All right, then. Game on.
“Anything else?” asked Joshua.
“What happens if I lose and Elizabeth has the abortion?”
“Are you approaching all of this as a game, Brent?”
“I’m just saying…I mean, what happens if things don’t happen as I plan? What happens to me?”
Joshua’s eyes grew intense the moment the question reached his ears. He leaned forward, interlaced his fingers, and rested his arms on the table. “This isn’t about you, Brent. This is about that young woman upstairs in the bathroom. You are about to make decisions and take actions that are going to affect lives forever. I suggest that you take this very seriously.
“You don’t fully understand the gravity of your decisions and actions combined with those of Elizabeth and the people in her environment. But you will. There is a burden that you do not yet feel that I do feel. It is no joke when I ask people to lay their burdens upon me. Remember, Brent, what Scripture records of my words? I said, ‘Come to me, every one of you who is tired from carrying a heavy load, and I will give you rest. Place my yoke over your shoulder, and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble. When you do that, you will find rest, because my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ Where do you think their burdens go when people come to me for rest? Why is my yoke on them easy and my burden on them light? It’s because I remove from them whatever they will give me. I carry the load. I make their burdens my own. I may not have an impressive stature in your eyes, or in the eyes of many, but I carry a lot of weight so that humanity does not have to.
“Brent, how much burden are you willing to take onto yourself? How much responsibility are you willing to shoulder? I have charged you, through Scripture, to take up your cross and follow me. Now you will have to take not only your own cross, but the cross of others. Do not be so glib as to think that this will be easy. It certainly isn’t for me.”
Brent was startled—rattled—by Joshua’s words. He felt deeply the admonishment that had just been given. But the revelation that Joshua just gave… It isn’t easy for God? I thought everything was easy for God.
“No, Brent. Not everything is easy for us—the Three-in-One. What do you think it means when Paul said not to grieve the Holy Spirit? We created you with emotion because we have emotion. You experience pain because we experience pain. It was not easy for me to take on your sin, let alone all the sin of billions of others. It was not easy for me in the garden at Gethsemane, knowing what I was going to endure. And you may think that I’m talking about the pain of being whipped and beaten and nailed to pieces of wood, but I am not. I was guiltless. You cannot fully understand that right now. But to give you some sort of idea, I want you to think back.
“Do you remember how you felt when you were racked with such intense guilt for having involved yourself in demonic practices?”
Brent was aching inside. Never had he faced a rebuke such as the one he was now enduring. But Joshua’s question was clear and registered loudly in his spirit.
“Yes, I remember,” he said meekly.
“Do you remember the moment at Freedom Rings when you asked me to enter your life as your Savior and Lord?”
That had been the most important event of Brent’s life. He re-lived that experience over and over in his mind. Never had he felt so peaceful and free and clean. All of the darkness, all of the hate, all of the feelings of worthlessness, including all of the guilt he had ever felt was removed from him on that evening back in 1981.
“I do remember.”
“The closest that you will be able to come to relating what happened to me at the cross is to ask you a question. What if, while you were experiencing all of that peace and joy…all of that freedom and purity…what if I took all of the guilt that you had ever felt leading up to that point in your life and all of the guilt that you have felt since that day and I laid the full accumulation of it on your heart and mind?”
Brent quaked inside. He felt tears begin to form as intense emotions rose at the core of his being. A horrifying picture developed in his mind. He saw an external shot of a younger Brent Lawton stabbing himself over and over with a knife trying to rid his existence of self-awareness. He wouldn’t have given a second thought to the possibility of a literal Hell if he were to experience the scenario that Joshua just laid out for him. He would have done anything, regardless of how irrational, to kill himself in the hope of relief from the weight of such guilt.
He attempted to find words, but what came out of his mouth were little more than squeaks. “I…I can’t…” Brent dropped his head to the table on folded arms and began to weep.
Joshua continued. “I had never felt guilt before. It was one human experience that I could only contemplate. I never knew what shame felt like. I had never smelt unholiness on my person. Do you have any idea what it feels like to become the actual guilt of murderers and child abusers? Gossips and backstabbers? Think of the vilest things you have ever heard of and apply those things to me. I very literally became sin! I had always been perfect—holy—in my eternalness. But now I was sin. Your sin, Hitler’s sin, and every other person’s sin. It is this that brought about the sweating of blood at Gethsemane, not my fear of pain or death. I paid the ransom for all of you. It was not easy, and yet, most people will still resist my gift of salvation, paid for by what happened during my scourging and death upon the cross.
“Even now, after all that sin was paid for and I had fully reclaimed my perfection, things are not always easy. It is not easy to see people that I love reject me, people to whom I have given wonderful purposes. It isn’t easy for me to end a life even though he or she chooses to reject—or never seek out—those purposes, knowing that I gave each one of them every chance necessary to accept me.
“I know what I am doing, Brent. I love who I am. I love being God. But not everything is a delight for me.”
Brent was still crying. He had never understood, until that moment, just how great was the burden of God. He knew that his understanding was still limited, but his appreciation for what Joshua had done for him—for everyone—had just grown in his mind exponentially.
“I’m so sorry,” Brent whispered, his head still down. “I’m such a jerk. I’m so sorry that I never really understood.”
“My dear Brent, once again I want you to know that there is no condemnation in my words. I am only wanting to make sure that you understand the gravity of the situation in which you find yourself. Do not go further into these events without realizing that this is not going to be as easy as it may seem on the surface.”
Brent lifted his head a little bit to wipe his eyes with his hands. Then he looked up into Joshua’s face. It was as kind and as accepting as he could have hoped.
“Are you ready to do this, Brent?”
“No.”
“Good. Then it’s time for you to get started.”
Elizabeth—Day One
In another twinkle of time, Brent found himself standing outside of the upstairs bathroom again. Only this time there was no Joshua.
The house was still. He could hear himself breathe. His heart was pounding hard.
I’m not ready for this.
He looked through the door and walls and into the bathroom. He saw Elizabeth still in mid-pace, her left, bare foot about to make contact with the floor. A moment later, her foot touched the ceramic tiles.
Brent tensed again.
He was without a safety net. Joshua had made it clear that this was all on him now.
What am I supposed to do?
After a moment, he decided to join her in the bathroom. He stood next to the sink and watched as the pregnancy stick began to turn its telltale pink. Upon Elizabeth taking another look at the stick she stopped. She stared.
With a trembling right hand she picked up the indicator. “Oh, God. Oh, God. No. No no no no NO!”
Rapidly, she opened the cabinet door below the sink and threw the stick into the trash can. Looking into the mirror, she said, “W
hat am I going to do?”
“What is Mom going to…” heard Brent in his head.
“Oh, God.” she whispered.
She looked at herself in the mirror and was struck with a terrifying realization. She quickly re-opened the cabinet door and dug through the trash can to find the stick. She put the stick back into the box from which it came, placed the box on the countertop, and withdrew her hand as if it might introduce something even more horrific. She stared at it for several seconds, then once again grabbed it. Opening the bathroom door, she walked briskly to her bedroom.
Brent could hear her panic. But something else was happening, too. He was feeling her panic.
He knew, also, that Elizabeth’s mind was furiously searching out her options.
Brent willed himself into her bedroom and watched as she arrived through the door and shut it. She stood mute looking all over the room. Her thoughts were a rapidly-evolving and scrambled mess, not making any sense to Brent. “Something… Where…? Find… Scared… Mom… Dad…! What time…? Bag…”
Elizabeth ran to the opposite side of her bed and grabbed her school backpack. Opening it, she jammed the E.P.T. box into it and zippered it shut. She turned and stared at her alarm clock. 6:45 AM. “I don’t want to go… But Mom… I need to talk to Tina and Colleen.”
Finally, a cogent decision, thought Brent. Who are Tina and Colleen?
Somehow, in that moment, Brent knew the answer to his own question. They were the Christian friends that Joshua had mentioned. Tina lives at 213 Curtland Street. Colleen at 189 Heathchase Drive.
While Elizabeth put together a quick ensemble of clothing to wear to school before heading to the shower, Brent decided to pay visits to her friends.
BRENT’S MIND DRANK it all in. He was able to process her biography through his mind almost at once.
Tina Morrison was fifteen years old, only days older than Elizabeth. She lived within a circle of family that made her feel secure. Her father led the home with such caring and wisdom that Tina never had to doubt that her family could make it through any trial. Her mom adored the man.
Tina was the middle of three children. She loved the arts, whereas her older and younger sisters, nineteen and thirteen years old, were thinkers; one had a penchant for psychology and the other for numbers. It wasn’t as though Tina was a slacker in school; she did pretty well considering how she had to tolerate classes like history and algebra. It was just that she needed to constantly express herself, and neither dates from the past nor algebraic equations were going to help her with that.
Along with her passion for writing and drawing was a fervent love for Christ. She had grown up with two parents who lived what they believed. Sometimes she would even walk in on them holding hands and praying. On more than one occasion, she walked up to where they were praying—seated at the dining room table, kneeling on the living room floor, or even sitting in the lawn in the backyard—and lay her hands on theirs and begin to pray with them.
Her parents always expected answers from God. And even when God said “no” to some of their requests—or even seemed silent—Tina saw God move often enough to have no doubt that He was both real and interested in their lives.
Kate and Mandy, her sisters, also grew up with a solid faith and a love for God. It wasn’t commonplace, but every once in a while two of them, or all three, would come together to pray about things that were either bothering them or about things that were going on in the lives of others.
Two of Tina’s best friends, Elizabeth and Colleen, came from different places spiritually. Colleen was a recent born-again Christian. She grew up in a non-Christian home, one that she apparently stayed away from as much as possible. And Elizabeth… Her parents had no regard for God and neither did she. It was something that ate at Tina from time to time.
Tina and Elizabeth had had discussions about God, His love for them, and even about salvation, but Elizabeth showed little interest in taking any of it to heart.
Brent stepped into the Morrison’s kitchen. There he found Janet Morrison—Tina’s mom—walking away from the breakfast table where she had set three cereal bowls.
“Girls! Let’s go! Time for breakfast, already!”
Brent smiled at the twinge of exasperation that played in her tone. Was the woman a Christian? Certainly. But she was also a mom with three teenage girls. He chuckled. I guess a mom’s patience is always stretched to its limits, regardless of how close a relationship with God she has.
One by one, the three girls bounded down a set of stairs and entered the kitchen. Tina was the last to enter by several seconds. No one could mistake Kate, Tina, and Mandy as being anything other than sisters. They had the same long, straight, dark brown hair that their mother had. Kate was the tallest, with Mandy already equal in height with Tina. While Kate and Mandy had nearly flawless complexions, Tina’s face was dotted with a few pimples—blemishes—over which Brent knew Tina agonized.
All three of the Morrison girls walked to the table, dropped their book bags on the floor, and sat down. Even though six years separated Kate and Mandy—Kate being in her first year of college—their morning chatter launched right away, talking about upcoming exams and Kate’s mention of that “irritating Bobby Cavanaugh.”
“Bobby’s cute…for an older boy,” said Mandy with a smile.
Tina sat reserved, eating a bowl of Honey Combs.
Brent ‘tagged’ her.
“I hope Kelly doesn’t decide to spout off on me today.” Tina briefly looked up toward the ceiling. “God, I know we’re supposed to endure persecutions, but please?”
Brent thought for a moment. Was there something that he could, or even should, do about her troubles? The answer came through in his mind as clearly as if Joshua had spoken it to him.
I’m only supposed to concern myself with the outcome of Elizabeth’s story. He sighed. This could get pretty complex.
Brent saw little reason to stick around the Morrison household, at least for now.
One friend tagged. One to go.
“I KNOW, MOM! God!” Colleen stuffed her textbooks into her book bag, and with an air of angry frustration, she walked out of her bedroom and stormed down the stairs.
Transporting himself to the landing, Brent watched as Colleen—her shoulder-length, almost-jet-black hair bouncing with each step—reached the first floor. He could tell that she was stopping short of unleashing her pent-up anger.
Tag.
“…hate living here!” She reached the door. “I’m leaving now. Satisfied?” She yanked it open, walked through, and with a satisfying slam, she made her way to the bus stop.
While Brent walked alongside her, he processed her story.
Colleen was the younger of two children that Tim and Rory Burns had produced. Their oldest, Chris was twenty-one years old and a freshman in college, while Colleen—the “Oops!” of the family—was fifteen.
She grew up in a family that teetered on destruction. Like the Morrisons and the Franklins, the Burns family was doing pretty well financially. They had more in common with the Franklins than the Morrisons, in that they weren’t particularly “religious.”
Brent discovered that the family was tolerating Colleen’s new beliefs and had made it clear that those beliefs needed to stay between her and the girl that had introduced them, Tina Morrison.
Colleen led a life of frustration. She believed in Jesus and accepted his salvation, but she was not very keen on the idea of having to try to “convert” other people. Besides, half of the time she was angry at God. In her mind, he didn’t seem to take much of an interest in what was going on in her family, despite her prayers, something with which Brent found he could identify, if only in part.
A little rushed for having gotten out of bed late, Colleen half walked, half ran all the way to the bus stop, barely making it in time to board the yellow bus.
She sat down in an empty seat midway back on the left side. There were eight others on the bus.
“I hope no
one decides to sit with me today.”
Two stops later, Colleen’s hope was quelled. Lara Rogers walked straight to her and sat down.
“Can you believe it about Corey and Aubrey?”
“Oh brother,” Colleen thought. “What about them?”
“He broke up with her this weekend. I told you he was too good for her,” she reasserted, with no attempt to hide her contempt for the girl. “I hope she doesn’t sit next to us.”
Lara’s hope was stymied, as well. A rather reserved Aubrey Adams walked to the seat directly across the aisle from them and sat down without making eye contact.
Brent tagged Lara.
“Good. She deserves to be sitting there all pouty. The little…”
Un-tag.
Brent was going to have to use this tagging thing sparingly.
And right now, it was time to make his way back to Elizabeth.
It was pushing 2:00 AM and I could tell that Tara’s eyes were struggling to remain open. Even the chill of the restaurant and the hard seats were no longer having the desired effect. The sugar high from the milkshake had long worn off, as well as the coffee from earlier in the evening.
“Ready to go home?” I asked.
She scrunched her brow with an “I’m sorry” look in her eyes.
My smile caused hers to appear.
With a yawn, she said, “I don’t want the story to end.”
“It won’t. I’ll keep telling it. You’ll just be asleep.”
She let out a snicker. “How about instead, you tell me a little more on the way home?”
“Deal.”
We got up from our table, left a nice tip for our kind waitress, and paid our bill. During the car ride home, I continued with as much information about Elizabeth as our travel time would allow.
“I had ridden with Elizabeth on the bus to school. She was very edgy and kept thinking about ways to hide her situation from her parents. The challenge was obvious; it couldn’t be hidden for very long. But then, she didn’t want the baby anyway. She had decided when she got home later that day, she would call a couple of places to check on how much it would cost for an abortion.”
Behind the Darkness Page 10