So in the here and now, I started thinking about the word wicked, how David has this huge blot on his record over Bathsheba, and sisters, in the new world, when they talk about who you want to meet from the resurrection, Bathsheba is very high on my list. I know David was King, and a handsome ruddy man. And I love Peter. I wish he was going to be back on earth and I fantasize sometimes that they'll get to come visit, or at least compose some new scrolls. But what do you think of when you hear Peter? Denied the Christ three times and then the rooster crowed.
I can't figure out what the worst thing I've done is. There's just so much to choose from, but none of it got someone killed, and none of it denied the truth. My mistakes are always a row of dominoes. It starts with this one little square falling down, and knocking down the next one, and then it's like a home movie on youtube of my life falling over one little topple at a time.
And a lot of times I made mistakes out of ignorance and they turned into consequences that mean literally, I have reaped a crop for decades after sowing those wild oats. You simply cannot mock God.
Nearly everybody would like to be about 17 again and know what they know now. But no, I would not want to be 17 and stupid again. Hardly anyone would. I don't even want to live through that again, only I like to think I could do a better job next time, but I do wish I had my 17 year old body back.
That's what getting younger will be like for me. Like Jehovah is dipping me into a bathtub full of Olay Regenerist everyday.
Here's something I did in ignorance, and it still hurts me over 30 years later.
I got to go stay at Becky's house 90 miles away when I was 16 and she was 17. We met that fall at a circuit assembly in Woodward, Oklahoma. My grandmother, mother, and myself were interviewed on the program for how we came into the truth. I met Becky when she came up later and said I enjoyed your experience.
In December, during the semester break, her brother came to our congregation to give a talk, brought another brother with him, and I rode back with them. In fact, it was his schedule that gave Becky the idea to make this work for us. You know how teenagers without cars figure out transportation. Then on Friday my father and brother drove up there to pick me up.
On Monday morning we are getting up and Becky has it planned for us to go in field service. Seriously, on a Monday. I had no idea anyone went out on Monday. We had maybe 40 publishers, no pioneers at that time, and no meetings for field service were announced for any morning except Wednesday, when my grandma and some other older sisters would go. When there was no school, I would go with them a lot. But we never had a brother to conduct the meeting for field service. We just got together and a sister put on a scarf, we read the text, and out we went.
Then on Saturday, everybody went. That was just how it worked in my experience.
So I didn't know what to do because I did not bring my book bag or any literature. Becky loaned me one of hers. This was funny. She had one ordered from a catalog, with the little side pocket sized perfectly for house-to-house record sheets, durable leather. My grandma had the wide one, and Becky had the narrower one for girls. That's the one she let me use. She had a trendier bag she used, but my mother would never buy the catalog bag for me. I liked it because it was like my grandma's. Becky apologized that was all she had, but I didn't want the cuter bag.
In the car group later, with a couple named Gene and CloAnne, (Gene was gloriously bald) Becky tells them that I came to visit for almost an entire week and didn't bring a book bag, can you believe it? And I didn't know what to say in my defense because I sure did not have a bag with me.
I reluctantly surrendered the catalog bag after the meeting on Thursday night and packed to go home. After being in a new congregation for four whole days, putting in long service days every day, I was thrilled to be surrounded by so many new friends.
It's hard for me to consider that a lot of those friends who were my current age back then are probably not with us now. I sure never expected to be facing 50 in this system. Becky and I were surprised to finish high school. To have children finished with high school is flabbergasting.
I remember Becky at 17, how she used her curling iron, a newfangled appliance back then, and spent a half hour curling my hair for meeting Thursday night.
Sometimes I wonder, how did I get from having a part on an assembly program to not having a book bag in the span of a few short months? What a crafty act it was to make me think it was my fault, that it meant something was wrong with me. And how devious it was to use a lovely 17 year old girl's innocent comment to make me doubt myself.
We were girls together. And after enough of the ultimate Regenerist treatment, we will be again. No more wickedness will there be.
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