Why do you choose what you choose?
Sunday. It was always cold in the room. I stood shivering in the front of the classroom. I had on my Sunday coat like I was dressed for winter even though it was 100 degrees outside. The other adult leader sat in the back of the class, insisting that the light from the window was enough, but it seemed to add to the overall chill without the overhead light.
I was not living the Good Girl Rules. “Hypocrite,” radiated from the women in the hall. I made no secret of how I lived. I wasn’t ashamed. But I felt like I should be.
Maybe they thought it would be good for me to teach the 16-17 year old young women’s class. This month’s theme was Choice and Accountability. I was learning about boundaries in therapy and was struggling to reconcile the belief that obedience makes you free with my newfound voice to say no.
The door opened. A girl walked in, her red-rimmed eyes looking down at the floor, her dark hair draped over half her face. The woman at the back of room smiled and patted the seat next to her. I cringed as the girl slumped into the chair.
“I’m happy to have you in my class, but you are not required to stay, Adriana,” I said. “The hall monitor might have fetched you, but I am not an advocate of forced obedience.”
The room was silent. She didn’t look up. The other girls in the half circle in front of me looked down at the floor too. Did a cloud just pass over the sun? I swear the room just got darker.
Trapped. Both of us. Outcasts. Like the Woman at the Well.
I cleared my throat and closed the manual.
“What was the war in Heaven about?” I said.
“Whether to follow Jesus or Lucifer.”
“No,” I said, feeling the rebel inside me pounding in my chest. “It was about whether to be allowed to make choices that didn’t match what God wanted. Whose plan was it to have the choice to disobey?”
“God’s plan,” a girl piped up.
“And whose plan was it to make everyone obey?”
“Satan,” whispered the girl in back.
I wanted her to get up and walk out. I wanted to put down my book and take her hand, open that door, and take her with me. But I didn’t. I looked down at the table next to me and opened my scriptures. I swallowed the lump in my throat and began to read Joshua 24:15 “Choose you this day whom ye will serve; … but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Maybe we served Satan that day, choosing to follow peer pressure.
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