A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?
I felt deranged.
I numbly moved the brush up and down the wall, hot tears still sliding down my cheeks. My mind was finally settling on its inevitable conclusion: There was something terribly wrong at Westboro. God was not in this place. We were not special. Not hand-selected by the Lord to do His divine work. We were a deluded people.
As my thoughts slowed, I came back to the present, the melody of a new song drifting into my awareness. It was gentle and somber and yearning, and it sounded like I would never be happy again.
Will I break and will I bow / if I cannot let it go?
At these lyrics, I began to sob in silence again. I glanced back to see if my sister had noticed, but she was still blissfully unaware of my state. Of the fact that we were living a delusion. Even knowing how difficult things had become at Westboro, how could I drag her with me into this waking nightmare?
“When will these things change?” Grace had asked me after the ultimatum. When would the grip of the elders slacken, their control over our every movement? When could she say a simple “Hello” to Justin without the suspicion and wrath of the church falling on her? When would our mother be treated with the compassion any church member deserved?
I’d told her what I always had: that the Lord was with us. That everything would doubtless improve. I composed long messages to encourage her to take heart and continue in Westboro’s way:
You must look on the great blessings you have been given, my sister. You must rejoice in those gifts and not continue to sorrow. You seemed to heartily agree with that recent line from Gramps’ sermon: “I think unthankfulness may be the most disgusting sin of all.” We don’t want to anger the Lord with unthankfulness—for gifts and for deliverance and for all we have.
Remember what the Lord said to Joshua. Israel had trespassed against God and He cursed them in battle and Joshua mourned and prayed to God. “And the Lord said unto Joshua, Get thee up: wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?” Instead of mourning, we have to get after what the Lord has given us to do. “Be not weary in well doing,” dear girl, and “cast not away your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.”
In due season we will reap, if we faint not.
But the hope that inspired me to write those messages was now gone. We couldn’t fix the problems in the church, because we no longer had a voice. When we objected, we weren’t viewed as church members with legitimate concerns. Instead, we were disobedient children. I thought about the future, and there was nothing left.
If I could’ve known then we were dying to get gone …
I can’t believe we get just one.
What if we did only have one life, and not eternity? How could we spend ours hurting people, picking fights with the entire world—not at the will of a Sovereign God, but for nothing?
How could I not talk to Grace?
I didn’t know what we would do with our lives instead, but I thought of my sister’s impossible dreams of exploring the world … and I suddenly realized that maybe the elders had been right about her. Maybe Grace didn’t belong here, either. Maybe she had already come to the same conclusion I just had, but was afraid to leave on her own. Maybe she was afraid to tell me, because I had been such a zealous defender of the church for so long. If so, her fear was not unfounded. Our mother had taught us the same verses:
If thy brother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods … Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death.
Our church wouldn’t be executing anyone, but the standard was clear: if your closest friend or family member came to you suggesting defiance of Westboro’s God, that person deserved to die—and you were responsible for turning