From the start, our relationship had been arduous and unconventional. But then, like The Velveteen Rabbit, love had made it real. We’d started out as promiscuous unbelievers hungry for faith, and love had made that real too. Now Dinah was wearing an engagement ring as beautifully roughhewn as our relationship.
We attended church together. Twice. But the second time, Dinah left before the service was over. “Why?” I asked in the parking lot. “I just feel so…restrained here,” she said. Calvary Chapel’s no-holds-barred early days had given way to structure and in-depth teaching. Which was fine in my book. But not in Dinah’s. Her book was loud and unpredictable.
The following Sunday she found that book thrown wide open at a Pentecostal church in an old movie theatre. So she took me there. Everyone at Calvary had a Bible. Everyone here had a tambourine. And no one stayed put; they danced where the Spirit led. Some fell down, “slain in the spirit.” Others shouted in tongues. And Dinah, with hands raised and tears streaming from her eyes, couldn’t stop laughing. “Laughing in the Spirit,” she called it. “It’s the freest I’ve ever felt, Mitch. God is setting me free!”
During prayer, she dragged me up onto the stage. Mike, the associate pastor, looked into my eyes, smiled knowingly, and laid his hands on my head. “God wants to heal your anxiety,” he said, “but you have to let him.” I knew then that there was something real going on here. For every person experiencing their own elation, there was another like Dinah, experiencing God’s genuine presence.
Still, I didn’t know how to let go of my anxiety. Yet. But I sensed God would show me in time, and that he would be with me every step of the way. Just as he was with Dinah now. Nevertheless, this wasn’t my cuppa praise. I wanted a more teaching and less dancing.
So we ended up at separate churches, and often didn’t see each other at all on Sundays. Which would have been OK if we saw each other the rest of the week, but… We’d graduated, our college funds had evaporated, and the air was acrid with the smell of debt. Dinah started taking every bottom-of-the-barrel temp job the agencies threw at her.
I would soon direct another community college play, but wouldn’t see a paycheck until semester’s end. Meanwhile, my little school of the arts could barely afford light bulbs. But then Phyllis, a teenage actress I’d been tutoring, told me her high school theatre teacher had quit. Larry the Water Polo Coach, who “once took a drama class,” had agreed to “teach” acting, but not direct plays. So…
The next day, Phyllis introduced me to her high school principal. “You’re hired,” he said. “We’ll pay you to direct two plays; you’ll receive ‘coach pay’ at the end of the semester.” So, I now had two paying gigs, but still wouldn’t see a penny until the end of the year!
I needed a day job. Hmm. I loved animals, so I called a drive-through zoo called Lion Country Safari. But for some reason, my degree in Theatre didn’t qualify me to nurse baby zebras. What else?
Books! The following week, I started work at B. Dalton Bookseller. “If the cover shows a girl running away from a castle, it goes in Romance,” said the manager without a hint of mockery. “And remember, you’re here to sell books, not read them.” The latter got me in trouble more than once. But I redeemed myself by doing a window display featuring a miniature stage set with props. It got customers buzzing and got me a bonus. There was only one problem…
I was working 12-hour days. Other than our sacred Friday Pizza Nights, Dinah and I barely saw each other. This was the woman I was engaged to, with whom I’d shared the most pivotal decision of my life. We’d chosen to be together…
And yet we were always apart.
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