Chapter Thirteen
FROM: Pastor Charles Littleton
Sent: Sunday, May 17 6:49 AM
To: Candi Canaberry
Subject: Isaiah 41:10 NKJV
Candi:
Don’t forget...
“Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”
I’m praying for you, kiddo. In the office early this morning if you need anything.
Charles
Candi slid in the back door of the church and headed for the ladies room. She set her heavy makeup bag on the counter and prepared to take another look at the ravages of last night’s devastation. She gingerly tapped the puffy bags under her eyes. There wasn’t a cucumber slice big enough to remedy that.
She put the bag back in her purse and headed for the pastor’s office. He saw her coming and stepped aside as though he was expecting her.
He closed the door. “How are you feeling this morning?”
She stood in the middle of his office. “I am emotionally and spiritually numb. These past couple months have been tumultuous, and I’ve finally lost it. I can’t hear God, I can’t find peace, and I don’t know what to do.”
He pulled a lavender and navy tie off his door knob and hung it around his neck. He motioned for her to sit.
Every muscle ached as she dropped into the chair.
He sat behind his desk. “What ended up happening with your father?”
“It was ugly. We didn’t resolve anything. All I managed to do last night was look like a fool in front of everyone.”
“I see.” He tugged his tie into place and closed his Bible. He said nothing else.
She squirmed in her chair. Quiet desperation was not familiar territory. Painful silent moments stretched on. “Aren’t you at least going to say I told you so ? Because you were right. I should have contacted my father weeks ago.”
He tucked his glasses into his shirt pocket. “Not my style.”
More stilted minutes passed. “Do you have anything helpful to say this morning?”
“That depends. Do you want to have our usual conversation where I try to give you my sage pastoral advice and you pretend to listen? Or do you want me to give it to you straight?”
She sucked in a breath. “Hit me with the truth. I’m ready.”
“You’re being pruned.”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s the truth. You’re being pruned. I’d hoped you would have figured it out on your own by now, but there it is. God has his clippers out, and according to John, chapter fifteen, he’s whacking away at your unproductive branches. There’s limited fruit on some of them so he’s cutting them back to allow for new growth. Out with the old, in with the new. You’re being pruned.”
Candi winced. “Remind me to never let you rip a bandage off me.”
“Sorry, but it’s high time you heard the truth while you can still learn from it.”
“OK... I’m being pruned. That would explain the massive blood loss and excessive pain. When does it stop?”
“When you’ve figured it out.”
“When will that be?”
“Hey, I’ve been trying to knock some sense into you for a year. You are one stubborn woman.”
“We’ve established that. What do I do? I obviously haven’t been able to see this for myself.”
“The Word says Jesus is the vine, we are the branches, and God is the gardener. As long as we stay intimate with the vine, everything is fine. As soon as we let our own issues like fear, anger, or unforgiveness get in the way, it separates us from the vine. When God sees that happening—”
“I know, I know. Pruners.”
“On the bright side, God only prunes when he knows there is potential for great fruit. He takes a good branch and makes it a great branch.”
“I guess I’m not even a mediocre branch. I’m a below-average wilting branch with some kind of parasite stuck in my bark. There’s no green left in me. I believe that passage also says my kind of branch ends up as firewood.”
“You are a long way from the wood pile. You just need to turn this thing around.”
“But that’s what I don’t understand. I love the vine. The vine is my life. How did I mess this up so bad?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
Candi braced herself. “Yes.”
“You need to change your default settings.”
“My what?”
“Your default settings.”
“You lost me. And I know there’s not a scripture reference for that one, so don’t bother.”
“You’re a great woman of God, Candi, and a great leader. Most of the time your gut reactions—or default settings—are just what God would expect from you. When someone has a crisis, you react with faith and start praying. When someone is broken, you react with Christlike compassion and truly want to help. When there’s a practical need, you react with a heart of service. I can’t prove it, but I know you used your tax refund last year to make up the difference on Rocky’s new wheelchair when the insurance wouldn’t pay. God seriously delights in your efforts.”
“I sense there’s a big but coming...”
“ But , when it comes to personal relationships, you default to fear. You become judgmental and unforgiving because you’re scared of anyone getting or staying close.”
“Not true.”
“True. You didn’t tell anyone last year when you had dental surgery. You took an Uber back and forth to the dentist. I know ten people who would have dropped everything to give you a ride. You were too scared to ask.”
“How did being self-sufficient make me scared?”
“You didn’t want to impose, didn’t want anyone to see you drooling on yourself, and didn’t want anyone to know you had dental issues like everyone else. You didn’t want anyone to get inside your tight little world.”
“Possibly true.”
“Definitely true and you know it, and it’s the reason for that uncomfortable scene last night with your father. You didn’t want to square things with him. Fear. You didn’t want to share your burden with the band. Fear. And now that it’s all out in the open, you’re miserable, when all you had to do was stay close to the vine and ask for help. Instead, you let fear isolate you from those who care about you the most.”
She stood and leaned across his desk. “That’s not fear. It’s unmitigated rage toward my father.”
He stood to meet her nose-to-nose. “Rage born of fear.”
“No... Rage born of anger from a festering wound.”
“That was, no doubt, initially rubbed raw by fear.”
“No... The original wound was caused by my father’s callous and criminal behavior.”
He smacked the desk. “Yes, but it never healed because of fear. You were a kid who’d just lost her mother and whose father was going to jail. Admit it. You. Were. Scared. And you’ve never been able to let that fear go so God could completely heal that oozing gash. Now it’s all internalized into a big ball of anger and bitterness, and it keeps you from true intimacy with God and with others. Let it go, Candi. Let it all go. Lean into the vine. Give up all that control and rest in Jesus.”
She blinked against the whoosh of truth he blasted into her face. Harsh reality settled onto her last raw nerve. What he said was real. Something inside her clicked and turned around. He was right. For years, she’d held on to garbage she didn’t need. Where she once fought to keep it buried, she now searched her mind for ways to purge it from the depths of her spirit.
Suddenly, she was a cat clawing its way out of a wet slippery bathtub. “I don’t know how to let it go,” she stammered. “What if I can’t?”
“You can. You have to.” He plucked his suit jacket from the back of his chair. “Otherwise, that numb feeling you have will not go away. It’ll become permanent.”
Shade put a music stand near Candi’s keyboard and did his best to pretend he had any idea how to rally the band for worship. Everyone was half asleep.
“Let’s run through our invitation to worship song, and then we’ll pray. Candi should be here by then.”
“Where is she?” Kevin asked through the guitar pick in his teeth.
“She’s with Pastor Charles. She texted me and said she’d be here as soon as she could.”
Kevin started the song while Shade kept his eyes on the doors at the back of the sanctuary. At least she was somewhere in the building. Last night they’d spent an hour on the park bench. It was a torturous sixty minutes of tears and often incoherent babbling as she wept her way through a list of her father’s transgressions and her inability to tolerate his very presence. When she’d run out of words, she’d simply wiped her nose and headed for her car.
He’d joined the remaining band members at the other tent but didn’t hear one note of music as he focused on looking for Candi’s father. He wasn’t sure what he’d have done if he’d found him, but he was curious as to what he was up to. No luck. If Don Canaberry had stuck around to hear the band he came for, he was staying far below the radar.
By two in the morning, Shade sat at the twenty-four-hour diner with Max, Kevin, Kelly, and Rocky, carefully avoiding their questions about Candi and her father. It wasn’t his story to share.
Candi rushed through the back door. She took several steps and stumbled out of her left shoe. By the time he got his guitar back on the stand to go help her, she’d recovered and had already bounded onto the platform. Whatever Pastor Charles said must have helped. She seemed to be in a lighter mood than the night before.
Kevin and Kelly stopped playing and singing. The song trailed off to an awkward end.
“Don’t stop on my account.” She flipped on her keyboard. “Go ahead with your warm-up.”
Shade pointed toward the timer on the screen where they projected words for the congregation. “We’re about out of time. Do you want to go ahead and pray?”
“Sure. Let’s pray. I have something to tell you all anyway.”
Everyone was slow to form the circle.
Kelly yawned. “Are you all as tired as I am?”
“Yep,” Max answered. “I think we all could use a few more Zs.”
“I slept like a baby,” Rocky said. “For the three short hours I slept.” He reached up to snap his fingers in front of Kevin’s face. “You awake, buddy? Can’t tell if your eyes are open. Looks like you have a marshmallow under each one.”
Carol Ann’s musical laughter filled the air. “Oh please. We’ve been over this. At y’all’s age you can stay up all night and it doesn’t show. Your skin is young and elastic. At my age, however, I still have imprints on my face from my wrinkled pillowcase three hours after I get to work in the morning.” She turned her head and leaned forward. “See? I’m sure I have one of those wicked little sleep creatures right now, and I’ve been up for hours.”
They all laughed as Candi called the group to order. “OK, listen up.”
She clasped her hands in front of her and raised them to her lips. Shade noticed a slight tremor as she took in a couple deep breaths and then seemed to relax.
“First of all, thanks for yesterday. It was phenomenal. The band did an amazing job, and I fully expect a rich harvest from the seeds that were sown.” She paused, opened her mouth to continue, and then stopped. “Sorry. It’s going to take a minute to get this out.”
“Take your time, hon,” Carol Ann said. “It’s not as if they can start church without us.”
“Secondly... I believe I owe you all an explanation about my bizarre behavior last night when my father arrived. He said he would come today, and I don’t think he will, but just in case he does, I want you all to know about him. I should have shared this with you earlier and asked for prayer, but I didn’t know how to do that. I’m beginning to figure it out, and I would appreciate your patience and your prayers.”
“Whatever you need, Candi, you know that,” Rocky said.
Shade didn’t realize he was holding his breath. He choked as he tried to exhale without making a sound. The whole exciting moment put him in mind of the first time he talked at an AA meeting. It wasn’t exactly the same, but he understood what it took for her to speak.
She glanced his way. He prayed she would feel his support.
She started to talk and he held his breath again. The fiercely private and ridiculously guarded Candi Canaberry was about to come clean to her friends.
And nothing encouraged him more.