Sally sat in the front row. The sanctuary sat empty. Forty-four years had dragged her through the real pain of imagined threats. Spiritual pitfalls hadn’t fallen through on their promise of destruction.
Her lips betrayed her as she said, “I made it all up.”
But it had all been made up long before 1967 in a hospital just outside of Chicago when Sally was torn from the comforts of the womb.
Her heart shushed her lips and spoke in retort, “Go easy on yourself. You only repeated it.”
And, as she walked out, her soul did her one better with a whisper, “And you don’t have to believe it.”
Half her congregation felt abandoned. The other half never so free.
And the man who made Sunday coffee had nowhere to go.