All Things Work Together Book Ii: Even If You Were Crazy and You Didn’T Care

By Kathy Bryant-Williams

If you enjoyed this book, please be looking for the other books in the series:

All Things Work Together
Book 1: Because Youre Crazy and You Dont Care
Book 3: Now That Youre Not Crazy and You Do Care


Twice divorced Vicki Bright McCarty has spent her youth and is now a thirty-something single mother looking for a social life while working at fairly low-paid jobs.

Is she looking for Mr. Right in all the wrong places? Will she be single the rest of her life, or will her knight in shining armor ride to her rescue?

Read about her next misadventures in book 2 of the series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514408063

Kathy Bryant-Williams

Having had a successful nursing career for many years and also having created and sold many original works of art in oil, clay, fiber, and beads, Kathy Bryant-Williams decided to finally try her hand at writing. “To become a published author has been one of my lifetime dreams. I find I love writing as much as any of my other crafts,” she says. Kathy Bryant-Williams grew up in Corinth, Mississippi, and in Vacaville, California. She now resides in Oakland, Tennessee, a small town just outside of Memphis.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Kathy Bryant-Williams.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015915254

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5144-0808-7

   Softcover   978-1-5144-0807-0

   eBook   978-1-5144-0806-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/16/2015

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Contents

Old Loneliness / New Friend (1985)

New Job / New House / Old Habits Die Hard (1985)

Desperate Times / Alone Again (1986)

More Boredom / Some Charity / Another Man to Date (1986)

Old Friend / New Friend

New Year / New Fun / New Problem (1987)

Work / Vacations / Balloons (1988)

Old Hospital / New Fun

Circulate, Circulate, Circulate / A New Opportunity (1989)

School Days Again / Charity Ball Fight

No More School / Better Job / New Town (1990)

Singles Church Move / New Condo

Boy Next Door

New Pet / Road Trip (1991)

Bad Dates / Good Dates / Hugh Michaels

Specifics List Man / River City Singles

Life with Paul (1991)

To my mom and to all moms, especially the struggling single ones who give up so much to make sure their children are well raised, while also trying to have a social life of their own

To my three children—and all those raised by single moms—because they have stuck by her and tried to honor her through the difficult years

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

—Romans 8:29 (NIV)

Author’s Note

This book was almost not published. After having finished the manuscript halfway, a family member, for their own reasons, insisted I not go any further with publishing it. I decided to honor his wishes even though it broke my heart to not be able to finish telling this story. I felt that the message of how Jesus changes lives was in books 2 and 3. I prayed about it for weeks, and finally, yesterday a phone call changed the heart of the one holding me back. We had a good heart-to-heart talk, and I got his blessing to carry on with the project. I already knew the same morning that my computer was on the blink and I couldn’t download this manuscript. Bless my husband’s heart. He taught me to back up my manuscript by saving often and e-mailing a copy of it to myself. I had lost only half of one chapter, about four pages that I wrote and had not e-mailed. It seemed there were several things getting in my way, including finances. If you are reading this as a published novel, then you know the end of this story. God does answer the prayers close to his children’s hearts. Amen.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my husband for giving me all the support over the months it took me to write this book series. Thank you for all the help with the computer and technical matter, for letting me read the many chapters out loud to you, and for listening to me wax on at length about how excited the publishing process and the sales of Book 1 is making me. These books would not have been written if not for you and the family I came into because of you. Thank you for the past twenty four years. I love you.

Thanks also to Richard Dunn of Xlibris for his professional assistance during the publishing process.

Old Loneliness / New Friend (1985)

My friends and I have just made the drive back home from our Florida spring break trip. We are all tired but happy. We are back at Di’s cute two-bedroom house, and after getting my luggage out of the Caddy, I say my thanks.

Di, I sure do appreciate you including me in this wonderful trip. I don’t guess I’d get past the shopping mall in the Tri-Cities, Alabama, without you.

She looks up four inches at my face and grins really big. Yeah, it was fun, wasn’t it, Vicki?

It sure was. I’ll see you at work Monday, if not before.

It is good to have Di as my friend during these single-mom years. She has been divorced once. I had a rebound marriage after the love of my life, Tom McCarty, left our rocky marriage of eleven years. We have a lot in common. It is Friday, and Tom is due to drop our boys off at my apartment at five. Well, it’s back to reality for me. Enjoy your weekend, and get some rest.

I will try. You rest up too, if your boys will let you.

We hug, and then we laugh together as she walks me to my Jeep parked on the curb. Di waves good-bye as I drive away, taking a left on Cruise Street at the end of her road.

Now back in my apartment, it is late in the afternoon, and only an hour before the boys will be bombarding this place. I have missed those two and can’t wait to hear about their week. After getting the luggage unpacked, I sit down and turn on the television and chill in front of it, not really noticing the programming. It is on just to keep me company until the other humans living here arrive. These years of having full custody of Chip (now age nine) and Chad (six), haven’t been easy since my divorce from a man I will always love was finalized. It’s been a long three years. As I was stumbling during those years several times, a new faith in God has lifted me. I flip open my Bible, and it lands on 1 Thessalonians 4. I read the verses about avoiding immorality:

It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong or take advantage of a brother or sister. The Lord will punish all those who commit such sins, as we told you and warned you before. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit.

It makes me glad I turned down William’s advances in Florida. He is a guy I met in a restaurant/bar where we’d had dinner, and then afterward, we were dancing to the DJ’s music. He had invited me to his beach home for a tour and then tried to take advantage of me by leading me into his bedroom and pulling me down onto his bed. I refused him and asked him to drive me back to my motel. He dumped me at a service station on the drive back. I was trying to make a phone call to get directions to my motel.

I vow to continue to try to be celibate. A noise gets my attention. I look up and see the doorknob turning, and in peek my boys. Mom, Chad and me are home, Chip says in his childish grammar.

I jump up, trotting to meet Chip and his brother and give them a great, big hug. I look out and see their dad’s car driving away. Welcome home, boys! Tell me all about your trip. Where did your dad take you?

We were at Panama City Beach. We stayed in a tall hotel on the ocean, Mom.

I can’t believe we were on the same beach this week. It’s a wonder we didn’t see each other. Tell me more.

Chad pipes in. Mom, I found some money in the bottom of our pool. I dove down and got it. It was twenty-five dollars, and Dad let me buy souvenirs with it.

Wow. What else?

Chip is standing here, looking tired. We swam in the ocean a lot and played on our beach.

Dad’s beer cooler got stolen. He left it with his beach chairs for a minute and looked out from our balcony to check on it. Two men were taking it, and Dad yelled at them from the balcony. They heard him and put it down and ran. Carolyn tried to put some yuppie clothes on us, but we wouldn’t wear them. Chad is being talkative.

Carolyn is the girl Tom liked the best of all the girls he dated at the time of our breakup, and they are now married.

I look at my firstborn. Chip, you are being so quiet, it’s not like you. Are you sleepy?

Yes. It was a long time in Dad’s car today.

Let’s get you into your PJs, and I’ll tuck you in after you eat, if you are hungry.

I’m not hungry, just tired.

I tuck my boys, each now in their clean pajamas, into their beds. Let’s say your prayers. I lead them in the prayer they say every night.

Now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die, before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Amen.

After we three say the prayer together, I kiss them on the cheeks; tousle their thick, dark hair, and turn off the light. Night, night, sleep tight, I say as I walk out of their room, leaving the door open so the dark won’t scare them.

I go to my room across the narrow hallway of our government-subsidized apartment. We had moved here after selling the three houses Tom and I built together, and I gave Joe, my second ex, the house where we had married as a divorce settlement. I dig my pajamas out of my small dresser and change into them. Then I walk over to the too-large-for-one-person king-size oak four-poster, I snuggle into it with pillows piled behind me. I reach to my nightstand where I’ve already turned on the lamp and pick up my almost-constant companion. It is my Holy Bible, which I read until it drops out of my hands into my lap as I doze off for the night.

***

Saturday morning I wake before the boys have stirred out of their after-travel slumber. Normally, they’d have been awake before me and watching cartoons on our only TV in the smallish den. As I lie here thinking, I realize a feeling of deep loneliness. I have been reading my Bible in hopes I could get some help with the pain I’ve felt after my two recent divorces. I had married again within a year after the boys’ dad left to live with Carolyn, a former waitress of ours. My second marriage failed too, when I discovered bruises on Chip. His stepfather had used his belt abusively on my child, once, before we quickly escaped his abuse. Afterward, we found out that Joe was arrested on his job for insurance fraud. Joe was wrecking cars on purpose. Then he filed false claims with an agent who went to prison for conspiring and embezzling money. The home we had bought together mysteriously burned to the ground after we had fled it and left it to him.

I realize I’m feeling lonely as I face another weekend as a single mom. I’m still somewhat of a baby Christian, just recently having been saved. I hear the boys waking up and going about their usual morning play in their room. I rise from my bed, and as I’m planning our day, the boys look into my room to see what I’m doing.

Mom, where are we going today? Never having been one to be still much, my boys know we go somewhere every day.

Hey sons, after we eat some cereal, do ya’ll want to go shopping in Alabama at the mall?

Their eyes light up. Yeah, we do. They look at each other in agreement.

We can eat at the Chuck E. Cheese’s too. I say this to them as I think about the summer ahead of us, and with the way they are growing out of their clothes, they’ll need new ones soon. Boys don’t like to clothes-shop much, so I try to make the trip fun for them.

Shopping is an old habitual way I try to anesthetize myself from the pain in my life. Being saved has helped, but I have a way to go in my healing. I’m trying to break myself of this habit, but I get us all ready for the hour-long drive to the mall nearest to our small town.

It is a late spring day, and the boys are getting along well, seat-belted into the Jeep’s back seat. My shiny black CJ7 is what I got as a settlement in my divorce from Joe. I’m driving along listening to whatever radio station I can tune into on the highway. I’m trying to not let the nearly constant pain I’ve felt these years creep in on me, when I look through the windshield and see large birds soaring overhead. The birds remind me of this trip here not too long ago so I recite my favorite verse, Isaiah 40:31, out loud:

But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

The pain in my head is relieved as I remember this beautiful verse. The huge birds, probably hawks, continue to glide overhead, and I speak out loud. Dear Lord, I was lost, but I wanted to give You my life. I’m trying to live for you only, since I’ve made a mess of this gift of life you have given me, and now I want You to live in me. I’ll die to myself every day so that you can live. Amen.

I feel my spirits lift, and all my emotional pain is replaced by happiness, peace, and real joy! I know I’ve been reborn and truly saved. Before, I’ve been trying to be a Christian, but also finding it hard not to live for myself. Thank God, the old is gone and a new day is dawning.

All day my little broken family eat, play, and shop together. Feeling elated in the knowledge of having had my recent salvation experience and beginning to experience what is ahead with Jesus at the helm of my nearly destroyed life, I find this life has to be renewed from time to time by gathering with others of my faith and always studying my Bible.

Monday morning, the old routine of getting the boys to school and day care so I can go to the low-paying menial job I’ve learned to enjoy begins all over again. There is a change in me, though. My step is quicker as I go about my tasks, and my coworkers even say something to me.

Vicki’s Florida trip has done some good for her. She looks happier. I overhear one of them talking to the other about me.

Yeah, tell us what happened down there on your trip. You seem so changed, another asks me.

Oh, I changed, but it is something more than just a time away. I’m not sure how to tell others of the vows I’ve made to the Lord and of my Damascus Road experience. I sure do want to share my Lord with other hurting souls, though. I decide to pray for opportunities to do so.

It’s been difficult to settle into this cafeteria work, being a licensed nurse and looking for work after taking a break, for two years, to stay at home and raise my boys. Then my second marriage fell apart. Joe and I spent all my money from selling my dream home during the second marriage. It was a marriage built only on material things. I have taken this factory job while I wait to hear from the many resumes I have put out into the medical job market.

The people from the factory line rush in on their first fifteen-minute break of the day, and I try to smile sweetly at each of them as they pass through my register, shoving their money at me and grabbing their change from the automatic change machine. They each are predictable and order the very same food every day, making this job interesting, in a boring way.

My workday is over at one o’clock after the line workers’ last break, and we get every table cleaned. I go home, picking up Chad at day care on the way, and then we wait for Chip’s school bus. Then it’s homework, dinner, and bedtime.

The days continue on in this manner, with no hope for change in sight. I’ve prayed for our life to improve, and I hope to get off the food stamps and welfare. Divorce forced me to sell my dream home built by my boys’ dad and me just after Chad’s birth. I had to let go of my nursing career for a while, so after the second divorce, I had to get some financial help. Still, thankful for what we do have, I continue to look for opportunities to share my faith with other souls.

Waking up in the morning, I see Chad is still asleep even though his older brother is already stirring. I place my hand on his forehead. He feels hot. I take his temperature. The thermometer reads 101 degrees. We make a run to the emergency room since it is the weekend. The doctor’s diagnosis is an ear infection and prescribes antibiotics. I nurse him the rest of the weekend, and he is better by Monday, so we carry out the old routine.

On Wednesday, we have to go to the welfare office to get recertification on all the financial help the government provides. I seem to be the only young Caucasian mother in the waiting room. A grandfatherly black man catches my eye. It is as if he’s been staring at me. When I make eye contact, he says, What is making you so happy here in this ole welfare line, ma’am? He speaks with a Southern drawl.

In one word, I give him the source of my newfound joy. Jesus. In return, he gives me a big, missing-toothed grin.

So there, my prayer to be able to share my experience with other hurting souls has also been answered in a least expected time and place.

Our days pass, but the joy stays. With my mini check and all the government help, we have enough. I realize I can keep going on like this, indefinitely, if nothing better comes along. As I think these thoughts, I hear the phone ringing. I answer in my usual manner, not knowing who could be calling.

Yes, may I speak to Vicki McCarty? a womanly voice says on the other end. To make contact from my boy’s school simple, McCarty is now the last name I use, having taken it back after the divorce from Joe North.

This is she, I reply politely.

This is the office manager for Dr. Reed Shield.

Yes, yes, may I help you?

I’ve reviewed your resume, as we are hiring a new nurse soon.

Oh, I see.

Would you be interested in the position?

Yes, I certainly am.

What is a good time for you to come in for an interview?

Any day is good. How about one thirty?

OK, can you be here tomorrow?

Yes. I will be there.

She gives me directions to their office. They are right across from the only hospital in town. We hang up, and I spend the rest of the evening excited at the prospect of our life starting to improve. I do hope to get back into my chosen nursing profession soon.

After tucking the boys in, I say my prayers. I ask God specifically to give me this office nurse job. I also pray for my possible future husband. I’ve learned at Di’s Baptist church to pray this way. I’ve made a list some months ago of what to be looking for next time around. I list all the qualities I want in him as I pray. This way, I’m supposed to know he’s the right man for me when God sends him. I sure need some kind of help in finding him after I’ve messed up marrying the other times.

This evening, I settle into a relaxing evening with Chip and Chad both tucked into bed. With some time on my hands, I continue to ponder my situation. It is true. Lonely much of the time, I feel my life is passing too quickly with this routine of work and raising my boys as a single parent. I’ve looked around for some sort of single parents group, but in this small Mississippi town, I find nothing. If one is not married here, one is an outcast. I don’t get invited to any social events. Even family social events have been rare since Mom passed away a few years ago. I decide the thing to do is to pray for time to find the companion God would have for me. At age thirty-three, I feel I might not have enough time to find him in this town with no outlets for one such as me. Dear Lord in heaven, let me stay young enough to enjoy him once you’ve given me the right mate. This I pray in Jesus’s name. Amen.

I awaken to a new day. I wake the boys and start getting Chip ready for the bus. As usual, he is running late, and I’m at my wits’ end as to how to get him to dress fast enough to not miss the bus. If he doesn’t get on the bus, I’ll have to drive him, which makes me late for work after dropping Chad off at private kindergarten. I’ve gone so far as to seek council with a child psychiatrist. His advice: put him on the bus partially dressed, one day. He assured me my son will never be late dressing again, if I will follow this advice.

All I can bring myself to do is to warn him. If you are not dressed when the bus gets here, you’ll be put on it anyway, Chip.

Ma … um …, he drawls his whine back at me.

Finally, I push him out the door as I’m double-knotting his tennis shoes. Whew. Let’s go, Chad.

I drop Chad off at the church kindergarten and then head fast to the factory cafeteria, where I’ve worked for almost eleven months, now.

As I sit on the high stool provided for the cashier, I happily go about my task of collecting payment for the workers’ food. I don’t tell anyone about my interview. I’ve arranged with my older sister, Barbie, to pick up Chad and watch him for an hour or so while I meet with the hiring manager at the doctor’s office.

My factory workday has finally ended, and I stride quickly to my parked Jeep. I remain in a prayerful attitude on my drive to the medical center. I park, get out, and lock the Jeep. Walking briskly and erect through the lot, I take notice of the signage mounted high enough for persons in passing traffic to read:

Magnolia Medical Group

Dr. Harry Wells, Dr. Gray Greco, Dr. Reed Shield

Family Medicine

I cross my fingers, open the heavy glass door, and approach the reception window. A cute young lady wearing glasses and sporting curly medium-length, light-brown hair looks up at me. May I help, you?

"Yes, I think your office manager is expecting me. I’m