A Couple is Three: The Beginning (book 1 & 2 Completed)

Chapter 26 - One Man, One Woman

Sunday, Winnipeg

Samantha woke up to her alarm radio playing I'm Not Alright by Sanctus Real. The words hit her like a ton of bricks. She wasn't alright. After everything that had happened on Friday night, she had gone into hiding on Saturday. She had gone for her run, worked, and texted with the boys, but otherwise she had hid in her bedroom, coming up with excuses for her parents.

Joy had driven Dawn over to pick up Dawn's car. Since the three of them had been drinking, Samantha had driven them all home and then drove Dawn's car to her own house. Samantha ensured that she wasn't around around when her friends came for the car, instead leaving the keys with her mother for them.

She had been mortified Friday night when Lisa and Dawn had made her relationship with the boys seem sordid and dirty, a scandal waiting to happen. This was why she had told the boys that she wanted to keep it a secret. She didn't want people to look down at her. It was easier to impress people when you keep your dirty laundry out of sight.

She was thankful that she had this song on her phone. She put it on repeat and listened to it as she got ready for church. The words, "I'm not immune, I only want to be loved...Can I lose my need to impress? If you want the truth, I need to confess. I'm not alright. I'm broken inside," became her prayer.

She knew that hiding was not the answer. It didn't matter if people agreed with her relationship or not, whether the church liked it or not, hiding it was even worse, but she couldn't go public yet. She just couldn't. She needed help and she prayed that the sermon that day would speak to her.

Samantha, sitting in a pew with her friends, had been enjoying the church service so far. The music had been speaking and ministering to her troubled soul and heart. She looked down at her bulletin to look at the title of the sermon. They had a guest pastor today as Pastor Shawn, their regular one, was away on holidays. The guest pastor had entitled his sermon, Sexual immorality and marriage.

Her breath caught, concern flooding her system. Was this the answer that she had been praying for? She certainly hoped so and prayed to keep an open mind as the Pastor stood up to speak.

Samantha's heart dropped. Instead of the sermon giving her answers, all it did was confuse her. She knew that this man was a biblical scholar, but the things that he was saying weren't ringing completely true with her despite the fact that he wasn't saying anything that she hadn't heard before. He talked about how God's design for marriage was to be just one man and one woman; that everything else was wrong and not allowed.

He briefly talked about the polygamous relationships in the bible and how God used them to show that they were wrong. He said that each of the men involved had fallen into a spiritual wasteland which had resulted in the plural marriages. He went on to talk about how even though the church had lost the fight against gay marriages, the church still had work to do. The church needed to fight against any further erosion of the institution of marriage and to not recognize the current legal unions of LGBT persons within the church.

It seemed like everyone around Samantha was nodding in agreement with the Pastor. Samantha looked around and wondered where all her caring and compassionate friends had gone. These people, who she loved and looked up to, outside of this building spoke out against injustices. They spent church money and their own to help out the poor. They volunteered to work in the soup kitchens, to help out with street ministries, to push for equal rights based on race, for humane treatment of prisoners, but somehow all that compassion seemed to disappear in the face of the treatment of others who were looking at something other than a one man, one woman relationship.

Samantha didn't know what to do. Her heart said one thing while her brain was on the fence. She didn't feel like there was anything wrong with her relationship with Jake and Josh. They both made her feel safe and secure. She felt...cherished by them. None of that matched up with how the Pastor tried to portray plural marriages. She didn't feel like she was in a spiritual wasteland, if anything, she felt like she was being drawn closer to God.