Alison Strobel - The Heart of Memory

“Yes. Though he certainly encouraged it and responded with his own flirting; it definitely wasn’t one-sided. Anyway, I developed a huge crush on him, and then, because I was heady with hormones and his attention, I fell in love with him.”

Tabitha took another cracker and gestured with it as she spoke. “So I worked with him for the whole first semester, and then after I came back from Christmas break he told me he’d missed me and couldn’t wait until I’d returned. I read into that all sorts of emotion and affection that probably weren’t even there, which I’m sure was his goal, and I admitted that I’d missed him, too, and that I really enjoyed working with him – though I made sure ‘really enjoyed’ was properly annotated with lots of nonverbal communication that made clear exactly how I felt. After that, things became much more serious. He told me he wanted to marry me, but that we couldn’t say anything to anyone because I was still a student and it might look bad. We planned to start publicly dating after graduation and get married at Christmas. But then one night after spring break…”

“Oh no.”

Tabitha nodded. “Yes. And I got pregnant. He freaked out and dumped me, claiming I was a Jezebel, that I’d charmed him-it was all my fault, you know?”

Savannah was heartbroken. “Tabitha, why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“Because I was afraid everyone would side with him. You remember how much trouble I got in at that school – no one in administration would have believed me against him. I was afraid they wouldn’t graduate me because I’d broken the covenant yet again, and way more seriously.”

Savannah was grieved to know it was true. Tabitha was the kind of Christian woman that the school hadn’t known what to do with. She hadn’t fit the traditional mold, and had challenged every attempt to stuff her into it. She had adhered just barely to the dress code, had both blatantly and secretively bucked the covenant each student signed upon matriculation to the school by drinking (two shots of Bailey’s over ice on her 21st birthday), breaking curfew (though she was hardly the only one) and dancing (on the Quad, at noon, with her Sony Walkman plugged into her ears, the day she found out she’d made straight A’s for the first time), and often asked the kinds of squabble-inducing questions that professors hated. But she did none of it to try to provoke anyone. She did it because she hated legalism and saw no reason why a liberated woman of the 80's should be constrained by the traditions of the 50's.

Savannah had agreed, but it wasn’t her nature to buck the system. It was one of the few ways in which their personalities digressed, and one of the many reasons why Savannah had loved being roommates with Tabitha.

The significance of Tabitha’s admission suddenly sank in. Savannah chose her words carefully. “So-you have a child?”

The look of sadness that flashed across her face before she answered made Savannah’s heart ache even more. “No. I aborted her.”

“Oh Tabs. I am so sorry.”

Tabitha shrugged as she took a sip of her soda. “I am too. It was an impulsive decision. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t feel like I could tell anyone what was happening-how could I possibly go home to my parents’ house pregnant? And by a professor, no less? I just went and did it without letting myself think about it too much. I kept telling myself that it was so early on, it wouldn’t really matter. It did, of course, and once it hit me what I’d done I was devastated. That’s when everything started falling apart – my faith included.”

“And that’s when you told me you weren’t sure you wanted to be a Christian anymore.”

“That’s right.”

“And like a fool I didn’t even push you for an explanation. You understand that I couldn’t imagine anything like all of this happening to you, right? I mean, it was stupid of me to make any assumptions at all, but I thought it had to do with not getting into the grad school you’d applied to.”

Tabitha laughed. “Seriously?”

“Well, your reactions had always been… big.”

She gave a conceding shrug. “That’s true; they were.”

“And you said something about not believing God cared about your future, or about your pain. I just figured you’d really had your heart set on that school.” Savannah shook her head. “It didn’t occur to me that anything else could be going on. I mean, we lived together. I saw you all the time – when would anything have happened that I wasn’t there to see? I never in a thousand years would have thought anything like that was going on.”

Tabitha waved a hand. “It’s all in the past. And God has used it for good. The Refuge was born out of my desire to help other people who had been hurt like I had been. The family I rented from when I moved out here – they were a true Godsend. They practically adopted me. And over the course of five years or so, they loved me back to faith. They helped me get the ministry started; God laid it on their hearts as well as mine. So how can I complain, you know? He redeemed my lost years and gave me a life with more purpose than I could have imagined.” She grinned. “And I’m one of the few people I know actually using my college degree.”

“So you’re a therapist here?”

“I am. I got my master’s in Atlanta, and my PhD, as well.”

“Amazing.” Savannah shook her head, astonished at the story. “Just amazing. I’m so happy everything turned out so well for you.” She chafed a bit at all the God talk, but the serenity and peace and joy she saw in Tabitha’s face made her long for the same outcome. She almost didn’t want to admit it, but Tabitha might have been right. Maybe Savannah really did need to be here.

THAT EVENING, AFTER THE POT roast dinner that Savannah had to admit was the best she’d ever had, she and Tabitha sat out on the second-story porch cocooned in quilts and continued to catch up on the time they had lost. Tabitha was apparently very skilled at reading people-or at least reading Savannah-because she had yet to ask Savannah what had actually happened. Savannah was relieved to put it off for a little while. She wanted to forget about the reason she’d come out and just focus on regaining the friendship she’d missed so much. Her friends back in the Springs were good people, and she’d enjoyed the time she’d spent with them over the years; but something about her relationship with Tabitha was different, deeper. Tabitha was a Jesus friend, closer than a brother, see-into-your-soul insightful, lavish with both her love and her forgiveness, even in the face of Savannah’s foolishneess. She was the sister Savannah had never had, who could read her like a book and didn’t buy the facade she tried to erect to save her image or her pride. She knew that, when she did finally tell what had happened, Tabitha wouldn’t come back at her with the same empty advice she’d gotten from others – and it wasn’t just because she understood what it was like to have your faith ripped away. Tabitha wasn’t made uncomfortable by other people’s pain.

The sky was black by the time Savannah came to her recent history in the retelling of the last twenty years. “I thought for sure I was going to die. I never once told Shaun – I didn’t tell anyone. I maintained a brave face and insisted I would be healed, but only because I thought if I claimed it enough, and got myself to believe it, that that would be the proof of my faith that God was looking for. And then, just before the surgery, I had this… this epiphany about my relationship with God, and I felt like my eyes were finally opened. Those few days were just… bliss. Mountaintop, day in and day out. I could feel his presence; I had this clarity of faith and thought that I hadn’t had in a really, really long time. And then I woke up from the surgery and it was all gone. So much was going on in those first couple weeks, physically and emotionally and mentally, that it didn’t dawn on me until later. It’s a serious mind-trip to know that such an integral part of your body is totally gone, and someone else’s integral part is now in its place – not to mention that you have it because they’re dead.” She gave a little shudder, though the quilt was plenty warm for the mild November night. “I started noticing little things were different, but I chalked them up to still recovering from the surgery. I didn’t want to go out, but that was because I didn’t want to pick up any germs. I was more clumsy, but that was because I’d been really weak and sick before the surgery, and my muscles were still rebuilding. That sort of thing. But other things were happening that I couldn’t explain-like, I love strawberries now. More than chocolate.”