Wearing My Halo Tilted

by Stephanie Perry Moore

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

With each novel, Stephanie Perry Moore demonstrates a deft touch with spiritual, relationshipdriven fiction. Even the best Christians sometimes wear their halos tilted—especially when dealing with troubled marriages. For Shari and Dillon, fissures have appeared in the bedrock of their union. So when Shari jumps on the chance to get away when her book is adapted into a play, she walks right into temptation. But her husband hasn’t given up on her yet—nor has the Lord!

Release date: January 1, 2010

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 272

Sample

As I balled up on the cold, hardwood floor in our master bedroom, I prayed that my irate husband wouldn’t come back upstairs and haul another lamp across the room, actually hitting me the next time. I was too afraid to budge from the corner, scared that my watery eyes would cloud my vision and I’d accidentally step on the shattered glass. Never in our contented four years of marriage had Dillon become so over-the-top angry that I felt threatened. But one time was one time too many for me to live with a man that handled conflict by screaming at me and punching the wall. I wasn’t going to go through mental drama with him. I had to gather my courage, compose myself, and figure out what was next for me and my girls.

I was so sick of the downward spiral our marriage had been on. For the last six months, Dillon had managed to sleep in numerous places in our three-story contemporary house. Everywhere that was other than beside me. The truth was, he was tired of me asking him to perform his husbandly duties. Was it so wrong that I wanted him?

Maybe I was overreacting, trippin’, or something. Maybe I was blowing this whole thing out of proportion. I was sure there were plenty of women who would love to have a faithful husband like mine. At least Dillon paid all the bills so that I could stay home, raise our two daughters, and write Christian novels. Even though he wasn’t in my bed and his insecurities took from me the best of him, at least he was home.

Four hours earlier when his black Escalade had rolled into our circular driveway, I had no idea asking him to satisfy his wife would cause such trouble.

“Alright, Lord,” I said, realizing I needed to find Dillon and address things rationally. “This isn’t what I signed up for. I’m just twenty-nine and Dillon’s thirty-one. Why are we fighting like this so early in our marriage?”

After I’d finished moping, I quietly opened the door to the closest bedroom to ours, which happened to be occupied by our youngest daughter, Starr. She had just had her first birthday at the beginning of the month. I certainly didn’t want to wake her. I cracked the door just enough to see she was sleeping soundly and that her daddy wasn’t once again sleeping on the floor. I could’ve gone through the bathroom that linked one daughter’s room to our other daughter’s, but mad and upset, I wasn’t thinking. I took the long way around to the other door, which was Stori’s, my three-year-old daughter’s room. Her eyes sparkled as she called out my name.

“Mommy, is it time to get up?” she asked in her most precious voice, which almost made me forget I was furious with her trifling dad.

I walked around her hot pink room and saw she was the only one in her bedroom. I pulled up her covers, kissed her on the forehead, and said, “No, sweetie, it’s not time to get up. Get some rest.”

“Okay, Mommy. Love you.” Stori rolled over and hugged her snow white teddy bear.

My anger seeped back in. Even my daughter had someone to cuddle with.

I continued the search, growing madder with each step. The door to the guest room across from Stori’s was open. However, I could clearly see my husband wasn’t in there. I headed down the winding staircase into the great room and then went to the keeping room. The TV was on, but Dillon wasn’t on our sectional leather couch. There was one other place he could be—his favorite spot—the basement.

With every step I took, I became more and more ill. I thought, Why do I have to be the one that always tries to not go to bed with anger seething? Maybe I wasn’t the only one ready to call it quits. If I have to be alone in our bed, we might as well be separated.

“Shake the thought,” I told myself as I passed the six framed NFL-team jerseys proudly displayed on the stairs. Those shirts quickly reminded me that maybe that was part of his problem.

Dillon was still frustrated about not becoming successful in the league. Though he was there long enough to get vested, he never was a starter. And ever since he’d been cut, because of salary cap reasons, he’d been a little crazy. If it wasn’t mood swings, he was downing other players in the league. For a year, he had no job. Thankfully, we had savings, but mentally he was scarred. Sometimes he went off on me for no reason, or I’d find him in a corner crying alone. Seeing him go through that was unbearable. After finding our way to each other for comfort, we prayed and God came through. His old college coach from the North Carolina Tar Heels who was now head coach at the University of South Carolina, offered him a chance to be a position coach. If that hadn’t happened, who knows where my husband would be.

He’d been out of the league for three years and the coaching world was difficult at best. The Gamecocks last two seasons had been subpar. I knew if they didn’t have a winning season this year, Dillon could be out of a job.

If he did still have issues about not playing pro ball, he didn’t have to take it out on me. Plus, he didn’t need to be stressing anyway. This was June. Football season was coming up in two months. God had blessed him to still be a part of the game. He was known as the best linebacker coach in the Southeastern Conference. Though he wanted to be a coordinator and head coach, this job was a stepping-stone. The chump needed to be grateful. He might not be playing in the league anymore, but at least he had a job. God had blessed him and he needed to get over it.

Flipping on the light switch, I saw his fat, funky self comfortably sitting in his La-Z-Boy with drool sliding down the left side of his face. I pushed his head lightly with one hand, while my other one rested on my hip. The jerk didn’t move.

“What are you doin’?” I screamed, trying to startle him.

He bounced up and became inches taller than me. “Shari, didn’t you get enough of messin’ with me?” he asked, as if he had no intention of apologizing.

He looked meaner than an upset pit bull. But I’d been bummed out too long. I was as ticked off as a struggling single mother who hadn’t gotten paid child support in over a year. My jaw was tight and my eyes were squinted. If I was white instead of the caramel brown sister I was, I would have been red hot.

“I really don’t think we should talk right now. Let me just go to bed. You really need to head upstairs and leave me alone,” he said, clutching my hand and turning me toward the stairway.

I jerked away from him. “Don’t pretend like everything is okay.”

“Don’t bring that up again.” His voice stiffened, like I was the one with the problem because I was mentioning it. “You’re beginning to be a little intolerable. Don’t make a big deal out of it.” He turned away and went to lay back down on the couch.

With frustration, I pouted and headed up to the main floor. I heard Dillon behind me, but I wasn’t waiting on him. When I stepped foot into the kitchen, I decided to let him know that he was no longer welcome in our bed.

Huffing, I sighed. “I hate you. You know what? Don’t even come upstairs. I just need to bring your stuff down here.”

“This is my house. I can go anywhere in it I want to go,” my husband argued back.

“You’re right. It is your house, and it’s mine too. But since we need time apart, let’s be apart for real.”

With eyes more malicious looking than I’d ever seen, he said, “Shari, don’t tell me what to do. I’m grown.”

I was beginning to hate him. I never used those strong words before, but that’s how I felt now. Boy did I wish my current experience was just a nightmare, but this was my reality. I hadn’t really pushed him to please me for months now. He thought everything was cool, but it wasn’t.

“What? Why you standin’ there like that?” he said, looking at the smug glare I’d pasted on my face. “What’s your problem?”

That was all I needed him to ask me. “You’re my problem! You call yourself a good Christian man, but every time I question you on stuff I feel you’re not doing right, you go off on me, screaming and yelling.”

“You’re screaming now,” he cut in.

“I have to scream so that you can hear me! When we do have sex every other month, it’s not that good. I’m not even thirty yet, Dillon. Why are you treating me like you’re gay or something? Are you into me? I don’t understand.”

“You’re pissing me off again, Shari! You better watch your mouth,” he said.

He came closer to me and I backed up. I wanted to be tough, but the sane side of me instantly recalled I wasn’t sure what he was capable of if provoked. The last thing I wanted was to be dead. Who’d take care of my girls with his butt in jail for murder?

“You know why I don’t want to be with you? Because you nag me too much!” he yelled as he punched a picture in the wall. “Go on upstairs and get out of my face!”

As the tears ran down my cheeks once more, we heard a little voice cry out, “Daddy, Daddy, please don’t yell at Mommy.”

Right around the corner was our three-year-old, Stori, trembling uncontrollably. Dillon went over to pick her up, but she ran to me. “No, I want Mommy!”

I knelt down, looked at her, and said, “It’s okay, sweetie.”

Stori cried out, “Mommy, why are you crying?”

I realized I couldn’t even console her. No way could I tell her it would all be better, because frankly I didn’t know. I stood up and looked at him viciously.

I wiped my face. “Don’t be scared. Mommy’s okay.”

I jogged up to my room with Stori in my arms. We laid in my bed, and I didn’t move until she drifted off to sleep. However, I couldn’t rest. I got out of bed and my knees just buckled to the floor, as if my body wanted to cry out to God. I used to pray every night growing up as a child, but when I got married, I stopped. Maybe that was a major reason why I had so much marital turmoil.

My husband was a strong believer. He was an awesome speaker. He’d been discipling some of his players, leading them to the Lord. Why then did it seem he was leading his family more to hell than heaven? We didn’t tithe. He always found some reason or another why our money needed to go somewhere other than God. I’d catch him on the phone lying to people about why he couldn’t make an event he promised to speak at. We didn’t have family meals together anymore, so the girls and I blessed the Lord for our food alone. We didn’t have quiet times like we used to in our dating relationship. We never even prayed together. So in a way, I had strayed away from praying alone.

With a breaking heart, I prayed out, “Lord, you gotta help me. You gotta help us. My heart is turning so hard toward him. Only you can soften it. Or am I supposed to leave him? I know you don’t want this for me.”

I got up off my knees and wiped my cheeks clean. I joined my oldest in bed. Snuggling with my child, I inwardly felt more messed and alone.

“Shari, baby, why you got that mad face on? Smile, girl! You in church!” my eighty-two-year-old grandma said to me, as I sat beside her the next day, in the front pew, reluctantly watching my husband preach at my granddaddy’s small Baptist church.

I’m not saying Dillon was a hypocrite or that all men and women in the pulpit should be perfect. But in my opinion that morning, Dillon McCray should’ve been sitting beside me listening to somebody telling him how to get himself right versus telling other people how to walk with God.

My husband wanted to be a preacher just as much as he wanted to be a head coach. So when my granddad came to him with an opening on youth Sunday, just once a month, Dillon jumped at the chance to see if his passion for the pulpit was legit.

His sermon was taken from Acts chapter one, where Jesus told the disciples to go and be witnesses for Him, but my husband wasn’t a witness at home. He couldn’t even talk to his wife with compassion. He had no business giving advice. If I could’ve gone up into that pulpit and knocked him upside his head so that he would start confessing to everybody he needed to practice what he preached, I would have.

But my grandma had me on lock down. She had her hand on my hand, making sure I didn’t move. Though my grandma was up in age, she had fire. She had spunk. She had wisdom. She had instinct. By the way I squeezed her hand so hard, she knew I was mad at that man I wished wasn’t mine.

“You don’t want the whole congregation to know your business, baby,” she leaned over and whispered to me. “It’s all in your eyes, girl. You hear me?”

I nodded. Even my husband must’ve noticed I was frustrated, because he said what I wanted to hear. He confessed to the congregation that he was frail and weak and needed God just as much as the next man.

But he said, “At least we’re trying. At least our halos are on even if they’re tilted.”

What a crock, I thought. I strongly believed that if the halo wasn’t on straight what was the purpose of wearing it. Some of us needed to quit hiding behind the fact that God gave grace.

Obviously, I was in the minority, because afterward he got huge applause from the members and a bunch of “amens.” When he sat down, he looked at me and smiled. I wish I could say that gesture melted my heart, but it didn’t. I was in God’s house and I had no forgiveness inside my heart. I was only there to keep up appearances. I also came to see my folks. With my grandparents on their last leg, any day could be their last and I didn’t want to ever let them down. But I wasn’t gonna be a hypocrite in the Lord’s place.

A part of me wished I felt differently. I wished I could feel like he did a marvelous job. I wished I felt full that he acknowledged me as his wife at the beginning of his sermon, but that was too small. I was tired of the little crumbs he threw at me every now and then.

Maybe I was selfish and immature for feeling that way. However, I saw no other way to feel. I’d change in a heartbeat if it’d make a difference.

Later we went over to my parents’ house for a big Sunday dinner. My mother loved cooking for her children. Though my dad’s coarse joking usually got on everyone’s nerves, the large spread of two meats, five vegetables, and three desserts would be enough reason for any adult to ignore him.

Stori and Starr loved going over there to see Mama and Papa and play in the playroom designed especially for them. My granddad loved having his family around him for Sunday dinners so that he could tell many stories of days gone by. During dinner, I couldn’t even play the role of Dillon and I being such a happy couple. When Dillon asked me to pass the hot sauce for his collard greens, I did so without looking at him. When he thanked me, “You’re welcome” never parted from my lips.

After dinner, I helped my mother clear the table. For a while she and I cleaned the spacious kitchen in silence. But I knew that would change. She always piped unwanted advice into my life.

“Shari, you know I can see you’re mad at Dillon. Whatever he did, you can’t pout like this.”

I wanted to break the glass she just handed me to dry. My mom had a way of loving me that was unnerving. She always thought that she was giving me medicine I needed, but she always gave me advice that pushed me farther away from her.

Drying the black-iron skillet, I looked at her and said, “You don’t even understand what’s going on in my family. You always think I don’t have a reason to feel anything other than happiness.”

“Shari, you can’t expect marriage to be great everyday. And I know you. If things aren’t perfect you want to bail,” she said, as she stared out the window over the sink to the open field.

I was fuming. Why was she treating me like a child? Those days had passed. If she didn’t notice my curves, I was grown. And I wasn’t going to live my life ignoring any problems that came my way like I’d seen her do over the years with my dad.

She turned to me and said, “I don’t know what’s really going on with you and Dillon, but as hard as you think I am on you, I’m on your side. I know marriage can sometimes be crazy. But you have two little girls.”

“And what does that mean, Mom?” I replied in despair as I went and took a seat at her table.

“Those precious girls don’t need to be walking around here with one parent. You two need to watch what you say around them. Because little Stori told me she heard her dad yelling. I’m not going to ask what it’s about.”

“Well, at least ask me if it’s true. You can’t just believe what my three-year-old daughter tells you,” I said rather sharply.

“Girl, please. She’s too young to have made that up. She simply said what she heard,” my mother said, placing her hand on my shoulder. “Shari, you’ve got to make it work. It’s more than just you two.”

I heard her but I wasn’t really letting her advice seep in. I nodded politely. As soon as Dillon was ready to go, so was I.

As the next few days passed, it was more of the same at my house—me sleeping in one bedroom and Dillon in another. It seemed like it was just me in the marriage. My feelings were all that mattered. Maybe that wasn’t the Christian way to think, but I had to be real with myself. I was in a marriage that I didn’t really want to be in anymore.

Every now and then, I caught myself thinking we could work stuff out. Sometimes he could be tolerable when he cut the grass, ran through the house chasing our girls, or cleaned the house from top to bottom.

The work it out mentality didn’t last long though. He still wasn’t taking care of me. Did he ask me if I wanted a back massage? No. Did he bring me any flowers or offer to cook dinner? Please! And when he did come home from the campus, he was more into his children than wrapping his arms around me. It didn’t appear that he cared to save our marriage, which was more of a reason why I shouldn’t care either.

I was so thankful for my college roommate, Josie Dennis. She had more sass than anyone I knew. I loved her silky milk-chocolate skin. And how come everything she put on looked like it was tailor-made for her size-four frame. Her relationship with God was not that strong. But she was a believer. Plus, Josie was a better person than most preachers around our town. My husband included.

I was so happy she phoned me midweek to have lunch. She worked in corporate America and was holding down six figures. She was my only friend in Columbia, but one true girlfriend was way better than numerous fake associates. When we met to gobble up steaks, I was relieved I had a real forum to vent.

“So your mama said stay with him though she knows he’s crazy, huh?” my girlfriend asked after I filled her in on all that went down.

I nodded my head, chewing on my rare meat. Honestly, I was somewhat embarrassed. I was really considering heeding my mom’s advice. He could get mean again at any time. Why didn’t I have backbone?

“See, that’s why I hate that old school mentality. Telling me because I have two kids I have to stay. Uh-uh. Girl, if it ain’t workin’, we are way too young to be tied down forever in a loveless marriage. Sometimes you just gotta show him. You just gotta walk out and let him know you can live without him. That’ll make him straighten up,” she said, cringing at the sight of my red meat.

“Well, it also sounds like you don’t advise me to stay. But I’m not like you. I don’t make even close to one hundred thousand dollars. How could I support myself?” I said, throwing down my fork and knife.

She placed her hand on my head and said, “You’re working. You’re writing books. You’re doing well enough to survive.”

“Josie, I got one book out. I won’t get another advance until I turn in the next book and if it gets accepted by my editor. And the first book only made me twenty-five thousand dollars. My agent’s shopping deals for me. And even if I do get paid more on my next advance, I’ll have to pay taxes, my agent, my transcriber, and marketing and travel expenses. Really, I won’t see much more than I’m seeing now.”

“Shari, I hear you, but the only thing I’m saying is you need to find a way. You’ve got to make Dillon understand that you’re not going to live like that, ’cause you see men dog out women, leave women, and cheat on women because they feel that we are just weak. And you are not weak, Shari. You have a degree. And if you gotta do something other than write them books, girl, you need to figure it out. Don’t let that man hold you hostage. Particularly when he ain’t treatin’ you right. You’ll b. . .