BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 26

ZELLA LaSTELLA-SALLIE

CAN YOU SEARCH OUT THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD? CAN YOU FIND OUT THE LIMITS OF THE ALMIGHTY? (Job 11:7)

            “Back up,” I petitioned Mick. “Didn’t that scare the daylights out of you to suddenly see a dog rushing toward you when you lifted your head?”

            “Sure it did,” he shrugged. “But it all happened so fast. Kind of like a close call in traffic. But after the first couple seconds, I could tell Jitts wasn’t mean.”

            Mick had just expressed reeling emotions after he had been praying in a remote area of some woods. He specifically had been praying for a Godly companion who could possibly be his future wife. As he was concluding his prayer, he was startled at movement to his right. It was a dog of German Shepard decent galloping toward him.

            “Self-preservation instinct produced a healthy shot of adrenaline through my system,” he continued. “But as I began to take a protective position, the canine slowed and I noticed the tail vigorously swaying back and forth. Also, rather than barking or growling Jitts was whining excitedly. He also seemed to be smiling.

            “So instead of exercising fight or flight, I greeted the fury creature. I accepted an invitation to pet and scratch the animal as he lay in front of me and exposed his belly. I remember his right front paw dangled to allow room for my hand to perform ministrations of doggie delight. Then all of a sudden this stunning vixen came charging up the trail hollering ‘Jitt’s!’

            “She stopped in her tracks, wide eyed and mouth gaping when she saw her dog and me. Her face looked like Bigfoot had just stepped out onto the trail in front of her. Her red-gold hair was pulled back tight against her scalp into a ponytail. I took in her black spandex which seemed to be painted on. So I averted my eyes back to the dog and frowned. My mind asked, “Is this an answer to what I had just been praying about?”

            “Time out,” Lindsey said. “Painted on? They were running shorts with top. Standard attire for women who run.”

            “And standard intrigue for guys who lust.”

             “Sounds like a guy problem.”

            “I suppose it depends on the guy as to whether it’s a problem or not. Anyway, I disciplined my eyes to stay above her neck and…

            “Gimme a break,” Lindsey interrupted again with a roll of her eyes.

            “Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar,” Mick sang.

            Lindsey and I laughed. Then she ordered, “Just tell the story. But I will make corrections if needed.”

            “Fair enough, so our dialogue went something like this. I said, “Hi.”

            “Hi,” she replied quickly, spitting out the greeting as if it tasted bad in her mouth.

            “I seem to have met your dog,” I said.

            “So I see,” she replied, crossing her arms abruptly and scowling, as if I had called Jitts away from her. But I thought she had called him Jet and said as much.

            “Oh, no, it’s Jitts. Actually Jitterbug. I call him Jitts for short,” she replied, losing her stern demeanor.

            “Jitterbug? That’s an interesting name.”

            “He’s a rescue dog,” she explained. “He shook uncontrollably when I first got him and, I don’t know, I just started calling him Jitterbug, then Jitts.”

            “I see.”

            “Were you praying?” she asked, almost like an accusation.

            “It was not like an accusation,” Lindsey added.

            “I acknowledged I was and she asked, ‘do you pray often?’”

            “Every day, multiple times a day. Do you pray?”

            “Not so much lately,” she confessed, taking a few steps toward me. Those painted on shorts were at head level and only three feet away, so I stood abruptly, my carnal nature protesting and Jitts hopped up with me and went next to his master. She unconsciously put a hand to her dog’s head. “By the way, I’m terribly sorry.”

            “For what?” I asked innocently.

            She laughed. “For my dog charging at you like a lunatic.”

            “Oh, that’s okay. I could tell right away he was friendly.”

            “I let him off his leash because he has never gone after anyone until now.”

            “Well, it’s an honor to be his first.”

            “Did Jitts ever chase after anyone again?” I interrupted.

            “No, but I was more careful going forward,” Lindsey explained and then looked at her husband as if for permission to take over telling the story. He gave a go ahead nod and she continued. “But I think Jitts running up to Mick was, this may sound silly, but I believe it was supernaturally inspired.”

            “That’s not silly,” I reassured. “Mick prayed and God answered using a dog.”

            “Happens every day,” Mick joked.

            “The thing is,” Lindsey said with a look of awe and reverence on her countenance. “If God hadn’t used Jitts to bring Mick and me together, I would never have known Mick wasn’t, what’s the word I’m looking for?”

            “A psychopath?” Mick interjected with an arched eyebrow.

            “No, silly,” she said, slapping his knee. “I would have never known you were worthy.”

            “And Jitts’ adoration of you let me know that you were worthy,” Mick added.

            “Fair enough,” Lindsey said with a satisfied smile. But then she scowled. “Even if I was wearing painted on clothes.”

            “I wasn’t implying you didn’t look good in them. As a matter of fact, after we married there was nothing I liked more than seeing you scantily clad.”

            “Scantily clad? I…”

            “So what happened next?” I interrupted, hoping to direct them away from their differing perspectives on attire.

            “Perceiving that he was a deeply spiritual man, thanks to Jitts,” Lindsey said. “I began to ask him about his faith and then admitted that I was struggling with mine. Which was an understatement. Then he shared the ‘He that began a good work in you’ verse (Philippians 1:6). I felt compelled to tell him about my sister, but I was torn. Part of me wanted to flee, frightened of my attraction, and another part of me would have married him on the spot.”

            “All because Jitts took to him, you would have married him on the spot?” I asked with a playful smile.

            “I do exaggerate a little, but Jitts was the biggest part of my feeling drawn to him to be sure,” she admitted. “But he also was very attractive. And I don’t mean just physically. It was like there was a light in his eyes, and a gentleness in his demeanor, but also a strength in his character.”

            Lindsey looked at her husband, so I did as well. He looked a little embarrassed. I probably didn’t help by asking, “So what about you, big fella? Would you have married her on the spot?”

            “No,” he blurted, and they both started laughing, so I joined their mirth. Then he explained. “I say no only because my head was spinning. I mean think about it. I pray for a potential wife and, forgive me if this is an improper term, a goddess just shows up in a remote part of a forest the very moment I had been praying for something of that ilk.”

            “Then my friend unintentionally ruined the fairy tale,” Lindsey said and smiled wanly. Then she shrugged. “She was actually trying to help pair me up with Mick, but in the moment of my fickle emotions, I took it as a sign to flee from him.”

            “It was an odd couple days for both of us,” Mick interjected. “She had talked about her floundering faith during our brief conversation. So it never occurred to me that she would show up at a Christian concert an hour away from where we had met the previous day.”

            “There were four bands in total,” Lindsey took over. “But Mick’s band was the special guest of the headliner. Because my friend had an in with the headliner, we had excellent first balcony seats. There were, I don’t know, four or five thousand at the show. So it wasn’t like the Stones or Taylor Swift, but still a lot of people. And we were so close, I could have spit on a band member when they came to the left side of their stage.”

            “And that’s how we met a second time,” Mick said. “She spit on me.”

            He said this with such a straight face, I frowned and said, “Really?”

            “No,” Lindsey replied as they both laughed.

            “Obviously you two re-met at the show, so how did that come about?” I asked.

            “The first two bands just seemed loud to me,” Lindsey said. “I was more soft rock or country. Thankfully they only played twenty or thirty minutes. When they were almost done setting up for Cornerstone, which was Mick’s band, a girlfriend leans in and says, “These next guys will be a lot better and play for about an hour.”

            “An hour! I thought. I began to analyze my options. The best thing I could come with is saying I didn’t feel well and have my aunt come get me. We were crashing at her place that night anyway. I was just about to tell my girlfriends that I was gonna leave. But the lights went down and a roar went up. The crowds reaction was way more enthusiastic than for the previous two bands. So I figured I would give them a chance.

            “When the band seemed to explode onto the stage, I was beyond surprised when the lead singer looked familiar. It was the guy Jitts charged in the woods! Tina Janis, the girlfriend that was with me in the woods, leaned forward and looked at me with pure astonishment. Both of our mouths hung open. You could have pushed me over with a feather.

            “There was another girlfriend, Heather Johnson, in between us, and she looked back and forth at us with a puzzled expression. She was also annoyed because we were interfering with her observance of the performance. Then Tina said something into her ear and Heather looked at me with a frown and mouthed, “Really?”

            “I shrugged and then kept my eyes glued on Mick for most of their set. Their music was heavier than I prefer at first. But then it turned out that they had some mellower songs that I really, really liked. One song in particular had me as stunned as when I first saw Mick come onto the stage. The song spoke to me about coming back to God and having a closer walk with Jesus.

            “I had heard the song numerous times when I tuned into Christian radio. The song both drew me in, but sometimes frustrated me, depending on my mood. Sometimes I would listen to it and weep, longing for my broken relationship with Jesus to heal. It made me long for the peace I felt as a little girl as we left church. But another side would make me feel so guilty for my spiritual neglect and rebellion. Yet I never turned it off.

            “Now, here I was listening to it live. The singer only about thirty feet away. The singer was the dream guy I had met the previous day. The singer was the only guy, only person actually, that Jitts ever had charged up to happily.

            “I was wearing a baseball cap with my ponytail laced through the back. I pulled it down low so my friends couldn’t see my watery eyes. Because we were so close I was also afraid Mick would recognize me. Ironic since I had went looking for him the previous day.

            “But what was I gonna do with somebody who was something like a rock star, albeit a Christian one? Plus, I was pretty sure he wasn’t from the Duluth area. Shoot, I wasn’t even sure if the attraction was mutual. All I knew was that I was infatuated with him. He probably thought I was a careless, irresponsible fool who just let her unruly dog run wild.”

            “The truth was,” Mick took over. “The attraction was indeed mutual. But I had moved on already and had her out of my mind by morning. I fancied myself a realist. God doesn’t always answer prayers instantly. By her showing up like that, dressed with not much to leave to the imagination, and espousing lack of faith. Well, I figured Satan might just be trying to trick me. You know like the warning from Proverbs about avoiding the immoral woman.”

            “Thanks a lot!” Lindsey responded, giving him a light slug on his upper arm.

            “So if you tried to hide by pulling your hat low,” I asked. “What happened that you ended up meeting again?”

            “Because Heather’s cousin was H. R. Puffin, the headliner, we had acquired back stage passes,” Lindsey said. “But it turned out to be a little frustrating. I didn’t see Mick or any of his band mates anywhere. Then Puffin himself flirted with me.”

            Lindsey shook her head, laughed and covered her face with a hand.

            “What’s so funny?” I asked, grinning.

            “She hurt Puffin’s ego,” Mick said matter of fact.

            “Even though he was supposed to be a Christian, he apparently was used to women admiring him, not asking him about another one of the lesser stars,” Lindsey explained.

            “You asked him where Mick was?” I asked.

            “I did. Right after he asked if I would like to go somewhere private and talk.”

            “Did he help you?”

            “I’ve got to hand it to him, he did. Although begrudgingly. He said Cornerstone were still out in the arena at their merch table, signing autographs and talking to fans.”

            “What’s a merch table?” I asked, being unfamiliar with concerts.

            “Merch is short for merchandize,” Mick answered. “It’s an area where bands sell shirts, posters, stickers, C.D.’s, and such.”

            “Puffin made a point of telling me he didn’t go to his merch table because he would be there for hours. Anyway, I went back out into the arena. I saw there were still a couple dozen people in line to meet the band. I bought one of their C.D.’s and joined the end of the line to get it signed.

            “I noticed they asked the name of the person they were signing an autograph for. So then they would write ‘To so and so’ before they signed their name…”

            Lindsey started laughing, so Mick finished. “She says to me, my dog is a big fan of yours, could you make this out to Jitts?”

            “I looked up at her in utter astonishment as she took her hat off and grinned at me… You could have knocked me over with a feather!”

(Writer’s note: My stories have sometimes been motivated by music, and I’ve always wanted to implement songs into a story. So I’m doing a little experiment if you are interested in playing along. Not doing so will in no way take away from the story itself.

            So here’s a little supplement to today’s edition. The song I had in mind that moved Lindsey during Mick’s show was a song by the band ‘Kutless’ called ‘Run.’ If you listen to Christian radio, you might recognize it. It was especially played several years ago. It can be easily found on YouTube.)