Saved

'Saved'
  A short story or faith, pain, and love


"When I was little I remember my mother saying that god was in everything beautiful;
to have his love and love him back was the epitome of happiness.
I found nothing in my young mind that could contradict this. To me God was everything I
loved anyway. He was the spring rain, the beautiful sun, and even the soft earth. With these
thoughts I was a firm believer that the devil was in spiders, broken glass, and sometimes the
devil was words. But I was content, I played in the tall grass and stood in the rain,
I would let the sun dry me afterwards with its bright warmth. Sometimes I would even sit for hours
watching dust particles dance and spin in shafts of light in a childlike abandon that I to possessed.
My life was like this in the beginning, carefree and full of Gods love and beauty.
Never was I discontented with my mother, pr the chapel, I was not even sad when I was made to wear
itching clothes, or to eat the meager gruel like portions of food.  In winter I confessed to once
thinking that God could be unkind, sending the winter frost into our chapel and freezing the
staples, cracking the pews, and forming dangling ice-sicles on the fading
blue virgin Mary's stone robes. I then felt Gods anger for the first time, the lashes scarring my
back with my transgression. And as flesh was ripped from my back I was told to never in my insignificant
life to question his will again. Yet even after this, I would still bask in the sun that burned our skin
and made the air thick with humidity and the smell of sweat. I still stood in the rain even when it made
me cold and sickly, flooded our gardens, and drowned our livestock. And I would still lay in the grass
upon the earth despite the painful tick and flea bites meddling my skin and that of the nuns. God was beautiful,
God was kind, and God was ever-present like the scars on my back. Then father into my youth, my mother
died, they said God took her for her infidelity, I was her life's greatest sin, the spawn of a fallen
woman.Yet my mother was beautiful, mahogany hair, soft pale skin, a dazzling smile, and a voice that rang
like the most heavenly quire of angels. But since she was beautiful, did God not reside in her? Did this make
me some demon spawn only loved by Lucifer and shunned by God and his heavenly light? I asked this in confession,
my answer was the lash once more. I was told that perhaps I would sink as low as my mother, but
truly that was impossible, she was buried. After this I was put into the care of sister Catherine,
a woman of fifty years, unloving ah she was thin. She was a homely woman, inside and out with a cold and
cruel disposition made thus by to strict piety and devoted faith. But in my mind then I could only think
of how she was a wife of God and she was not beautiful. How could such a contradiction exist? I
did not confess my questions, and perhaps this was where I truly started regressing from the thoughts
of the cloth, but I was grateful for an un-stinging back and safety from the lash with silence. Silence...
it was a plague that seemed to suck the life out of every woman in the convent, there was little fresh
air, little light, but we were abundant with time to pray. And that is what I did, I prayed to God
on my mothers cross, I asked him all of the things I was afraid to ask the lash wielder's. Why had my mother
died? Was she in heaven? Had she lied of him being beauty? And why oh why did the preacher leer at me so
with burning dark eyes? I was sixteen when I first stopped hearing his answers in my mind, telling
me there was a reason and purpose for everything, and that beauty could be found in many ways.
Fasting is a terrible time, filled with remorse and even more silence, the stone walls seeming to
seep sorrow as if our very souls were weeping through the stone. So I watched, I watched people pass by
with wares, delivery's, just day to day life of a person not devout to fully serving God. One day
far into fasting, weary and hungry I saw a rake of a man. He was truly beautiful. He had sunshine gold
hair, copper skin, and cerulean eyes that shone like the ocean. I felt my heart stir inside of my chest,
he was the most beautiful man I had laid my eyes upon. He looked at me through the window of the chapel
where I sat and smiled a crooked white toothed smile. I remember it with such clarity and unchanged color that
sometimes I think it might have been a dream conjured up by my imagination that was sick of loneliness.
He often visited after that, and even once he spoke to me, told me of the outside world and how people
could be kind, and he even made me laugh. I had lost laughter when I lost my mother, and he had returned it
to me. There was at one point where I was going to run away with him, take his offer to elope. But God
would be angry with me. So I told him, in tears and sorrow, half choked words, and shaking hands; that I could
not leave with him, I truly wanted to, this life was pain, but I could not make God, or my late mother, angry.
It seems that I only made him angry, my only friend then shunned me. He never came back into my confidence.
But sister Catherine heard my confession to him one day as he made his way past me, I had told him I loved him.
And he had looked at me wide eyed as I shook scared and afraid once more of his friendship leaving me.
I would not have to worry, lady Catherine dragged me away from him as he continued staring at me
in what I can only assume was sadness. I do not remember when I had been dragged to my room, I also do not
remember when I stopped screaming, or when lady Catherine's cane stopped its decent against me. I was bloody,
bruised, and heartbroken. Yet I recall with clarity what she said to me, over and over echoing it
like a chant...or perhaps a curse. "Whore! Tramp! The devils slut!" I had loved, like was my nature,
and been punished, beaten within an inch of my life as I chanted prayers of forgiveness under my breath
at her harsh accusing words. She left me alone then, her eyes even colder between her frail thin skin.
And so I prayed harder and harder with my battered hands. But he was still silent. And that day, I truly
thought that God did not care and only the devil wanted me, and he was intent on making my life
a painful cesspool of lost hopes and lost dreams. Life was quieter after this, my love quietly gazing at
me from behind his downcast eyes, guilt or something akin to it written plainly on his face. The time
grew into a lonely succession of days, weeks, and years. I felt so old inside, like I was already past my
sixteenth year. Our priest seemed to grow even more of an interest in me, seeming to burn right through
my skin. Then when he spoke to me, it was kindly, of God and the world around us. He even gave me
small trinkets despite our denial of material possessions. With his friendship I ate well and had soft
clothes and warm blankets. I could not help but to think that all the rumors of him were true, he would not
harm and use woman then blame them for tempting him. He was to much of a Godly and kind man in my mind.
That is what I thought for the longest time. But I was proven wrong. In one of our many conversations
I found myself under him, he was besotted and I was to blame for it. I felt so much pain, I tried
to scream but he covered my mouth. And when it was over, I was out of tears, and I think a little
our of my mind. I heard so many voices at once rushing over, God was present again. He was there with
warm assurances telling me it would be fine, I was loved. His strong arms supported me and took
me away from the shouting, the pain. I asked without worry of whip or reprimand if I would see my mother
in heaven, but he answered something strange. "Not yet I pray to God." And I opened my eyes to see
the cerulean blue of my love, Christian was standing above my bed in a room made of wood and not stone.
God loved me, I knew it then. Not by the irony of my loves name, not because I was saved. But throughout
my life of pain, of silence, he had let me live to see the day where I was wanted. Then Christian
smiled at me, the light shining through the smudged windows and dust particles dancing around his
face. And I laughed, I laughed so much I cried, and when I was done he was still there. And I prayed beside him,
I prayed to God, to my mother, and anyone who would listen to me. I told them I was sorry, that there
was a planned beauty to everything, that God was there. When I opened my eyes once more I heard the pounding
rain outside, I smelt the earth smell of my Christian, I was content. And I do not pretend to not
wish that I could have avoided the pain, I also do not pretend that life is perfect. But it is beautiful,
and I often dance in the rain with my children, and stare at my husbands face through shafts of light
as we sit in the soft grass."