More Than I Can Bear (24 page)

There were a couple chuckles.

“So do you see where I'm going with this, saints? Do you see what just one impression of something can lead to? But I'll say it again. It ain't real. It's a façade. A mirage. An illusion. In other words, it's a lie. Don't you believe it. The devil is a liar!” Pastor Margie shouted. “Don't you let the devil trick you into believing that you didn't get delivered and that you can't stay delivered.” The New Day congregation was on their feet. It was rare that Pastor Margie got loud during her sermons, creating such an emotionally charged service. That wasn't her typical style, but she was out of control today. God was in control.

God was in control and anyone in that sanctuary could see it, including Paige. Paige knew that woman who had just preached was not her usual pastor. If it wasn't her usual pastor, then it could have been only one other thing: God. Paige couldn't argue, or come to any other conclusion, than God was now using Pastor Margie to deliver a message with power and unapologetic boldness. And that's when Paige also put two and two together and concluded that she'd witnessed the same actions in Rudy.

“God was there,” Paige said under her breath, a tear streaming from her eye. God had, in fact, been there for her. He had been in that conference room that day acting on her behalf, through the appointed person, Rudy. And today He was doing it again through Pastor Margie.

“So once your heart, mind, body, and soul is filled with doubt,” Pastor Margie said, now using her regular soft tone, “don't nothing look right anymore. Everything is wrong. Everything looks wrong. All this bad stuff is happening to you and you use that as confirmation that God isn't who He says He is. God doesn't love you. God isn't there to protect you. If He was, then why does all this bad stuff keep happening to you? Why is nothing going right? Why, when it rains, does it pour? And the big one y'all: ‘why is more being put on me than I can bear!'”

“Hallelujahhhhhhhh!” That ringing sound pierced Paige's eardrums. It took her a minute to realize she was the one shouting it out. Now standing on her feet with one hand lifted, Paige allowed tears to fall freely from her eyes as she continued to listen to her pastor.

“I hear you, saints, I hear you. ‘I just don't understand why God is subjecting me to all this,'” Pastor Margie mocked. “I'm here to tell you today that God is not subjecting you to anything. He's injecting you. It's part of your immunization.”

There were some puzzled looks among the congregation.

“Oh, I see I done lost some of you.” Pastor Margie chuckled. “Well, let me see if I can help some of you find your way back, not get too deep but make it plain.”

“Make it plain, Pastor,” someone instructed.

“You know how when you get injected with the flu immunization, after a couple days or so you might wake up feeling like you have the flu? I mean, your head hurts. Your throat hurts. Body is aching in some areas. You have to really stop and say to yourself, ‘I know I got the flu immunization, but I think I still done caught that dang on flu anyway. I got that stupid shot and it didn't work. I still caught the flu. I'm sick.'” Pastor Margie was rubbing her head, putting her hands on her throat and bending over as if in pain. “You have all the symptoms of the flu because, basically, you were injected with the flu antibodies. Because of this injection, your body will now know how to fight off the flu. The injection subjected you to the symptoms, of what it might feel like. But because of this immunization, you can now be around someone who actually does have the flu and it will not hurt you. It will not make you sick. You will not die.”

“Glory! I will not die,” Paige yelled out.

“I know where you're going with this, Pastor, preach!” the lady next to Paige yelled as Paige continued to cry a river.

“You've already experienced the symptoms of the flu through immunization, so when you are subjected to the real thing, baby, you can withstand it. You will survive. But the effects of that immunization make you think you are sick, but you ain't sick; it's just the symptoms.”

Applause and praise flooded the sanctuary as Pastor Margie made her way back behind the podium to wrap things up. “As parents we have to make sure our children receive immunization shots so that they are protected against something they might come into contact with that could kill them. That could destroy and tear down their little bodies until death is welcomed versus the pain. We would never want that to happen to our children. Well, our Father feels the same way about us.” Pastor Margie pointed up to the heavens and then placed her hands on her Bible that lay open on the podium. “Those shots we subject our children to, they hurt. They are painful. They make them uncomfortable. Grouchy and mean sometimes. They give some of them all types of symptoms and side effects that make them think they won't live through it. Again, saints, that's what our Heavenly Father does for us. So, in closing, what I need you to get is that God is not subjecting you to all kinds of bad stuff. He's not turning His face from you in order to let Satan have his way with you. God is injecting you . . . with immunization. He's not subjecting you; He's injecting you. And just like with our babies, there is a series of immunizations, but when all is said and done, the power of the injection is stronger than any infliction that the devil could ever possibly bring upon us. Now give God a hand for His Word,” Pastor Margie said as she left the pulpit and a sanctuary full of souls who knew God had injected them with the power to conquer all things, whatever curveballs life had to throw them. And Paige was one of those souls.

“Look at you, gorgeous,” Ryan said as he hugged Paige and kissed her on the cheek. It didn't matter that when he'd called her two days straight after their date a couple weeks ago she'd ignored him. It didn't matter that she'd ignored his text message on day three, checking in on her to make sure she was okay. It didn't matter that on day four she sent him an “it's not you, it's me” text, followed by a “don't call me, I'll call you when I'm ready” e-mail. None of that apparently mattered to him when now, two weeks later, he had instantly agreed, within minutes, to meet with her to talk; an invite she'd sent him via a Facebook inbox message.

Paige had committed all three impersonal no-no's when it came to communicating in a relationship. She just didn't want to get him on the phone and endure the awkwardness it would surely entail. How could she have verbally asked him out without giving him some type of explanation for going ghost on him, especially after the last time they'd been together they'd shared an amazing time?

After they'd eaten dinner, with a taste for the best cheesecake in the Midwest they went to the Cheesecake Factory for dessert. It was there Paige felt so open that she did just that: opened up to Ryan. She shared every detail and every crevice about every single part of her life.
Everything.

All Ryan did was listen. He didn't interrupt her with questions. He just listened, detecting Paige was so open that he was sure she'd provide all the answers without him even asking the questions. And that she did. By the time Paige had shared her entire being with him, the cleaning crew was sweeping up the floors in the restaurant. That didn't stop them though. They talked more on the way to the parking lot where their cars were parked. This time it was Ryan who got naked before her, not literally of course. But exposing the vulnerability most men weren't man enough to. He shared details about the times he did past women in his life wrong and how it was his fault. There was no “she wasn't giving me what I needed; she was too big; she was too small; she didn't listen to me; she didn't support me; she didn't laugh at my jokes,” blah blah blah. No, it was, “I was a low-down, dirty boy who knew better, but continued to do worse.” That was his truth.

He confessed how meeting a woman, who in essence was like meeting his match, changed the game completely for him. Finally being the one who got played instead of being the player made him see what a scoundrel he really had been for not being honest and respecting others' hearts. It didn't feel so good with the shoe being on the other foot. But in denial and insisting the player couldn't be played, he'd stayed with the woman, doing back flips in order to get her to drop all her other zeros so that she could be with him, her hero. He knew he only wanted her because she didn't want him more than he'd wanted her, which was what he'd been used to from women in past relationships. The minute she became putty in his hand he would have dropped her like a hot potato and he knew it. The attraction would have been gone.

Well all rules changed when she invited him over to her house one night and broke the news that she was pregnant. This was the wakeup call she'd needed to settle down. He was the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. They'd settle down and raise a family. They'd have the cat, dog, white picket fence, and the whole nine yards. They did, until the baby came out as light as El DeBarge. There was nothing wrong with that but for the fact that both Ryan and the girl were the complexion of Wesley Snipes. The numbers didn't add up. Literally, the 0.09 percent results translated to “you are not the father” on the paternity test didn't add up. Ryan was sick, considering he'd made all the changes he needed to in life to adjust to his new life with her, and the baby. It made it even harder considering they'd had a shotgun wedding because of her pregnancy.

Ryan thought he'd never recover from that situation. His way of coping was turning into a male whore for a lack of better terms. Women were worse than men and couldn't be trusted as far as he was concerned. They would only be good for one thing in his world. Then he'd met his sons' mother and she, too, turned up pregnant. Boy did he make her pay for the sins of the previous woman. When she told him she was pregnant he didn't believe her and admitted he could have been a lot more diplomatic in relaying that to her. When all was said and done, this time—both times—the numbers added up and he was 99 percent his sons' father. No one could deny he wasn't the bomb father to his sons, but he hadn't been the best fiancé to their mother. It took her sudden diagnosis and death of aggressive breast cancer for him to realize that.

He took her death extremely hard. But then a coworker, who happened to be Catholic, invited him to church one day and everything changed after that . . . for the better.

Paige felt like she'd met her match in Ryan, in a good way. They connected on so many levels and had experienced close to some of the same situations in life. They had connected emotionally. They hadn't even realized how much time they'd spent exposing their lives to one another until security drove through the parking lot making sure that they were okay, seeing it was four in the morning and everything around was closed.

“We might as well go to breakfast,” Ryan had suggested.

Knowing Paige had promised the girls a day at the park that Saturday, and she'd already be exhausted from staying out way later than she'd anticipated, she had to decline, but had promised to call him the next day. That was the first promise she'd made him . . . and she'd broken it.

But just like now, as Paige stood there feeling the moisture on her cheek from Ryan's kiss and the warmth from his arms that he slowly removed from around her, they'd managed to pick up where they'd left off two weeks ago. It felt like just yesterday she'd stood in the restaurant where he'd greeted her with a kiss on the cheek and a warm hug. And that's just what Paige wanted: she wanted to pick up where they'd left off. She hoped he'd allow her to make many more promises and fulfill them this time.

“You look great too.” Paige smiled at Ryan. “Thanks for meeting me here at the park.” Meeting at the park had been Ryan's idea. He had a high school senior photo shoot, so when he read Paige's e-mail asking could they get together to talk, he figured it would be convenient for her to just meet him there.

“No problem.” There were a few seconds of silence. Ryan lifted his hand toward the walking trail. “Shall we walk and talk?”

“Sure,” Paige agreed as the two headed off on the trail. There were a few more seconds of silence and Paige decided that first things were first. “I'm sorry.” She owed him that off the bat. “I'm sorry that I just got ghost on you, sent you that tacky informal text and e-mail and stuff, and ignored your calls. You deserved better.”

“I agree and apology accepted,” Ryan said.

Paige stopped walking. “Wow, that was easy.”

“What?”

“You; accepting my apology without making me beg for forgiveness.”

“Ahh, no need to torture you,” he said. “Unless you're into that kind of thing.”

Paige shot him an eye.

He put his hands up in defense. “Just joking. Dang.”

Paige smiled and the two started walking again.

“You shared a lot of yourself with me on our date a couple weeks ago. You gave me a big piece of you and it wasn't fair for me to just leave you hanging like that. But I got some disturbing news from my ex that next morning that just really set me back. Completely stole the total bliss I'd experienced the night before with you. I got scared. For a moment I even lost trust in God. And I don't care what anybody says, if you can't trust God, then you can't trust anybody, especially yourself. So I didn't trust me to be with you. I just felt like my life was a huge dark cloud, that I was a walking disease called misery.”

“And do you still feel that way?” Ryan asked.

“No.” Paige shook her head. “I realized that I wasn't sick. I just had the symptoms.”

Ryan scrunched his face up in puzzlement.

“Never mind.” Paige chuckled.

“So is this—our little talk—you telling me that we can pick up where we left off?”

Paige exhaled and stopped walking again. She looked downward.

“Uh-oh.”

Paige turned and faced Ryan. “Ryan, let me be blunt with you. I dig you. You give me butterflies. I feel connected to you like no other person. Let me really go there and say I don't doubt for a minute that God made you for me and that maybe He even removed people from our lives so that we could ultimately make our way to one another.”

“Well, dang,” Ryan said. “Go on with your bad, holy bold self.”

“I'm serious.”

“I know you are,” Ryan said in a serious tone, stopping and taking Paige's hands into his. “I feel the same way.” He stared into Paige's eyes sensing there was more. “But . . .”

“But even though I'm not sick, I still need to remain in quarantine for a little while longer. I need to just be alone with me . . . work my way through the symptoms.”

Ryan, still holding on to Paige's hands, let out a deep breath while he looked up to the sky. He then closed his eyes.

There was silence and it wasn't awkward. It just was. Paige felt an energy flowing about that felt like heaven. It felt like God was right there in their presence. She couldn't explain it. Neither could she explain the tear that slipped from her eye.

“So this is it . . . for now,” Ryan said as he opened his eyes and looked at Paige again.

“For now. But, Ryan, I believe with all my heart that when we meet again, just like always, we're going to pick up right where we left off spiritually . . . and emotionally.”

“And I believe that. God says you are mine. Which is why you can take your time. Take all the time God will have you to.”

“And you.”

Ryan looked into Paige's eyes with those sexy eyes of his. “I'll wait. It's going to be unbearable, but I'll wait.”

“Oh, it won't be that bad,” Paige said. “You'll live through it.”

“Oh, yeah, and how do you know?”

“Because God won't put on you more than you can bear. Trust me. I know.” Boy oh boy did she know.

Ryan released Paige's hands and gave her his infamous wink and then she watched him walk away. She turned around and continued her journey on the path before her.