Janie and I dropped out of seminary after two years, and I proudly took my new girlfriend back to the Pacific Northwest with me to recapture the magic that was the inspiration for my coming to the seminary in the first place. I was twenty-five years old, Janie was a year younger. I learned in my theology classes the Bible says it is more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, or something like that. I’m here to tell you it is more difficult to recapture magic once you’ve given it two years of sabbatical than it is for that same camel to pass through the eye of a west Texas tornado. Snow-capped majestic Mt. Rainier still loomed over Seattle, gigantic evergreens welcomed us to the Evergreen state of Washington, the skies were as blue as ever – but two years can create a seismic change in magic.
We both found jobs without difficulty, but neither had work related to our two years of sacred music studies which gave us both a nagging feeling of wasted time, even failure. Janie began working as a secretary for a private school which had tenuous connections to a nondenominational church while I was hired to be the assistant controller for a hotel supply firm as the result of my CPA background. Music was born again when we joined my former church family at Mercer Island Baptist where we became minor celebrities singing duets at the suggestion of the church pianist there which led to mini concerts in other Southern Baptist churches in the area, eventually singing at the Northwest Baptist Convention in Portland, Oregon which was a realtively big deal in Baptist circles. Our voices that separated us into the soprano and alto sections in the Southwestern Singers at the seminary blended together in rich harmony, but the other parts of our lives were filled with bitter discord the year we lived in Seattle.
Sometimes magic works against music and takes devious twists. My infatuation with the sultry Sherry, the volunteer music and youth director at Mercer Island Baptist, returned but this time I had an outright affair with her that I confessed to Janie who knew something was definitely wrong. She wisely left me to return to the seminary which gave me easier access to Sherry who then promptly moved back to a safer space with her husband and three children in Abilene, Texas where her parents lived. Well deserved heartbreak for me.
I quickly found solace in the arms of another older married woman in the little Baptist church on Mercer Island – this time with the minister’s wife who was in her early forties. We were together one night in the parsonage while her husband was out of town when the phone rang. I was in the bedroom but overheard her talking to Sherry and understood their relationship had been an intimate one. When I confronted her, she revealed she and Sherry had had an affair for years. With Sherry in Texas she realized now she loved me and was ready to leave her husband to run away with me. I was twenty-six years old, in water far too deep with women who liked to play games with my emotions, and I couldn’t swim.
Janie was my salvation. She called and told me she was moving to Columbia, South Carolina to accept a position for the Women’s Missionary Union of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. I had never heard of Columbia but knew I had made a mess of my life. I begged Janie for forgiveness for my sins and asked her to give me a second chance which she did. I resigned my position as the controller for the hotel supply company in Seattle, put gas in my faithful Buick Skylark, and began the 3,000 mile journey across the country by myself. I was ready for a different ocean and a different church.
I'll Call It Like I See It 