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.
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