Stained Glass

By Patrick Friar

There are other ways to end a career.

As the head of a southern congregation, Pastor Damon has always tried to be all things to all people. Thus far, he hasnt lived up to his own expectation of what it means to be perfect for the job. When his own inner demons vie for his attention, Pastor D has some decisions to make.

Things really start to teeter out of balance on the day he meets Taylor, a nurse who feels trapped in a tumultuous marriage, both as a wife and as mother of five. Damon feels an immediate connection and attraction to this woman, and he is torn at the very root of his soul. He struggles as the intense demands of his human body wrestle for control against the more traditional tensions of his religious soul. Taylor feels a similar pull against her own needs and her marriage. They quickly realize how much they have in common, including the inescapable sensation that each is trapped by his or her own vows.

But could their meeting be something other than coincidence?
Could the sweeping changes they flirt with actually be a blessing in disguiseor a trap?

What if each is destined to save the other in some way neither can predict?
There are other ways to start living a life too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jun 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496921253

Patrick Friar

Patrick Friar completed his doctorate and then began serving his human community. As a therapist, he has a deep understanding of the difficulties people face. Patrick brings his many years of experience in ministry to his writings. He enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, and listening to music. He lives in North Carolina.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

H E HAD BEEN perusing his favorite Internet dating site all morning. It may as well have been a meat market. He had just heard that Chloe had filed for divorce for the second time, just a week after reconsidering her first attempt. Damon, however, wanted to ride on a roller coaster of his own choosing instead of the current out-of-control ride he found himself thrust upon. Chloe recently had been ramming a coworker and really couldn’t say a whole lot after Damon walked in on stud boy kissing her at the office earlier that spring. So mostly she did her thing and kept him at arm’s distance as much as she could. Her life right now was her hospice house, which strangely enough was the one thing that she and Damon worked well in together when he occasioned the spare time to assist her.

Today he had church matters to attend to. He would spend the beginning part of this Wednesday morning visiting an ill and declining parishioner in the hospital. Afterward, he would return to his office for a little sermon prep on his newly minted Sermon on the Mount series, but mostly his hours were for woman shopping on his computer.

His drive this morning was a pleasant one through their humble town, a small, North Carolina, Southern American town made famous just this year by an American Idol finalist who called the town home. Damon was a safe and defensive driver, although he liked to keep the air-conditioning at full blast on his face in order to keep sweat from forming on his forehead and under his armpits. The sun was hot even at this early hour, and temperatures would be up to eighty-three by midmorning. He arrived at the hospital parking garage and parked on the bottom floor, giving himself some relief from the heat of the sun, and seemingly, in his mind, also some relief for his Volkswagen Passat. Passing it now on the outside, with a grin, he remembered the sarcastic stab his brother offered in critique of his choice—he’d called it Hitler’s car.

After skipping up two stairs at a time, Damon ambled up to room 314, located along a hall that housed mostly oncology patients. Dressed in his typical un-preacherly attire of slacks and golf shirt, this day un-tucked, Damon wasted no time knocking tepidly on the door. After hearing a beckoning call uttered with weakened voice, he entered and timidly uttered, Mrs. Summers, how are you doing?

Pastor D. She smiled a faint smile and continued, I am glad you came this morning. I was just thinking that I needed to pray. Tears began to fill her eyes as she looked away from Damon.

Moving toward her with genuine care and focus, as she looked at him once again, Damon asked, What is the doctor saying about things with you this morning?

Doris, with a tight upper lip and a feigned toughness reported, It’s six months or maybe a year … I … you know … Joshua. I mean I just don’t know … whatever will he do?

Damon, capturing the intimacy of the emotional cascade, which always seemed to present itself to him, nonverbally executed a flawless compassionate response. He could pull this off in a pastorally manner as beautifully as any trained skater at the highest level could land the triple axel jump maneuver. Damon uttered nothing yet said everything. The young single mother—she was only thirty-nine—could sense God’s eyes through him. That was the importance of the moment. Damon was a perfect vessel of grace, and to boot, he was built handsomely and had been blessed with pure, nurturing eyes. Even his lengthy piano hands were somehow reassuring. He was sincere in his care for the flock, and everyone in his past five parishes had caught it instantly.

Gently taking her hand, he sat and motioned her unspoken permission to emote. She seeped into his comforting presence. He is seventeen, but I won’t be able to be there for the important things. His future … I can’t believe this is happening … what will he do?

After a few seconds of deep and wide silence, which had the affect of turning the small hospital room into a cathedral, Damon picked the instant to portend healing. Let’s pray …

Now looking up at him with surrendering and humbled eyes, she drew a labored breath and submitted softly, Please, yes.

Damon went into prayer mode. His words were simple and yet full, and they came just like breathing—smooth and genuine. O, God, bless now your servant Doris and bless now, too, dear Joshua. Hear her cry of pain and helplessness. Give her your strength, where she is lost and weak and frightened of an uncertain future. Wrap your arms around her and her precious son. Give him every benefit and fill in grace what cruel circumstances will be stealing from his days. Be for them both extra love and extra grace. Provide Doris days of health. Provide for Joshua special time with his mom and a connection like one they’ve never had before. Give them both—somehow, someway in the midst of such difficult times—a way of trusting you even when the road seems long and unknown. And, God, bring healing to Doris’s body and mind in the midst of it all. Thank you for your ever-abiding presence with us, before us, beside us, behind us, above and underneath us, forever and always. In your name we pray. Amen.

When Damon prayed, the super-positional quantum particles aligned with symmetry and harmony in a way that only basketball players in that rare zone that made the basket seem as large as a hula-hoop can fathom. Flashing on the TV now in the tiny room, Damon ignored the highlights of the PGA championship. In other circumstances, a parishioner might have lost his attention to sports, but Damon would not let this moment get away from himself or from her. In so many ways he was the most natural and succinctly perfect man for this calling, and yet in certain ways indeed he was not. Jack Bauer meet Damon Crawford. Or something like that …

I keep wondering what I did to cause this to happen. There was a long pause after she spoke.

Then he began, I believe that God is far more merciful then anyone is able to understand. So I really don’t think that God punishes us for our improper behavior. If he does do that to people … He paused as if seeing a vision in his mind’s eye, then I for one don’t want to be associated with that kind of God. Switching emphasis now, Damon altered his mini theological lesson. God is with you, Doris. God is love, and love is not vengeful or vindictive. Do you believe that? Damon granted comfort to the suffering parishioner.

Yes, I want to believe it.

Maybe Damon’s cohorts in the ministry wouldn’t like him to believe this kind of wide-berthed doctrine. This view, for one thing, tends to offer way more control to the people than a control-oriented style clergyman would normally approve of, but this had always been Damon’s mode. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, he continued. "God’s mercies never come to an end. And, dear Doris, never is a long, long time." Damon liked this verse from Lamentations 3 the most. It was his fire and life insurance.

Doris weakly responded. Well, I can promise you that I believe that from deep inside. A long smile passed between them. She began to project her son onto this divine man in front of her, envisioning and hoping that, one day, Joshua would somehow become like Damon. But could he grow with strength and conviction? He was so young, and she wouldn’t have much more of a say in the matter. There was that issue again, cropping up as it had since she had been little and left alone on so many days to tend to the house chores. Her mother had been a woman who couldn’t save her and who couldn’t deal well at all with her alcoholic husband. And so was a life born in which Doris demanded so much of herself every day. But the preacher’s words to her now were healing. Her condition was a harbinger. She had known nothing but push her whole life from childhood. But her healing, if anything, was coming conversely not in tireless effort, but rather in a moment of surrendering. She wasn’t good at it, to say the least. Things change. Even things we believe in most. Things such as life and freedom and blue-collar laboring become effusive. Now, facing mortality was the sealing lesson of it all. Everything came into question. How had she lived? Especially the past seventeen years of her life. Had it been good enough? Oh, to have it back now. Damon, would you do me a favor?

Absolutely, he responded without pause, nodding in servant’s mode as church member after church member had observed him do for years again and again. Damon, one must understand, was his mother’s shining star, and in short time became God’s, the church’s, and just about everyone else’s too. Would you give a blessing to our home—with Joshua there—sometime in the next week? She sighed and finished her thought, When I am strong enough to go home? She asked with the softest of expressions.

I will. Gladly. Just let me know when is a good time for you both, and I will check on you tomorrow again. Until then, I will be praying for you and Joshua.

Doris looked at him walk away. Suddenly a weird and foreign thought came to her. She literally almost choked herself as he left the room. How could she be lusting after the man’s ass? Especially when she was in such condition, and after he had brought to her such a beautifully spiritual moment. She felt a bit guilty and even ashamed. One moment she saw him as the man she admired and wanted her son to grow up to be like, the next she was aggressively seeing herself having his pants off and wanting him to grind-bump her person and thus grant a special healing filling that could please body and mind if not soul. Her doubts scrambled back as he left, and it ruined an otherwise soothing visit for her. Almost two millennia ago, Augustine proclaimed that God and feminine sexuality were as oil and water. The church followed suit and adopted that belief, and woman and their vaginal impulses have been castigated ever since. Funny how such an edict could have a direct impact on Doris even to this day and in this moment. I shouldn’t be reading that hot romantic book series with all that steamy sex, she thought to herself. Maybe God was trying to tell her something. And yet, maybe Damon had cleared that up for her as he spoke. Masturbation had been her only pleasure up until she lost her energy to the curse that had overtaken her body. She even thought at one time that masturbation had something to do with her cancer. Again, thanks so very much, Augustine, for that. The longer she lived, the harder such questions had become. But Damon’s light, not to mention his ass, brought levity to her otherwise crappy week. She had to be strong for her son now. No more sorrow sessions. Whatever life she had dwindling in her now, she vowed to give to him. Without knowing what she was doing or without believing in herself, Doris in that very mode of thinking had suddenly become holy and more at peace with herself than she had been in a long time, maybe ever. Prayer and surrender can have a way of doing that for a person.

CHAPTER 2

D AMON MONITORED SEVERAL profiles on the dating site, but the one he had viewed most often was Mallory—an attractive, slender, seemingly well-read, West Coast transplant, eight years his junior, with ministerial ties of her own. And though he didn’t know it at the moment, as he pressed the ground-floor elevator button, his scattered mind racing and thinking of her, if there was someone who enjoyed sex as much as he, Mallory was it.

She had picked up immediately on the e-vibes caused by his attraction to her. Many a woman not only has the ability to read a guy in person, but can put out her feelers through electronic communication as well. She liked his communicative skills, and his picture was a bonus. He seemed to her to have an interesting background as he listed his profile, not in the ministry, which would be plain career suicide, but as a social work professional. She was actually hooked before meeting him.

Now, to his amazement, in conversation Damon would learn that Mallory had once been shot in the upper arm. It had happened during a holdup at a mall five years earlier, and the shooter had had the audacity to shoot her! The reaper had come knocking, but she had been able to escape death’s clutches, whether through a trap door or purposeful benevolence no one can really say. But one thing she was sure of—God had been on her side. God was completely on her side.

Mallory had almost married a missionary, had been to Bible school, and could preach her doctrine convincingly to anyone, even a preacher, with both hands tied behind her back. However, she possessed a conservative bent that convinced her to believe that it was her place to submit to a man. So she would mostly defer in conversations, especially with a man. And, oh, could she submit to the right man. Could we count the ways? She had set up life, post shooting, here on the East Coast these days. Mallory’s apartment, courtesy of dear old Dad, had every unique trinket that a thirty-one-year-old woman could acquire in her living years—ornate furniture, religious scenes in tapestry, decorative pieces from Germany and Poland, as well as other paintings and sculptures from places unknown. Mallory herself was also an aspiring artist of sorts and had done freelance photography when she was younger, capturing in still photography anything that moved or didn’t. There had actually been a time earlier in her life when she had photographed models and even artistic nudes. One time, transfixed by a stud of a male model, she got so turned on that her clit became engorged like a man’s hard-on, and it protruded against the fabric of her pants so as to be embarrassingly uncomfortable and noticeable. She had paced herself that day and let the camera do the work patiently, but she admitted to her girlfriend later that, while she took still shots of his masculine body, all she could think of was wanting to go right up to the beautiful stallion and suck on the perfect tool of his till she struck man gold—or rather, it struck her. Sex was one thing she didn’t repent about. She knew it was important to be a good girl, and she was good in many ways, at least in her own mind-set, but sex was not an area in which she had to be good. She was not a whore, but make no mistake, when she got with a guy, she could express lust equal to anything Aphrodite rapturously prescribed in her very own world of sea foam.

They had decided, in their e-mail correspondence, to get together for lunch at location in her town some forty-five minutes north of Damon’s home. Upon greeting her, Damon found himself both attracted to and interested in Mallory. She herself decided immediately that Damon was better looking in person then even his picture portrayed. A fling of the past had described him as a tall drink of water. Mallory thirsted for more and more of Damon. The subject of religion was paramount at this introductory meeting. Damon revealed his true identity as a pastor, and it was actually a good thing that he did. Already knew that, she said. I do my homework. It’s okay. I know that’s not something you want to really advertise. No worries. She gave him a surreptitious grin. Though taken aback by her forwardness, he believed her, and he immediately enjoyed the expression. No worries. It could be a mantra for him really. Jesus said, Don’t worry, and that was the topic of this week’s sermon. How cool was that!

Mallory felt the meeting was going well. She had seemingly caught one she might not need to throw back. Already in her mind, on the very first date, she was allowing herself to picture herself in a preacher’s wife daydream. Mallory had decided years ago that she was made for this sort of job, and it would become a special type of redemption—God’s plan. God is so good. But even more than that, she knew she wanted to be with this man. She hadn’t been with a man in a couple of years, and her inner vixen had gotten to the point where horses in the parade actually started to look good to her. But here before her was not an animal, but rather a man that she was extremely attracted to, and she blushed at her own erotic desire as she listened to him talk about the hard line he had taken with a woman on the stance of a religious viewpoint. Mallory’s mind wandered as she, starry-eyed and grinning, looked at Damon and tried to Jedi mind freak him into take a hard line … in me, Damon. How about across this table? How about right now? When he stood, she actually peered down below his waist to take in what had been hidden from her at the table. No shame, and to her, no worries. She smiled continuously hoping against hope that he would ask her out again. Instead of sitting all night and day by the phone, however, she would get good news instantly.

I had a great time meeting you, he told her. Want to come my way for a picnic? It was Damon’s style to leave no mystery concerning what he was feeling. The mystery of Damon involved the feelings that he himself was not entirely in touch with … the feelings that were within himself.

Yes! came her happy response.

How about … day after tomorrow? he said. I’ll get Trolley subs for us, and we can go to Frolic End Park. You mentioned earlier that you have never been to Altonville, so I’ll send you directions via e-mail. His hug pressed squarely against her. This was not a church lady side embrace, but a full on, this-is-how-my-stuff-feels-against-your-stuff grapple. And indeed she held it a bit before they shared a soft peck on the lips, and their clothed bodies unstuck themselves.

CHAPTER 3

T HERE WERE WAYS to remove oneself from a marriage, and at least some could be carried out with a certain degree of diplomacy. Taylor, however, preferred the slower, I-will-do-it-when-I-am-good-and-ready approach. For this tarnished Taurus, progressing in this manner was not in the stars. Now this much-maligned mother of five children—from two husbands—was going to find the right man for her. The previous mates had shined at times, especially in the courting phase, but they had not been the brightest at illuminating her oft-troubled life. Rather, they mostly only added to the tepid dimness of it. She had settled for too many screw-ups and was tired of this long, slow descent to morose discontentedness. She couldn’t make the change now, but she would make it when the time came.

Taylor was a hardhat-and-lunch-pail gal when it came to fastidiously tending to family and work. She had to be. This day was a particularly tough one because her younger daughter was in the full-on mode of doing what she did best—and that was trying every last nerve of her mom’s being. Tempee (whose nickname was short for Temperance) was bent on playing her mom and also her dad, who lived several states away, to get what she wanted. Taylor was all too familiar with this drama; wrestling in court with custody issues had cost both parents thousands of dollars. Now Tempee was at it again, explaining to her mom that she wanted to stay up in New Jersey to live with her father—Taylor’s ex. She had already, to this point, spent the summer there. It was her experimental fling with a girl a couple of years older that was the sole motivation for her defiant demand for relocation. Now she would fight for her right to involve herself in delinquent behaviors.

Taylor had fought men for ages, so this demonstration from Tempee really should have been no surprise to her now. Taylor had fought against the girl’s dad directly, starting with a fight about his drinking back when both of their daughters were infants. After the carnage ended, the end result caused Taylor to lose custody of both of her daughters for almost a year. This eight-month period of absence—which was not her choice—had created a scar on Taylor visible only to those who could peer deep into her subconscious mind. It had never gone away and was very much present in her behavior just now.

Taylor could hold back the thoughts in her mind even as she spoke words. Her thorough daily-life poker face could have been the inspiration to Lady Gaga’s music. Who knows? These days she fought against her current husband, who had fathered her youngest three—two boys in elementary school and one in middle school. Now, a man could back Taylor into a corner, but once there, she was going to fight her way out! For a woman with such a beautiful face and perfect, flowing, curly, shoulder-length hair, Taylor could be rough and tumble, ready to rumble. John, you better get your hand off of me and move away. I am cramped against this wall! They weren’t getting along now. They hadn’t been getting along for some time. John wanted to regain and then usurp and tap into the attention he used to get from his wife in the days early in their marriage. The problem now was his manhood—literally. Not only did he make half the amount of income that she did, but his performance in the bedroom left her wanting much more in that department as well. She was all too glad to fight, and besides, she realized that his hombre stance was clearly postured out of fear.

She had left New Jersey to move down to North Carolina about a year ago when they separated, and he had only just arrived to join her toward the last part of spring. She hadn’t agreed to pick up the marriage again, really, so things were even worse after he arrived, relocated, and gained access to work—finally. The thing was that—yes—they were living together again, but not sharing the same bedroom. She was still separated from him, and allowed him to live in the same house only because of the boys. She knew in her mind that the marriage was over. Once she made up her mind, there was little chance of going back. Deposited in her elephant-like memory was the recollection of an accumulation of limp nights as well as even more meagerly limp contributions to their finances. Their words