Layers of Happiness (Episode 3)
As she left, I felt a cold running through my body. My heart was shattered like the family photograph now on the floor. But I had to make it to church.
Layers of Happiness
I had to preach that Sunday. I was heavy, heavy with this new layer of happiness. I didn’t imagine that happiness had other layers.
I didn’t know that happiness could be a bubble in the air, something that travelled into the wind, and then suddenly burst out, exposing the minute things about the relationship.
Like the act of sleep-walking, I motioned to the bathroom, took my bath and motioned back to the bedroom to dress up for the Sunday service.
The service commenced at 9am and it was already 8:45. I simply dashed out of the house, knowing fully well that I was already late for the opening hymn that signaled the commencement of the church service.
I was some miles away from the church when I heard the choir’s voice echoing right into my ears. The lyrics of the hymn they sang telegraphed into my ears thus:
O happy day that fixed my choice
On thee, my Saviour and my God
Well may this glowing heart rejoice
And tell its raptures all abroad.
But it was not a happy day for me. The song contradicted my state, it contradicted my emotional being. And I began to cry for the first time that morning.
I knew what the church says about divorce and I couldn’t fathom the reaction of the Senior Pastor. As I drew closer to the church, I began to show indifference. I just fixed my gaze on nothingness and I mind was just crowded with several thoughts.
The senior pastor had given me the sermon for today but my mouth was heavy. But I had to preach. I walked to the pulpit after the choir ministration at about 11am into the service.
And I began to preach. The message was titled the “the danger of self.” Then I began my explication on the nature of the self and how it could affect the whole human existence. I quoted from the book of Galatians chapter five verse nineteen to twenty. And there was a pin-drop silence in the church as I stammered through the message.
Momentarily, I asked the congregation to shout hallelujah in the middle of the message to essence me of the emptiness and the uneasiness that had bedeviled my morning.
And then, Ruth walked into the church. And it appeared I had a goose pimple on my heart, rising beyond the normal ones, almost ripping my heart out, almost covering me as a cloud.
But I continued to preach, though Ruth began to walk towards me, to the pulpit. And when she got to the front row of the church, she stopped. By now, she had drawn the attention of the congregation to herself.
“This man, your pastor,” pointing her finger at the direction of the pulpit, “is an infertile animal,” she screamed at the congregation.
“And I can’t stay with him again” she proudly asserted her stand.
Immediately, the church was in a disarray.
To be continued in the next episode…
Also read: Layers of Happiness (Episode 2)
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