BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 27

SEVEN SALLIE

THEN JESUS SAID, “FATHER FORGIVE THEM FOR THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY DO.” (Luke 23:34)

            “Jared, hi,” Lindsey said cheerfully and jumped up to greet a gentleman who had just arrived.

            “That was quite a story,” I told Mick Wadena. I had been a silent observer as my wife questioned him and his wife Lindsey about her dog playing match maker with the couple. Zella would later tease me about calling myself a silent observer. In my defense, TALK show hosts tend to talk, even when they are not on the air.

            “The miracle of Jitts bringing Lindsey and me together actually isn’t the most remarkable part of our story,” Mick told me, pointing to his wife and the guy she was now hugging.

            Lindsey and Mick had just finished telling us about their second meeting after Mick’s band finished their show in Madison, Wisconsin. That’s when a lone man made his way onto the deck that over looked C. S. Lewis’s back yard on a remote acreage, only a few miles from Lake Superior.

            The guy appeared to be about fifty, give or take, as with most of us on the deck. He had a shaved head, a sun weathered face, sunglasses, and a goatee with a light sprinkling of salt. He also was missing half of his left arm, and his left leg was a prosthetic.

            “Do you see that guy Lindsey is hugging?” Mick asked.

            Zella and I glanced at Lindsey embracing the lone man I had just described. “Yeah.”

            “That’s the guy that raped her sister.”

            “What?” Zella and I both replied, stunned. I recalled that because of her sister’s ordeal, Lana had ended up taking her own life. As a result, Lindsey developed a subtle vendetta against men. She also developed a not so subtle hatred of the man that violated her sister! So what happened that a rapist not only avoided the plagues, but was in an embrace with his victim’s sister? I asked as much to Mick.

            “Yeah, their friendship surprised me too,” Mick admitted. “Kind of ironic that he showed up when we were getting to his part of Lindsey’s and my story.”

            “Did he play a role with your, um, romance?” Zella asked with a frown.

            “Actually he turned out to be a major obstacle,” Mick explained. “I perceived early on as Lindsey and I got know each other that her hostility toward him was slowly eating her alive. After a few months of virtual dating, she…”
            “What do you mean by virtual dating?” Zella interrupted.

            “I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it,” Mick replied. “What I mean is, that after Lindsey and I initially met, I was in the middle of a nationwide tour for our second album. So most of our time spent together over the first few months was over the phone.”

            “Okay, I see,” Zella said. “How far apart did you two actually live from each other?”

            I shook my head a little at my wife. I wanted to hear about Lindsey forgiving her sister’s rapist, not geography. Later for sure, but not now. But Zella only frowned at me and continued, “I mean when you weren’t on tour, where did you call home? She mentioned being from Duluth.”

            “Milwaukee,” Mick said. “Three hundred plus miles, but it could have been worse.”

            “Why is that?” Zella asked and I shook my head some more.

            “Actually what was worse than the long distance relationship in the beginning, was our sports rivalry. Mainly she was a Vikings fan while I was for the Packers. Baseball wasn’t so bad since her team, the Twins is in the American League and mine, the Brewers, is in the National League.”

            “I notice you say was,” Zella said, and I just sighed and then chuckled to myself. I needed to exercise the patience of the saints.

            “Yeah, well, we still liked our teams, but the closer we got to Christ the less sports mattered. It turned out we actually enjoyed our teams more when we didn’t take it so seriously.”

            “Amen!” Zella smiled.

            “Now we’re on the verge,” I began, and Zella shook her head. Her wide brown eyes mocking me playfully. “We are on the verge of Christ’s return and sports seem to be a thing of the past. A shadow of our time on earth.”

            “True enough,” Mick agreed.

            “Games people more often than not took too seriously,” Zella added. “When I used to see fans in the stand with their hands earnestly clasped over a close game, I used to think ‘if they only sought the Lord with that sense of urgency.’”

            Lindsey returned, making our threesome a foursome. Mick inquired, “Where’d Jared go?”

            “He just stopped by to see how we were all doing,” Lindsey replied. “He’s on his way to check on a guy that’s from his disabled veterans group.”

            “Mick was just telling us about your long distance relationship,” Zella said.

            “And he was just about to tell us about you and Jared,” I interrupted.

            Zella smirked at me. I knew she wanted to know just as badly as I did. But she knew I struggled more with patience than she did.

            “Yeah, me and Jared,” Lindsey sighed and then looked fondly at her husband. “The subject of Jared almost ended Mick and me before we really got started.”

            “But not for the usual reason another man causes a hiccup with a couple falling in love,” Mick interjected.

            “Yeah,” Lindsey chuckled. “I guess it’s not typical for a boyfriend to tell his girlfriend to seek out another guy.”

            “Here’s the thing,” Mick said. “I tried to convince her that she didn’t have to see him in person. Just call him or even simply write him a letter. I emphatically told her that just because you forgive someone, it does not mean you have to have a relationship with them, or associate with them afterward in anyway. Forgiveness is actually more for yourself.”

            “I was so torn,” Lindsey said solemnly. “I was angry with Mick for making me feel guilty over my sister’s rapist of all people. But what saved our new relationship was he didn’t push it. He gave me time to think on it. But for two or three months, it impeded our progress in becoming close. I had heard that Jared was a wounded war veteran. But I didn’t know the extent. Do you remember me mentioning my girlfriend, Tina Janis?”

            Zella and I acknowledged that we did.

            “So her sister Taylor was a nurse in Minneapolis. All of my girlfriends knew I had a vendetta against Jared. So Taylor calls me and asks me to keep something between us because she didn’t want to get in trouble for violating any privacy policies. I couldn’t fathom what kind of conspiracy she was going to reveal. Part of me wanted to tell her ‘no thanks.’

            “Tina had been my best friend at one time, but her younger sister Taylor was a pest and a busybody. But my nosy side won out, and I told her I would keep whatever it was to myself. That’s when she told me Jared had been admitted the previous night over a suicide attempt. Her tone as she told me was one that expected me to be delighted. But I felt sick to my stomach.

            “I think I remained neutral in my response, and I did thank her,” Lindsey had a tear float from her eye, and she swiped it. “I remembered something Mick had told me about our human condition…”

            Mick gave her a few seconds to make sure she wanted him to speak. Then he said, “I told her we humans are vessels that are either controlled by Satan or God at every moment. I had quoted C. S. Lewis where he said… By the way, I mean Clive Staples Lewis, the author, not Charles Scott Lewis, our friend that lives here.

            “Anyway to quote the author, ‘There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.’”

            “And that was forefront on my mind when Taylor told me about Jared,” Lindsey said, having composed herself for the moment. “That and his suicide attempt. I actually felt bad for him. For the first time. When I heard he had been badly wounded about a year before, back then I thought good he deserved it. But after meeting Mick, I began to read the Bible again.

            “After my sister’s demise, which I did blame Jared for, I often thought about the mental, spiritual state of victims of their own hand. I have been at some pretty dark places in my life. I’ve had countless bouts of depression. But I never got so low that I considered ending my life. So this gave me perspective. What must that immense darkness be like? I didn’t want to know. But that reality gave me empathy for even, dare I say it, for Jared.”

            Lindsey stared off into the distance. Her breathing became rapid and a couple tears leaked from her eyes. She turned to Mick. “Honey, you know the story almost as well as I do. Will you finish telling the Sallie’s? I’m getting a headache.”

            “You bet,” he replied, as Lindsey stood and walked quickly toward the house. After watching her go, he said, “Knowing it almost as well as she does is a stretch. But you have to understand. Her testimony about forgiveness is powerful. But more often than not, it zaps her emotionally. What with seeing Jared just now, it doesn’t surprise me that she wasn’t in a good place to share how her change of attitude came about.”

            “It’s understandable,” Zella said. “I noticed she watched him as he limped away.”

            Mick nodded. “So, she went to see him in the hospital. She wasn’t sure if she could muster the compassion she needed to forgive him. As she made her way through the hospital, she prayed and quoted scripture to herself. Still she had a supreme battle with self and the hostility she felt. Then she saw him.

            “He wasn’t the handsome all-American teenager she remembered. Although on the later side of his mid-twenties, he looked war weary and twenty years older than his actual age. He wasn’t long out of high school when 9/11 happened. He joined the Marines and served in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Three tours of duty in all, and on the last one he had a devastating encounter with a road side bomb.

            “He was drugged and a bit delirious when she saw him. When he saw Lindsey, he called her Lana and began crying and apologizing. He said he loved her and thought she loved him. She let him blubber for quite a while, then he fell asleep. She left him a note saying she was Lindsey and that she forgave him.

            “She left the hospital feeling both lighter for having gone through with it, yet sick at how broken such a young human being was. She hoped that was the end of it. But she didn’t realize during the stress of the meeting that she had written her phone number on the note she gave him.

            “He called her a few weeks later. They met for coffee and spent a long time talking. Lindsey saw how remorseful he was about Lana’s fragility and the role he played in her demise. He said he felt like a pervert due to his sin. He wanted to do something noble by joining the Marines. This aspect played as big of a role as patriotism had in his motivation to join.

            “Something else occurred to her that she had always purposely overlooked. Although no means no, no matter what! The young, immature couple had been participating in foreplay for a lengthy period of time. Then on the verge of consummation, Lana wanted to stop. As wrong as his actions were, it didn’t seem the same as if he had drugged her or was some guy that yanked her off the street and into some bushes.

            “The thing is, Jared didn’t truly feel forgiven by just reading the note Lindsey left in the hospital. Lindsey’s nurse friend told her that when Jared woke up in the hospital and discovered he was still alive, he was out of control angry. That’s why he was sedated when Lindsey visited him.

            “Lindsey found out later that when Jared called her, he had a phone in one hand and a gun in the other. Like Lana, he had been sort of considering others when he had taken an overdose of pills, only to have his stomach pumped. Also like Lana, he was gonna make sure with round two, regardless of the gory mess. He had made up his mind on a direction. If Lindsey agreed to get together, he would postpone his death so he could apologize in person. If she  wouldn’t see him in person, he was prepared to say a permanent goodnight to the world.”

            “So what changed Lindsey’s attitude that actually made her and Jared friends?” I asked. “I mean it seems one of the main things you said to convince her to forgive, was that forgiveness didn’t mean a relationship.”

            “When I noticed she was having regular contact with Jared, I asked her why. She said Jared asked about her faith, because he was surprised at the love she was showing him. He ended up giving his life to Christ, rather than ending it. She said she saw that he was a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17). He wasn’t the same person that date raped her sister. Behold, all things were new. ”

            “Amazing grace!” Zella said.

            “Amen, Sister Wife!” I added, and Mick arched an eyebrow.

            “Sister Wife, I like that,” he grinned. Then he added with a look of awe on his countenance. “She also shared another C. S. Lewis quote that moved him like nothing else. Especially coming from Lana’s sister. ‘You can’t go back and change the beginning. But you can start where you are and change the ending.’”

            “I love that,” Zella said.

            “It just goes to show you the ripple effect of good and evil,” Mick continued. “Because of how Lindsey forgave and then ministered to this one soul, he in turn has ministered to countless other fellow veterans.”

            “And all that hung in the balance with that one call,” I said. “A phone in one hand and a gun in the other. We often don’t realize how often life is only a matter of inches.”