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passport was the empty pad I’d bought to write all of my new songs in ... whenever or wherever I was inspired by something. So far, I hadn’t been inspired and, therefore, I hadn’t written a single word beyond “Please Return To” and “Journey.” The only thing I had going for me on that resolution list was my weight loss. I lost a few pounds over the months and if I wanted to keep them off, I had to keep on walking. Lunch could wait.

Chapter Three
    E xodus 13:17. That’s what Sunday is like for me at my father’s brainchild of a church, Greater Prophet House. In the Bible, that’s when God leads Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt through a desert road that leads to the mouth of the Red Sea. The Egyptians are coming up behind, and then old Moses lifts his staff and the entire sea cooperates, opening up a pathway for the fearful people to pass through safely.
    In magnitude and magnificence, “The House,” as everyone calls it, couldn’t sit in the shadows of the Red Sea, but it was certainly getting there. The church my father, the Reverend Dr. Jethro Cash, started with just four members (my mother, older brother Jethro Jr, me, and my Nana Jessie) was now ministering to 20,000. Over thirty-one years, I watched from the front pew in my Sunday clothes and patent leather Mary Janes as my father’s beard grayed and the choir loft grew from my mother holding a microphone with her gloved hands to a competition-ready chorus of 1,600 singers in seventeen choirs. Behind me, the pews bustled and busted out of control as we outgrew three sanctuaries, the second of which we marked with the birth of my rambunctious baby brother, Justin, and finally ended up in “The Big House”—a huge dome of pews that seemed to stretch out to the sky. It had seating for 25,000 and always filled up—even the overflow auditorium had additional overflow space. While the expected logistical chaos and traffic nightmare that was required to get worshippers into the sanctuary to hear the sermon was despised by everyone in the city from the mayor to my own mother, my father said he wouldn’t stop adding on to the House until he had enough seats to make Bryant-Denny Stadium’s 92,138 seats look like a pigpen—only instead of the Crimson Tide, we’d be “cheering for the Lord.” And that was a big calling, because in our town, people christened their own babies in the name of the Tide.
    Now as many screaming babies, casket-sharp men, and women in sun-shading church hats and nylons as there were in the House, when Evan and I got there, the bulging sea of people seemed to subside as we made our way to wherever my parents’ orders were taking me. The people didn’t turn their backs or walk in silence in another direction. Instead, they smiled and waved in the familial, responsible way people tend to look at preachers’ kids they’ve watched grow up.
    By the time we made our way to our seats, my cheeks were red from countless sweet kisses from church mothers and deaconesses. Evan’s arms were weighed down with shiny gift bags, and his hands were filled with cards. Against Billie’s wishes, I was wearing a teal and black pantsuit that hid the curves I didn’t want to be seen and Evan complemented me in a black suit with a teal bowtie and handkerchief. I always told him we didn’t need to match quite so much, but he loved doing it on special occasions. He said it looked better in pictures.
    Around us, the church was coming alive with preparation. There were teleprompters and flatscreen TVs. A section for the hearing impaired and blind. The quiet room with the long windows toward the back where they took the women with the white prayer hats who’d gotten the Holy Ghost and needed to be rested. Dressed in their long red and black robes, the choir assembled on the bleachers, the band was in the pit, and the noble deacons and immaculate