CW: GORE

Mara first met Thomas in the lobby of Cross Chapel, a few minutes after service had let out. They reached for the coffee stand’s half-and-half at the exact same time, and within minutes Thomas was telling Mara his testimony: how he had been running an ‘all-girl revue’ in the city, until one late cocaine-bender night the previous spring when he hit rock bottom and felt the call of God on his life. Now he had dedicated himself to the Good News.

Mara was captivated by his green eyes and fierce conviction. She had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nothing special, and she’d driven to the Cross Chapel on the outskirts of Sin City that morning because she felt lost. Directionless. When he told her his vision to build a new church in a new city, everything in her suddenly wanted to be a part of it.

Within two months they were engaged, and after four more they were married by the lead pastor of Cross Chapel, who was overjoyed to know Thomas aspired to be a pastor himself. Less than a year after their lobby meet-cute, the couple left Las Vegas, following Thomas’s vision to plant a Cross Chapel in South Florida.

They birthed their church in the rented back parlor of a funeral home, relying solely on prayer and word of mouth to advertise it. The first week they held service, there were only two attendees, including the worship guitarist. But Thomas was a charismatic speaker, and news spread fast. The congregation went from eighteen, to sixty-two, to over two hundred: the church body overflowed the funeral home and moved to an auditorium at Sunrise Middle School. They began to have volunteer teams, for music and childcare and even making pots of coffee. Mara saw with wonder that everything was happening exactly as Thomas had described it, and even more quickly than she had believed possible.

She knew little of what it meant to be a pastor’s wife, but she was determined to support the vision any way she could. She filled in everywhere, watching the preschoolers one week and setting up chairs the next. She was the first one to arrive with Thomas in the morning, and the last one to leave, long after he had gone to lunch with whichever congregant had requested his presence. Among her other projects, she determined to make breakfast for their volunteers, and she was scraping a large pan of scrambled eggs the day middle-aged Marjorie came up to ask why Cross Chapel had no Women’s Ministry.

Mara knew Marjorie had been in churches a long time, perhaps her whole life, and the older woman’s care comforted her. She entreated Marjorie to help start it, and soon a full group had agreed to serve in the Women’s Ministry, many of them decades Mara’s senior. It gave Mara such relief to know she would have women around her for support and mentorship. After the loneliness of moving across the country to follow Thomas’s vision, she had so many questions and feelings.

The first thing the Women’s Ministry established was a Bible study, which met every Tuesday morning at Mara’s house. The first thing they told Mara—lovingly, of course—was of her sacred duty never to talk about herself, only about the Good News.

Within a year of the Women’s Ministry forming, it and the rest of Cross Chapel outgrew their building once again, and the tithe money was such that they could buy a building of their own. Thomas had begun to speak at conferences in and out of town, with his down-to-earth preaching style earning more converts by the day. At times Mara only saw him at church and in their bed. But in fairness, these were sometimes the only two places she’d go all week.

At the start of Advent season, the women gathered to decorate the tree that would serve as the lobby’s focal point. When they pulled the last ornament from the box, they discovered it to be missing a hanger, and looked to Mara. Thinking fast, she plucked a strand of her blonde hair and looped it through the ornament, to the women’s admiration. After hanging it, she stepped back and gazed with pleasure at the serene golden angel on top.

The following year, the church bought an even larger Christmas tree, and during their pre-service decorating the women helped themselves to so many strands from Mara’s head that she began to feel dizzy from the pulling. When she went forward to take communion, she retched and had to clap her hands over her mouth to avoid losing the bread and grape juice altogether. The women looked on from the balcony with horror. “What a shame,” Marjorie murmured, “that she couldn’t show more reverence when partaking of the Body.”

When Mara returned home from Bible study that evening, Thomas demanded to know how she could have done such a thing to her hair right before the Christmas Eve service—the night when they’d be visible to the full church body at once, not to mention all of the twice-a-year Christians. Mara wordlessly walked to their bathroom and stayed there until she had worked her hair into a presentable state.

At the Christmas Eve service, a few of the women came up and handed her a package wrapped in “JOY!” paper, repeatedly expressing that they wanted to bless her because of just how much of a blessing she was in their lives. Inside lay a day planner, already partially filled out with each of their names on different dates and times. What days remained to her were claimed in the weeks and months to follow, each time by a woman who “just wanted to talk.” They just talked, and Mara just listened.

Mara had her first baby, closely followed by her second—a boy and a girl. The women came in a steady stream to her house, bringing home-cooked meals after each birth. When Mara had finished breastfeeding her daughter for the last time, the women appeared at her door again, two of them holding chef-grade butcher knives brought from their own kitchens. “You won’t need these anymore, dear,” the women explained as they laid Mara on the kitchen island and began to saw her breasts off. “They will only get in the way.” Women from the Quilting Ministry sewed up Mara’s wounds with a pure white thread as others placed the severed breasts in sacks of modest burlap. Mara wondered in a daze where the thread had been back when they were hanging Christmas ornaments, but said nothing. Just as soon as they had appeared, the women were gone, leaving behind one last casserole. 

Never wasteful of church resources, the quilters brought the breast-sacks to the church’s new production studio, where the cameramen used them as sandbags. During video recordings, the sacks beautifully kept the lights they trained on Thomas’s made-up face from falling over.

When the church moved into an even larger building, Thomas chose a corner office surrounded on the outside by foliage, for privacy. His assistant calendared his meetings, radio and TV program appearances, and the many individual counseling sessions he offered. As time went on, the counseling sessions he chose to take in his office became more frequent, especially those with young female congregants.

One week at the women’s Bible study, Mara turned to the person sitting next to her—a girl of about twenty-two who was new to the church—and whispered “I’m so lost.” The girl smiled and replied, “As we all are without Jesus!”

When the news first broke of Thomas’s affairs, the women came to Mara’s porch and wept and begged for her to speak on his behalf, to show the church a united front. She stood on the other side of her screen door and said nothing.

When the tally of Thomas’s indiscretions reached too high of a number to be managed, the elders of Cross Chapel quietly forced him to resign. The following month, Thomas left his family to take an apartment near his new job, at a nightclub on Miami Beach. 

The Cross Chapel leadership updated the “About” page of the church website to say nothing of the past or the church’s founding, only of a hopeful future. The newly elected lead pastor, James, was bright, charismatic and free of scandal. His wife had a perfect smile and hardly ever spoke—the women lovingly described her as a “meek and quiet spirit.”

The last time Mara stepped foot in Cross Chapel, weeks after her husband’s disgrace, she marched wordlessly to the studio door and rummaged in the equipment closet until she found the sacks that held her breasts. As she turned to leave, an intern saw her and cried out, “Wait! Those are church property!” Unheeding, Mara ran out the West Entrance and all the way through the parking lots. As soon as her feet touched ground that wasn’t church property, she let out a scream she’d been holding in for years.

The next day Mara drove to California, as though on a mission, with her two small children and her two breast-bags. Within a month, she’d set up shop as a strip-mall esthetician.

***

When the greeters stand at the doors of the East and West Entrances of Cross Chapel on Sunday mornings, three times per morning, nothing in the pamphlets they smile and offer says anything of the couple who started it all. The only real hint, if you listen closely, is the way their every “Good morning!” echoes the register and intonation of Mara’s former voice, welcoming people to service at the funeral home decades before.

Churchgoers give friends they invite from work and school and their neighborhoods tours of the grounds, stopping to tell stories about the different acquisitions—the skate ramps donated from an outreach event to the youth, the fully equipped cafe and restaurant, the production studio that broadcasts their services worldwide. No one who knows the church’s history ever points out the remnants of its past: the scraped skin under the prim paint of the sanctuary walls, the bloodstains blending into the crimson carpet. 

Because the only thing they want to share is good news.