Apologies: No New Blog Till Further Notice

My sincerest apologies to anyone who follows my blog, but due to circumstances beyond my control, I will be unable to post until further notice.

My computer has developed hardware problems that make typing impossible. In fact, I'm using my roommate's computer to do this short blog.

In case you're wondering, the keyboard on my computer won't type correctly. If I hit the spacebar, I get a "w." If I use shift with my spacebar, I get a "6." The number one acts like the tab button and the function button doesn't work at all. The only keys that do work are the letters and the 10 key pad.

So, while I wish I could continue sharing my life story, that will not be possible for now. I've been told it'll be 10 - 14 days before my computer will be repaired. If it's not repairable, it'll be even longer.

I appreciate all my readers and thank you for your patience and understanding. I hope all in your life is going well.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 46

By the time I left that meeting I was convinced that I needed to move as soon as possible. Steve and Bill did offer to help me in any way they could, including helping me find a low rent place I could afford. How moving was going to be possible, I didn’t know, so I put a “fleece” before the Lord. I told Him that if He wanted me to move, He’d have to open the doors for me to do so. Especially because of the debt load I carried. I checked into low-income housing online and found out I qualified, however, when I called to see if applications were being accepted I got a recording telling me to call back in three months. I guess that was a pretty good sign that I wasn’t to move just then.

I didn’t fully realize until a few days later that I walked out of that meeting with chains on my soul. The requirement that I move before Steve would dedicate my son to the Lord was and is unfair to me. Jesus never denied a blessing to anyone during His time here on earth because of the sin in his or her life. So, I don’t understand why Steve thought he had the right to deny me that. I also learned from a friend that getting approved for low income housing and finding it are two different things. She told me that even with approval, it wasn’t always possible to find a place.

This situation made it difficult to want to go to church. It was difficult to sit there week after week and listen to a man preach, who is unwilling to see that God works in ways we don’t always understand or agree with. This was the first time in my life that I have ever felt like I knew better what God’s will was for me than the pastor. I’ve been taught to respect church authority and so for me to basically disobey my pastor’s wishes felt weird, even though I was sure in my heart that I was doing what God wanted me to.

I talked to Steve after the meeting and told him I’d made effort towards moving out, but he didn’t respond. I tried calling Section 8 housing at the times specified, but to no avail. Whenever I tried to call about getting an application for low income housing, I got a recording telling me the mailbox was full and that if I knew the extension I wanted, I could enter it or wait for a list of people. Given that I didn’t know who would be the appropriate person to talk to and I wasn’t in a position to write down an extension or punch it in, I always had to hang up.

I’ll admit I had no real desire to move either. I’d had to be independent for so many years just to survive, that to be living with someone who can be and is a big help to me, is very nice. It has taken me a few years to learn how to give up my independence and I don’t want it back. I was extremely tired of having only myself to lean on. If I had to move out without getting married, I would have had to regain some of the independence I no longer wanted and fought so hard to lose. Even if I moved in with another woman for a roommate, I would have still had to become more independent. I want and need to stay at David’s house because of the way he helps me. The only way I could do better than that, is if I was married.

The saddest part of this is that I resent the way I was treated in this situation and because I feel like there is nothing I can do about it, I resent Steve and Bill, the elder I went to for help. Not only that, but every time I get near Steve for any reason, even in passing, I can feel the walls he erected. It hurts.

I have come to realize that in Steve’s eyes, my efforts weren’t good enough. He wasn’t willing to do the dedication until either I move out or God tells him to. I’m not so sure he wouldn’t fight it if he felt God telling him to dedicate my son to Him while I still live here.

Now I can’t lay all the blame for my lack of desire to go to church at Steve’s feet. There’s my mother who also attended the church. Her marriage is in such poor shape, she clings to Caleb and me every chance she gets. Not to mention the fact that I would rather not see her at all, if that were possible. Which it wasn’t, so I just tried to avoid talking to her.

There were other problems at church as well. I came to realize that there were people in the church who judged me for living with David without being married to him. The sad part is that no one ever came to me and asked me why I’d found it necessary to move in with him and no one ever offered to help me out other than Steve and Bill.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 45

I did take a day off soon after that as I had a bad headache and I knew that if I tried to go to work, I would just fall asleep on the job, despite having taken pain medication. After getting some rest, I felt well enough to get up, so I decided to call the church office to see if he had an opening. I was told that Steve was only in the office two days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and this being a Monday he wasn’t in. I was shocked and upset. Steve had never told me that he was only in the office two days out of the week. The next time I had a day off, it was a Thursday and I thought maybe he’d have an opening. Again, he wasn’t in as he’d switched to coming in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. At this point I didn’t know what to do.

After talking it over with David, I decided to take my case to an elder I knew and see if he could do something about it. I went to the elder, Bill, after service one Sunday and asked if he had time to talk. He did and I poured out the whole story to him from the beginning. I even told him about Steve’s hesitation and why. I also told him about my relationship with David and a little about why I was living here. He said he’d talk to Steve at the next elder’s meeting and see what he could do.

I thought with Bill’s help, Steve would be more willing to dedicate my son. Bill told me a few weeks later that my request had made them realize there were probably others in the church that had young children they would want dedicated. They put a notice in the bulletin and waited for a response. I was the only one who responded to the notice. I thought that would take care of it. Wrong again. Apparently they talked again and Steve still wouldn’t dedicate my son. Bill indicated to me that if nothing else, he would do it. While I appreciated that, I really wanted Steve to do it. Bill also suggested I write a letter to Steve telling him how I felt about the whole situation.

It took me several days, but I finally did. The hardest part of writing the letter was the fact that in some ways I felt like I was chewing out someone in a position of authority. That kind of thing does not come easily to me, even when I know I need to. I basically told Steve that I felt like he had led me to believe that dedicating my son to the Lord was simply a matter of setting a date. He also requested a meeting with me, but failed to tell me that he was only in two days a week and that his unwillingness to see me outside of his scheduled time to be there was unfair to me. I also wrote that if I had asked for an appointment with him, I would have expected to accommodate his schedule, but because he asked to meet with me, he should be more willing to accommodate mine and he clearly wasn’t. I gave a copy of my letter to Bill as well.

The response I got from Steve shocked and hurt me. He called me and left me a voice mail saying that my letter was very discouraging and that under the circumstances he didn’t think he could do the dedication, but if I called his office and spoke with him, maybe we could arrange for some kind of closure to the matter without dedicating my son.

I became furious. How dare he try to shrug me off like that! I talked to Bill again and apparently Steve had told him about my letter and the general contents of it. Bill must have spoken to Steve about it as a few days later Steve found an opening in his schedule to see me one evening.

I went to the meeting with high hopes and determined to get this issue settled once and for all. When I got there I found that Bill was to also sit in on the meeting partly as a chaperone. Steve asked if I minded and of course I didn’t, especially considering that I thought he was “on my side” in this matter. It turns out he was more on “Steve’s side” than mine.

During the course of the meeting, Steve told me he was uncomfortable dedicating my son to the Lord as long as I lived with David. I told him that I carried a large debt load and could not afford to move out at that time, not to mention the fact that I didn’t have any dishes or pots and pans. He asked me about the kind of place I required and I told him that I didn’t expect a palace. As long as it was reasonably clean with two bedrooms that would work for me. I also told him that I couldn’t afford much more in rent than I already paid to David. He asked me how much rent I paid and about how far in debt I was. I told him that I paid David $150.00 a month in rent and him that I was in debt collection for around $10,000 and that didn’t include my school loans. I think that surprised him. But as I told him, the debt in collections was originally credit card debt and boy had I learned my lesson there.

During the meeting, I also told Steve that I felt my living situation was God’s will for me. I told him about how I’d prayed for God to heal me emotionally. His answer to my prayer was to go to David as a man and basically learn to cry on his shoulder. I told him how my initial reaction to the idea of David as the answer to my prayer was basically, “You can’t be serious, Lord.”

Yet every time I prayed, the answer was to see David. I also told Steve about how I came to be living in David’s house.

Steve still told me he was uncomfortable with my living situation, partly because David was recently divorced and I’m divorced. Having his son, Darren and his girlfriend, Angela living here made matters worse in his eyes. He talked about my son and how I had named him after a man in the Old Testament. How the original Caleb would not be living in a “compromising” situation. He also asked me how I could hear God’s voice talking to me directly if I couldn’t hear it coming from a person. I had to admit I hadn’t thought of things that way.

I Was An Emotional Prostitute Part 44

In January, David told Darren and Angela they had to move by the end of March, period. I could hardly wait. I practically counted the days. Early in March, David came home to learn that they had picked up and moved. Darren left a note saying they’d gone to live with her sister and would not be back at all. David called me at work to tell me about it. He was angry, as Darren had not said a word about the car payments. I was relieved and very happy. No more tension because of them and no more having to hide my personal things to ensure they remained mine.

However, a couple of hours after I got home, I discovered two of my outfits were missing. I called the police. While I was waiting for the police to show up, I heard a car door slam. When I looked out my bedroom window, I saw Darren and Angela coming towards the house. Angela was just starting to light a cigarette when she must have caught sight of me. She paused and scowled ferociously. I stood in the doorway of my bedroom while trying to decide what to do. They couldn’t get in as I had dead bolted the door and no one had a key to it. So, I waited to see what would happen. Pretty soon, Darren knocked on the door. When I opened it, he looked at me and said, “What do you want?”

I said, “I thought somebody knocked on the door.”

He told me he had and that they had come back looking for a place to sleep because their original plan to stay with her sister had fallen through. Angela’s sister was being evicted herself. I told him that his note had said that they weren’t coming back and he’d made his choice that afternoon. He asked me what they were supposed to do. I told him that was their problem. I know he didn’t like it but he didn’t argue with me either.

Angela on the other hand, not only told me I didn’t own the house, but that David had given them till the end of the month. She even threatened to call the police. I told her not to bother as the police were on their way.

Darren asked me why and I told him because I was missing some clothes. Both of them immediately denied taking the clothing. Angela also demanded that I wake up David. I told her I didn’t need her telling me what to do then I closed and bolted the door. As I walked back into the living room, David came from the back of the house and asked what was going on. When I told him, he went outside and told them in no uncertain terms that they were not welcome here anymore. Shortly after that they left.

I think I finally know why Darren and Angela could not or would not accept my authority. They couldn’t yell at David, as he would have thrown them out sooner. That was the one thing I did not have the authority to do; if I had, they would have been thrown out the first time Darren brought Angela home for the night without permission. Not only that, but I’m not sure David ever made it clear to them that my authority was second only to his in this house.

One good thing came from Angela’s staying here; I came to understand how badly I must have smelled when I smoked. I had been a smoker myself until just a few months before she moved in. While I always smoked outside, I had no idea just how much it stank until she came in one day from smoking and I got a whiff of her. I went to David and apologized for putting him through that with my habit.

The other big problem with living here turns out to be one I never anticipated. I had been trying for some time to get my pastor, Steve, to dedicate my son to the Lord. This ceremony is basically a public recognition that a child is a gift from God. Steve told me at first that all I had to do was call his office, leave my number and we’d set a date. Well, I called his office later that week. I didn’t hear from him after that and I didn’t go to church for a while as I started to really go through some things emotionally and was just too tired.

The next time I saw Steve was at a church potluck. I talked to him about it again and he said he hadn’t seen me in service for a while and had some very real concerns about that. I told him that as far as I was concerned, this church was home to me. I also told him that I didn’t know how often he’d see me there because of the emotional stuff I was going through. I thought that cleared things up. Wrong.

I still didn’t hear from him. I finally cornered him at service one Sunday. That’s when I found out that he thought my living situation might be a problem. I got so upset, I couldn’t think straight. I went in the ladies room to think and wrote him a note telling him to “ask God how He felt about my living situation.” I walked up and gave it to him, then walked away. I don’t think he ever did as I requested in the note.

I did finally get a phone call from Steve later that week requesting a meeting with him before he would dedicate my son. I called back and left a message saying sure, but I generally work M-F from 8-5 and that I would be happy to come see him on a weekend as on the weekdays I was generally too busy. Steve called me back and said that his time on the weekends was at a premium, so he couldn’t see me then. Maybe something would break in my workweek. I was pretty upset about his saying that his “time on the weekends was at a premium.” I felt that my time on the weekends was at a premium as well, especially being a single mom, but I let it slide.