Church, Again

 

A local IFB church near my old house that had beaucoup of trouble too bizarre to detail involving a child molesting pastor.

I am sitting here in all amusement watching Jim rush about madly trying to make everyone involved with his new church happy. I'm not dressed for church, I'm sitting here in my old cotton granny nightgown drinking coffee and listening to the phone conversations. He just said to me that perhaps he's too nice of a guy. You think?

All this started earlier in the week when Velma, the older lady who likes to use our hot tub but has no idea how it gets hot, visited for another hot tub bout. Jim mentioned something about picking up Dave for church too, and she lost it on him, screeching she WOULD NOT ride into town, with Jim driving of course, to pick up Dave. Did I mention it's only about six minutes out of their way?

Now I'm not as nice as Jim and that same afternoon I had an unfriendly exchange with Velma who started bemoaning that the virus is a hoax and she's not getting vaccinated. Fine. She started complaining that both Jim and I are now vaccinated and it's a micro chip slipping mind control thing that the Democrats are up to. When forcefully stated that all liberals needed to be executed I looked at her and said, "But Velma, would you really like to see Jim and I executed?"

Up until that moment neither Jim nor I had ever revealed our political biases. Nodding dumbly through screeds on why Trump was returning in August, anti vax lies and other inanities spilling from her lips. Me, because I can see how old she is and she's possibly not in her right mind. Jim, because he has been taught to be polite to strangers. 

I'm not sure what Velma holds against Dave, but I myself avoided Dave at first. Why? Because the most uptight Evangelical I know here was all insano for Dave to come. Dave has a Fundagelical podcast, was involved with Calvary Chapel, has written oodles of Christian books and is classified by this guy as a world expert in his favorite flavor of fundamentalism. I talked to Dave a few times, getting some sort of garbled story about a Mercedes that was crashed or trashed here or there that made no sense as to why he's living here with no car. So I continued to mostly avoid Dave, pegging him for just another very effed up fundagelical.

Although Dave  has gone up in my esteem several zillion notches by his refusal to keep attending the mens breakfast Bible study group that is roughly now a end of this world as we know it circle jerk. They're verklemting about End Times! He and Jim no longer attend.

This morning Jim was fielding calls from Dave, from Velma, from our neighbor and friend down the street that leads church at this new church, from the Covid happy pastor. Everyone wants rides, everyone had different time frames and places, and Jim, people pleaser that he is was trying madly to accommodate everyone rather unsuccessfully..... I can see I'm going to have to talk to him this afternoon about the personal power of saying "NO!"

Le sigh, and I need to pop a xanax because Velma will soon be here to use the hot tub, and I'm not looking forward to the conversations. Before I can talk to Jim about saying no to the hot tub use three times a week. Before the power of no.

This morning he ended up running our friend/neighbor to church early on. Going to get Dave and the person Pastor Covid called about and taking them to church before he went back and picked up Velma. He's not a freaking Uber and a Pirata Taxi is cheap cheap. 

With Covid rates hovering around 2,500 new cases a day here I'm not going to be attending in person church for quite a while. I'm not at all sure what's going to happen. We have plane tickets to fly out to the States soon, but I'm worried, vaccinated or not, because with the way rates are climbing I am thinking we might soon see closed borders again.

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