My throat clogs so I can’t go on. Angel must have thought that was all I had to say, because she squeezes my fingers, adds “Amen,” then digs into her meal in a way that can’t be good for her digestion issues.
I clear my throat. My prayer might have been simple, but it was also heartfelt, and maybe that’s what matters most. I feel its gratefulness all over again as I take my first bite of creamy soup.
She glances up, her brown eyes pools of vulnerability. “It’s been a long time since I prayed. I blamed God for allowing Matt to hurt me, but now that I’ve played a part in hurting another woman, I realize that the bad stuff that happens isn’t God’s will. It’s more like a result of us notfollowingGod’s will.”
My roommate’s recent late-night confession about her first marriage was as much of a shock to me as finding out her boyfriend was married, and I don’t blame her for her hard feelings. Had I thought much about God before my big toe started locking up, I might have blamed Him too. “What about my trigger toe?” I ask. “Nobody is to blame for that. Except maybe bad genetics.”
She stares out at the water as she chews. The sun kisses her skin, and the breeze lifts her hair. “There’s a lot of pain in the world that we can’t explain. Your trigger toe. Cancer. Miscarriage. It’s hard to make sense of it, but something Nathan said on our date got me thinking.”
I set my spoon down. I haven’t been jealous of her date with Nathan until now. “What?”
She focuses back on me, squinting either to protect her eyes from the sun’s brilliance or to ponder Nathan’s. “He said that loving someone means you’re more afraid of harming them than you are of losing them. He used my ex as an example of setting boundaries, but you could compare it to how we have to kick drunk passengers off the plane. The company wants their business and we want them to make it to their final destination, but it’s a safety issue. The altitude could worsen the effects on their body, and their behavior could be detrimental to other passengers.”
Last week I actually had to kick an air force pilot off a flight for appearing intoxicated. He fell to his knees and begged me to let him fly, and I felt bad, but out of all the passengers, he should have been most aware of the dangers. “Okay, but I’m not sure how this applies to trigger toe.”
“If God is love, then He has to have those same kind of boundaries with us. He loves us too much to accept our harmful behavior, so He lets us go our own way.”
That makes sense for our relationship with God. But still ... “Trigger toe?”
She covers a burp with her napkin. “Sorry. I was getting to that.” She folds the napkin back in her lap. “There was no trigger toe in the garden of Eden. Life was perfect. Then Adam and Eve chose to go their own way, bringing pain into the world.”
This is quite the Sunday school lesson. “So we blame Adam and Eve?”
“We could. Though I’m sure somebody else would have messed it up along the way. If they hadn’t, I probably would’ve.” She scrunches her nose. “But rather than place blame, we could focus on how we don’t have to bear our pain alone.”
I think about the air force pilot I kicked off the plane. His buddy went with him to make sure he got rebooked on the next flight and sobered up in time. He didn’t have to. He could have stayed on board. But he cared about his friend enough to take the punishment on himself.
I’ve never understood the Bible better than I do at this moment. “Rather than take away our pain, Jesus joined us in it.”
Angel sits tall. She takes a breath. “He’s not to blame. He’s to praise, because He allows us to feel the pain that can redirect us and bring us back to Him.”
She felt the pain of being part of an affair. And it’s definitely redirected her.
My pain also redirected me. While I loved my life as a dancer, I would have missed out on this beautiful moment. I wouldn’t have felt such a need for a Savior. Doesn’t mean I’m glad it happened, but I can see the value in it.
I wonder whether all these realizations will affect Angel’s relationship goals. “You still don’t think you’ll ever remarry?”
She dips a fry in tartar sauce and sighs. “I’ve been pondering that too. I went to a really traditional church where women were made to feel that we didn’t have any value unless we were virgins at our weddings. That’s part of why I married so young.”
“Really?” I cross my arms and lean forward on the edge of the picnic table. I feel old-fashioned for not wanting to move in with Wyatt, so I need to know her thoughts on this. With her nose ring, she didn’t strike me as the old-fashioned type.
She shrugs and rolls her eyes. “Sadly, my husband didn’t value me, and I’m obviously not a virgin anymore, so I decided to have the fun of marriage without commitment. But as you know, that didn’t work out well either.”
I give her a sad smile. She’s such an amazing woman. I hate this for her. It’s as if she can’t win.
“Now I’m not sure the idea of waiting for sex is a bad idea. I think my church just taught it wrong. Or I took it wrong.”
I frown. I don’t relish the idea that churches can cause harm too, but as I’m reading the New Testament for the first time, I’m seeing that Jesus’s biggest beef was with religious leaders who caused harm. Jesus established the church, but they’re led by humans, and as Angel pointed out, we humans are seriously flawed. So what’s the answer? “How should you have taken it?”
Her eyes light up with hope. “Rather than abstain tobemore valuable, I think God wants to protect us because wehaveso much value.”
I like that. And it fits with the whole definition of love Nathan gave her. “You’re so valuable, and you see the person you love as so valuable that you’d rather leave them than do them harm.”
“Yes!” She slams a palm on the table. “I didn’t even think of that. I need to wait to date until I’m really ready to love someone the way they deserve to be loved.” She dips another fry. “What about you? Are you going to marry Wyatt?”
My smile slips. I take a bite of smoky chowder and time to contemplate. There’s a hollowness that’s growing inside every time I think about my boyfriend, and I don’t know that it’s only from distance. It could be from a growing realization that I don’t feel valued. “I want to marry him, but he says we should wait to get engaged until we have more time.”
“You are pretty busy right now,” she allows.
