World and Town (24 page)

In a way she still can’t believe she told Ginny.

But Ginny just nodded and nodded and listened and nodded and said that life was sacred, and that she, Sophy, was God’s child, and was born to reflect His glory, but that people have sinful natures. All around them people were crying, but Ginny wasn’t crying. “Romans 3:23,” she said in this gentle voice. “ ‘For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.’ The Bible doesn’t say some have sinned. It says all. All have sinned. You’re not alone, child. You’re not alone. And you’re right to be upset. ‘For to be carnally minded is death’—that’s what it says in Romans. To be spiritually minded is life and peace, but to be carnally minded is death. As you know. Because you’ve felt it, haven’t you—that it was death. How lucky you didn’t have to have that baby cut out—you could have gotten so lost that you had it cut out. But the Lord spared you that, didn’t He. He said, Sophy, you have sinned, but I am going to have mercy on you. And He did. He chastised you in the most helpful way—bringing you here to us, to your salvation. So that it was an act of love! An act of love! We have to give thanks for that.” And Ginny hugged her and handed Sophy tissues from one of the boxes along the altar while Sophy said how she hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t thought of how things could’ve been even worse, though she was still sorry she had ever slept with Ronnie. Because that was so wrong, she said. And she was glad she got punished, she really was, and sometimes when she looked at other girls now and saw how they were dressed, like, in the summer especially, she just knew where they were headed, she said. And she wanted to tell them, but knew that they’d just laugh and so she hated them, she said. She did. She hated them. Then she cried and cried and cried some more. She cried so much that she was afraid when she stopped, she might not be able to see anymore, like her mom in the refugee camp. She was afraid when she stopped, her eyes might not work. But when finally she did open her eyes, she saw the most beautiful thing instead. It was this bird flying across the meeting hall, this white bird. Taking off from a support pole and flying right away. “Did you see that bird?” she asked, though she was almost afraid to ask. Like she thought Ginny was going to roll her eyes the way her sisters and her had rolled their eyes back when their dad told them that story about the white flower opening beside his parents’ grave. But Ginny didn’t roll her eyes. Instead Ginny looked at her hard and said, “Maybe it wasn’t just a bird. Maybe it was a dove.” And when Sophy suddenly remembered, Renee!—how was Renee going to get back from the altar?—it turned out that someone else had already helped her. “Don’t worry,” Ginny said. “You are walking with God now. God is showing you the way.” Then she said, real quiet-like, “Isaiah 54:4: ‘Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth.…’ And not only will you forget; in His great mercy, God will forget, too. God will forget, too. Do you know what He told Jeremiah? He told Jeremiah that there would be a new covenant with the people of Israel, and that He would ‘remember their sin no more.’ And the way He forgot their sins, He’ll forget yours, too, child. He’ll forget yours, too.” Sophy thought it was funny how Ginny repeated herself, and how she called Sophy “child.” Like no one had ever called Sophy “child” before. But she didn’t mind. The strangeness was, like, so strange it wasn’t strange. And when Ginny asked her, “Do you accept Christ’s sacrifice for you?” she said yes. And when Ginny asked, “Do you call upon the name of the Lord?” she said yes. And the next day Ginny brought Sophy this real silver cross on a chain, and said it was hers for keeps. And Sophy said she would wear it always, and never take it off.

Change my heart O God; make it ever true.
Change my heart O God; may it be like you
.

When back in her old town, Sophy’s probation officer used to say, “Think how bright your future could be,” Sophy never knew what he was talking about. Like it was just another thing he liked to say besides “You have a choice” and “You make your own fate.” Because, like, what was a “bright future,” anyway? She always wanted to ask him that. But now that she was leaving the desert of her past, now that she was headed for the Promised Land, she felt like she finally understood the words. Her future was going to be bright.

But first God must have wanted her to cry, because she cried at just about every Bible study group meeting, for weeks. And that was okay because there was always someone there with a tissue for her, and a hug. So that more and more, she found that she could not wait to get back to the Bible study group. More and more, she found that as soon as they opened their Bibles, she felt this peace come into her. And more and more, she found that the words sank in deeper, and that the lessons seemed harder and wiser. Like when they read that passage about how God gave the Israelites manna in the desert, and told them not to save it, only to have some of them try anyway, so that it bred worms and stank, Ginny talked about how hard it was to put your whole faith in God, and that was so true! It was hard not to try to take care of things yourself. Like could you really just let the Lord sit on the throne of your life? Could you really just leave it all to Him, just like that? Sophy found that a lot to think about. And the time they talked about Paul, and how he failed to practice the good deeds he desired to do, and instead did the evil deeds he did not desire to do, that was a lot to think about too—like how we could be strangers to ourselves like that, even enemies. Like that was so true and so sad.

And it was sad too, when they talked about what it meant to belong to the family of God, and how that could be at odds with your family of origin, because it was like the Bible knew her whole life then. It was like God knew how hard it was going to be for Sophy to choose Him first, like He knew how hard it was going to be for her to think about leaving her family even if it was so she could be adopted into a better family. It was as if He knew that she was going to be an enemy to herself in this way. “In Ephesians 1:5, the Bible says, He ‘predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,’ ” Ginny said. “Do we all understand what it means that He
predestinated
us? It means He foresaw our struggle. He did. He foresaw it. But He foresaw, too, that we would give ourselves to our new family.” She looked at Sophy then with her green eyes, and they were, like, a special effect—like they had this special power. “He had that faith,” Ginny went on, and it was as if she knew that Jesus Christ had faith in even Sophy. She knew.

He had that faith
.

Sophy couldn’t always come to services on Sunday, but that week she did, and as soon as she sat down she could see that God meant for her to be there, because Pastor Blake was talking about her, and her struggle. “Think about what Jesus tells the apostles in Luke 18,” he said. “In Luke 18:29–30, He says, ‘Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting.’ There is no man who shall not receive manifold more. There is no man who shall not receive life everlasting. It’s a great deal, isn’t it? It’s the deal of a lifetime, a deal you wouldn’t want to pass up, a deal you couldn’t pass up. Eternal life! Eternal happiness! Naturally you want to take God up on this special offer. And yet maybe your family of origin is against it. Maybe they’re threatened by the idea that you’re about to win the lottery. Maybe it makes them feel their own poverty. Or maybe they’re Christians themselves, and are mostly happy for you, except for a particular family member who cannot welcome the Good News. Not that he or she is a bad person. They’re not. They’re good people, who love you. But they’re like people who just have to have their coffee in the morning. You know how some people just have to have their coffee in the morning? Because they’ve been having coffee in the morning their whole lives, and just can’t imagine starting their day with tea? They can’t change, can they? Of course, if they really wanted to, they could. And maybe there are good reasons why they should. But no matter how good the reasons are, they are going to resist, aren’t they? They are going to insist on their coffee, and that you have coffee too. You can tell them, Well, tea has antioxidants. You can tell them, Tea has less caffeine. You can offer them tea every day, just in case they’d like to try it. But in the meanwhile, you’ve got to drink what’s right for you. You can’t drink coffee because they can’t handle change, even if that’s a challenge. Matthew 18:17 tells us that if a brother refuses to listen to the Word, you should tell it to the church, and if he refuses to listen to the church, you should ‘let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.’ In other words, a pagan and a tax collector. You should make him as welcome as a pagan and a tax collector. But it isn’t so easy, is it? It isn’t easy, and yet we need to understand that this is exactly what Jesus Christ our Savior asks of us. Isaiah 30:13 tells us how important it is to keep a wall around our belief. It tells us how the devil goes looking for weak spots, and how fast the wall can fall, and how important it is to know where the broken-down spots are. And so often we find that it is just one or two people that make up our gap, don’t we? It’s not everyone. It’s just one or two people. And so often we find that if we think about it for a moment, we know who those one or two people are. So let’s take a moment today, and look in our hearts, and maybe we can share the names of our greatest challenge with others later, so we can begin to think how to deal with them. So we can begin to think how to close up our gaps and take advantage of the Lord’s good deal. Because we wouldn’t miss out on the deal of our lives, would we? We wouldn’t want to miss out.”

And the next Bible study class, that’s what they did. They went around the table, naming their persons of challenge. And when they got to Sophy, she surprised herself with her answer.

“Sarun,” she said. “My brother Sarun.”

Because when she thought about telling her family the Good News, when she thought about telling them about the love and peace she’d found in the Lord, Sarun’s voice was the voice she heard the loudest. Like she could hear her mom and dad, but she’d been telling them her whole life about how she didn’t know if she really believed in
kam
and
k’maoch
anyway. And her sisters were just, like, whatever. Sarun was something else.

“Can you hear him?” asked Ginny. “Can you hear his voice if you try?”

And sure enough Sophy could, easy. It was easy to hear him laughing and laughing.

“Let’s see if you can hear what he would say,” said Ginny. “What would he say when he was done laughing?”

“You got to be shitting me,” he said. “You been listening to that superstitious bullshit? That gang be shooting up something serious. That gang be ripping you off.”

But what? What were they trying to rip off?

“They’re the Khmer Rouge all over again,” he said. “They want to control you. Control your mind.” He tapped his head. “You know those remote control cars, you push the stick left and the thing goes left? You push the stick right, and the thing goes right?”

“Has he ever even been in a church?” asked Ginny. “Ask him. Has he ever been in a church and really listened, with an open heart?”

“Have you ever even been in a church and really listened, with an open heart?”

“No, and I’m not going to listen to none of that shit.”

“Because you’d rather hang out with your friends and break into video parlors and steal the computer chips out of the machines,” Sophy said. “You’d rather steal them and fence them so you can buy cars to crack up.”

“That’s right, man. You got it.” He laughed. “I’ve already got an old man who wants to tell me what to do fucking twenty-four hours a day. I don’t need two.”

“That is so sad,” said Ginny, and the look on her face was truly mournful and sorry—like her eyes were far away, and her mouth was soft, and she held her cross in her hand like it was someone’s heart. “I’m sure it hurts you to know how he thinks. To hear how angry he is. How bitter. How he can’t let go of his bitterness and how he doesn’t want you to, either. How he doesn’t want you to move on. Because you love him, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Matthew 18:9 says, ‘If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee.’ But that’s not so easy with someone you love, is it.”

“No,” Sophy said. “It isn’t.”

“It isn’t so easy to let him be unto you as a pagan and a tax collector, like Pastor Blake said Sunday.”

“No.” Sophy bent her head then, and probably would have cried, except that Ginny looked at her with such kindness.

“Just know we’re here to help,” she said.

R
eading the Bible by herself was hard and weird. Like Sophy wasn’t much of a reader to begin with, and it sounded so strange, with all the
thou
s and
shalt
s and
saith
s and
begat
s. She didn’t like the cover of the Bible either, with, like, that goth writing. And she didn’t like those thin pages, and that tiny print with no pictures. The only thing she did like was the material of the cover, and the way you could kind of bend it in your hand. Like it was so soft, and nice to hold. And she liked the gilt at the edges of the pages, and how it made the edges of the pages soft too, and she liked the way the bookmark hung back behind the book when you were reading—how it was right there to mark your place when you stopped, it was almost like it knew you were going to need it, like it knew you, and was sort of waiting for you. It was, like, the exact opposite of the words, which she could never have read without the Bible study group. But now she read the way they read in class, just a little at a time, like it was this million-piece puzzle you worked on bit by bit, or like she was learning a secret code. She marked her Bible up the way other people did, too, with, like, this special highlighter that didn’t go through the page. And she prayed all day, the way Ginny said she should, practicing her faith, and increasing her belief. Because she did have doubts, she couldn’t help it. Like did she really believe Mark when he said that if you tell a mountain, “Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea,” it would move? She didn’t think that would work, she really didn’t. Even if you said that without doubt in your heart, she didn’t think it would work. But she thought she might conquer her doubt one day if she tried, and in the meanwhile she thought she should not pray instead of reading, but should, like, both pray and read. Because Ginny said that prayer was like a house she was building, but that the Bible was the rock she was building her house on. So she wrote on a piece of paper, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” and put that in the beginning of the book, to help her get started on days when it was hard. And that helped, she thought, it really did.