directly on my
heart. Every time she admonished us to “intercede” the word bounced around
inside me like a pinball machine.
Intercede. Intercede. Intercede.

“Don’t let the enemy come in
and steal your children. Kill your family. Destroy your joy. According to John
10:10, that’s all he comes to do. He’s not here to hurt your feelings, make you
sad and angry. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Honey, his goal is to
kill
you. Don’t play with him. Fight him. Stand up to him. Defeat him. The victory
belongs to God’s people!”

She pumped me so full of the
Word, I was ready to drop-kick the enemy. How dare he try to come in and
destroy my family? Take my husband’s health? Take my children’s good memories
of their father?
I don’t think so!

After the lesson, I hopped up
on my feet and applauded to thank her for being a vessel for the message, as
did most of the women gathered.

We were instructed to have a
discussion among the people at our table, centered on questions which had
already been distributed to the group facilitators. “Glory to God. Bless His
name.” Hattie took a second to settle down enough to read the first one aloud.
“Okay. Mmmm mmm
mmm
. She sure can preach. Let’s start with question
number one. What is the enemy trying to steal from you?”

“My peace,” from Beverly.

“My money,” Janice added.

Since I was near the center,
I spoke up. “My family’s joy and my husband’s health.”

“You don’t say?” Hattie
probed. “Well, we sure can’t have that happening. What’s the matter with your
husband?”

Well, I did want to be the
baby in the group. And the baby does get all the attention. “Lately, he’s been
having terrible headaches. He’s been extremely cranky. Mean. But I know it’s
because he’s in pain.”

“Mmm hmm. Wonder is he…does
he have any, you know,
sin
in his life,” Linda suspected. “You know,
sometimes, we get sick because of our
own
fault.”

What in the world?

A chorus of “mmm-hmmms”
spread around the table. I looked to my left. My right. Heads nodding in
agreement.

“Well, I mean. My husband is
not perfect, but he’s—”

“Step one is a good
soul-cleaning. We can’t expect God to step in and clean up when we’ve been
sinning,” Hattie added. “That’s what I told my sister. Doctor told her she had
cancer. I told her the first thing she needed to do was forgive her ex-husband,
else she wasn’t gonna ever get better. She never did. Not even on her death bed.
So now, before I pray, I tell people to get right with God first ‘cause ain’t
no need in us praying when somebody
want
to stay sick.”

“Yep,” Doris cosigned. Then
added, “Healing starts at home first. And you got to build up your faith, too.”

Did we all hear the same
message?

“Most definitely,” Beverly
echoed. “Without faith, it’s impossible to please the Lord. You can’t expect a
thing
from God without faith and obedience!”

“And a clean heart,” Janice
piled it on.

Awkwardly, I questioned,
“Umm…Jesus didn’t tell people they had to be perfect before He healed them.”

“But what did He tell them
afterward? Go and sin no more!” Beverly said.

“Yes.
After
,
and—”

“You just keep on living,”
Hattie interrupted me. “You’ll see. People that ain’t livin’ right can’t lay
claim to the promises of God. Period. He will
not
be mocked. Every woman
at this table done lost somebody who wouldn’t turn it all over to God.”

“Mmm hmmm.”

I might as well have gone
to a prayer meeting with my father, with all this negativity.
Thank God I knew enough of the Word to
recognize when I was sitting at a table full of people who had more faith in
their experiences than the Word.

I had to shut them out.
Completely.

When it came time for us to
pray as a table, Hattie asked the Lord to “do Your will” in my husband’s life.
“Lord, we know You can heal him. But like the Hebrew boys said, even if you
don’t, we’ll still praise you.”

Note to self: Do not sit
at table four again.

I was so angry and
disappointed; I didn’t even want to come back to the church again to get my
baby. I checked Zoe out of the nursery and walked to the parking lot. As I was
securing her in the car seat, someone’s shadow shaded me from behind. “I’m
sorry. I’ll be out of your way in just a second.”

“Oh, no rush.”

Sister Windham’s distinct,
heavy voice caught my attention.
Up close and in person, she had
an even more inviting demeanor than when she’d been teaching.

“Oh my goodness, you blessed
me so much today,” I straightened to greet her.

“God bless you, sweetheart,”
she reached for a hug.

She barely reached my
neckline, and yet the love in her embrace overwhelmed me. “I hope you don’t
mind, but could you pray for my husband?”

She stepped back. “Surely.
What’s going on?”

“He’s got migraine headaches.
They just came out of nowhere. I mean, my husband is healthy, he runs, he
doesn’t eat a bunch of junk. We’ve been to a couple of doctors but they don’t
really know what the problem is.”

“Well, honey, let’s get one
thing straight. Fitness and health is two different things. Fitness is about
your body in the natural realm. But prosperous
health
comes from life in
Christ. Don’t confuse the two.”

She didn’t have to worry
about me confusing the
two
. I, for
one
, was confused enough. I
was sure she’d said something profound, but it escaped me.

“It’s just that, normally,
he’s a strong, godly man. Lately, he’s…miserable,” I shared.

Her eyes softened. “And so
are you, I bet.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I know by the
Spirit—you’re a good wife. A good mother.” She waved at Zoe.

“Do you think, maybe, my
husband is…doing something wrong?”

“You don’t have to do
anything wrong to be the target of an attack. A lot of Christians
forget—we do have an enemy in the land. But don’t let that worry you.
We’ve been given power over Him through Christ. You understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What’s your husband’s name?”

“Stelson Brown. Thank you.”

I backed away so she could
pass.

“Where are you going?” she
asked.

“I was getting into my car so
you can get into yours,” I laughed slightly.

“Well, you asked me to pray,
didn’t you?”

“Yes.” I was thinking she’d
write his name on a prayer list and get to him later.

“Let’s touch and agree
now
.”
She offered her spindly hands. This woman brought my husband, his doctors, me,
our children, our jobs, and the strife from my family—which I hadn’t
mentioned to her—before the Lord. She spoke healing and peace over us.
And then she prayed for more patience for me. Matter of fact, she spent most of
the time praying on me, which came as a surprise.
Why are we praying on me?

“Fill her with more love,
Lord. Let her be slow to anger, quick to forgive. Let her not look to the left
or to the right, Abba Father. Gird her up in Your strength.”

The comfort in her touch was
pure love. Almost as good as if I was standing in agreement with Momma. In a
way, I was—we were—because I knew Christ was in our midst.

“Amen and it is so.”

“It is so.”

I was hoping that she’d ask
me for my phone number or some way to keep in touch with her. But the finality
of her prayer, “it is so” put a period at the end of this situation, like when
Jesus told the ten lepers to go show themselves clean, and they were healed as
they went. It was a done deal from the moment He spoke it.

This lady had believed she’d
received what she had prayed.

And so did I. For a while
anyway.

Stelson

Stelson had no business
driving on an expressway and he knew it, which was why he took the back roads
to work. He could stomach the ride at 40 miles per hour much better than 70 or
80.

When he arrived at work, he
parked as close as possible to the elevators. Walking had become a chore.
Though no one seemed to notice him leaning, he felt off-balance when he took
more than five steps.

After the previous day’s
blow-up with Cooper and Helen, Stelson wondered if he should bother walking
into the office at all today.

They had been right, however,
about how he’d dropped the ball by not returning messages. But Stelson didn’t
appreciate his partner and his secretary teaming up on him, holding a meeting
to get to the bottom of what Cooper had called “a miscommunication”.

The most important people in
his life were turning out to be his worst allies through this illness,
especially LaShondra. Instead of being there for him, offering compassion, she
was turning cold and pulling away.

Can’t blame her, though.
Especially since he hadn’t told her the
whole truth. For all she knew, he had a bad headache.

And God wasn’t saying much.
Though he still believed the Word, what he needed more than anything was a
friend.

Stelson texted Cooper:
Not
coming in today.

Cooper replied:
Good idea.
I’ll handle things. Take a few days off.

Couldn’t have come at a
better time. Stelson left the garage and wandered around the city for a while,
thankful for the overcast skies hiding the sun’s glaring rays. The only quiet
place that came to mind was a library. He stopped at the local branch, brought
in his laptop and found an unoccupied corner.

Wish I could sleep here
.

For probably the tenth time
in a week, he searched online for hints about his condition. Individually, his
symptoms were clearly linked to specific diagnoses. But taken altogether, he
could have just about anything.

God, You have to show me.

His phone vibrated. Jim
Moore’s name flashed across the screen. Stelson rejected the call, as he’d done
to all other calls from church members recently. All they wanted to do was pray
and tell him to find the bright side.

Praying was always in order,
Stelson knew, but right now, he was too discombobulated, too disoriented to
pray. Besides, the Lord knew he was sick. If He didn’t intervene, it wouldn’t be
because Stelson hadn’t told Him already.

In a desperate attempt to
find his own cure, Stelson Binged “multiple symptoms” and “misdiagnosed” which
led him to a site called “HoldMyHand.” On a whim, he scrolled through the
message board topics.
Don't want to tell my wife, No one understands, Just
want to go to sleep and wake up when this disease is over, Still don’t know what’s
wrong with me.

He could have written any one
of those posts.

Finally, he’d found people
who were walking in his shoes.

“Hi, LaShondra. I’m so sorry
to call you in the middle of the day. I know you’re busy and all,” Helen
apologized.

“Is everything okay?” I could
count on one hand the number of times his secretary had called on my cell
phone.

“Yes. Everything’s fine. Sort
of. I have Mr. Cooper on the line. He’d like to speak to you if you have time.”

“Certainly.”

Talking to Cooper was even rarer
than talking to Helen. Aside from the company Christmas party, Stelson’s
business partner and I didn’t communicate.

“LaShondra,” he started,
“thank you for taking my call.”

“No problem. How can I help
you?”

He paused. “We’ve noticed
some changes in Stelson around the office as of late. I’m wondering if you can
give us any insight. Is he well?”

How could I answer that
question without damaging my husband’s professional reputation? I dodged him.
“What kinds of changes?”

“All I can say is that he’s not
himself,” Cooper summarized.

I understood his vague
verbiage to mean that he wasn’t at liberty to discuss my husband’s work
performance with me. From my conversations with Peaches, I knew that there were
laws against divulging information about co-workers, even in a partnership.

“Oh. I. Yes. Stelson has been
under a tremendous amount of stress,” I excused my husband’s behavior. “As you
may know, I’ve taken a leave of absence. With our two kids and taking care of
my father…we’ve both been juggling a lot.” I slathered it on, though none of
those reasons seemed weighty enough to explain the abrupt decline in my
husband’s attitude.

“I see. Has he been to a
doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Uh huh,” Cooper huffed.
“Well, I’ve told him he should take a few days off.”

No! I don’t want him home!
You keep him!

“If there’s anything I can do
to help him, please let me know,” Cooper said.

“Thanks for calling.”

The garage door squeaked
open. When Stelson walked through the door, I looked up from the row of
seasoned chicken and acted surprised to see him. “Hey, babe. To what do we owe
the pleasure of seeing you this early?”

“Got finished. Came home.”

Oh, he wants to lie to me
now?
“Really?”

He answered with a malicious
glare.

Zoe beat on her high chair
for her father’s attention, but he walked right past her to our bedroom. My
baby’s bottom lip poked out. Her beautiful smile turned upside down as she
processed what had just happened.

“It’s okay, Zoe,” I cooed,
picking her up and rocking her until she seemed to forget. She was already
sleepy, so nap time came easy.

Once Zoe was snoozing in her
playpen, I hopped on the internet. There was no way my kids and I were going to
suffer because my husband could not manage his pain. Granted, I’d never had a
migraine, but I knew people who worked with headaches and lupus and shingles
and in between cancer treatments. They got up and went to work every day and
they didn’t snap people’s heads off. They learned how to cope. “I will not, not,
not let the enemy steal my joy,” I chanted.

The question came from
inside:
Who is the enemy?

My initial thought, which I
know the Lord heard, was “Stelson”.

I tried to change my answer
to something spiritually correct.

His loving chastisement
stilled my hands on the laptop keys. What exactly was I looking up on the internet
anyhow? A way to stop my husband from being mean? Ten steps to ignoring your
spouse? How to live a parallel life in the same house?

“I don’t know, God.” Giving
sound to my confusion led me to the prayer closet like a puppy with his tail
between his legs. I knew better than to go to Google before going to God. Why
was I acting so brand new? How could I have forgotten so quickly that we were
under spiritual attack?

Here I am, God. Let’s whip
this thing.

Wrapped up in His Word and
His love, I learned the first rule of spiritual warfare real quick: The war is
not against people.

Fresh from the prayer closet,
I finished dousing the chicken, put it in the oven to cook, and then made
Stelson a sandwich.

He was sitting up in bed
reading his Bible. He had kicked his shoes off, but his clothes were still
intact.

“I brought you something.”

He took the plate of food. Set
it on the bed. Without veering from the book, he said, “Thank you.”

Since he hadn’t said anything
smart, I crawled in bed next to him and bundled myself against his right side.
“Baby, I’m praying for you.”

“I need it.”

My flesh wanted to ruin the
moment: to ask him if there was any way he could stop acting bully-ish and let
him know how much he had hurt my feelings over the past weeks.

I glanced down and noticed
that my husband was reading from the Psalms. Books of woe and lamenting written
by David when he felt most neglected by God.

No, this wasn’t the time to
start fussing and demanding improvement. I sat there next to my husband and
wept for him, for us, while holding on to his arm.

He rubbed my forearm. “It’s
going to be all right.”

“I know. It’s hard watching
you go through this, though.”

“I’m better this week than I
was last week,” he confessed.

“And you’ll be better than
this next week,” I prophesied over my husband. “By His stripes, you were
healed.”

“Amen.”

The words from my mouth to
his ears became our truth the next week. Stelson reported less intense
headaches and his attitude showed marked improvement. I should have been
shouting for joy, but I wasn’t.

I was still angry. Hurt.
Stelson did render a two-second apology and thank me for nursing him during his
bout with migraines. My feelings, however, were not satisfied. I knew Stelson
wasn’t perfect and we had both done things and said words we recanted later.

This was bigger than me,
though. He’d been rude to our kids, my father and our friends. And he’d
lied
to me. I couldn’t just dismiss all this behind migraine headaches. These were
character
issues lying dormant inside my husband before this sickness brought out the
worst in him.

Maybe the ladies at table
four were right after all. Maybe my husband
was
doing something wrong
that I knew nothing about, which the Lord wanted to bring to light. Maybe his
sudden changes were not as sudden as I thought they were. Had I been blinded by
love? So busy working and taking care of the kids that I failed to see the
signs? For all I knew, he could be having an affair and I’d be clueless. All
those late nights at work. “Business” trips.
Hmph.

I didn’t put anything past
him, and I certainly wasn’t going to give him an opportunity to trample on my
heart again in the future, headaches or not.

“Babe, can you take my shirts
to the cleaners today?” Stelson asked as he repositioned his laptop case on his
shoulder, preparing to leave.

“Got it,” I sang to cover
myself.

He pinched my waist and
kissed me. “See you this evening. Seven-ish.”

“Got it.”

I must have spoken a little
too sharply because he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I nodded
rapidly and smiled.

Stelson peered, like he
wanted to ask another question, but he didn’t. “I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

My prayer time was short, but
not sweet at all because I was getting tired of God giving me all this
information about
me
. What about Stelson? What about the way he’d acted?
What about the fact that I didn’t want to find myself stuck-out, without a job
should my husband ever start trippin’ again?

My Momma raised a Christian,
but she didn’t raise no fool.

As soon as Zoe’s first
naptime came, I was on the internet searching through my employer’s website to
see if there were open slots listed for principals or even in the curriculum
office. I called Terrie Meunse, a fellow administrator with whom I’d taken
several graduate level classes. We were study buddies and we’d both risen in
the ranks with Plainview School District over the years. She worked at the central
office now.

“Hey, Terrie, thanks for
taking my call. How are you?”

“Not as good as you,
obviously,” she teased. “Wishing I was home, too!”

“Girl, I’m tryin’ to get back
in the mix after the semester, if I can. You know of anybody leaving?”

She hummed, “Mmmmm. I think
Ms. Adams, over at Lakeview, may be pregnant. But she had a miscarriage with
the first one. You know how that goes.”

It seemed heartless to be
discussing someone’s infertility issues so trivially, seeing as Stelson and I
had wandered through our own barren years when we first married. “I hope she
makes it to term this time.”

“Yeah. But other than Adams,
I can’t think of anyone. Who took your spot at the high school?”

“We hired a lady named
Natalie Lockhart-Gomez.”

 “She’s from the valley,
right?”

“Yeah.”

“I heard she was a pretty
good administrator down there,” Terrie said.

“Thanks for the memo.”

“But you’re great, too!”
Terrie quickly recovered. “Anyway, I’ll keep an eye out for you and let you
know if I see any vacancies coming up.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

There. I had done it. I’d put
the wheels in motion to get my life back on track. I felt better already knowing
that if push ever came to shove in this marriage, my kids and I could survive.

Since I’d crafted an escape
hatch for me and mine actually improved my attitude. Since I didn’t envision
myself depending on Stelson for my livelihood much longer, I figured I would
not be as vulnerable to the possibility of him acting the fool.

Life went back to my new
normal. Taking care of the kids, the household and Stelson. Praying in my
silent space every morning. Trying to make sure Daddy didn’t turn Seth into a
Black Panther.

I still loved Stelson. He
still loved me. But I had roped off a corner of my heart. Just in case.