Strongholds

Book 0: Blessed Trinity

by Vanessa Davis Griggs

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

Vanessa Davis Griggs combines Terry McMillan sass and Jan Karon spirituality in the second part of her moving Blessed Trinity trilogy about a congregation striving to gain Heaven while struggling with earthly concerns. Pastor George Landris has a monumental mandate for his flock. He wants them to cast off their strongholds (i.e., their weaknesses), and this sets off a flurry of soul-searching and repentance with humorous and poignant results.

Release date: May 1, 2010

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 384

Sample

When God told me to write this book, I was instructed not to deal with it from a sin standpoint but from a stronghold standpoint. I wrote the first chapter that same day and put it away not knowing what God’s plans would be in delivering this to the people. I fasted and prayed and listened to the voice of God as I proceeded to write it. My prayer now is that it will be a blessing to millions.

I have acknowledged people in previous books, and truthfully, I wasn’t sure whether I would do the same in this one. But I must send my eternal love to my mother, Mrs. Josephine Davis, who has faithfully been in my corner, praying for me, believing God’s best for my life from the time I was in her womb until this day. Thank you, Mama. To my father, Mr. James Davis Jr., who continues to teach me what perseverance really is about. He is a man who refuses to let obstacles or setbacks (namely a stroke in 2000 that left him with limited use of his left side) stand in his way of doing what he sets his mind to.

Editor Rakia A. Clark: You came onboard at Kensington/ Dafina as my editor well after I had turned in this book. I want to thank you for your attitude and the work you have done, having inherited an author (me) that you honestly didn’t choose. Rakia, you made this process one I could feel good about, and I thank you so much for that.

To my family and friends: husband, Jeffery; children Jeffery Marques, Jeremy Dewayne, and Johnathan LeDavis Griggs; grandchildren Asia and Ashlynn; sisters, Danette Dial and Arlinda Davis; sister-in-law, Cameron; brothers Terence Davis and Emmanuel Davis; cousin Mark Davis; and friends Rosetta Moore, Vanessa L. Rice, Zelda Oliver-Miles, Linda H. Jones, Marilyn Davis, Stephanie Perry Moore, Bonita Chaney, Pamela Hardy; and the members of The WBRT Society book club in Gadsden, Alabama, please know that I love and appreciate all of you more than words can ever relay.

To those of you who are blessing me by choosing Strongholds, I offer you a heartfelt thank you. I’ve said this before and I’ll continue to say it: Without you there to receive it, what I do as a writer really doesn’t matter much at all. As always, I do love hearing from you, and I appreciate your continuing to spread the word about my books. May you walk in God’s exceedingly, abundantly, above-all-you-can-ever-ask-or-think blessings!

 

Vanessa Davis Griggs

 

www.VanessaDavisGriggs.com

Hear the voice of my supplications, when I cry unto thee, when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle.

—Psalm 28:2

Fatima

There comes a time in your life when you just get tired of pretending. Get tired of wearing a mask. You know the mask I’m talking about. The one you put on to make people think you’re fine when you’re not. The mask that helps to cover parts of the real you—the you that you don’t want anyone else to even know exists.

Fatima Adams is my name. But I have a feeling I could easily substitute your name for mine and you’d know the story. That’s if you’d be honest and fess up. Now tell me this doesn’t sound familiar to you: you live your life hoping no one discovers the real you, because if they did, you figure, they might surely not care to know you. Or worse: you’re afraid someone is going to find out you’re a fraud…a fake. That you’ve been acting out a script (oh, we all have individual scripts created just for our character) that no one forced upon you, except you.

Sure, you want to tell me right now that that’s not you. You’ve always had it together. Or better yet: the way you are is actually someone else’s fault. Now if you are one of those rare folks who happens to be perfect and always has been, then far be it from me, this imperfect being, to say anything to you. But as I stand here at the altar on this sunny Sunday morning in March (although it’s not a true altar like in biblical days), I see at least four other people I personally know who had the guts to come forward when the pastor called for those who wanted to break the strongholds off their lives.

“Take off your mask today, won’t you?” forty-five-year-old Pastor George Landris pleaded. “God already knows the true you. Don’t be so caught up in what other people think that you miss your opportunity to be set free. For whom the Son sets free, is free indeed.”

I knew he was talking to me. As I glanced at the crowd surrounding me, it became quite apparent that I was not the only one he was speaking to either. Who would know that I-got-it-all-together Fatima Adams—a thirty-one-year-old Christian woman with a knock-out body; perfect hairdo every single time I step out of my three-story, brick house; designer labels gracing me from head to toe; incredible-paying job that affords me the kind of money where I don’t even need a man to take care of me—who would know that I am deeply and hopelessly in love with a married man.

“You don’t have to tell me or anyone else what you’ve done or are doing right now that has caused you to come up here,” Pastor Landris said as he bounced on the balls of his feet. “God already knows whatever it is. But this…this is about you getting things right between you and God.”

Yes, Pastor Landris is right. God already knows. And He knows that I’m not just in love from a distance with a married man; I’m committing consistent fornication while my Mr. Right is committing adultery. Look at him sitting there with his wife as though that’s where he belongs instead of up here alongside me trying to get himself right with God!

“What’s wrong with us being together?” Darius had asked when guilt hit me after the first time we were intimate. “I can’t help it I fell in love with you. Neither one of us sought this out. And God knows that. Besides, I’m planning to make things right with you someday. Soon. I just need a little time.”

Yeah, and “soon” was some three years ago. I’ve tried to walk away. I’ve prayed so hard to God to help me. I even managed to break it off with Darius Connors—the true classic of a tall, dark, and handsome, oh Lord, handsome specimen of a man. He seemed crushed but claimed he understood my convictions and admired me even more for them.

“Fatima, I’ll respect your wishes if you really want me to leave you alone,” Darius said seven months ago. “God knows I wouldn’t ever want to do anything to hurt you. Not ever.”

For three weeks, like a champ, I pushed through the withdrawals of being without him, marking off my mental calendar the number of days behind me as each one passed. But I couldn’t wrestle thoughts of him out of my mind, nor could I manage to uproot him from my heart. And on the third day of the fourth week, there at my front door, he stood.

“Please leave. Please,” I begged him. “I can’t do this anymore with you.”

“Fatima, I will be happy to leave.” He looked at me with those eyes that always made me feel like I was instantly melting. “Truthfully,” he said, “I didn’t come for you.”

My heart fell to the ground with those words. I’m just being honest. It’s okay he was honoring my wishes to leave me alone. But couldn’t he at least pretend like I meant something special to him, make me believe this was as hard for him as it was for me?

After what seemed to be a long pause, he said it.

“Fatima, I didn’t come here for you. I only came here today, to get back my heart. That’s it. I just need to get back my heart.”

These words—I probably don’t have to confess—caused me to fall right back into his arms again.

Literally and figuratively—I fell.

But today…today, Pastor Landris spoke about strongholds and being truly set free. I’m tired of sitting by the phone waiting to hear Darius’s voice, practically willing the phone to ring only for days to pass (sometimes weeks) before he could finally “break away” to be able to call me. I’m tired of not being able to go out in public or to popular events with him because “word might get out” and “ruin things for us both.” Translation: mostly ruin things for him.

I’m tired of spending days upon weeks alone when I could have someone who loves me, someone willing to pledge himself to me and only me. I do deserve to be number one in someone else’s life. Not the spare tucked conveniently away inside some old, dark trunk. But out front—chromed in, with, and surrounded by the good things of life.

God, please…please, God—You have to help me. Please. You just have to!

Desiree

Personally, I don’t think I am totally responsible for my present condition. I have determined—although for the life of me I can’t get a doctor to confirm this or agree with me—that I have a serious allergy and my problem stems merely from an allergic reaction.

I’m allergic to meat, starches, and sweets. Whenever I eat any of these things, my body begins to blow up like a balloon. And since my alternatives for food consumption are vastly limited, my body has no alternative but to continue to manifest this reaction.

My dilemma originated with my smoking. Now I’m a constant eater instead. My stronghold seems to be that I must have something in my mouth at all times to be content. The pattern has held: when I smoke, I don’t eat much; when I eat, I don’t feel the need to smoke.

You should have seen me when I was a chain smoker. I was top-model thin, but of course, that was way back when. Then I started seriously considering what cigarettes were doing to my body, and I said, “Desiree Houston, if you don’t love yourself enough to put an end to this, then who will?”

Boy, did I sound just like my mother when I heard those words come out of my mouth. I’d seen this woman I’d known growing up, all hooked up to a tank she had to carry around with her everywhere she went because she’d smoked. I realized if I continued to smoke, that might be my fate. It hit me like a ton of bricks how cigarettes were actually killing me, and I had somehow become an unsuspecting accomplice to the plotting of my own murder. Yeah, I could blame tobacco companies for adding addictive additives in order to keep me as a profitable customer (for as long as I lived, that is), but that was too much of a cop-out even for me to go out like that.

So I turned my attention to food, and not just any kind of food either. Maybe it’s just me, but I happen to like the kind that tastes good. Why is it the foods that taste the best also happen to be, most times, the ones containing megacalories?

Yes, I know all about calorie counting, glycemic loads, fat intake, carbohydrates, and the benefits of fiber. If there is a diet out there, you can believe we’ve probably met. Let’s see, there was the Cabbage Soup Diet (yeah, that one makes you want to run right out and sign up for membership), the Lazy Zone Diet, the Atkins, Scarsdale, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Hilton Head, South Beach (which was a lot like Atkins only this diet says to lay off the bad fats as opposed to piling them on), the Two-Day Diet, the 3-Day Diet, the 7-Day All You Can Eat Diet (now you know I tried this one!), the 3-hour Diet, the One Good Meal Diet, the Chicken Soup Diet (sure, you can eat whatever you want for breakfast but it’s chicken soup, their recipe of course, for the rest of the day), the Metabolism Diet, the Russian Air Force Diet, the Grapefruit or Fruit Juice Diet, the Amputation Diet (don’t ask, I wasn’t even interested enough to look into that one further, although I do believe in stripping down to the bare essentials before stepping up on anyone’s scale), the low-fat, no-fat, low-carb, no-carb diet, and my all-time favorite—the Chocolate Diet.

Did you know on the Chocolate Diet you can have pasta and popcorn in addition to eating chocolate? Breakfast is always fresh fruit and fruit salad (sounded like the same thing to me, but I worked with it), shredded wheat with nonfat milk and strawberries. Morning snack is popcorn and fruit. Lunch is salad, pasta salad (low-calorie dressing, which goes without saying), and spaghetti. Afternoon snack is popcorn, vegetables (they suggest cutting them into sticks—don’t even ask me why), and a fruit smoothie made from blending one half a frozen banana, a half cup of frozen peaches or whatever fruit you like with one cup of nonfat skim milk. Dinner is fettuccini with garlic tomato sauce (I’m getting hungry just thinking about it), whole wheat pasta primavera, salad, and steamed vegetables. The evening snack consists of popcorn and (here’s the best part) up to one ounce of chocolate. And on all the diets, I can have all the water I can (and can’t) stand to drink.

So here I stand in front of this preacher with dreadlocks feeling drawn to bring my true burdens to the Lord and leave them. That’s one of the reasons I grabbed my husband, Edwin’s, hand and dragged him to the altar along with me. Cause and effect.

My husband (the cause) actually drives me to smoke or overeat (the effect).

I know you think I’m playing the blame game here, but it was Edwin’s actions that caused me to start smoking in the first place. Okay. See, he’s an obsessive gambler, bets on everything from the office pool to the lottery (there’s no lottery in Alabama but that doesn’t stop him and a slew of others from crossing the state lines to get tickets).

We’ve been married for twelve years, and of those twelve years, he’s left me almost every night, including our honeymoon night on the cruise, for some kind of gambling event. No, I am not exaggerating: every night. Mondays through Thursdays, he goes to the dog track; then on Friday nights, he catches a bus down to Mississippi to the bright lights casino and stays until Sunday afternoon. Most of the weekend, you can find him at either the blackjack table or pulling on some lady luck’s steel black arm trying to get three things to come up a match so he can win some money—big or small.

“You don’t have to pull an arm on a machine anymore, Baby-cakes,” Edwin said one day when we were discussing this. “Now you can push a button on the front of the machine and it does the same thing.”

“Whatever, Edwin! Pull, push, it’s still gambling, and it’s still a sin,” I said.

“That’s commandment number what?” he said, folding his arms across his chest as he smiled. “Show me chapter and verse where it says gambling is a sin. Show me.”

I stood with both hands on my hips and just stared at him. He knew he had me; we had been around this mountain several times before. I’d searched the Bible and even posed the question to several preachers for some biblical assistance, to no avail. There was one preacher who took a scripture out of context and tried to make it work for gambling. That dog wouldn’t hunt in my sight, and I was an easy mark. Another preacher talked about how the Roman soldiers gambled (cast lots) for Jesus’s robe. That was his feeble attempt to make it fit the bill. And yet another preacher pointed to a scripture, making the claim that we’re not supposed to receive something for practically nothing.

O-k-a-ay.

“You can’t, can you? You can’t show me anywhere in the Bible where it specifically states that gambling is a sin,” Edwin said as he smirked. “Now, smoking on the other hand, which literally destroys the temple—your body—and gluttony of food, again which can destroy the temple—your body—are different matters. I can prove those.”

“I’ve quit smoking and you know that,” I said, letting my hands hang limp by my side, a clear admission of defeat.

“Yeah, and when you finally did stop, you seemed determined to eat us out of house and home, as if—no matter how hard—it would be the last thing you’d do.”

“Edwin, don’t you dare harp on my weight! I declare, I’m not in the mood today.”

“So I guess that means you’ve either started another grand diet or just finished one?” He opened the refrigerator door. “What’s the name of this one, Baby-cakes?”

“Edwin, don’t try to change the subject. We were talking about your gambling problem.” I watched him as he took out the strawberry cheesecake I’d pushed all the way to the back of the refrigerator so I wouldn’t be tempted. He took it out and practically whizzed it around the room like it was his dancing partner, making sure he passed my way twice before he did a dip with it. “Besides,” I said, “you drive me to do what I do.”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault?” He sliced the cheesecake and placed it in a saucer. When he placed it in his mouth, he made a moaning sound. “Baby-cakes, you know you can outdo yourself. This has got to be the best strawberry cheesecake you’ve ever made.”

“And you have the nerve to ask how it’s your fault?” I walked over to the refrigerator, opened it, took out some prepackaged carrots and broccoli florets, and proceeded to chomp unenthusiastically on them.

“Yes, how is it my fault? I don’t force you to smoke or to overeat. You just need a little willpower, that’s all. You can’t blame me because you don’t have any.”

“Willpower, huh? You mean like you don’t have the willpower to stop gambling?” I said. “That’s how you force me to smoke and eat. You’re gone practically every night, Edwin, and most of the weekend. I’m here all alone with nothing to do but watch television and think. My nerves are practically shot from worrying about bills that keep piling up and seemingly getting further and further behind.”

He placed another fork full of cheesecake in his mouth and closed his eyes as he shook his head and smiled. “Well, I bet you I can stop gambling anytime I choose to. I just have never chosen to.”

“Yeah, well, I can stop smoking and bingeing whenever I choose to, but I-I-I…”

“I what, Desiree?” He looked up at me and grinned.

“I guess, I guess…” I felt a tear stinging my eyes. “I guess—you know what, Edwin? I don’t care anymore! Keep gambling! Forget the fact that you’re taking money out of our home and losing it or that you’re leaving me home all alone. You don’t care? Fine, I’m through talking to you about it! You’ve never won any great amount of money, yet you keep thinking and believing you’re going to hit that ‘big one’ because you were ‘so close’ the last time. But you never do! Okay, fine. Have it your way!” I looked at the remaining carrots and broccoli, threw them in the garbage can, and stormed out of the kitchen.

So here at the altar, Edwin and I now stand, holding hands like everything is peachy-keen between us. Suddenly, I realize his hand is clammy, and it’s at this precise moment that he gently squeezes my hand with three gentle pumps. And I, understanding this unspoken message, can’t help but to smile.

Edwin

Desiree grabbed my hand and started for the front of the church before I could protest. I might have put up a better fight, but she caught me totally off guard. Although in truth, I was already debating whether or not I should go up there. Normally, I wouldn’t have even been at church, but my money was acting funny for the bus trip down to Mississippi this weekend. I hung around Birmingham and went to the dog track instead of my usual three-hour ride to the bright lights of the casino.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t have anything against the dog track. In fact, I’m pretty much a regular Monday through Thursday. But I love being able to feel like I have more control over whether I win or not. Holding those cards and making the decision to stay with what I have or letting the dealer hit me again can be such a rush. Or being able to wrap my hand around that black stick on the slot machine and pull it just right, or push the button with precision as I wait for those blessed three symbols to stop one at a time; that’s pure skill with just a tad of luck. That’s me being the captain of my destiny.

With the dogs and the horses, I’m left trying to figure out which animal is going to do its job on that day or other factors I have no control over. Like that time that one crazy dog broadsided that other dog. Now, who could have predicted something like that in advance? And I had that trifecta straight, too: 2–5–7. Right up to the finish line, almost, it was 2–5–7. Then five seconds before they crossed, that crazy number four dog came out of nowhere and clipped the seven dog. Well, seven flipped and rolled, hitting the number five dog. Yeah, you guessed it: the number two dog stumbled, although I have to give him his props; he did try to recover. The trifecta came 4–1–2. Paid $8,267.

I almost had that one also. My ticket said two with one and four, which meant the number two had to come first with the one and four coming in second or third (any order) after the two dog. For four more dollars, I could have boxed those numbers and they could have come in any order and I would have won. But I was so doggone sure about the two.

That’s what I was trying to tell Desiree. I do this for us. Imagine how happy she would have been had I won that money. A few of our financial troubles could have been taken care of with that. She . . .