Authors: Fran Riedemann
What didn’t fit with the stateliness of the sanctuary was the loud buzz of voices, originating from the many conversations going on around her. She had been instructed as a child to be quiet and prayerful while waiting for the service to start as that was the time for her to repent of her sins. However, from first grade on, as soon as she and her friends learned how to print, much of the service was devoted to writing and passing notes to each other, something else that needed to be repented of.
She was equally taken aback at how casually many of the members were dressed, remembering how she would be sent back to her bedroom to change clothes if she came downstairs wearing something inappropriate for church, followed by Alma’s strict admonition, “You must dress for God with the same care as you would dress for a date.”
If you did that today you’d be
kicked
out of church,
she mused.
The music prelude had begun by the time Randy arrived, red-faced and breathless. “I had to park clear down by the Potomac!” Brittany heard him telling Jeanne. But, the bright side would be that the walk back to the car would be pleasant and downhill, poor Randy had done the hard part.
From the first song, Brittany felt as though the service was designed for her. The pastor spoke on the Fifty-first Psalm and each passage cut through her to the core. “
For I was born a sinner—yes, from the moment my mother conceived me. But you desire honesty from the womb, teaching me wisdom even there. Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Oh, give me back my joy again; you have broken me—now let me rejoice
.”
Like waves rolling one over the other she could feel God reaching inside her soiled soul and washing her clean. Suddenly, it was as though her own perspectives became transparent. She could see through and past her own perceptions and into those that were different than hers were—a new awareness of the baggage that each individual brought to their redemption, and how God’s redeeming love, through Christ, lifted off of the weight of it. The pastor’s voice became God’s voice calling to her, telling her that she wasn’t alone. And, finally, after holding them in for so long, the tears came.
Jeanne and Randy sat with her after the service ended and the church emptied of people. Their Pastor, John Simpson, joined them but remained silent; wisely sensing this was an epiphany moment for Brittany. She continued to weep, needing the closure that only tears can bring.
After she stopped crying, the pastor offered her some tissue, cautiously asking her, “Is there something I can do?” Brittany nodded yes.
Jeanne reached over and took her friend’s hand in her own. Randy was also crying and claimed a handful of the offered tissue.
The pastor led Brittany in a prayer. Brittany Lynne Foster got her wish.
It was as simple as that. She left church that day…whiter than snow.
Chapter Ten
That Monday morning at Brittany’s workplace, when the staff gathered around the coffee maker, it was the usual after-the-weekend back and forth banter where they compared notes about what they each had done over the weekend; a perpetual contest of whose weekend trumped the rest.
Brittany usually refrained from offering anything, mainly because it was difficult to find colorful adjectives for doing “nothing much’. The other part was because she considered it none of their business. But, today, when it was her turn to speak, she offered, “I became a Christian yesterday.” Silence followed, with her co-workers, one by one, melting away.
Later that afternoon, when she tried to describe the moment to Jeanne over iced tea, she was still having a hard time believing what happened. “Jeanne, it was unbelievable! A few of them became absolutely hostile,” she told her friend. “Two walked away immediately, two others asked me what was wrong with me, the IT guy told me he thought it was illegal for me to mention becoming a Christian in my workplace, and thought I might be in trouble. My friend Monica said she thought if I’d gotten more counseling it might not have happened. And, then, on our lunch break two of the girls in my department came back to my cubicle to tell me they were also Christians, but they didn’t want me to mention it to anyone, if I ‘understood what they meant’.”
Jeanne wasn’t surprised, seizing the opportunity to remind Brittany that she did work for a liberal women’s magazine. Jeanne reminded her, “Brittany, what was the cover story last month? Wasn’t it something like ‘How far you can go and still say no’? Honestly, you may not contribute to the content of that rag you work for, but if you did, I will guarantee that you couldn’t stay there long—you couldn’t do it.”
Brittany cringed, knowing there was truth to what Jeanne said. “Well, I do read the stuff they give me to edit, but when I’m editing I don’t really think about what I’m reading. But, yes, some of it is kinky Believe it or not, my magazine is conservative if you compare it to some of our competitors.”
Jeanne added, “Yes, but the worst part is that those magazines are aimed to entice a teen-age audience, as well as young adults. It is unavoidable that as you grow in your faith you will begin to have a different awareness of the workplace environment you have existed in up until now. I’m not saying you need to quit, but it isn’t conducive to faith.”
Brittany knew Jeanne was right. If she wasn’t getting a paycheck from them, she probably wouldn’t subscribe to their magazine. But, the other side was she had empathy for the quest of empty-headed people who were seeking to satisfy their emptiness with mental candy, because for a time she had been one of them.
***
For the locals, when the calendar turned from August to September, the shift to fall was celebrated with great relief. Summers were typically hot, humid, and the area was clogged with tourists and traffic. Fall in Washington D.C. had a different pace, with the tourist season ended.. Brittany likened it to returning to sanity after some kind of weird, psychotic episode.
Brittany celebrated seeing the children gathering on the street corners in peer group clusters, waiting for their yellow school busses to pick them up for school. The storefronts also reflected the change of season, their windows arrayed with late-summer produce, with the clothing stores sporting the newest styles, inspired by the influence of autumn colors and cooler temperatures. Restaurants changed their menus, acknowledging the change of seasons with savory dishes, also anticipating the cooler weather with entrees designed for comfort.
The fall event schedule had been posted at her church and Brittany looked forward to the first meeting of the Divorce Recovery Group, optimistic she could learn from the other women and hopefully contribute as well. The group’s facilitator was Anita Burdick, one of the pastors at the church. She was a spunky, athletic looking redhead, with an irresistible sense of mischief about her. In spite of her mischievous demeanor, her strong suit was her empathy. She was a survivor of a brutal marriage that ended in divorce, and she was willing to expose her pain year after year to give other hurting women hope.
After Anita allowed the divorce to remain in her past, she felt called to attend seminary and become a minister.
Her
season of pain made her well suited to mentor hurting women; empathy was not something that could be learned in seminary.
According to Anita, this year’s recovery group was reasonably small, with only nine women attending. The church also hosted a divorce
group for men that met on a different night, for obvious reasons. The church did not encourage co-ed mingling with people who were working through their rejection and the oft anger issues that accompanied them. Unlike many other church
es, they did not have a single’s group, leaving the matchmaking to others.
To Brittany’s way of thinking, the size of the group was perfect, she wasn’t sure she could open up had it been any larger.
Looking around the circle of women she felt an immediate affinity with each one. Their varying backgrounds and age differences surprised her. She was one of the youngest in the group, with the majority of the women in their forties. Most had children and the majority of them were struggling in some manner.
The woman who sat beside her confided she was sixty-eight years old and newly divorced. Brittany quickly sensed she might be the most vulnerable one there. She had overheard her talking to Anita before the meeting, saying how her husband had recently left her for someone much younger and that she had been blindsided, never once having considered her marriage to be in danger. Additionally, she had never worked, they had no children, and she was alone with no other family to fall back on. Brittany’s heart went out to her.
Anita called the meeting together and introduced herself, suggesting each of them take a few moments to share with the group who they were and what had brought them there. A few of them said little more than their names, a couple started to talk, and once they began it became a torrent of emotion and words, and there were a few others were so emotional they couldn’t talk at all. Brittany kept her own introduction brief. She was also close to tears, but not for herself. The plight of some of these women was imponderable; one of them had five children and no job.
Midway into the meeting Anita suggested they take a break, cookies and apple juice had been put out on a table at the back of the room during the introductions. After some brief socializing, Anita used the second half of the session to share her own story. Her divorce had taken place fifteen years earlier, after years of intimidation,emotional and physical abuse. Some details of her story were so horrifying it was hard to listen, and even harder to believe it could have happened to the darling, freckled faced woman who was sharing it so openly with them now.
The divorce had nudged her to seek a higher purpose, and because of it she made the choice to seek Him rather than become a victim of circumstance, God endowed her with the credibility to say with assurance how God would use for good what each one of them was going through.
After the meeting, and half way to her car, Brittany turned back, wanting to say thank you to Anita. When she reached the meeting room she saw Anita bagging up the left over cookies and apple juice for the woman with the five children. Brittany stepped back into the shadows, sensing her life was about to take a paradigm shift.
When she tried to describe the evening to Jeanne later, it came out in rushes, while she tried to do justice to each of the women’s stories. There was so much misery in that one room. “Jeanne, it was sadder to me than the night when Craig left. It is like their agony attached itself to me.”
Jeanne nodded. “Somehow, when we go through a severe loss, there is within it the potential to enlarge us. Not in just one way, but in many if we let it. When Randy and I lost our baby, and found out we wouldn’t be able to get pregnant again, we were devastated. We still struggle with why the baby had to die, but it hasn’t made us want a child any less.” She took a deep breath, “Brittany, we are in the process of becoming licensed to become foster parents. You may be getting some new little neighbors.” She was smiling. “We have been praying about this for some time, and we can’t think of anything that we could do that might have more long- term impact for good.”
Brittany shook her head, incredulous. She had been so wrapped up in herself that she had forgotten about their loss two years earlier. She felt terrible she had no idea about the decisions her friends were making. “Dear God, forgive me, Jeanne! I had no idea. I don’t know what to say.”
But Jeanne only smiled. “It’s okay. That was our journey to walk through, you have been on a different path, and now the two are merging. As you said to me in the beginning of your saga, some things are just too private to talk about.” Brittany nodded, remembering the conversation. Jeanne continued, “I would have told you if I needed you to know. Randy and I needed time to really think this through. Not everyone will be supportive of our decision and we wanted to prepare ourselves for that. So, that is why we wanted to keep it private until we were absolutely sure this was what God wanted us to do.”
“
I think people react badly because they don’t understand how God leads us to do things they don’t understand.” Brittany told her. “Even with the increase of divorces taking place in our culture now there, is still a stigma. I have come to realize that often we are all pretty eager to talk to each other about what we are going through, and it’s usually way ahead of when we include God in the conversations. Correcting that habit may be the most important lesson I have learned in my life to date.” She added, “And, I am absolutely sure that what I have been through will be used.”
Chapter Eleven
It seemed impossible almost nine months had passed since
the day.
During that time Brittany had not had any communication from Craig, other than through his attorney and even that had stopped. Craig’s car remained in her garage; the last remaining vestige of the failed marriage.