Shelter Me (2 page)

"That's right," said Mark. "That's very good. He's not trying to be insulting towards other women, but he's basically saying that his beloved is the only woman in the world to him." He paused, running his finger farther down the page. Mark was a seminary student, a friend of a friend of the head pastor who'd been invited to lead our senior-level youth group. Ever since he'd come to our church a few months ago, pretty much everyone had fallen in love with him. I kept my distance, politely. I had no particular reason to dislike him, but there was something about him that unnerved me. Nothing I could put my finger on, so I just stayed quiet about it.

He went on. "Now here's the part we need to emphasize. This whole book is a celebration of love, and not the brotherly or fatherly love that the Bible is usually so focused on. It's all about romantic love, carnal love, even. In the church we spend a lot of time trying to avoid the topic or pretending that it doesn't exist, or that it's not powerful. But that's not what God intended. He's telling us right here. 'Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you, by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.' He's telling us that a love like this is something beautiful, and something to be cherished. But be prudent about it."

He paused, clearing his throat. The room was silent for a few moments, and then, a small voice came from far in the corner.

"What does that mean, exactly?"

Everyone shifted to look and see who'd spoken up. I didn't have to, because I was already watching her out of the corner of my eye. As usual, Marissa had slipped in last of the group, and all the spots at the table were taken when she sat down. She was wedged awkwardly in the corner of the room, behind a few other people, with her hair falling over her face like she was trying to hide behind it.

Mark smiled.

"That's a great question, Marissa," he said. "Thank you for bringing that up. We say things like this pretty often, right? Be prudent. Stay pure. Guard your heart. But we don't talk about what that actually
means
, in the real world. Emotions can be overwhelming. They can distract us from everything that's truly important in life. Make no mistake. God wants us to have the full human experience. He wants us to feel the heights of joy and the depths of sorrow, because that's what he created us for. But he doesn't want us to create suffering for ourselves. And unfortunately, more often than not, that's what happens when we allow ourselves to get lost in our feelings.

"But of course, knowing we should be careful and actually
being
careful are too very different things. You're all at a very vulnerable time in your lives. So am I. I'm not much older than most of you, don't forget that. Hormonally, we're climbing towards a peak. Every message we see in the mainstream media and entertainment is telling us that we need to be falling in love. Falling in love all the time, falling in love with everyone, falling in love with love! We're sold this idea that it's the answer to all of our problems, and our own minds and bodies are telling us that it must be true."

Marissa was watching him intently. "You make it sound like a losing battle," she said.

Mark frowned a little. "I don't like to think of it as a battle," he said, "so much as finding a balance."

"Explain," said Marissa. Her voice was still very quiet, but it had taken on an unexpectedly commanding tone. A moment later, she seemed to realize it. "Please," she amended.

Mark laced his fingers together, resting his hands on the desk. "I'm going to turn this one to the group," he said. "How do you think we can find a balance between the desires of our minds and hearts, and the desires that God has for us?"

"Prayer," said the one girl who always wore prairie-style dresses.

"Absolutely," said Mark. "
Ask
God to help you. Stay in communication with him. We talked about this last week. If you don't have regular talks with God, you can't expect you relationship to stay strong. Just like with a friend or a family member. What else?"

"Self control," Brandon suggested, spinning a pen between his fingers.

"Self control is always a good practice, but how do we cultivate it?" Mark looked around the room. "It doesn't always come naturally."

Marissa started talking again. She had to raise her voice before anyone noticed, this time. "I guess what I'm asking is, what's the inherent virtue in denying yourself?"

"Marissa," said Mark with a smile. "I'm so glad you've found your voice."
 

She looked at him like she didn't know how to take that.

"You're asking such insightful questions," he said. "I'm sorry to say, though, we're out of time for tonight. I know you guys need to get home, or your parents are going to start leaving me angry voicemails. Let's pick up this discussion next week, okay? Everybody think about Marissa's question when you get home tonight."

I did.

But as it happened, next week, when we all gathered in the small anteroom up the hill from the church, Marissa never came. Mark brought up a completely different topic, and nobody mentioned anything about it again. She stopped attending youth group after that, but I saw her talking to Mark after church, sometimes for a very long time.
 
They'd often still be sitting side-by-side in a pew long after everyone else was filtering out, finishing their coffee, and heading home.
 

CHAPTER TWO

Marissa

No matter what she says about it now, it was my mother's idea in the first place.

When Mark first came to Eternal Grace Church, of course I sat up and took notice. Everyone did. He had a kind, patient face, wise beyond his years, and the piercing blue eyes of a movie star. Whenever he talked to you, he made you feel like the most important person in the room. Some people eat that sort of thing up. Me, I never liked it much.

But after my mom met him, she was smitten. I remember her saying it, as clearly as if it happened yesterday:

"Mari, if only you could marry a man like that..."

I didn't think much about it at the time. But at church the next week, I kept hearing her voice echoing in my head. After the service, as we all filtered into the social building for coffee and muffins, Mark made a point of pulling me aside for a chat. I figured someone must have told him about my reputation:
There's a girl who could use some guidance.

"It's Marissa, right?" he said, after shaking my hand.

I nodded.

"It's really nice to meet you. You probably heard in the service, but I'm going to start leading the youth group next week. I'm really excited to get things moving in a new direction."

Good sales pitch,
I wanted to say,
but why are you wasting it on me?
But I'd been told enough times by now to "bite your tongue" that I'd actually started to listen. So I just smiled, and nodded again.

"Try not to get too excited," he said, smiling back. "Hey, I know what the situation is. Pastor Dave practically got down on his hands and knees begging me to come here and take his place. He doesn't know the first thing about leading a youth group and he always felt lost. He never knew how to serve your needs. I mean all of you, as a group, not you specifically. But maybe you specifically too, huh?"

I made a small, noncommittal noise.

"Anyway, I'm going to make sure that changes. I'm going to make sure that you all get what you need. My goal here is to serve you."

His actual goal was to get a nice new paragraph of experience for his resume, but it was hardly worth arguing over. I'd seen plenty of youth group leaders come and go, in my time. It was, by its nature, a transitional period for seminary students to get some real-world experience before they started leading their own church. Nobody ever stayed for longer than a year. I couldn't blame them, but I wished they'd quit pretending.

"I don't want to put you on the spot," he said. "But this week, if you get a chance, think about what you'd like this youth group to be. What would help you? What are some ways that this community could bring some joy into your life or help lighten your load? Next week after church I'm going to talk to you again, and if you think of anything, you just let me know."

***

"Reputation," said Pastor Dave, leaning forward on the lectern. "When we say that word, what are we referring to?"

I was absentmindedly thumbing through my Bible - supple and leather-bound, with the words of Christ printed in red letters. My mother had my name embossed on the front as a gift when I first told her I'd accepted Jesus into my heart. I was six years old. They flubbed the embossing and damaged the front cover. My mom got a discount, and I got a Bible with a big silvery-gray smudge on the front cover, right under my name.

"Reputation is about how other people perceive you," Pastor Dave went on. "So why does it matter? After all, God knows the truth. We're told in the scriptures that God knows everything that passes through our minds and hearts. And ultimately, He will be our only judge. Based on that, why should we worry about our reputations here on earth?"

The room was silent. A few coughs.

"But we do, don't we? When we have to make a decision, when we're choosing how to conduct ourselves - we think first about how our actions are going to be perceived by others. For all the 'WWJD' bracelets and bumper stickers, it's clear where our priorities lie."

I shifted in my seat. I knew a "but" was coming.

"But," he said, and I smiled to myself. "Our reputation matters, doesn't it? We don't live in a vacuum. Everything we say, everything we do, reflects on ourselves as Christians, on the church as a whole. And even on God.
 

"The trick is to think of it in these terms - am I concerned about this because of my reputation, or am I concerned about this because of God's reputation?"

He paused, looking around the room, waiting for that to sink in.

"When you find yourself faced with a decision, consider yourself first as an emissary of the Lord. That's the only thing that really matters. Your own reputation isn't what matters, but it should still reflect your status as a child of God. The scriptures give us plenty of guidelines to follow. We're to be generous, kind, meek, non-judgmental, steadfast, honest, and pure. I'm sure you can think of others. We've all read the verses many times. But we have to remember not to be these things just because we think we're supposed to, or because we want people's praise or positive attention for our own satisfaction.

"We have to remember to always seek recognition for God first."

As he broke the bread for communion, I thought about reputation. I thought about the fact that my oldest sister, Mary, had what Pastor Dave later called "a lapse in judgment" in the backseat of her boyfriend's car. My nephew Ian came in the spring of the following year, but something in my mother's eyes, and in her heart, changed long before that.

I saw the way she started eyeing me with suspicion, and coming quietly into my room to look over my shoulder when I sat at the computer. I noticed her picking up the books I had lying around and thumbing through them, with a slight frown on her face. I noticed the way I couldn't have a conversation with her anymore. Not really. Almost anything I said was ripe for sharp criticism or probing questions. It got tiring, so I kept my mouth shut, which only led to accusations that I was "too secretive" and demands to know "what I was hiding."

Why she skipped over Martha and went straight to me, I'll never know. I won't pretend I was too nice to ask. In one or two fights, I remember screaming at her, asking her why she never hassled Martha the way she did me. But that was always, inevitably met with a "don't change the subject."

She wasn't alone. The rest of the people here looked at me differently, too. Maybe I just didn't smile enough, or they thought I wore too much black, or too much eyeliner. But from then on, I was branded as a problem child, and nothing I did - or
didn't
do - could convince anyone different.

I rolled a bite-sized piece of bread around in my mouth for a moment, before washing it down with a thimble-full of grape juice.
 

"The Lord bless you and keep you," Pastor Dave was saying, with outstretched hands. "May he make his face to shine upon you. May he lift up his countenance to you, and give you peace. Amen."

People began to stand and filter out. I tucked my Bible under my arm and followed the crowd into the lobby, snatching a piece of muffin off the table and standing in the corner to pick at it. I was hoping to remain unnoticed until my parents decided it was time to leave, but of course Mark spotted me and immediately started to cut through the crowd.

"Hi Mari, how's your week been?"

Who on earth had told him to call me Mari?

"Fine, thank you," I said, with measured politeness.

"Did you have a chance to think about our conversation last week?"

I cleared my throat. "Group activities," I said. It was the first thing that popped into my head.

"Group activities," he repeated. "Like...what kind of group activities?"

"Any kind," I said, looking down at the carpet.

"Okay," he said, finally, with a tone in his voice that I couldn't quite place. "That's a start."

***

When I got home, I collapsed on the bed and let out a massive sigh. My cat George came over from his favorite spot by the window, sashaying over to me and sniffing at my face, curiously.

"Hey, Georgie-boy," I cooed, letting my hand slide along his back. "How'd you like sleeping in? I'm so jealous."

He purred, curling up by my side. George had been my constant companion since we found him as a kitten, curled up and shivering under the car in the driveway. He was old enough to eat solid food, but barely. We put up fliers, but the phone never rang, and at a certain point we stopped waiting. He took to me for reasons that no one could really explain. It was always my door that he scratched at, and it was only when I got home that he roused himself from his near-constant napping and came over to say hello. It didn't matter who fed him or paid him the most attention, all he wanted was to be close to me. Even when I was absorbed in my own problems, barely aware that he or anyone else existed, he was there. It was like he somehow knew that I didn't have anyone else.