Divine Order (the novel)

An extraordinary story of how God’s Divine Order brings two lovesick singles together in holy matrimony.

After experiencing a life time of lies, deceit, and heart break, two career focused singles discover God’s Divine Order for their lives.  During their teenage years, Priscilla Malveaux and Keith Crawford encounter life changing stumbling blocks that leave them emotionally scarred and terrified of the thought of being in a committed relationship.  Their fear of monogamy takes a turn for the worse during college as they find themselves in several unhealthy relationships.  As they prepare to turn the big 3-0, Priscilla and Keith again go in search of love, however, end up alone, frustrated, and confused more than ever about relationships; that is until they allow God’s Divine Order to guide their way.
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Keith

 I don’t consider myself to be a ‘playa’.  I’m just very selective with the women that I allow into my life. It’s hard for me to trust these females nowadays.  I don’t know if it’s something in the water or what, but there are some crazy women out there.  I had this once chick to approach me at the club and ask me for my number. She was cute and I was flattered that she approached me, so I gave her the digits. For the rest of the night she followed me around the club and conveniently placed herself between me and any other female that approached me.  I had to sneak out of the club without her seeing me for fear that she would follow me home or get my license plate number.  She called me the next day and after telling her that I wasn’t interested she still continued to call and leave messages as if we were cool.  She still calls to this day.  Oh and then there’s the Facebook stalker.  We only had one mutual friend in common which was somebody that I may have taken a class with back in college.  I regret not using the Facebook alert to ensure that she was “someone that I knew personally.”  Every morning she left me a wall post which I never responded to followed by a poke and then an inbox message.  After I ignored her posts for a few weeks the messages just stopped.  I had started to look forward to not answering her messages, but was also relieved that she had gotten the point.  Just when I thought that I was safe she updated her status letting the world know just how she felt about me. She created a story that suggested we use to date and now I was ignoring her.  Long story short, I removed her as a friend as well as the one mutual person that we had in common. 

So now do you see why I choose to be selective? I even decided to stop going out for awhile and do more things with my “church friends.”  The only thing is that most of them are married and have 2.5 children. Their wives usually don’t want them to hang with their ‘single friend’ unless it was for dinner at the house with the kids.  After several spaghetti and meat loaf dinners followed by the Backyardagains and SpongeBob Square pants, I ‘respectfully declined’ the invitations to dinner. There were times when my married buddies would get out of the house to catch a fight or football game. The only bad part was they usually spent the entire time complaining about their wives or talk about how great it would be if they had some ‘side action.’  If this is what I am missing from my life then I don’t want any part of it.  I don’t have to answer to anyone.  I watch whatever I want to watch on television. I take trips whenever I get the urge. My single life hasn't been so bad or so I try to convince myself.  It’s not that I don’t want to be in a relationship, I just don’t feel like doing the leg work to ensure that I'm dealing with a psycho. So that brings me to my point… What do I do in the meantime; you know while I wait for the person that God has decided will be my wife.  Patiently wait is all that comes to mind.  I’m in no rush to get married, but I would like to have someone to hang out with, watch a movie or a game on TV, catch a concert, or get a bite to eat… You know someone not crazy. 

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Priscilla

I’ve spent nearly thirty years in search of that one true love. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’ve come pretty close. I was even engaged once, but here I sit successful, single, and unsatisfied.  I mean, I pray about it, you know.  My prayers usually go something like this:

“Dear God, I know that you are awfully busy up there, but have you forgotten about me? I was just wondering if it wasn’t too much trouble, could you go ahead and send my husband this way. This time I know that I’m ready. Thank you Lord. Amen.”

Before I stand from my knees I usually hear God saying, “Now Priscilla, you should know better.  How many times must I tell you; not your way, but my way?”  At that point I suck it up and go back to patiently waiting. 

The last five years have been extremely rough for me on the relationship front.  Let’s see how I can summarize this for you without it taking years to get the complete story out.  I met a guy. I fell in love with the guy.  The guy fell in love with me. The guy proposed to me. I forgot about me and it became all about us. The guy then left to pursue, how did he put it, “other options.”  He completely cut me out of his life.  Every form of communication was shutdown. Still trying to hold on to him I would often call or send texted messages and even emails; three years later and I was still waiting on a response.  Around the beginning of year four I met someone new. I knew that this guy wasn’t right for me, but instead he was “Mr. Right Now.”   I told myself that having a “friend” was what I needed to truly get over my EX. Long story short our “friendship” turned into “cuddle buddies” better known as “friends with benefits”.  I started to feel myself falling for him simply because he was there and he had my attention.  We even started to have arguments as if we were a couple.  That was when I realized I had to let him go.  After that episode I knew that it was time to start focusing on me and my life.  Since I was in high school, I have always given relationships with the opposite sex more time and energy than my needs or my wants.  I’ve purchased countless books that were supposed to help me get through this time in my life, but have only left me feeling forever hopeless since most of the books ended with the author saying something along the lines of:

 ”and although I’m nearly fifty years old I still have faith that he/she is out there for me.”

 I moved from books to more social settings.  I attended singles retreats, singles seminars, singles workshops, joined singles ministries and hung out with other single folks just like me.  After awhile I realized that although I wasn’t in a relationship my quest to understand and appreciate my singleness was taking over my life.  My entire day evolved around some type of single person event or activity.  I was tired, irritable, and frustrated with myself and with God. 

Had God not heard my prayer? Had God not seen my tears? Did God not see how aggravated I was with friends, family, co-workers, and church folk trying to “hook me up” with someone that they knew for a fact wasn’t good for me, but they just “hated to see me alone.” Did God not see how embarrassed I was on Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s when I was without a plus one?

So, I stopped everything.  I stopped going to happy hour, to church, and to work parties.  I avoided question and answer sessions with my parents.  I just stopped.  I stopped living. I simply went through my days existing only because I had to.  I did, however, start eating whatever I wanted.  Since I was no longer in a relationship or trying to solicit to be in a relationship, there was no need to “keep myself up.”  I spent less time on my hair and make-up. I started drinking before bed time every night so that I didn’t have to think about the fact that no one was there beside me. I started smoking again even after losing two people that were close to me to lung cancer.  I just didn’t care anymore.  I told myself that based on my symptoms I was depressed.  By self-diagnosing myself, I was also prescribing temporary pain relief medications in order to heal.  After a few days of consuming the dangerous toxins, I would release them to God and pray that I would no longer be tempted. And after a week or so had passed I found myself in the same vicious cycle.  I couldn’t explain what was going on with me.  Even if the love of my life had shown up, I was in such a mess that I wouldn’t have even given him the time of day.

I believe there’s a song out there that says, “What do you do when you don’t know what to do?”

Well, this morning I decided to pray. Yeah, I know I’ve tried that before, but what else can I really do? I mean all the other options only leave me feeling worse. I have to give this prayer thing another shot.