“It’s okay,” she said. “Thank you for asking.”
“You don’t sound happy,” I said. “I am not much for wise counsel, as I am sure you know, but if you want to talk about something, I am happy to be a sounding board.”
“That means a lot to me, Ruth. Thank you. Honestly, it is nothing specific. It is just feeling a little vulnerable. Lakisha missed her last ultrasound appointment. That is never a good sign. She hasn’t answered my calls. Has she called you?”
“No,” I said. “I have tried calling her in fact but she never picks up. I was hoping this is normal…”
“Not so much if the woman has stayed firm in her choice for life,” Talia said. “If she is wavering, sometimes she cuts off communication.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“What’s worse is she sometimes also cuts off communication with God. When we wander into sin, we feel shame. And shame makes us try to hide. It’s so tragic since the one we are hiding from is the only one that can really help set us back on the right path. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God and ate from the tree that had been expressly forbidden to them, do you remember what they did? They covered themselves, recognizing for the first time they were naked, and tried to hide from God.”
“How could they not know they were naked?” I asked, laughing despite my glum mood.
“There was no reason to cover any part of them before sin entered paradise,” Talia said. “They could stand fully exposed before God with no guilt or shame. I suppose it is a symbol of being completely seen by God with nothing to hide. That didn’t last long however.”
“What will help with Lakisha now?” I asked.
“Prayer,” Talia answered immediately. “We can’t force ourselves on her. She knows the truth. We can pray that she turns back to God and to truth.”
“How do you do this all the time?” I asked. “I would imagine that lots of the women you counsel end up changing their minds back to abortion. How do you keep from feeling like it is all a waste of time?”
“Some turn back to abortion,” Talia said, “Not all. Not even most. Most who choose life are grateful. Those who turn to God often completely turn their lives around. It is important for me to keep my focus on them. I try to, and most of the time, I am successful. But I admit, Satan is a powerful, relentless enemy, and he doesn’t give up. God wins in the end. I just need to keep returning to that truth and rest in that.”
“I don’t think I am cut out for that kind of work,” I said. “I feel like it is all my fault…like I should have said or done something more, something else, and Lakisha would not abort.”
“Don’t give up on her yet,” Talia said. “She may be struggling right now, but maybe the battle is still being waged. Let’s pray now.”
She didn’t wait for me to acquiesce, but launched right into a lengthy prayer right then and there. I closed my eyes, deciding that I could use prayer too, if God was still bothering with me after all my anger at Him. Maybe some of the prayer for Lakisha would rub off on me.
When Talia finished, she said, “Thank you Ruth. I actually feel lighter, like a weight has been lifted. Your concern means a lot to me.”
I mumbled, “You’re welcome.” Then Bo started nibbling at my ankles and making noises that sounded like she felt dinner was long overdue so I got off the phone. A walk would do me some good. I told Bo that dinner would wait till we finished a walk. She agreed.
Despite my intentions otherwise, I ended up letting Bo lead me towards Timothy’s house. Fortunately, or maybe not, we didn’t run into him by the time we hit our turnaround point, the hedge where we often collided with each other. Bo stopped and howled as I started to drag her back towards home. I am pretty sure it was the doggie alert system, notifying Dumbo of our presence.
I paused, hoping maybe Dumbo would come barreling down the street with Timothy catapulting behind him. However, that did not happen. With a sigh, we started back home. I glanced back once, and oh how I wish I hadn’t. I caught a glimpse of a man just rounding the bend in the road who looked like Timothy. I was, in fact, certain it was Timothy. Timothy…with his arm around a willowy woman with long dark hair.
I started jogging before Bo got any wild ideas of trying to head back towards him. In fact, I ran full out. I probably did a personal best for a two-mile dash. I felt like puking as we stormed across the grass into my apartment. Some of that was due to running faster than I had ever run, but most of it was due to the nauseating realization that I had lost the best man on earth to someone who looked like a model. All hope was now permanently gone.
Well, I had faced troubles far more severe than a broken heart. I would survive this one too. I made our dinner without shedding a tear. Then I plopped on the couch with a bag of cheap cookies and began filling out the first in a series of forms for my school check list.
Somehow I finished all the cookies, and now had a stomach ache to add to my sorrows. Good thing I was blessed with a fast metabolism, or the Blimp would have nothing on me. Bo sat beside me, licking the few crumbs that managed to escape as I’d crammed the little sugar bombs into my mouth.
She knew it was best to just remain quiet. No advice at all was offered, for which I was glad. What could she say that would change the obvious?
Talia’s story about Adam and Eve hiding from God when they sinned rattled about in my head. I opened my Bible to Genesis to read that story myself. I don’t know what I hoped to find, but if there was such a thing as a prompting from God, I felt prompted.
I read about the creation of the earth, then of Adam, and how right away God warned Adam that basically he could do whatever he wanted except for one thing. He could not eat of the Tree of Good and Evil or he would surely die. What struck me immediately was I wondered if Adam even knew what God meant by death. Nothing had died yet as far as I could tell in Eden. God was warning Adam about something that was totally out of his experience.
Honestly, was that fair?
Then God created Eve and clearly in some form or another, the two people married. In the passage after Eve is presented to Adam, he calls her flesh of his flesh, and then that act is summarized in the following verse that all married people will cleave to each other, united in flesh.
Then this: “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” Genesis 2:25. Just like Talia said. They were naked, but not ashamed.
So in the very next chapter, Satan arrives in snake form and entices them to eat of the Tree of Good and Evil. As soon as they do, I mean, bam, immediately, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” Genesis 3:7 .
So the immediate, first response to disobeying God was shame. Covering themselves. I remembered the many times I had seen women entering the abortion center covering their faces from the pro-life crowd along the fence. The pro-choice escorts covered them with umbrellas so they could not be seen by the pro-life people. Covering their shame. Everyone hiding.
Now of course, that is not what I used to think was happening, nor how the pro-choice escorts characterized what was happening. They said the pro-life crowd was being self -righteous, judgmental, and condemning. The umbrellas were to shield and protect the aborting women from harassment.
Interesting that I thought of that immediately as I read the account of Adam and Eve covering their nakedness.
Next, Adam and Eve heard God walking in the garden, and hid from God. The next verse again struck me with it’s ludicrous-ness. (Not sure if that is a word, but it fits.) “But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”” Genesis 3:9�
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Think about that. God, who supposedly sees and knows everything, asked where they were. Was it possible God didn’t know? I don’t think so. So why did He ask??
I thought about that for a long time. This is what I concluded. He asked because it gave Adam and Eve a chance to fess up. I remember when I was a little girl, my mom told me that she had made a special batch of cookies for a church bake sale. She told me we didn’t have much money to offer to the refugees which the bake sale would raise funds for, but we could certainly make cookies for the church to sell. She put them on the counter to cool. She gave me one, for being such a good helper and told me the other ones would be wrapped in clusters of three to sell. There were three dozen cookies, so enough for a dozen perfect little clusters of three cookies.
I was too young to have figured that out or I might not have tried to get away with stealing a cookie while Mom was in the bathroom. I stuffed it down my throat so fast that there was no way she could have suspected. But when she finished wrapping the cookies, she called me to the kitchen. I noticed two unwrapped cookies beside the many wrapped bundles.
“Ruth,” Mom said, “Did you eat another cookie?”
I had no idea she KNEW through the miracle of math that I had eaten another cookie. I was sure the evidence was destroyed deep inside my gut and she would never know. But I couldn’t look at her as I answered. I hid my eyes.
“You put one cookie separate from the others. I thought you put that aside for me.”
That led to a long lecture and some time in my room for quiet reflection on the value of honesty.
Adam did just what I did. He lied by deflecting blame onto God. “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”” Genesis 3:9, 12
It was a very serious thing that Adam did, but he tells God that it was actually all God’s fault since God gave him Eve, and Eve was the one who offered the forbidden fruit. Poor Adam had no choice but to eat it.
There were a whole bunch of terrible repercussions that I won’t go into, except for two. First, God made a covering of skin for Adam and Eve. They could not remain naked. They must now be covered, which spoke to the sin that now had entered their lives. But, here is another startling thought. Why not just let them keep the fig leaves? Remember, up to this point there was no death. None. In fact, since I had already read chapter one, I knew that even the animals only ate plants. No creature had died yet.
Then where did God get the skins for the clothing He put on Adam and Eve? As soon as they rebelled against God, death entered Eden. Something died and its skin became the covering for Adam and Eve.
I had never realized the depth of that simple story that even as a heathen little girl, I had heard countless times. Everyone knows about Adam and Eve, but I had never known all those details.
And there is more. At the end of this tragic tale, God banishes Adam and Eve forever from the Garden of Eden to prevent them from eating of the Tree of Life. Now admittedly, as far as I could see, Adam and Eve never apologized. They both made excuses, but if they did ever admit guilt, it wasn’t recorded. Nonetheless, to banish them FOREVER from the Garden God made just for them…?? Doesn’t that seem a little harsh???
I called Talia.
“Why,” I cried out, “Why did God banish Adam and Eve forever so they could not eat of the Tree of Life??”
“It was an act of mercy,” Talia said.
“Mercy?”
I was new to all this, but it sure didn’t sound like mercy to me. They had it made in the Garden of Eden. I can’t imagine they were happy to be banished.
“They had sinned against God. They had chosen a path of rebellion. That sin began the fall of all humankind in the choice to do evil once given the option. God gave them the option for evil, but remember, they could have chosen good. They followed their own path, rather than God’s path. They ignored His clear command. If they were granted eternal life, to have eaten of the Tree of Life while yet in a regenerate state, having chosen evil rather than God, they would have been in their sinful, decaying body for all eternity.
“When they were banished from the Garden, God knew they would experience hardship and physical death, but they would also have the possibility of reconciliation with God. We know that their son, Abel, made sacrifices pleasing to God, as the Bible tells us that…so we assume he learned that from his parents. No one knows for sure if Adam and Eve chose to follow God faithfully after their banishment. But we do know that the promise of the Tree of Life occurs again in the book of Revelation, and all who trust and believe in Him will experience eternity with God.”
Bottom line: if given the choice of good and evil, choose good. And if you choose evil, fess up. Right away.
I still had questions after I got off the phone. For one thing, couldn’t Adam and Eve have found forgiveness and learned to trust and obey God in the Garden as well as outside the Garden? I still could not see how being banished was merciful. So I can’t say that I understood totally all the ramifications of Adam and Eve’s sorry tale. But one thing kept returning to me over and over again. It seemed to me that God was offering them a chance at redemption. He outright asked, “Where are you?” And “What have you done?” This seemed to be the answer that eluded me in both the depressing situations I faced right now.
Lakisha.
Timothy.
Where are you…and what have you done?
I think God was telling me I should ask.
Chapter Fifteen
But not yet. First, I would obsess over how best to ask. Then I would procrastinate because no answer left the potential for hope, and the answer I was pretty sure I would hear on both counts was not a good one. At this point I was certain Lakisha had aborted and Timothy was in love with a willowy model.
So I promised God I would ask, eventually. For now, I would do what I always did. Shut down my emotions that hoped the world was fair and go into survival mode. Talia did call during my terrible next two weeks, but I let her call go to voice mail. I was doing to her what Timothy and Lakisha were doing to me. And while it is possible I deserved bad treatment, in fact, for sure I did if God was a God of justice, Talia didn’t.
Nonetheless, I could not tell her the terrible truth of what had happened with Timothy. It was too raw. And she probably had already figured out what happened with Lakisha. This was not her first rodeo.
The one somewhat bright spot was that almost daily I got letters or emails from Mirror Lake University. You would think I was some awesome prize by the number of glowing messages I received from them. They could hardly wait for me to walk onto their campus and taste all the delights of higher education.
The other bright spot was work. Dr.Harried almost never failed to make me laugh. For example, one day, I walked to work as usual to find her in the front garden area raking lines in the gravel. She was creating a swirling pattern that arched around each bush, and then circled around the large boulders that were interlaced among the bushes.
“This is Feng Shui.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It is the ancient Chinese practice of creating balance and serenity in our surroundings.”
I watched her rake the curving furrows for a while.
“How does it do that?” I asked.
“Natural elements are ‘forces’ in Feng Shui parlance. Whenever you add a natural element such as water, wood, earth, metal, or fire to your landscape, you honor nature and create balance. Also, nature is rarely straight lines…it is all about curves. When you create curves in your surroundings, you invite paths of adventure. So, notice our straight walk way into the clinic there. It is not evoking serenity. It is evoking man-made rigidity.”
“Will you rip up the concrete?” I a
sked.
“No…that would destroy my serenity no matter how much Feng Shui harmony I created. Instead, I will create curves in the gravel here to achieve Feng Shui on a budget.”
I didn’t have time to ask her if the objective was to help her animal clients to be more peaceful as they pooped and peed on her Feng Shui or their owners. Our first patient arrived, a black Labrador with a graying muzzle. The old dog had been around a few blocks. He moved so slowly that I wasn’t sure he would make it up our man-made rigid path to the door. Dr.Harried laid her rake aside and cooed to the old dog as she opened the door for him.
“I think his arthritis is bothering him,” the elderly man who held onto the leash said. “Mine too. You think you got something we could both share?”
Leashed to Faith Page 12