We met The Cowboy and his wife when they visited our church. Apparently they had just gotten into town and had been staying in a hotel for a few days. They hadn't done laundry in a while, so being as we loved to show hospitality and my husband was pastor of the church, we invited them over for dinner and the opportunity to do laundry at our house. They had two kids so you can imagine the laundry.
We had a nice dinner together, then they started their laundry, which meant they had to spend a few hours at our house. Their kids got along well with ours and all was well.
There was one little red flag. The Cowboy, in the three house they spend with us, had to use the bathroom seven times. I thought nothing of that in an of itself; sometimes our systems are messed up, the red flag came in the fact that he insisted on using a different bathroom each time he went. That was odd to me. We had three bathrooms in the house and he rotated through them, even asking if we had a third once he had rotated through the main floor bathrooms a few times.
As the weeks passed, they found a home and got settled. They were faithful in church but I noticed The Cowboy came to the adult Sunday School class alone, but I would see his wife in the main church service with him. I asked him one time if she came late because she didn't feel well and he informed me that she was always there but preferred to sit alone in the dark auditorium during that time. The auditorium was not used during the Sunday School hour.
This was a red flag to me. Not because she liked to be alone in the dark but because it seemed odd to me.
We often had ice cream gatherings at the parsonage and at one such gathering, one of The Cowboy's kids got into a scuffle with one of mine and instead of coming to me, The Cowboy tried to handle it himself. This did not set well with me. I have always taught my kids that not every adult is their boss just because they are an adult. So, I kindly asked The Cowboy not to speak to my child in such a way. He apologized but began to distance himself from us.
That was fine but there is more.
He began to make unannounced visits of some of our elderly members' homes, citing the urgent need for a bathroom. These visits were more frequent in some homes than others. This was a red flag for a number of reasons, but the most prominent was that these people were farmers and lived in out of the way places around the county. It wasn't convenient to "stop in" unannounced.
We were not the only ones who saw red flags in this behavior. One elderly man was so sure The Cowboy was doing something sinister that he planted a specific number of drugs in his bathroom medicine cabinet.
Sure enough, after The Cowboy's next visit, pills were missing.
The elderly man chose not to press charges, but it was a moot point because once he realized this was discovered, The Cowboy disappeared and left town very quickly without a word to anyone. We don't know what the elderly man said to him.
To honor the privacy of the elderly man, this was not made public, as per his request.
Church gossip surged and my husband faced accusations of "not wanting the church to grow," even though the church had doubled in size since we had gone there.
My husband ignored the gossip and kept preaching God's Word.
The sheep did not know he was protecting them the entire time.
At my house, when he was visiting all my bathrooms that laundry day, he was looking for drugs. One of my children had just had major surgery and he figured there had to be drugs in the house. He was right, there were drugs in my house, strong drugs, narcotics. Little did he know, I kept the drugs in my room, hidden in a drawer.
I was right to have red flags.
~Tricia
