Shortly after moving back to Maine, I was sitting before the Lord one morning and I asked, "Lord, when are you going to do what you promised me?"
He said, "I already have."
That said absolutely nothing to me, there was no way I had any clue what he meant. Until the phone rang.
It was my daughter Sherry. She had asked if she could stay with Bob until the end of the school year, and I had agreed because she had friends, and was into youth group, I couldn't see any harm in allowing her to finish that semester. Oddly, Elie and Van, and another couple I was close to, were up in arms. "NO WAY should you let her stay with that man!" they all said together. "Why are you talking to me like that? I'm letting her stay to finish the semester. He's her father." "NO WAY should you go along with this." "Well, I've already told her she could and she's there now. She'll come home when school gets out. My friends were absolutely adamant and angry and warning and yelling, but I did not understand why they were acting this way.
Until I was back in Maine on that fateful day when the phone rang. It was my daughter. She told me that a woman had moved into the house with a child, and that the child had run to Bob crying, "Papa!" My daughter was in shock. Who is this woman? Who is this child and why is she calling my father "Papa?"
I was silent on the phone. I couldn't speak. Then my daughter said, "Mum, there's more." "More?" "Yes, he's married to her. He was married to her even while you were still living here."
There isn't a word in the English language that can adequately describe the destruction of a human soul. I felt my insides split, come apart. I said, "I'm going to hang up now." And I went into that numb place. Only ...I knew that that numb place was a temporary thing my body does when it goes into shock.
I picked up the phone and called Elie and Van. Van answered. I said, "Van, you aren't going to believe this. Bob is married."
Van answered, "Paula, we've known about her for five years."
I'm not going to go on with the rest of this story, because reliving it is too horrible. There was more to come. A lot more. But not now.
