Leashed to Faith

by Vicky Kaseorg

  “How does someone claim to believe in God and still kill their baby? Isn’t that against the Bible?”

  “Well, it is against God’s clear commands about protecting the sanctity of human life.”

  “Do you believe they really believe in God if they abort their baby?” I had actually often wondered that when I worked in the Women’s Center. It seemed like a faith of convenience if they could say God understood why they had to disregard what He told them to do. I used to hear that all the time.

  “I personally cannot imagine how anyone who truly loves, honors, and lives for God could then destroy the life He has created within them. That said, I have seen what I would consider faithful believers do terrible things and be terribly deceived when very difficult trials come. It is why we are commanded to be involved in the lives of other Christians. We need that accountability as well as support of Godly counsel and friends. Life is not easy.”

  “Do people tell you that God is okay with what they are doing when they stop to talk to you on their way to abort?”

  “Not often. Most of the time they admit He doesn’t like it but they also tell me He understands and forgives.”

  “Well…He does, doesn’t He?”

  “Of course He understands on one level, but not the level they mean. He understands everything and even knows what we will do before we do it. His understanding is perfect and complete. But they mean gives them a pass when they say ‘understands’. That is a terrible misunderstanding of God’s abhorrence of sin. In fact the Bible says God hates the wicked.”

  “I thought God is love?”

  “He is,” she said. “But He is also just. There are several verses that speak of Him despising, and yes, hating the wicked.”

  “How can He be love and hate at the same time?”

  “That is a great question. I am not certain I can answer. I have some thoughts. God is outside of time so perhaps His love is possible because His knowledge of who we are extends beyond who we were in our wickedness but to what we were designed to be in Him. Maybe we cannot hate in the way that God hates, and we cannot understand fully what that means. There is no doubt He also loves the wicked, or John 3:16 is not true. For God so LOVED the WORLD that He gave His only begotten son…The world includes the repentant and the wicked.”

  Well now that was another one of those conflicting impossibilities that this God was so full of that made it so impossible to wrap my head around Him. On one hand, that was a source of skepticism. On the other, in a strange way, it made Him more plausible. Who would make up such a crazy, incomprehensible Being?

  “Then isn’t God a hypocrite if He hates but He tells us to love our enemies?”

  “No,” Talia said. “There are many things that God our Creator can do, and has the right to do, that we do not. Just as a parent has roles and behaviors that are not open to their children.”

  I would need to ponder all this. Every time I asked a question about God, it made faith even more confusing to me. I had thought of telling Talia about Timothy using the L word and even the M word, but decided I had enough heavy discussion to last me for the day.

  “Anyway, back to Lakisha. She is struggling now because she feels the full weight of what she did taking the abortion pill. Now she regrets it, and has to wait to see if her child will survive. It is very difficult. How much better for her, for all of us, if we would follow God in the first place. What a mess of woes we would avoid.”

  That was something I could heartily agree with. If I could erase most of my past and just start all over again knowing what I knew now, I am sure I would be having an easier time in life. I went to the back door and peeked out the window at the dogs. They were still racing around and tumbling over each other when they collided.

  “Well at least she gets a second chance. There is nothing I can do to cancel all those years I spent at the abortion center.” I heaved a sigh and swung away from the window.

  “We all do have a second chance of sorts,” Talia said. “We have the opportunity to be born again through repentance and acceptance of Jesus’ offer of forgiveness through His death on the cross.”

  I smiled at her. She never gave up. Never. Any opportunity she had she would try to wedge a salvation discussion into the conversation. Persistent was her middle name.

  “I don’t mean to annoy you,” she said. “I just sense that you struggle a great deal with the despair of what you did in your past. I imagine that burden becomes very heavy at times.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “You know, Jesus does not want us to carry that burden. He tells us to come— all who are weary and heavy laden—and He will give you rest for your soul. You know, we are referred to as sheep throughout the Bible and God is the Good Shepherd. Do you know an interesting fact about sheep?”

  “They are stupid,” I answered.

  “I don’t know about that,” Talia said laughing, “But did you know that sheep’s skeletal and muscular structure is such that they cannot bear heavy burdens? You see other domestic animals used as pack animals, but not sheep. They collapse under much weight.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “What an incredible symbol that is for us,” Talia said. “We carry so many burdens — sin, regret, remorse, despair, fear, anxiety…But God wants to free us from all of that. He knows those burdens will ultimately crush us.”

  “How do we put all those terrible things aside?” I asked.

  “Often, we cannot,” Talia said. “But God can. That is the offer Jesus makes.”

  There were sudden scratching noises on the door. The pups were begging to be let in. Bo watched them from the bottom of the back porch steps, head cocked.

  “They must be hungry,” Talia said, glancing at her watch. “I will grab my crazy pups before they destroy your door. Think about what we talked about. Maybe read Matthew 11. I think you will find it comforting.”

  She gathered the pups, leashed them somehow despite their wild squirminess, and headed out the door. Bo and I waved goodbye. I poured her a bowl of kibble, and me a bowl of cheerios. Cheerios was my fail-safe dinner when I didn’t feel like cooking, which was always.

  Not that I didn’t trust Talia, but as I settled down with my bowl of cheerios, I googled whether sheep made good pack animals. Talia was correct that they were not the go-to pack animal. Their legs are not as strong nor as nimble as goats but they can carry small packs. I guess that supported Talia’s point. We are perhaps able to carry small burdens, but when they are too heavy, hand them off to Jesus. It made sense that there would be no weight too heavy for God to carry, if He were indeed all-mighty.

  Then I went to an online Bible and looked up Matthew 11, as Talia had suggested. Matthew 11: 28-29 said: Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

  I examined this passage. There were a lot of tricks hidden in Jesus’ words. First, He did for sure encourage people to come to Him, but not exactly all people. Only those who labored and who were heavy laden. Now that did apply to me, but did He not call those who were shirkers with no burdens? To tell you the truth, I knew a few of those types.

  Next, He said He would give us rest, but then in the very next breath says “take my yoke upon you.” That did not make sense. I knew what a yoke was. It was what the farmer put on his cattle before hitching them to a heavy wagon. That didn’t sound restful to me. So what was it? Rest… or carry a yoke and haul a wagon full of who knows what?

  And if hauling the wagon was not enough, He added that we were to learn from Him. We’d be splitting our gut pulling whatever weight He wanted to load onto us and we had to be paying attention to His educational goals as well.

  Then the conundrum. We were to do all this because He self-promotes Himself as gentle and lowly. So far, I wasn’t buying it. And the reward: rest for our souls.

  How? How does His recipe add up
to rest?

  However, strictly from a literary standpoint, I liked His words. To give the heavy laden rest was a beautiful image, even though adding the yoke made no sense to me. Talia often said the Bible was counterintuitive. She said apparent contradictions are never truly antagonistic. Often, they just make us pause so we can discern the deeper meaning.

  So I googled, “yoke.” The definition of yoke blew me away:

  “A wooden crosspiece that is fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to the plow or cart that they are to pull.”

  Wooden. Cross. piece. The cross is where Jesus died, as Talia explained, to pay the penalty for our sins. It was wooden. If I wanted to take the thought to a likely unintended extreme, Talia also told me that it was through His sacrifice that we made PEACE with God. Not piece, but still an interesting thought, if you ask me.

  But the really flabbergasting revelation was that a yoke is used to attach TWO animals together. They would pull the burden together. Who was in the yoke with me? I did not need to even call Talia to find the answer to that. I knew the answer. Jesus was there right beside me. That’s why He said take MY yoke. It is not that we would not have a burden to pull, but that He would help us bear it.

  Chapter Five

  Ifelt comforted by that thought and drifted to a long dreamless night of sleep. That surprised me since I had so much on my mind, not the least of which was the Tuesday meeting with the attorney, Mr. Zeller.

  As soon as I rushed through the door at work, I laid out the whole shebang before Dr. Harried.

  “That is a generous offer. Mirror Lake University is a fine school. You could continue to work here at least part time while getting your degree. I think it sounds like just what you were thinking and praying about.”

  Praying? I let that slide.

  “I also believe you would make a fine vet. You are smart, compassionate, and willing to learn from your mistakes. What are your thoughts about it all?”

  “It sounds too good to be true,” I said.

  “Yes it does. From what you have told me about your life, you haven’t really had a whole lot of too good things happen. It’s time the scales tipped in that direction, don’t you think?”

  “I would need Tuesday afternoon off. That is when Mr. Zeller, the bank attorney, wants to meet with me..”

  “I am sure we can find a way to muddle through without you for one afternoon,” she said.

  Later when I told Brendan about this incredible offer, he asked if Dr. Thanatos might consider adopting him. “I would love someone to fund college for me. I take one class a semester. At this rate, I can become a vet in five hundred years.”

  I didn’t realize Brendan’s dream was to become a vet. I guess I should have guessed. No one had ever envied me for anything before. I told Brendan that Dr. Thanatos was not big on adoption, and did not elaborate.

  When Tuesday finally arrived, I went home for a quick lunch and to walk Bo. She could tell I was nervous.

  “Whuuuuuhhhhsssss upppppfff?”she asked.

  I explained what Dr. Thanatos had offered and how I was meeting with Mr. Zeller to read the fine print. Timothy had told me that it was possible I didn’t need to sign anything immediately. He also said it would be wise to mull it over and he would be happy to look at it with me later. Even if I did sign, Mr. Zeller had indicated I had a year to enroll and the deal was off if I didn’t do so.

  So I am not sure why I was nervous. I did not trust Dr. Thanatos. I knew he had always been a sly wolf, ready to devour the unsuspecting— or cut into tiny pieces if they were fetuses. I was not certain he didn’t have some terrible ulterior motive that I would not be able to discern till the scalpel sliced through my heart.

  However, Bo had no further advice on the matter. She was very interested in following a tantalizing smell and I had to wrench her away to return home. She was not pleased by that. I gave her an extra dog biscuit which smoothed over her grumbles.

  Mr. Zeller was surprisingly young. I expected a bank attorney to be old and fat. He was actually quite handsome, and didn’t look much older than me. He shook my hand, and his eyes bored into mine with a disturbing intensity. They were a brilliant blue. Electric. I liked him. My instincts, finely tuned to jerks since I dated so many of them, told me this was a good and honest man.

  I sat down across from him.

  “I gather you are estranged from your father?” he said, as he pulled a huge wad of papers from a Manila folder.

  “You could say that,” I said. “He was not in my life until recently. I didn’t even know he was my father.”

  “Oh?” An eyebrow raised.

  “It’s a long story I don’t really like to think about,” I said, hoping to squash any further questions.

  “Of course. No problem. So the conditions under which the agreement will be validated are spelled out on this first page. I would suggest you read it over carefully, and if you have any questions, I will do my best to answer.”

  He handed me the first sheet of the thick pile. I was concerned that I might be required to read through that entire enormous pile. I could not imagine what could possibly be written about this contract that would take up so much space. The sheer mass of the pile of papers raised my suspicions ten meters.

  The first sheet was pretty straightforward. It first identified who I was, who Dr. Thanatos was, and the nature of our relationship. It even had the name of my mother and the promises by Dr. Thanatos made to her to remain out of my life while I was a minor. I did not recall him mentioning that before, that the promise was only to her in my minor years. She was not here to ask one way or another. I don’t know why he felt the necessity to put that in writing in this agreement. There had to be a reason, and knowing him, an evil one, but I could not think of any plausible reason why it might matter one way or the other.

  Nonetheless, I paused in my reading, and told Mr. Zeller I had a question. “Do you see any reason why it would matter if Dr. Thanatos told my mother he would not interfere in my life at all while I was a minor?”

  Dr. Zeller read the paragraph.

  “Not off hand. I assume he wants to assure your mother that he abided by the terms they had agreed upon for custody of you.”

  “She’s dead,” I said.

  “Oh. I am sorry. No, to answer your question.You are not a minor now, and even if she were alive, she could not prevent you from doing whatever you desired to do with regards to your father. Now, she may have stipulated in her own will that if you had contact with him, she could restrict your access to certain inheritances.”

  “She had nothing,” I said. “There was no will as far as I know. She was a single mother. We were not exactly rolling in riches. We barely made ends meet. There was nothing left after she died. I was just a young girl, but I remember that much.”

  Mr. Zeller looked at me sadly. “You have not had an easy life.”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry that is the case, but it seems this might make your life easier.”

  “Do you see anything I should be worried about?”

  “I did not, though I did find it odd that Dr. Thanatos stipulated you could not publicly reveal the source of your college funding.”

  Believe me, I was in no hurry to brag about an abortionist paying my bills, but I also found it odd. I also wondered if the fact that I had disclosed his intentions to a few of my friends ruined the deal. I asked Mr. Zeller about that now.

  “He specifies not to disclose at the college of your choice, or in any public forum or written disclosure. I think speaking to your friends would not invalidate the contract unless they were college friends.”

  “I think I can abide by that. Why do you think he wants to keep it secret?”

  Mr. Zeller shrugged. Here’s what I think. Dr. Thanatos likely had all kinds of illegitimate children running around Mirror Lake. He probably was unsuccessful aborting ALL of them. If they got wind of his generosity towards me, maybe they would all swarm upon him demanding their
fair share. I kept this theory under wraps though I am sharing it with you so down the road, in case I am correct, you will be amazed at my clairvoyance.

  Nothing else on the page jumped out as a red flag. There was nothing requiring me to do anything other than keep the donation hush hush, and enroll within a year.

  “What if for some reason I don’t graduate?” I asked.

  Mr. Zeller said there was nothing to indicate any action would be taken at all.