© 2010 David’s Harp and Pen
It would be remiss of me to talk about the plight of the single Christian woman without talking about sex. Normally, though, I don’t like to write about things in which I have such little experience, so I guess I will have to wing it. Having reached my 35th year with my virginity still intact, I realized that I was a growing rarity in today’s society. It was actually very easy for me to maintain my purity for three and a half decades. It had finally dawned on me why I had reached middle age and was still single. I would meet a nice guy. We would hit it off. We’d go on a few dates and have a few laughs. Then, I would speak…and it would all go downhill from there. So, my natural ability to stick my foot in my mouth when interacting with the opposite sex helped reduce opportunities for sexual temptation tremendously. The other saving grace for me, and countless other Christ-followers, was chocolate.
Recent studies have shown that chocolate satisfies the same part of the brain that is satisfied by sex. So, whenever I would meet a guy I found myself remotely attracted to, the first thing I would do is head to Shopper’s Warehouse and buy up the industrial vat of peanut butter cups. Now, most people think of chocolate as comfort food only for women, but I know many a good Christian man who secretly indulged in it in order to make it to his wedding night a virgin. In fact, Shane consumed so much chocolate in his pursuit of sexual purity that chocolate producers in Hershey, Pennsylvania have erected a statue of him in the town square.
One day, shortly after Ryan’s arrival, Shane decided to go on a 40-day chocolate fast, and me being the gullible supportive friend I am, agreed to do it with him. We put a temptation clause in the agreement, though, that if he faced sexual temptation, he was allowed to have what we referred to as “spiritually necessary chocolate.” Now, I can always tell how great the temptation is that he’s facing on a given day based on the manner and volume of his chocolate consumption, and Satan was not kind to Shane during those 40 days. One of the reasons he wanted to do the chocolate fast was to lose weight, but in light of how random women throw themselves at him, I think he should’ve been working on making himself LESS attractive. On Day 7, I rode with Shane in his car to a concert, and when I got in the passenger seat, I stepped into ankle-deep peanut butter cup wrappers. Day 13 must’ve been particularly rough for Shane, too, because when he arrived at worship team practice, he pulled five chocolate bars from his backpack, unwrapped them, stacked them on top of one another, and ate them all together. However, the worst was Day 21. He came by my house shortly before midnight after having been at auditions all day for a travelling musical. I could only imagine what he saw there, what with all those showgirls. When I opened the door, there he stood, his face and clothing smeared with chocolate syrup and his hair full of chocolate cake crumbs. My mouth dropped open and I stared in shock, but before I could say anything, he looked at me with fire in his eyes and said in a psychotic tone, “Don’t judge me!”
I was dealing with temptation of my own at the time. However, I was not afforded the luxury of “spiritually necessary chocolate.” I don’t know which was worse, that he was a walking Ho-Ho or that when I helped him clean up, I wanted to snag some of those chocolate cake crumbs in his hair for myself.
Some would say, “Avoiding temptation with chocolate? That doesn’t sound very spiritual.” The thing is, though, when a person is trying to break free from habitual sin, and everything else he or she has tried failed, he or she must get creative, especially since, when it comes to creating temptation, Satan is extremely creative. For example, if a person’s struggle is with rage, Satan will cause that person to be stuck in traffic on the interstate for three hours because everyone on the road has stopped to watch someone change a tire. If a person’s struggle is gluttony, Satan will cause discount Chinese buffets to sprout up on every block within a 50-mile radius of the person’s home. If, in Shane’s case, the struggle is with sexual addiction, Satan will see to it that the hotel where Shane works hosts the International Hooters Convention. The Bible says in I Corinthians 10:13 there’s no temptation that comes against us except that which is experienced by everyone. However, Satan will tell the tempted that they are a special case, that they’re extremely unspiritual to be facing that temptation, and are therefore hopeless to resist it. I know. I know. It’s dirty. It’s underhanded. That’s why Satan is called Satan! Hello?!
There’s a second problem with temptation, though. If one faces the same temptation for a while, one really does start to doubt their spiritual state. However, being tempted isn’t a sin. It’s the yielding to the temptation that’s the problem. It’s also a process and a question of comparison. I guess what I want to say is some struggles go away the minute we get saved, but others take time. For Shane, the important thing is that he finishes the process to master temptation, not that he finishes it quickly, and he’s come so far in his quest for purity. Before he was saved, he was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List for endless felony counts of interstate hit-and-run dating and fleeing the scene of the relationship. Now, he still has to take his Antabuses whenever Victoria’s Secret mails out their catalogs, but compared to where he was, this was a major step forward. (I thought it was a shame Shane couldn’t be like Bruno, who avoided temptation with women simply by remaining bitter towards them.)
The final problem with temptation, and the most serious in my opinion, is that it is so tempting. As I said earlier, Satan does more than his fair share to dangle the golden carrot in front of our faces, but he can’t take all the blame. We are often led down the wrong path, too, by our own desires. It was easy for me to resist sexual temptation all those years because I didn’t know what I was missing. However, since Shane had already tasted the forbidden fruit, and saw that it was good (okay, not good, but definitely fun in the short run), it was that much easier for him to give in to temptation every time the opportunity presented itself.
Purity for the Christian is much more involved than non-Christians think. True purity is holistic, in that it includes not only how we act but also how we think. Jesus said that to even look at another with lust is tantamount to doing the deed in our hearts. Therefore, the first and last battlegrounds for purity are our minds and hearts. Prayer, the Word, daily renewal by the Holy Spirit, and fellowship with other believers are our first line of defense against the trappings of sin, Satan, and our flesh. After that, as stated earlier, chocolate is a wonderful and highly enjoyable spiritual supplement. However, for Shane and me, it was a short-term solution to a long-term problem. Ultimately, it wasn’t enough to not want to sin, but to develop a burning, overwhelming craving for what was good, which was also a process.
Speaking of the process, mine had been long and arduous. My recurring temptation hadn’t been as obvious as Shane’s. Mine was fear or, more specifically, an insecurity that was sometimes so crippling I couldn’t do anything. I had been pretty good at hiding it. In fact, in some Christian circles, insecurity easily passes for humility. However, I knew in my heart that letting myself be ruled by fear was just as offensive to God as any other sin I could commit. The day finally came when my fear and my faith had a head-on collision.
Shane and I had plans, along with some others from church, to go to this swank new restaurant in town to celebrate Shane getting hired for a series of motorcycle commercials. I was on crutches because of the bear trap I stepped in when Bruno, Ryan, and I had to chase my dog Bernie through the neighborhood. Some of the people in our group were already at the restaurant and had gotten a table when we arrived. When Shane and I pulled into the parking lot, I looked in despair at the staircase leading to the restaurant. There must have been at least a thousand steps. There were wheelchair ramps, but they were long and zig-zaggy. At that moment, it dawned on me why the place was called Skyline Bistro.
“Oh, Shane! How am I ever going to get up all those steps?” I moaned as we reached the curb.
“I’ll run in and see if they have a wheelchair or something,” Shane answered. Then, because he’s in such great shape, he traversed all those steps with the grace, speed, and agility of an elk.
The moment of truth had arrived for me. As I began to painfully climb the stairs, temptation came to meet me. The tape in my head started to play, with all the familiar lies, telling me I was a klutz, stupid, etc., telling me that everyone around me was watching me fumble with my crutches and making fun of me to themselves. Temptation told me to agree with Satan, to freak out, to believe fear and insecurity would always master me. However, just like Joseph said that what some would mean for evil, God could turn around for good, I realized that maybe, just maybe, this moment which Satan had meant to enslave me further to fear was also an opportunity sent from God to liberate me from it. I paused on the third step and prayed, “God, you said that You won’t let me be tempted beyond what I can bear, and if the temptation is too great, You would provide a way of escape. Fear and insecurity are telling me that I can’t live without them. And I’ll be honest God. I don’t have the desire to fight, or even try to fight. Help me! Show me the way of escape! Show me how…”
My silent prayer was interrupted when I felt an arm around my waist. I looked to see whom it was attached to, and it was Ryan. He pulled me tight next to him. He then took my crutches and handed them to Bruno, who had driven himself and Ryan to the restaurant.
“Bruno, would you carry these, please?” Ryan asked Bruno. When Bruno took the crutches, Ryan swept me up into his arms, looked at me, and said, “Don’t worry, Darlin’, I’ve got you. Just hold on.”
So, he carried me in his arms up all thousand stairs, except now that I was climbing the steps in a much more enjoyable fashion, there didn’t seem to be quite as many. I felt like I was in a bit of dream world, ‘til I remembered that his hand was still bandaged up from getting caught in my car door. I looked at him and said, “You don’t have to do this.”
“Of course I do. The place would’ve closed by the time you got up the steps,” Ryan replied.
“But, what about your hand?”
“You worry about holding on and let me worry about my hand, alright?”
He carried me in to the restaurant and all the way to our table. I still wasn’t sure if I was imagining the whole thing until I saw the flock of female servers huddled in a corner, staring at Ryan and me and cooing. One of them walked up to us as Ryan lowered me into my seat and asked, “Are you okay?”
As happens regularly, I lost my powers of speech temporarily, which in that case, was definitely for my benefit. Ryan answered, “She’s fine. She’s just on crutches right now and needed help with stairs.”
“Wow! That was really cool!” The waitress said gushingly, obviously enamored with Ryan.
Ryan looked at me and said, “Anything for the Dog Whisperer.”
I looked back at him and prayed silently, “God, when it comes to answering prayer, you really outdid yourself this time.”
Dinner went well, and then our waiter came by to ask us if we wanted any dessert.
“Mags, since we’re celebrating, go ahead and have some chocolate. My treat,” Shane said.
“Really?” I asked. Then I turned to the waiter and said, “Ooh, let me see your dessert menu.”
The waiter handed me a menu, and as I poured over my chocolate dessert options, I thought about the huge milestone I had just reached. Maybe I could now move forward successfully in my fight against fear, insecurity, and self-consciousness, and I could eat chocolate because I wanted to, not because I needed to. The thrill of victory was to be short-lived, however, when I once again decided to speak.
“How is your chocolate mocha cheesecake? I mean, is it everything the menu says it is, because it’s been a long time since I’ve had any chocolate. I mean, forever. I mean, I don’t think I even remember what it tastes like. And it’s been ssoooooooooo hard going without it. I mean, I can’t go into the gas station and pass the candy bar aisle without going into hypoglycemic shock,” I ranted.
The waiter looked at me strangely and replied, “Ah, tell you what. I’ll bring you a piece. If you don’t like it, I’ll bring you something else.”
As soon as the waiter left, Bruno looked at me and said, “You know, Mags, if I didn’t know you, I’d think you were talking about how long it had been since you last had sex.”
All the guys at the table started laughing at me. I blushed so much I thought my face would burst into flames. That’s the problem with hanging out with guys all the time. No matter how godly they may be, once in a blue moon, they will let their minds wander to the gutter.
“And you know, Mags, chocolate is also slang for men of color,” Shane chimed in.
Once again, talking without thinking, I looked at Shane and cried, “It’s not fair! You get to have chocolate instead of sex! Why can’t I have chocolate instead of chocolate?”
Everyone laughed even harder as the waiter returned with my cheesecake. I tried inconspicuously to eat a few bites. I felt that temptation creep in to dog myself and play the tape again in my head. Shane turned to Ryan and said, “She’s such a dork!”
Ryan replied, “No she’s not. She’s absolutely fantastic.” That brought tape playback to a screeching halt! The waiter returned to our table and asked me, “So, how’s the cheesecake?”
Slightly delirious with glee, I answered, “It’s wonderful, but I can tell you right now, I’m definitely going to need another one.”
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
3-The Sixth Sense
© 2010 David’s Harp and Pen
I have a dog. His name is Bernie and he’s a Saint Bernard (no, I’m not very creative). Bernie’s been a faithful, although at times unpredictable, companion to me. He had a rough puppyhood and, as a result, is slightly lacking in social skills. Okay, to be honest, he’s the neighborhood menace and would most likely have met an early doom had it not been for me. The problem is he doesn’t like anyone except me. And the mailman. Well, not really the whole mailman, just his ankles.
I’ve heard it said before that animals have a sixth sense about things, that they can size up a person when they first meet him or her. If that’s true, then according to Bernie, everyone I know is evil. I don’t discount there’s some truth to it all, I just don’t know how much. It must be nice, though, to be able to read someone like that and size them up in an instant. I’m not very good at reading people. Or, maybe I am, but don’t have the good sense to heed the red flags when I see them. To Bernie’s credit, he’s successfully scared away many a dysfunctional man before I had the opportunity to get entangled. One night not so long ago, though, Bernie’s perceptive powers proved to be indispensible.
That night, my car was in the shop, so my friend Bruno agreed to drive me home from Bible study. Bruno is the second component of my power trio of male friends. Bruno is 33, Italian, a New Yorker, and a cop. He’s one of those brutally blunt people. In fact, when I told him he could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, he told me he could catch the most flies by holding fly swatters in both hands. Now, before anyone asks, no, there was nothing going on with Bruno and me. When Bruno was in his early 20s, and before he was a Christian, he went to Vegas for the weekend, got drunk, and somehow ended up married. He stayed married for a year, which is a long time by getting-drunk-and-married-in-Vegas standards, but the whole experience ruined him towards marriage and women forever. In fact, I don’t know why we’re even friends. The only thing I can think of is he was sent to me by God to keep my self-esteem from getting to a dangerously healthy level.
So anyway, the other night, after Bible study, Bruno drove me home. Ryan was with us because it was Bruno’s turn to host Ryan. No one said much during the drive. I didn’t think Ryan would ever want to speak to me again after the whole hand-in-the-car-door fiasco. I know I wouldn’t speak to me after what I did to him. The poor thing got a crash course in American healthcare by spending five hours in the emergency room, stitches, and three weeks with his right hand in a cast. Now, for reasons I still can’t comprehend, his medical expenses were covered by my car insurance. It didn’t seem right, but considering the colossal amount of money I had shelled out over the years for emergency medical expenses, I was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
When we pulled up to my driveway, I saw, to my dismay, the gate to the backyard open, a pizza box that had been torn open and deprived of its contents, a pizza delivery man on the ground with a dazed and frightened look on his face, and no Bernie. I jumped out of the car and into my house to grab a leash. When I came back outside, Bruno was attending to the pizza guy.
“Make it stop! Make it stop!” the pizza guy moaned in pain.
“Excuse me, sir. Oh, I’m so sorry about…well…this. Did you see which way my dog went?” I asked.
“That wasn’t a dog. That was a werewolf!” the pizza guy shouted angrily as he tried to get up.
“Here. Let me help you. Do you need an ambulance?” Bruno asked as he helped the pizza guy to his feet.
“Beer! I need lots of beer!” Pizza Man replied. Out of the side of my eye, I saw Bernie turn the corner to the next street.
“Ooh! There he goes! Sorry. I’ve got to run after him before he gets too far. Tell the pizzeria to send me a bill!” I yelled to Bruno and the Pizza Man as I ran down the street. By the time I got to the corner, though, Bernie was completely out of sight. I yelled his name several times, but no response. I was starting to worry.
“Did you see where he went?” Ryan asked.
“Aahhhhh!!!!!!!!” I screamed, right into Ryan’s ear. I didn’t know he had followed me. Oh crap! First I mangled his hand, and then I made him deaf.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know anyone was there!” I said apologetically.
“I’ll be sure to announce myself first next time,” he said, rubbing his left ear with his left hand.
“No, it’s my fault,” I started to ramble. “It’s all my fault. I should’ve gotten a lock on the gate like Bruno’s been saying all along. If I had gotten a lock, he never would’ve gotten out, and the pizza guy would be okay, and my neighbors would have their pizza, and you’d still have your hearing. Oh, Bernie gets so disoriented when he gets out of the yard. Now he’ll get lost, or kidnapped, or killed, or worse, and it’ll be all my fault. I am such an airhead some times. Stupid, stupid, stupid…”
“Stop slamming yourself like that,” Ryan interrupted. “It’s not attractive!”
I was taken aback for a second and I just stared at him. How dare he…well, he hadn’t insulted me, really. He was telling me not to insult myself. Still, he…hmmm…I wasn’t used to being told to treat myself better. I was going to have to think about how to process that.
“C’mon. We’re going to need Bruno’s car if we’re ever going to find Bernie,” I said. I didn’t say anything as we walked back to my house, mainly because I was too nervous.
When we got back, the pizza guy and his car were gone. Bruno was standing outside his car with the usual disgruntled look on his face.
“Oh, Bruno! Can we please drive around in your car and look for Bernie? I don’t know where he went and I’m really worried,” I whimpered.
“Ryan, would you excuse us for a moment, please?” Bruno asked.
“Sure,” Ryan answered and got into Bruno’s car.
“Now, Dr. Doolittle,” Bruno started as soon as we heard the car door shut, “what did I tell you the last time I helped you chase that mongrel through the neighborhood?”
“That Bernie was a public nuisance and it was your duty as a civil servant to put Bernie out my neighbors’ and my misery?” I answered sheepishly.
“Do you know what would happen to you and Bernie if we were back in Brooklyn?”
“What? Would you make me sleep with the fishes?”
“No. I wouldn’t do that to the fishes,” Bruno answered and got in the car. I followed timidly, wondering if my dog or I would ever see sunlight again.
We drove around for the next 45 minutes, circling my subdivision and the adjacent ones looking for Bernie. Each time we thought we had caught up to him, he’d take off. I still don’t know how he was able to outrun Bruno’s old police cruiser. Maybe Bernie had bionic legs or something. Meanwhile, inside the car, the tension was so thick I could’ve cut it with knife. Bruno was furious with me, I was scared for my dog, and Ryan…well, I couldn’t tell what was going through his head, except maybe that he finally understood why Europeans think so little of Americans. He finally broke the silence and asked, “So, what’s the deal with the dog?”
“That’s not a dog. It’s a demon with fur. Devil dog!” Bruno shot back.
“I take it you don’t like the dog?”
“Oh, I love devil dogs. They’re really tasty dipped in milk.”
“Go easy on Bernie, please,” I pleaded. “He had it rough as a puppy and he’s never quite recovered.”
“What happened?” Ryan asked.
“I found him one night when I was driving home in the rain,” I replied. “He was limping, he had cuts all over him, he was infested with fleas and ticks, and it looked like he’d not eaten in weeks. There wasn’t a collar on him, so I brought him home. I took him to the vet the next day to get checked out. The doctor said Bernie was lucky to be alive…”
“Lucky for who?” Bruno interrupted.
“Anyway,” I continued, “it took a long time for him to get well, and he didn’t trust me at first. After all the feedings with a baby bottle, rubbing his wounds with Vitamin E oil, and a thousand bucks for the vet and gourmet puppy chow, he realized I was okay, and he’s been my dog ever since.”
“That’s a lot of effort to put out for a dog,” Ryan said.
“Well, I couldn’t bear the thought of him dying starving and alone like that,” I said defensively.
“Hey, there he is! Going into that back yard,” Bruno yelled. I hopped out of the car and ran after Bernie into what had to be the creepiest piece of property I’d ever seen. I wasn’t quite sure where we were, but I was confident the address was probably 1313 Mockingbird Lane. The house had a weird Addams’ Family feel to it, and I fully expected winged vampires to start dropping out of the sky. I looked straight ahead of me, and nuzzled next to a large, dilapidated oak tree, was Bernie. I approached the tree quietly, attempting to be as quiet as possible. I almost had my hand on Bernie’s collar when the inevitable happened.
“Margaret, you forgot the leash!” Ryan yelled to me. Bernie shot up and began to charge at Ryan.
“Oh no!” I thought. “This is it. I busted his hand, deprived him of his hearing, and now my dog is going to finish him off. The Irish Republican Army will invade America in retaliation. It’ll be World War III and it’ll all be my fault!”
Bernie reached Ryan, but instead of goring him, like he’s done with every other human whose path he’s crossed, he jumped up and put his two front paws on Ryan’s chest as Ryan patted him on the head. Ryan got the leash on Bernie, who then jumped off and began to ram his head into Ryan’s legs. I didn’t understand. Bernie didn’t like anyone except me. Perhaps…maybe…did Ryan have “the gift?” No sooner did I finish the thought than I stepped backwards with my right foot and heard a loud metal clank. An agonizing pain shot through my ankle. I looked down and saw my right foot caught in a steel bear trap. At first, I was too much in shock to make a sound. Ryan and Bernie ran towards me. Wow! Ryan looked positively mesmerizing in the moonlight.
“Omigosh!” Ryan exclaimed as he looked at my foot. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I answered as I began to get slightly delirious. “I mean, he doesn’t like anyone except me. I can’t believe Bernie didn’t try to…”
“Not the blasted dog! Your foot! I can see your bone and all!”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. My ankle,” I replied. Suddenly, I remembered that I had metal jaws of death trying to amputate my foot. “AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”
I have a dog. His name is Bernie and he’s a Saint Bernard (no, I’m not very creative). Bernie’s been a faithful, although at times unpredictable, companion to me. He had a rough puppyhood and, as a result, is slightly lacking in social skills. Okay, to be honest, he’s the neighborhood menace and would most likely have met an early doom had it not been for me. The problem is he doesn’t like anyone except me. And the mailman. Well, not really the whole mailman, just his ankles.
I’ve heard it said before that animals have a sixth sense about things, that they can size up a person when they first meet him or her. If that’s true, then according to Bernie, everyone I know is evil. I don’t discount there’s some truth to it all, I just don’t know how much. It must be nice, though, to be able to read someone like that and size them up in an instant. I’m not very good at reading people. Or, maybe I am, but don’t have the good sense to heed the red flags when I see them. To Bernie’s credit, he’s successfully scared away many a dysfunctional man before I had the opportunity to get entangled. One night not so long ago, though, Bernie’s perceptive powers proved to be indispensible.
That night, my car was in the shop, so my friend Bruno agreed to drive me home from Bible study. Bruno is the second component of my power trio of male friends. Bruno is 33, Italian, a New Yorker, and a cop. He’s one of those brutally blunt people. In fact, when I told him he could catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, he told me he could catch the most flies by holding fly swatters in both hands. Now, before anyone asks, no, there was nothing going on with Bruno and me. When Bruno was in his early 20s, and before he was a Christian, he went to Vegas for the weekend, got drunk, and somehow ended up married. He stayed married for a year, which is a long time by getting-drunk-and-married-in-Vegas standards, but the whole experience ruined him towards marriage and women forever. In fact, I don’t know why we’re even friends. The only thing I can think of is he was sent to me by God to keep my self-esteem from getting to a dangerously healthy level.
So anyway, the other night, after Bible study, Bruno drove me home. Ryan was with us because it was Bruno’s turn to host Ryan. No one said much during the drive. I didn’t think Ryan would ever want to speak to me again after the whole hand-in-the-car-door fiasco. I know I wouldn’t speak to me after what I did to him. The poor thing got a crash course in American healthcare by spending five hours in the emergency room, stitches, and three weeks with his right hand in a cast. Now, for reasons I still can’t comprehend, his medical expenses were covered by my car insurance. It didn’t seem right, but considering the colossal amount of money I had shelled out over the years for emergency medical expenses, I was not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
When we pulled up to my driveway, I saw, to my dismay, the gate to the backyard open, a pizza box that had been torn open and deprived of its contents, a pizza delivery man on the ground with a dazed and frightened look on his face, and no Bernie. I jumped out of the car and into my house to grab a leash. When I came back outside, Bruno was attending to the pizza guy.
“Make it stop! Make it stop!” the pizza guy moaned in pain.
“Excuse me, sir. Oh, I’m so sorry about…well…this. Did you see which way my dog went?” I asked.
“That wasn’t a dog. That was a werewolf!” the pizza guy shouted angrily as he tried to get up.
“Here. Let me help you. Do you need an ambulance?” Bruno asked as he helped the pizza guy to his feet.
“Beer! I need lots of beer!” Pizza Man replied. Out of the side of my eye, I saw Bernie turn the corner to the next street.
“Ooh! There he goes! Sorry. I’ve got to run after him before he gets too far. Tell the pizzeria to send me a bill!” I yelled to Bruno and the Pizza Man as I ran down the street. By the time I got to the corner, though, Bernie was completely out of sight. I yelled his name several times, but no response. I was starting to worry.
“Did you see where he went?” Ryan asked.
“Aahhhhh!!!!!!!!” I screamed, right into Ryan’s ear. I didn’t know he had followed me. Oh crap! First I mangled his hand, and then I made him deaf.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know anyone was there!” I said apologetically.
“I’ll be sure to announce myself first next time,” he said, rubbing his left ear with his left hand.
“No, it’s my fault,” I started to ramble. “It’s all my fault. I should’ve gotten a lock on the gate like Bruno’s been saying all along. If I had gotten a lock, he never would’ve gotten out, and the pizza guy would be okay, and my neighbors would have their pizza, and you’d still have your hearing. Oh, Bernie gets so disoriented when he gets out of the yard. Now he’ll get lost, or kidnapped, or killed, or worse, and it’ll be all my fault. I am such an airhead some times. Stupid, stupid, stupid…”
“Stop slamming yourself like that,” Ryan interrupted. “It’s not attractive!”
I was taken aback for a second and I just stared at him. How dare he…well, he hadn’t insulted me, really. He was telling me not to insult myself. Still, he…hmmm…I wasn’t used to being told to treat myself better. I was going to have to think about how to process that.
“C’mon. We’re going to need Bruno’s car if we’re ever going to find Bernie,” I said. I didn’t say anything as we walked back to my house, mainly because I was too nervous.
When we got back, the pizza guy and his car were gone. Bruno was standing outside his car with the usual disgruntled look on his face.
“Oh, Bruno! Can we please drive around in your car and look for Bernie? I don’t know where he went and I’m really worried,” I whimpered.
“Ryan, would you excuse us for a moment, please?” Bruno asked.
“Sure,” Ryan answered and got into Bruno’s car.
“Now, Dr. Doolittle,” Bruno started as soon as we heard the car door shut, “what did I tell you the last time I helped you chase that mongrel through the neighborhood?”
“That Bernie was a public nuisance and it was your duty as a civil servant to put Bernie out my neighbors’ and my misery?” I answered sheepishly.
“Do you know what would happen to you and Bernie if we were back in Brooklyn?”
“What? Would you make me sleep with the fishes?”
“No. I wouldn’t do that to the fishes,” Bruno answered and got in the car. I followed timidly, wondering if my dog or I would ever see sunlight again.
We drove around for the next 45 minutes, circling my subdivision and the adjacent ones looking for Bernie. Each time we thought we had caught up to him, he’d take off. I still don’t know how he was able to outrun Bruno’s old police cruiser. Maybe Bernie had bionic legs or something. Meanwhile, inside the car, the tension was so thick I could’ve cut it with knife. Bruno was furious with me, I was scared for my dog, and Ryan…well, I couldn’t tell what was going through his head, except maybe that he finally understood why Europeans think so little of Americans. He finally broke the silence and asked, “So, what’s the deal with the dog?”
“That’s not a dog. It’s a demon with fur. Devil dog!” Bruno shot back.
“I take it you don’t like the dog?”
“Oh, I love devil dogs. They’re really tasty dipped in milk.”
“Go easy on Bernie, please,” I pleaded. “He had it rough as a puppy and he’s never quite recovered.”
“What happened?” Ryan asked.
“I found him one night when I was driving home in the rain,” I replied. “He was limping, he had cuts all over him, he was infested with fleas and ticks, and it looked like he’d not eaten in weeks. There wasn’t a collar on him, so I brought him home. I took him to the vet the next day to get checked out. The doctor said Bernie was lucky to be alive…”
“Lucky for who?” Bruno interrupted.
“Anyway,” I continued, “it took a long time for him to get well, and he didn’t trust me at first. After all the feedings with a baby bottle, rubbing his wounds with Vitamin E oil, and a thousand bucks for the vet and gourmet puppy chow, he realized I was okay, and he’s been my dog ever since.”
“That’s a lot of effort to put out for a dog,” Ryan said.
“Well, I couldn’t bear the thought of him dying starving and alone like that,” I said defensively.
“Hey, there he is! Going into that back yard,” Bruno yelled. I hopped out of the car and ran after Bernie into what had to be the creepiest piece of property I’d ever seen. I wasn’t quite sure where we were, but I was confident the address was probably 1313 Mockingbird Lane. The house had a weird Addams’ Family feel to it, and I fully expected winged vampires to start dropping out of the sky. I looked straight ahead of me, and nuzzled next to a large, dilapidated oak tree, was Bernie. I approached the tree quietly, attempting to be as quiet as possible. I almost had my hand on Bernie’s collar when the inevitable happened.
“Margaret, you forgot the leash!” Ryan yelled to me. Bernie shot up and began to charge at Ryan.
“Oh no!” I thought. “This is it. I busted his hand, deprived him of his hearing, and now my dog is going to finish him off. The Irish Republican Army will invade America in retaliation. It’ll be World War III and it’ll all be my fault!”
Bernie reached Ryan, but instead of goring him, like he’s done with every other human whose path he’s crossed, he jumped up and put his two front paws on Ryan’s chest as Ryan patted him on the head. Ryan got the leash on Bernie, who then jumped off and began to ram his head into Ryan’s legs. I didn’t understand. Bernie didn’t like anyone except me. Perhaps…maybe…did Ryan have “the gift?” No sooner did I finish the thought than I stepped backwards with my right foot and heard a loud metal clank. An agonizing pain shot through my ankle. I looked down and saw my right foot caught in a steel bear trap. At first, I was too much in shock to make a sound. Ryan and Bernie ran towards me. Wow! Ryan looked positively mesmerizing in the moonlight.
“Omigosh!” Ryan exclaimed as he looked at my foot. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I answered as I began to get slightly delirious. “I mean, he doesn’t like anyone except me. I can’t believe Bernie didn’t try to…”
“Not the blasted dog! Your foot! I can see your bone and all!”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. My ankle,” I replied. Suddenly, I remembered that I had metal jaws of death trying to amputate my foot. “AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”
Saturday, February 6, 2010
2-The Irish Invasion
© 2010 David's Harp and Pen
It was the thirteenth anniversary of my last relationship. Things didn’t end well, and I sort of liken it to the anniversary of the destruction of the Hindenburg blimp. He seemed like such a great guy. He went to church with me and we prayed together all the time. Next thing I knew, he dumped me for the local woman of ill-repute and was arrested for selling marijuana out of the trunk of his car. I’d be lying if I said the whole thing didn’t scar me a bit.
So how, one might ask, does a girl in our relationship-crazed culture avoid romantic entanglements for so long? Chocolate! Inordinate amounts of it. In fact, when I entertain my monthly visitor, my refrigerator is filled with nothing but peanut butter cups. Not for my benefit, keep in mind, but to appease my wrath so I don’t try to kill every man in sight. Another way of averting potentially harmful entanglements is having an extremely overactive imagination. I still say, until now, my best boyfriends have been the imaginary ones.
When I went to church that night for worship team practice, I had pretty much resigned myself to think that there were worse fates than to die a virgin and childless, such as to be buried alive in a box, or eaten by worms, or, like in my recurring dream, to be forced to repeat my senior year of high school forever simply because I could never remember to attend gym class. Then everything changed.
I walked into the practice room, as I always did, and sat next to Shane. Shane is part one of my power trio of male friends. Shane is too gorgeous for his own good, and women glom onto him in the same way zits glom onto my face every time I need to get a new driver’s license photo. Now before anyone asks, no, there was nothing between Shane and me. He’s a recovering gigolo and has dedicated his life to God, prayer, and finding the perfect hair gel, one with the perfect balance of movement and secure hold. He’s basically a Guido without the Italian heritage or New Jersey accent. He’s also quite charming and gregarious, two more reasons the women can’t stay away from him.
“Hey, Mags,” he said. “So, how did you spend your anniversary?”
“Lying on the floor clothed in sackcloth and ashes, mourning the loss of my youth,” I replied.
“Good. Good. So, did you hear there’s going to be a cattle call audition for the new Mel Gibson movie they’re going to film here? My agent says my chances are really good.” And that’s how my conversations with Shane usually went. We’d talk about me for about 30 seconds, and then promptly move on to him. It was okay, though. I’d gotten used to it.
“Oh, by the way, we’re on babysitting duty tonight,” Shane said. “There’s some guy in town who’s shadowing the worship arts intern program. We’re supposed to hold his hand and answer all his questions.”
“Wow! This is the third person in two weeks. Have you met him?”
“Yeah. Oh, here he comes now. Don’t tell him about being in mourning. Grief is unbecoming to a woman of your advanced years.” Shane and I stood up, and I turned around to lay eyes for the first time on our charge for the evening.
“Ryan O’Loughlin. Margaret Sims. Margaret Sims. Ryan O’Loughlin,” Shane said as I looked at the stranger in front of me. Now, I know some other things were said at that moment, but I don’t remember what they were, because I all of a sudden had a weird sensation like Keanu Reeves did right after he swallowed the red pill. All grips on reality were lost as I stared at the vision of loveliness in front of me. Ryan was well over six feet tall, with jet-black hair and slate blue eyes, the kind of eyes that, if I stared into them too deeply, would bore holes right through me. Luckily, I had Shane there to snap me back to reality before those eyes turned me into Swiss cheese.
“Is she alright?” Ryan asked with what had to be the most heavenly accent I’d ever heard.
“I don’t know,” Shane replied as he snapped his fingers in front of my eyes. “I’ve never seen her like this before.”
“I’m sorry. I…” I tried to talk, but Ryan was way too distracting. “I was…eh…I was…I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Ryan is going to be a missionary,’” Shane replied, perplexed.
“Oh,” I said, turning back to Ryan. “That’s great, because I need saving.”
“Oh, crap,” I thought. “I didn’t just say that.”
“Mags!” Shane exclaimed, horrified.
“Double crap!” I said to myself. “I DID just say that!”
“I mean, the world needs saving, and you look like just the man to do it,” I said, trying to cover my tracks and failing miserably. Ryan raised his eyebrows at me.
“Yes. So, Ryan is here from Ireland,” Shane said, trying to change the subject and, no doubt, protect me from further embarrassment.
“Ireland,” I giggled nervously. “I loved ‘Braveheart.’” Ryan cocked his head to one side and his eyes got really big.
Shane leaned over towards me and whispered, “’Braveheart’ was Scotland.”
I said, “Well, I know it took place in Scotland, but that crazy guy that was Mel Gibson’s body guard and who thought God was his best friend was Irish. In fact, he said he owned Ireland. And then there were those soldiers Longshanks hired to…”
Shane put his hand over my mouth and said, “And stop talking now.”
“Eh, where do I go for a slash?” Ryan asked. That didn’t sound good.
“I mean, where are the toilets?” He asked again.
“Through the double doors, then make your first right,” Shane, answered. Ryan then walked off, and I couldn’t help but watch. Next thing I knew, Shane was squeezing my arm and throwing me into a chair.
“So!” Shane asked with annoyance in his voice. “Did someone just have a stroke?”
“Mmm,” I mumbled.
“Okay. So, yes or no?”
“Eh.”
“Alrighty then. I’ll see if I can find you some peanut butter cups.” Shane walked away and left me to my imagination again. Oh, Ryan was devastatingly handsome! I hadn’t felt anything like that since I’d watched “Superman,” when he took Lois Lane for that flight around the Statue of Liberty. Maybe Shane was right. Maybe I was having a stroke.
The rest of worship team practice went off without a hitch, which should have been my first indication that something was about to go horribly wrong. I walked off the platform to get my purse, and Shane skipped over to me.
“Ooh! I am famished. So, who’s paying us to eat out tonight, Mags?” Shane asked.
I was about to answer, when I felt “the presence” behind me. It was Ryan.
“You get paid to eat out?” he asked.
“When Margaret’s with us, we do. She’s the coupon queen,” Shane replied.
“How does that happen?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s illegal, but until someone can prove it, we shall eat, drink, and be merry.”
“Well, I’ll go to my car and see what I’ve got,” I said, excusing myself before I had the chance to say anything stupid. It seemed like the smart thing to do at the time. I headed towards the front door of the church and reached to open it, when someone opened it for me. I turned around. Again, it was Ryan.
“I hope you don’t mind me walking you to your car, but where I come from, we don’t let a lady out in a parking lot at night unescorted,” he said.
“Mmm,” I muttered, certain I was about to have another stroke. “And where is it that you come from again?”
“Ireland,” Ryan replied, with a slightly confused look on his face.
“Right.”
“What do you have to do to get restaurants to pay you to eat their food?”
“Oh. Coupons. I clip all the coupons in the Sunday paper, download some from the Internet. Then, I just combine them the right way so that our food’s free, or nearly free.”
“Hmm. I never heard of such a thing.”
“Don’t you have coupons in Ireland?”
“Not magic ones, like yours.”
“No wonder you left.” We both laughed as we reached my car. I unlocked the driver’s side front door and Ryan held it open for me.
“I’m not here permanently. I’ll be going back in eight weeks,” Ryan said.
“Oh, good!” I thought. “I don’t think I have any blood vessels in my head left to burst.”
I found my coupon box, got out of the car, and put my hand on the door, not realizing Ryan’s right hand was in the door way.
“This is my magic coupon box.” I said gleefully as I slammed the door shut…right on his hand.
“Omigosh, omigosh, omigosh,” he screamed in pain. I pulled the door back open and Ryan pulled his hand out. It looked a little mangled and turned all sorts of different colors.
“Oh no!” I screamed, dropping my keys and my coupon box on the pavement. “I am so sorry!” I bent down to get my things. Ryan, who I was discovering was the consummate gentleman, even in the face of great adversity, reached down at the same time to pick up my keys and my coupons, the result of which was our heads colliding, only adding to his pain and my humiliation.
“Arghh!!!!” I yelled. “I’ll go get help.” I ran back into the church. Actually, a stroke would have been really nice right about then.
It was the thirteenth anniversary of my last relationship. Things didn’t end well, and I sort of liken it to the anniversary of the destruction of the Hindenburg blimp. He seemed like such a great guy. He went to church with me and we prayed together all the time. Next thing I knew, he dumped me for the local woman of ill-repute and was arrested for selling marijuana out of the trunk of his car. I’d be lying if I said the whole thing didn’t scar me a bit.
So how, one might ask, does a girl in our relationship-crazed culture avoid romantic entanglements for so long? Chocolate! Inordinate amounts of it. In fact, when I entertain my monthly visitor, my refrigerator is filled with nothing but peanut butter cups. Not for my benefit, keep in mind, but to appease my wrath so I don’t try to kill every man in sight. Another way of averting potentially harmful entanglements is having an extremely overactive imagination. I still say, until now, my best boyfriends have been the imaginary ones.
When I went to church that night for worship team practice, I had pretty much resigned myself to think that there were worse fates than to die a virgin and childless, such as to be buried alive in a box, or eaten by worms, or, like in my recurring dream, to be forced to repeat my senior year of high school forever simply because I could never remember to attend gym class. Then everything changed.
I walked into the practice room, as I always did, and sat next to Shane. Shane is part one of my power trio of male friends. Shane is too gorgeous for his own good, and women glom onto him in the same way zits glom onto my face every time I need to get a new driver’s license photo. Now before anyone asks, no, there was nothing between Shane and me. He’s a recovering gigolo and has dedicated his life to God, prayer, and finding the perfect hair gel, one with the perfect balance of movement and secure hold. He’s basically a Guido without the Italian heritage or New Jersey accent. He’s also quite charming and gregarious, two more reasons the women can’t stay away from him.
“Hey, Mags,” he said. “So, how did you spend your anniversary?”
“Lying on the floor clothed in sackcloth and ashes, mourning the loss of my youth,” I replied.
“Good. Good. So, did you hear there’s going to be a cattle call audition for the new Mel Gibson movie they’re going to film here? My agent says my chances are really good.” And that’s how my conversations with Shane usually went. We’d talk about me for about 30 seconds, and then promptly move on to him. It was okay, though. I’d gotten used to it.
“Oh, by the way, we’re on babysitting duty tonight,” Shane said. “There’s some guy in town who’s shadowing the worship arts intern program. We’re supposed to hold his hand and answer all his questions.”
“Wow! This is the third person in two weeks. Have you met him?”
“Yeah. Oh, here he comes now. Don’t tell him about being in mourning. Grief is unbecoming to a woman of your advanced years.” Shane and I stood up, and I turned around to lay eyes for the first time on our charge for the evening.
“Ryan O’Loughlin. Margaret Sims. Margaret Sims. Ryan O’Loughlin,” Shane said as I looked at the stranger in front of me. Now, I know some other things were said at that moment, but I don’t remember what they were, because I all of a sudden had a weird sensation like Keanu Reeves did right after he swallowed the red pill. All grips on reality were lost as I stared at the vision of loveliness in front of me. Ryan was well over six feet tall, with jet-black hair and slate blue eyes, the kind of eyes that, if I stared into them too deeply, would bore holes right through me. Luckily, I had Shane there to snap me back to reality before those eyes turned me into Swiss cheese.
“Is she alright?” Ryan asked with what had to be the most heavenly accent I’d ever heard.
“I don’t know,” Shane replied as he snapped his fingers in front of my eyes. “I’ve never seen her like this before.”
“I’m sorry. I…” I tried to talk, but Ryan was way too distracting. “I was…eh…I was…I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Ryan is going to be a missionary,’” Shane replied, perplexed.
“Oh,” I said, turning back to Ryan. “That’s great, because I need saving.”
“Oh, crap,” I thought. “I didn’t just say that.”
“Mags!” Shane exclaimed, horrified.
“Double crap!” I said to myself. “I DID just say that!”
“I mean, the world needs saving, and you look like just the man to do it,” I said, trying to cover my tracks and failing miserably. Ryan raised his eyebrows at me.
“Yes. So, Ryan is here from Ireland,” Shane said, trying to change the subject and, no doubt, protect me from further embarrassment.
“Ireland,” I giggled nervously. “I loved ‘Braveheart.’” Ryan cocked his head to one side and his eyes got really big.
Shane leaned over towards me and whispered, “’Braveheart’ was Scotland.”
I said, “Well, I know it took place in Scotland, but that crazy guy that was Mel Gibson’s body guard and who thought God was his best friend was Irish. In fact, he said he owned Ireland. And then there were those soldiers Longshanks hired to…”
Shane put his hand over my mouth and said, “And stop talking now.”
“Eh, where do I go for a slash?” Ryan asked. That didn’t sound good.
“I mean, where are the toilets?” He asked again.
“Through the double doors, then make your first right,” Shane, answered. Ryan then walked off, and I couldn’t help but watch. Next thing I knew, Shane was squeezing my arm and throwing me into a chair.
“So!” Shane asked with annoyance in his voice. “Did someone just have a stroke?”
“Mmm,” I mumbled.
“Okay. So, yes or no?”
“Eh.”
“Alrighty then. I’ll see if I can find you some peanut butter cups.” Shane walked away and left me to my imagination again. Oh, Ryan was devastatingly handsome! I hadn’t felt anything like that since I’d watched “Superman,” when he took Lois Lane for that flight around the Statue of Liberty. Maybe Shane was right. Maybe I was having a stroke.
The rest of worship team practice went off without a hitch, which should have been my first indication that something was about to go horribly wrong. I walked off the platform to get my purse, and Shane skipped over to me.
“Ooh! I am famished. So, who’s paying us to eat out tonight, Mags?” Shane asked.
I was about to answer, when I felt “the presence” behind me. It was Ryan.
“You get paid to eat out?” he asked.
“When Margaret’s with us, we do. She’s the coupon queen,” Shane replied.
“How does that happen?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s illegal, but until someone can prove it, we shall eat, drink, and be merry.”
“Well, I’ll go to my car and see what I’ve got,” I said, excusing myself before I had the chance to say anything stupid. It seemed like the smart thing to do at the time. I headed towards the front door of the church and reached to open it, when someone opened it for me. I turned around. Again, it was Ryan.
“I hope you don’t mind me walking you to your car, but where I come from, we don’t let a lady out in a parking lot at night unescorted,” he said.
“Mmm,” I muttered, certain I was about to have another stroke. “And where is it that you come from again?”
“Ireland,” Ryan replied, with a slightly confused look on his face.
“Right.”
“What do you have to do to get restaurants to pay you to eat their food?”
“Oh. Coupons. I clip all the coupons in the Sunday paper, download some from the Internet. Then, I just combine them the right way so that our food’s free, or nearly free.”
“Hmm. I never heard of such a thing.”
“Don’t you have coupons in Ireland?”
“Not magic ones, like yours.”
“No wonder you left.” We both laughed as we reached my car. I unlocked the driver’s side front door and Ryan held it open for me.
“I’m not here permanently. I’ll be going back in eight weeks,” Ryan said.
“Oh, good!” I thought. “I don’t think I have any blood vessels in my head left to burst.”
I found my coupon box, got out of the car, and put my hand on the door, not realizing Ryan’s right hand was in the door way.
“This is my magic coupon box.” I said gleefully as I slammed the door shut…right on his hand.
“Omigosh, omigosh, omigosh,” he screamed in pain. I pulled the door back open and Ryan pulled his hand out. It looked a little mangled and turned all sorts of different colors.
“Oh no!” I screamed, dropping my keys and my coupon box on the pavement. “I am so sorry!” I bent down to get my things. Ryan, who I was discovering was the consummate gentleman, even in the face of great adversity, reached down at the same time to pick up my keys and my coupons, the result of which was our heads colliding, only adding to his pain and my humiliation.
“Arghh!!!!” I yelled. “I’ll go get help.” I ran back into the church. Actually, a stroke would have been really nice right about then.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
1-Introduction
© 2010 David’s Harp and Pen
Hello. My name is Margaret. Those that prefer to do so may call me Maggie. My friends call me Mags. My enemies call me things not fit to print in a Christian novel. I am here to give voice to an overworked, under-loved, under-understood, and under-appreciated segment of society: the single Christian woman. Someone has to stick up for her, because the pressure she faces is enormous. Here’s the thing: when one bears the name Christ-follower, one is told, at least subliminally, that one should have it all together, right? And part of that is setting the example of matrimony, being fruitful and multiplying, yadda, yadda, yadda.
“You’re not getting younger,” they’ll say.
“Genesis says it’s not good for man to live alone.” Well, that’s man. I’m woman. I hope that most people could tell the difference. But the stigma is unavoidable—if the Christian woman is not domestarian extraordinaire, married, and mother of the next legion of future missionaries, she’s in sin, and that’s all there is to it.
When a single woman gets to be in her 30s like me, her church friends get more and more anxious to see her hitched. It’s like the entire survival of mankind depends on her having kids before she’s old enough to join AARP. How often they forget that the majority of famous Biblical moms didn’t have kids ‘til well into their 90’s. Besides, I hear that geriatric fertility clinics are all the rage these days.
So what do I do when a well-meaning friend starts to make unkind remarks about my biological clock and the dangers of being out of the very will of God? I run as fast as I possibly can. There’s absolutely no reasoning with the ones that are really pushy about it. Now, it would be kind of touching if it weren’t so insulting. As if it’s my fault there’s a man shortage. As if it’s my fault I have standards. As if it’s my fault that there’s a very good reason why certain people (not me) are in their 30s and still single. But no. They say I’m running from love (dodging bullets is more like it). They say I’m too picky; that no one is perfect, and that if he’s got problems, I can always change him. Tell me, why is it always up to the woman to do the change in a man, especially in Christian circles? Is it terribly selfish or unrealistic to want a man to change me instead?
But the Christian yentas persist. They repeat it’s not good for man to live alone and he who finds a wife finds a good thing ‘til I hear it in my sleep. (No disrespect to the Bible, but does it seem in most of these verses it’s the dude who gets the better end of the deal? Besides, I’m not looking for a wife, anyway.) What starts out as polite dissent on my part becomes, for the sake of self-preservation, biting sarcasm, and I end up making enemies when I reply, “Well, it does say those things in the OLD Testament, ‘old’ being the key word here. However, being a New Covenant kinda chick, I must heed the Apostle Paul’s exhortation that it is better not to marry, unless of course you’re burning with passion. Now, if you look in the original Greek, which you probably don’t, but I do all the time, that ‘burning with passion’ literally means overcome with desire. In other words, horney, that because of my close, intimate relationship with Jesus, is definitely not a problem. I’m so sorry you lost the whole battle with lust, though. I’ll pray for you about that.”
Sometimes, if that doesn’t get them off my back, I must, like David did when he tried to hide out in Moab while on the run from Saul, feign lunacy.
“You know, I’d love to get married some day, but God said I have to wait ‘til I finish my shock therapy.”
Let’s face it, though. Christendom at large is no help. Has anyone ever read any of those Christian Harlequin-type romance novels? The heroines are usually one-dimensional, beautiful, perfect housekeepers, never accidentally say the wrong thing to members of the opposite sex, devoid of any kind of insecurity, and, oh yeah, under 30. While some of them will start out in the beginning of the story by saying they’re not gonna look for love but will just concentrate on God, well, that usually lasts about 3.2 microseconds before some dashing, perfect, emotionally healthy single guy comes along who looks like Brad Pitt and prays like Billy Graham, who the heroine will initially resist (why? I have no idea, except maybe the heroine is also operating under the false assumption that that guy can’t be the right one unless she has to ‘change’ him in some form or fashion), only to eventually be swept off her feet, and carried by her knight in shining armor on a white horse into the sunset off to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Well, if my love life were made into a novel, it would read something like Jules Verne or maybe Kurt Vonnegut. Truth is, I’m not the average female. I’m 35 years old, and it’s been, by most people’s standards, eons since I dated anyone or even liked someone enough to let them take me to their high school reunion in order to make the cheerleader they had a crush on back then jealous (I feel so used…ugh!). The truth really is, I’m a bit of a tomboy, and because of the spiritual sounding, but completely unrealistic, bally-who shoved down my throat at women’s retreats since I was a teenager, I just kinda resigned myself to the fact that love for me was confined solely to the few romantic comedies I felt the slightest affinity for, like “While You Were Sleeping.” I’d be the best friend or the comic relief in those stories, but never the star.
I’m told it’s supposed to work like this: Girl goes to church. Girl meets nice boy in church. Boy tells girl plainly and simply that he likes her. Girl parades boy and relationship around to various elders in the church and gets their approval. After acceptable courtship period, Christian boy goes to Christian father of girl to get his permission for her hand in marriage. Let the Earth rejoice! They go through pre-marital counseling under the watchful eye of everyone and their brother, and then six months later, they marry, and begin to write their own chapter of “Ozzie and Harriet Go to Church.” Well, for reasons I’ll get into later, I was disqualified for that gig before I even got a chance to get started. Now that I’ve reached my mid 30s, I’ve resigned myself to think that love is for other people, and besides, they’d always need people like me to work in the nursery or kids’ church, right?
Before I go any further, I don’t wanna seem like I’m knocking the people who do go by the book and find love like the majority of other Christians, but despite my what will become glaringly apparent insecurities concerning my appeal to the opposite sex, there was always a part of me that wanted something different. Something special. Something movie worthy. Does anyone out there remember those times when discouragement loomed like a bad toupee, and someone would say, “Don’t you know that God could bring you someone special? Someone from halfway around the world, just to prove how much He loves you?” That’s a nice thought in theory, and even encouraging at 25, but once 35 rolls around, instead of holding my breath, I’m signing up 5 years in advance for the diaper brigade on Sunday mornings so I can forget how lonely I really am and how undesirable I really feel.
Well, it turns out my story was movie worthy after all, and the whole thing centers on the ever so lovely continent of Ireland.
Hello. My name is Margaret. Those that prefer to do so may call me Maggie. My friends call me Mags. My enemies call me things not fit to print in a Christian novel. I am here to give voice to an overworked, under-loved, under-understood, and under-appreciated segment of society: the single Christian woman. Someone has to stick up for her, because the pressure she faces is enormous. Here’s the thing: when one bears the name Christ-follower, one is told, at least subliminally, that one should have it all together, right? And part of that is setting the example of matrimony, being fruitful and multiplying, yadda, yadda, yadda.
“You’re not getting younger,” they’ll say.
“Genesis says it’s not good for man to live alone.” Well, that’s man. I’m woman. I hope that most people could tell the difference. But the stigma is unavoidable—if the Christian woman is not domestarian extraordinaire, married, and mother of the next legion of future missionaries, she’s in sin, and that’s all there is to it.
When a single woman gets to be in her 30s like me, her church friends get more and more anxious to see her hitched. It’s like the entire survival of mankind depends on her having kids before she’s old enough to join AARP. How often they forget that the majority of famous Biblical moms didn’t have kids ‘til well into their 90’s. Besides, I hear that geriatric fertility clinics are all the rage these days.
So what do I do when a well-meaning friend starts to make unkind remarks about my biological clock and the dangers of being out of the very will of God? I run as fast as I possibly can. There’s absolutely no reasoning with the ones that are really pushy about it. Now, it would be kind of touching if it weren’t so insulting. As if it’s my fault there’s a man shortage. As if it’s my fault I have standards. As if it’s my fault that there’s a very good reason why certain people (not me) are in their 30s and still single. But no. They say I’m running from love (dodging bullets is more like it). They say I’m too picky; that no one is perfect, and that if he’s got problems, I can always change him. Tell me, why is it always up to the woman to do the change in a man, especially in Christian circles? Is it terribly selfish or unrealistic to want a man to change me instead?
But the Christian yentas persist. They repeat it’s not good for man to live alone and he who finds a wife finds a good thing ‘til I hear it in my sleep. (No disrespect to the Bible, but does it seem in most of these verses it’s the dude who gets the better end of the deal? Besides, I’m not looking for a wife, anyway.) What starts out as polite dissent on my part becomes, for the sake of self-preservation, biting sarcasm, and I end up making enemies when I reply, “Well, it does say those things in the OLD Testament, ‘old’ being the key word here. However, being a New Covenant kinda chick, I must heed the Apostle Paul’s exhortation that it is better not to marry, unless of course you’re burning with passion. Now, if you look in the original Greek, which you probably don’t, but I do all the time, that ‘burning with passion’ literally means overcome with desire. In other words, horney, that because of my close, intimate relationship with Jesus, is definitely not a problem. I’m so sorry you lost the whole battle with lust, though. I’ll pray for you about that.”
Sometimes, if that doesn’t get them off my back, I must, like David did when he tried to hide out in Moab while on the run from Saul, feign lunacy.
“You know, I’d love to get married some day, but God said I have to wait ‘til I finish my shock therapy.”
Let’s face it, though. Christendom at large is no help. Has anyone ever read any of those Christian Harlequin-type romance novels? The heroines are usually one-dimensional, beautiful, perfect housekeepers, never accidentally say the wrong thing to members of the opposite sex, devoid of any kind of insecurity, and, oh yeah, under 30. While some of them will start out in the beginning of the story by saying they’re not gonna look for love but will just concentrate on God, well, that usually lasts about 3.2 microseconds before some dashing, perfect, emotionally healthy single guy comes along who looks like Brad Pitt and prays like Billy Graham, who the heroine will initially resist (why? I have no idea, except maybe the heroine is also operating under the false assumption that that guy can’t be the right one unless she has to ‘change’ him in some form or fashion), only to eventually be swept off her feet, and carried by her knight in shining armor on a white horse into the sunset off to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Well, if my love life were made into a novel, it would read something like Jules Verne or maybe Kurt Vonnegut. Truth is, I’m not the average female. I’m 35 years old, and it’s been, by most people’s standards, eons since I dated anyone or even liked someone enough to let them take me to their high school reunion in order to make the cheerleader they had a crush on back then jealous (I feel so used…ugh!). The truth really is, I’m a bit of a tomboy, and because of the spiritual sounding, but completely unrealistic, bally-who shoved down my throat at women’s retreats since I was a teenager, I just kinda resigned myself to the fact that love for me was confined solely to the few romantic comedies I felt the slightest affinity for, like “While You Were Sleeping.” I’d be the best friend or the comic relief in those stories, but never the star.
I’m told it’s supposed to work like this: Girl goes to church. Girl meets nice boy in church. Boy tells girl plainly and simply that he likes her. Girl parades boy and relationship around to various elders in the church and gets their approval. After acceptable courtship period, Christian boy goes to Christian father of girl to get his permission for her hand in marriage. Let the Earth rejoice! They go through pre-marital counseling under the watchful eye of everyone and their brother, and then six months later, they marry, and begin to write their own chapter of “Ozzie and Harriet Go to Church.” Well, for reasons I’ll get into later, I was disqualified for that gig before I even got a chance to get started. Now that I’ve reached my mid 30s, I’ve resigned myself to think that love is for other people, and besides, they’d always need people like me to work in the nursery or kids’ church, right?
Before I go any further, I don’t wanna seem like I’m knocking the people who do go by the book and find love like the majority of other Christians, but despite my what will become glaringly apparent insecurities concerning my appeal to the opposite sex, there was always a part of me that wanted something different. Something special. Something movie worthy. Does anyone out there remember those times when discouragement loomed like a bad toupee, and someone would say, “Don’t you know that God could bring you someone special? Someone from halfway around the world, just to prove how much He loves you?” That’s a nice thought in theory, and even encouraging at 25, but once 35 rolls around, instead of holding my breath, I’m signing up 5 years in advance for the diaper brigade on Sunday mornings so I can forget how lonely I really am and how undesirable I really feel.
Well, it turns out my story was movie worthy after all, and the whole thing centers on the ever so lovely continent of Ireland.
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