Mister Chapter IX

Chapter 9 - 1988

            My fingers were shaking as I brought the envelope to my lips to seal it.  Though I still regularly visited with Gram and Grampy, I decided to put my thoughts on paper and let the mailman deliver this letter.  I had scribbled and scratched out a few different attempts at putting paper to my thoughts, finally forcing myself to just get it over with.  My tongue was dry, so I removed the letter from the envelope to read over one last time before continuing:

            Dear Gram,

                        I am writing this to you because I want you to know that I am pregnant.  I                            know you must be so disappointed in me after all the ways you taught me                                 right from wrong.  I don’t know why God has given me this child, but I                                   want to thank him in the best way I know how - and that’s by turning my                            life over to Him and trying to be half the mother you have been to me.  I’m             asking if you will tell Grampy for me.  I just don’t have the heart to.  I’m                              so, so sorry, Gram, and I hope someday you can forgive me for not                                 living my life the way you showed me by your words and example.  I won’t               blame you if you don’t want me in your life anymore.  I love you ~Liz        

           

            Fear and butterflies accompanied the nausea in my stomach throughout the days after I mustered the courage to mail it.  Gram must have thought it was strange when she received the letter - I had been over there just the week prior.  Each time I went, I waited to see whether they would notice my swelling stomach, but nothing was ever said.  Heavy guilt drove me crazy (could they tell I was pregnant, or couldn’t they?) until I just couldn’t take it anymore.

            My boyfriend and I were renting a small addition to an old lodge in Danville, an obscure little town about 35 minutes away from the Beal’s.  Starting out with nothing but two pillows, a blanket and a bucket for ice that we refilled at the neighbors to keep our perishables cold, we were ‘living on love’.  He was attending the police academy for a small town position and I had just given up my job working with circuit boards and chemicals because of the warning labels for pregnant women.

            Having been told I may never have children due to the scar tissue on my insides from my ruptured appendix as a child, I was completely shocked when, as a favor to a friend of mine who didn’t want to be embarrassed taking a pregnancy test alone at the infirmary of our large company, her test came back negative, but mine was ‘very’ positive.

            This was a time when I began wrestling with God.  I had completely ignored Him after and during my dark days with the church youth leader.  I never blamed God for what happened to me, or hated the church because even as a teen, it didn’t seem fair to judge Him on the actions of people here on earth.  I had just come to a point in my life where I didn’t think about God much at all.

            With the promise of new life in me, I took a long, hard look at my own life, and at the examples of those who had a part in raising me, good and bad.  Deciding I didn’t want to teach my child something I didn’t really believe in myself, I chose to find out for myself whether I wanted to have faith in God, not because people I loved said he existed, but because I found Him to be real for myself.  I wanted to eliminate the middle man and figure it all out - with Him or without Him.

            Two days passed with no word from Gram.  We had no phone, and I didn’t want her knowing I was living with my boyfriend, so I had pretended to rent a room at my neighbor’s, giving her that number in case she ever needed to reach me.  Sandy arrived on my doorstep on the third day, motioning for me to come take a call.

            I picked up the receiver off my neighbor’s counter.“Hello?” It came out of me as more of a question than a salutation.

            “Liz, it’s Grammy.  We reveived your letter.  We love you and miss you, and want to see you.”

            “Ok, Gram.  Can I come over now?” I asked.

            “We’ll be here,” was her reply, and the call was over.

            That instant, I understood grace.  Gram didn’t accuse, complain or berate me.  She just wanted to let me know she loved me. Her and Grampy’s own faithful examples had saturated me with knowledge in the form of verses, Bible stories and family prayer, but it was all external to me until this moment in time.  A song came to me then, one that Grampy had often sung to himself as he went about his day.

            ‘Heaven came down and glory filled my soul. When at the cross my Savior made me whole.  My sins were washed away, and my night was turned to day. Heaven came down, and glory filled my soul.’…

            I couldn’t begin to explain what happened then and there.  I ceased trying to figure out what I could do to be good enough for God.  I realized just an inkling of the love He had for me to offer me His grace.  When I couldn’t reach to Him in my own strength, Heaven came down.  

            Gram could have judged me, but she didn’t.  And it was because of her own relationship with God.  I jumped in the car, making a beeline to their home.

            “I would like to be the one to tell Mark’s parents, if it’s alright with you,” Grampy had been waiting for me in his recliner when I arrived. “Unless Mark would rather they hear it from him.”

            I knew Mark hadn’t even told his family I had moved back to New Hampshire with him, and he didn’t know how to approach the subject with them, either, so I thanked Grampy.

            “His dad and I go way back.  I led him to the Lord as a teenager back in Mars Hill when I was a pastor,” Grampy reminisced. “I’m going to share how wonderful the Lord is to allow us to be grandfathers together, and what a precious gift this baby is to both our families!”

            We talked on and on about plans for marriage, giving my life and the future of my baby to the Lord, and how God is so good to offer His gifts to us, even when we don’t do things the way we should. 

            A week or two earlier, I walked out of Grammy and Grampy’s home with a guilty heaviness and self-recrimination I couldn’t shake until I gave in and told them the truth about living with Mark and expecting his child.

            Today, we had spent easy hours talking it all out, they prayed with me, handed me a Bible and sent me on my way, assured of their love and forgiveness. I had never felt so sure of Heaven as I did at that moment.