CHAPTER 9

WILLA

Getting to know Billy Bob changed me. In the days following the wedding, everything was off with me. Mainly, I couldn’t get back into the swing of work. I felt something akin to dread as clients came in, and I felt dirty after they left. I had apparently lost the switch in my mind where I felt nothing but indifference with how I earned a living. I always told myself that the sex I had with clients was not invasive. I told myself it was like a medical procedure. I even wore latex gloves.

But now I wasn’t listening to my excuses. I knew what I did was disgusting. The men I entertained were not just kinky, but perverse. I’d always looked at them as overgrown teenagers. Now I saw them as twisted adults who needed a psychotherapist, not a massage therapist. I viewed the reward I earned as easy money. Now I saw it as ill-gotten gain.

I’d flippantly considered myself an atheist before I met Billy Bob. But then, with just a few outings on horseback with him displaying his gentle, yet strong character and the way he would point out spectacular things in nature, I changed from an atheist to an agnostic. Then with one brief conversation, I changed from an agnostic to a seeker. Eventually I would become a believer. It started as we watched a beautiful sunset. He was giving his typical, subtle praises to God about the miraculous nature of the systems of the universe. I’d finally had enough.

“How could there possibly be some God of Love when the world is so unjust and cruel?” I demanded.

“If there is no God,” Billy Bob replied calmly, “where did you get these concepts of just and unjust? If we don’t have a conscience given to us by God, where did we get this idea of good and evil? Where did we get the capacity to love?”

I replied with some gibberish about the world having no meaning.

“If the world had no meaning, we wouldn’t know it didn’t have any meaning, now, would we?” he asked with such a sweet smile that it made me both want to punch him and hug him at the same time.

I proceeded to tell him about a regular customer of Zella’s whose five-year-old son died of cancer. As I related the story to Billy Bob, my eyes filled with tears, and I became angry. “Where was God when her son died?”

“The same place God was when His own Son died a cruel death for the sins of the world,” Billy Bob answered with such love, patience, and his own eyes rimmed with tears.

Those nineteen words were the straw that broke the camel’s back. There are countless moments in a person’s spiritual journey, but absorbing that sentence was the most definitive moment of my spiritual awakening.

Billy Bob had given me a Bible and I actually began reading it. I also looked up the history of Jesus on the internet. At some point, it dawned on me that the Son of God was a real historic figure that walked the earth. The Creator mingled with His creation!

The historical account I was reading in the Bible was no myth – it really happened! God not only lived as a human being in our sinful flesh, but He also was murdered by those He came to save. He was killed by the very people who professed to worship God!

 At first, my carnal nature did everything to extinguish the fire that was building in my soul. Six mentally tormented days after the wedding, Billy Bob and I went horseback riding just like he promised. Every time I was with him, I experienced such joy and contentment. Yet it was because of Billy Bob that I had lost a lot of sleep the previous week.

When I had last seen him, I had no end in sight with my profession. As far as I was concerned, I was going to keep my adult entertainment gig for as long as the guys were willing to pay. Then, as I joined Billy Bob not quite one week later, I was seriously considering quitting.

I was anxious to tell Billy Bob about how my life seemed to be transforming, but I wasn’t sure how to explain my thoughts and feelings. He and I liked to stop at a certain bluff that overlooked the landscape to the west and get off our horses to stretch. You could see a half dozen farms spread over many miles up there. I would wait until then to talk to Billy Bob. However, something seemed to be off with him. I couldn’t tell if his preoccupation was good or bad.

“Is everything alright?” I asked him after our feet thumped onto the ground.

“Huh?” Billy Bob replied, looking a bit dazed. “What are you talking about?”

“Something seems to be on your mind,” I told him.

“Oh,” he chuckled. “I guess there is. Carly and I are back together.”

Something like electricity careened through my entire body. It was followed by pangs of jealousy and an overwhelming sense of something lost. My breath was actually catching. I had thought that there was a glimmer of hope for our relationship to turn romantic in nature if I told him my willingness to give up my way of making a living.

“Do you mean as friends,” I asked cautiously, “or as a couple?”

“As a couple.”

“Billy Bob Booker, are you an idiot?”

“Maybe,” he grinned sheepishly.

“You are an absolute fool,” I told him as I put my hands on my hips and shook my head.

“I never stopped loving her,” he said with a shrug. “Besides, we’re taking it slow. Baby steps, ya know?”

“She betrayed you,” I said slowly, emphasizing every syllable.

“We’re taking it slow,” he repeated, shoving his hands into his back jeans pockets. He looked up to the sky and sighed. “People make mistakes. I’ve known Carly a long time. We were together for six years. I can tell she is genuinely regretful and filled with remorse.”

“You’re making a big mistake,” I told Billy Bob, maybe more out of jealousy and desire than with his best interests in mind.

“Look, Peter betrayed Jesus when the cock crowed,” Billy Bob said. “Jesus forgave him, and he went on to be one of Christ’s most devout disciples.”

A little thrill coursed through me. I had actually just read that in the Bible that very morning. “I think I’m gonna give up hook… Massage therapy,” I said with a quiet smile.

“You’re what?” Billy Bob asked with a look of amazement plastered on his face.

“You heard me,” I said, shoving him playfully in the chest. Quick as a flash, he pulled me into a tight embrace. If any other man on the planet grabbed me like that, I would have kneed him right in the family jewels.

“I thought you said that you would prostitute yourself as long as men would pay,” Billy Bob said as he released me.

“Well,” I said with a shrug, “you truly introduced me to Jesus that day you gave me a Bible. I’ve been reading it and getting to know about Jesus ever since.”

“Have you?” Billy Bob asked, crossing his arms and wearing a pleasant grin.

“I have,” I said with a smile. “I have a question for you, too.”

“Okay.”

“Can I go to church with you sometime, or will that make things complicated now that you are back with Carly?”

“No, it will be fine with Carly,” he replied as something came over his face that told me he doubted his statement. “I’d love to take you to church.”

“Now that you’ve reconciled with Carly, you will be going to church with her again, won’t you?”

“I guess I will,” he said frowning.

“Where exactly have you been going for the last six months?”

“Several months ago, I started going to this really cool place called Cotton Creek Cove Fellowship. I know this guy, Dirk Easton, through work. He told me that he had been going there, so I checked it out and fell in love with the place.”

“But you’ll stop going there and return to Carly’s church?”

“No way,” he replied, shaking his head. “Besides, Cotton Creek Cove has their worship on the Biblical Sabbath, so I can do both. You can’t get too much God, can you? Especially in these chaotic times we live in.”

I nodded.

“Do you want to go to Cotton Creek Cove with me tomorrow?” Billy Bob asked.

I felt a pang of anxiety at doing something so foreign to me so suddenly. I had hoped to put it off for a few weeks to kind of get my head around the idea.

“There are actually a couple of women who are members that minister to women in the sex trade. Annabelle Knight, and her niece, Destiny Knight Storm.”

 “Knight Storm,” I laughed. “For real?”

“Absolutely,” Billy Bob said. “She married a guy named Brock Storm, but she kept her maiden name also. She’s a former porn star, and her aunt is a former stripper.”

“Former porn star, huh,” I wondered as I realized maybe I wouldn’t be so out of place after all. “Is she nice?”

“Oh, man, nice as can be. And almost as pretty as you to boot,” he said with a grin, a wink, and a playful shove on the shoulder.

That evening when I got home, I called all my regular clients and told them I was no longer in business. I was surprised at how well they took it. Especially Lyle. However, Billy Bob told me later that Lyle chewed him out royally for, get this, ruining me. Apparently, Lyle also said that Billy’s influence destroyed my purpose in life and gift to the world. Unbelievable!

But I was thankful for Lyle voicing his opinion. Maybe the others had the same attitude. And if sex is how they saw my reason for being, if I had any reservations before about quitting, they were completely gone. One of Christ’s most devout followers was a former prostitute. Now I was a former prostitute. But I wasn’t quite devout yet.

I was seeking, growing, and on my way to becoming converted and born again. But there were birth pains. I struggled to turn off the hypothetical sexual switch. This would lead to a moment blinded by passion that would drastically alter the course of my life. But I also learned through the coming ordeal the love and mercy of God. I discovered firsthand just how God can turn ashes to beauty.

So Billy Bob picked me up at ten after nine on a Saturday morning to go to church. I was puzzled by him attending church on what I considered the Jewish Sabbath. I asked him about it as we rode in his pickup truck to Cotton Creek Cove Fellowship.

“I know that you’re new to the Bible,” Billy Bob replied. “But nowhere does it say that the Sabbath the Lord established in Genesis 2:2 and 3, and commanded in Exodus chapter 20, was for only the Jews. One example is Jesus Himself. In Mark 2:27 he declared the Sabbath was made for man. In other words mankind, not just the Jews.”

“So why does most of Christianity keep Sunday?” I wanted to know.

“In the Old Testament,” Billy began. “The book of Daniel, which was written around six hundred years before Christ, predicted an attempted change to God’s law. Chapter 7:25 foretold of a religious and political power that would make this attempt. It even says it would be part of the law that had to do with time.

“This actually happened when Emperor Constantine made the Roman church a legal religion. In the process to accommodate all the pagan sun worshippers, the Sabbath God established was then declared to be the venerable day of the sun. Also known as Sunday.”

“You say attempted a change,” I said. “But from where I sit it looks like they more than just attempted, they succeeded. I never even heard of Christians keeping anything but Sunday until you said you go to church on Saturday.”

“Well, there’s Seventh Day Adventists, Seventh Day Baptists, and Seventh Day Church of God just to name the most well-known.”

“I guess I have heard of those,” I admitted. “I just never thought very deeply about it. Is Cottn Creek Cove associated with any of the ones you just mentioned?”

“The Adventists.”

“And Adventist means?”

“The second advent of Christ.”

“So, you all are Sabbath keepers that look for the second coming of Christ?”

“You’re an excellent student!” Billy Bob said with a big grin.

“Thanks,” I replied, feeling pleased that he was pleased. But I was only getting hungrier for truth. “I want to learn more, especially prophecy. You seem to know quite a bit.”

“I’m still a new student myself,” Billy Bob admitted. “The church I used to go to put prophecy and subjects like the antichrist off in the future. They declared that Daniel and Revelation were sealed books that couldn’t be understood yet. This even as Revelation says in the third verse of the first chapter, ‘Blessed are they who read and hear the prophecies of this book.’ Most prophecy has already been fulfilled, the largest part was during the dark ages.”

“By church you used to go to, do you mean Carly’s?”

His face fell, and he muttered. “Yeah.”

“Are you going back?”

“Yeah, I have a lot of friends there. Plus Carly has agreed to start attending Cotton Creek Cove as well. So we both will be attending both. I guess.”

Forgive me, but I smiled a little at the uncertain way he explained his situation.

“If you want to,” Billy Bob offered. “We could have a regular date to study, and then go horseback riding. Or vice versa.”

“I’d like that,” I replied with a smile. I especially liked him calling it dates to study and ride. A girl could always hope, right. We pulled into Cotton Creek Cove’s gravel parking lot.

It felt strange walking into a church for something other than a wedding or a funeral. One tremendous comfort was that Carly wasn’t attending today. Everyone Billy introduced me to was very friendly and welcoming.

Billy Bob was more than right about Destiny Knight Storm. She was a major sweetheart toward me, as was her aunt. I even opened up to her about how I had been making a living. Destiny in turn opened up to me about her own experiences in adult entertainment. I had found a friend I would keep for life!

She invited me to a ladies’ only Bible study she and her aunt held every Wednesday evening. I was vague with my answer. Not because I didn’t want to go, but because I didn’t want a conflict with Billy Bob’s offer to study and ride. Even though he wasn’t my man, I guess I wanted to feel like his woman for as long as I could.

In the weeks that followed, I got to know many wonderful people. Carly came a couple times. Surprisingly, she and I got along well. We probably wouldn’t have if she knew how much I loved Billy Bob. Not only that, but my willingness to steal him if possible. Please keep in mind I was brand new to Christianity, and conversion is often a process. It was for me anyway.

 I began to feel like part of something that felt like family. Most importantly, I was being set free from sin. But even as my faith grew, I had some setbacks. I began to experience firsthand Ephesians 6:12. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in high places.”

Thankfully I ended up following the admonition of the verses sandwiched in-between verse twelve about putting on the whole armor of God. It just took a little coaxing and a lot of prayers.