Free Faithful by Kim Cash Tate

glad to have something to occupy her time. If she had had nothing to do tonight, she would have worried herself to death about Dana.
    She exited at New Florissant Road and a couple minutes later veered into the parking lot of Living Word Community Church. She’d been a member of the church since its early days. Her family moved to St. Louis when she was in seventh grade and Stephanie was just a baby, because her father had taken a position on the faculty at Wash U. As they acclimated to the area, Bruce and Claudia Sanders had sought a Bible-teaching church and found young Dr. Mason Lyles, a black man three years out of seminary with a passion for preaching the unadulterated Word of God. And when they met Dana and her family—also new to St. Louis—and learned they were Christians, they got them excited about the church too.
    The ministry was small at the time, about forty members meeting in a high school, yet it was diverse from the beginning. Pastor Lyles’s prayer was that Living Word would be a true picture of the body of Christ, welcoming people from all nations. His personality certainly helped. He had a winsome delivery, naturally lively and hip, but earnest and forceful, always challenging, always zealous in his love for truth and seeing it at work in the lives of others. That zeal drew folk, who would often testify later that they didn’t understand the whole counsel of the Bible until they came to Living Word.
    The church had outgrown three structures since its inception, and five years ago built a complex of three buildings: one for the main sanctuary, adult education, and administrative offices; one for children’s and youth ministry; and the third dedicated to the pastor’s burgeoning national ministry of written Bible studies with accompanying DVDs.
    Cyd pulled into a spot near the main entrance, raised her windows, closed the moon roof, and hopped out. She loved the view of this building at night. The two-story glassed entrance that flooded the space with natural light during the day had the opposite effect at night, as the lighting inside shone like a beacon to the outside world.
    Stepping quickly up a cascade of steps, past a courtyard that connected the main building to the youth building, she slid lip gloss across her lips, unclipped a wide, crystal-adorned barrette, smoothed her hair with her fingers, and clipped it back on. She wore a two-piece shimmering metallic brocade suit with a portrait-collar jacket and sequined tie belt. The slim skirt hit her at the knee, and the soft metallic sling backs had a much higher heel than she was used to. It had been a long while since she’d had a reason to dress up like this.
    Inside, she walked through the spacious common area where people milled about between services and after church. There wasn’t a soul in sight now, but when she made her way around the bend of the wide hallway, she saw Stephanie and Cassandra conferencing outside the sanctuary doors.
    Cyd fixed immediately on what Stephanie was wearing, a platinum baby-doll dress with a rhinestone empire waist, shoulder straps that crisscrossed on a bare back, and a plunging V in the back and front. It had been the subject of much discussion in the store dressing room.
    Stephanie and Cyd were both tall and shapely like their mother. Claudia had always extolled modesty, but she could only make Stephanie toe the line while her daughter lived at home. When she went out on her own, her tops got tighter, necklines dipped lower, and skirts, shorts, and dresses climbed higher.
    Talking did no good, so Cyd relegated the clothing issue to the same sphere she’d sent Stephanie’s romantic entanglements—prayer. But with the wedding, she knew she’d have to deal with it head-on, especially since Stephanie would be choosing what she would wear as well. To her surprise, though, they didn’t clash at all over the bridesmaids’ attire. In one day, Stephanie, Cyd, and