Signs had been placed in front of the church informing the press they were not to set foot on church property. You wouldn’t think you’d have to say that to another human being. You wouldn’t think you’d have to tell someone that our town is in mourning and we want to be left alone. I wished I could hang a black veil over the entire community, wrapping us back in the bubble of anonymity we’d enjoyed before the whole mess began.
Randall, our police chief, had stood in the doorway of my office three days ago after someone leaked details about the funeral to the press. He said, “Walter, we’re going to need security for this funeral. It’s going to be a mess.”
“Security at a funeral?” It was a new one for me.
He leaned against the doorframe and rubbed his forehead like he was trying to rub the whole thing away.
“Yeah,” he said. “This funeral…it’s just going to be a nightmare.”
“The whole damn thing is a nightmare. The funeral is just a small part.”
“Yeah,” he said, popping four ibuprofen in his mouth and swallowing them without water. He’d been chief for twenty-five years, longer than I’d been a pastor, and I know he’d never seen anything like this in Granite Ledge.
None of us had.
**
Generally, I don’t mind funerals. I don’t have a problem officiating them. Funerals are supposed to be a celebration of life. Two months ago, Edith Fletcher passed away. She had spent her entire ninety-five years of life as a member of the church and we were so sad to lose her here on earth. No more almond cakes. No more lap quilts. And no more hearing her joyfully belt out Blessed Assurance, slightly off key.
But she had lived almost a century. She died peacefully in her sleep. She’d lived her life, fulfilled her dreams, marked everything off her bucket list. She had lived happy, she died happy, and her funeral was, in the truest sense of the word, a celebration of that long and full life.
But Stefia’s funeral is not.
I want it to be. I should be able to walk to the pulpit with marked solemnity but effective hope and speak comforting words about heaven. I should be able to smile warmly at the family and friends who gather in her honor.
I should be able to do that.
But I don’t think I can.
**
One month ago, Stefia had quietly knocked on my office door. She came in, sat down silently across from me and set her hands in her lap. My cluttered desk separated us but I could tell she was nervous.
It was uncharacteristic for Stefia.
Not once in the fourteen years she’d attended my church had she ever asked if we could talk privately. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but ran through several scenarios in my head, guessing at the path of the upcoming meeting. One thing I assumed was that the conversation would flow freely. Everyone knew Stefia could sell ice to an Eskimo or make a conversation with a brick wall seem exciting, so it didn’t seem like a Tuesday morning conference in my office would be any trouble at all.
But sitting across from me in the crimson padded chair, Stefia was quiet. Too quiet to be the Stefia I’d watched grow up in church.
“Can I get you something?” I asked. “A water? Some coffee?”
She shook her head and absent mindedly rubbed at her thighs, so I sat down in my office chair. I rested my elbows on the desk and folded my hands under my chin. Our eyes met momentarily but she looked away, saying nothing.
“You wanted to talk about something?” I prodded gently.
“Yes,” she cleared her throat. “I do.”
“Well, what a coincidence.” I smiled. “That’s what I’m here for.”
She took a deep breath in.
“Pastor?”
I waited, thinking she would continue, but she didn’t. She just took another deep breath and then smiled weakly.
As I watched her eyes move about the room, stopping to read book titles on my shelf and identify people in pictures on my wall, I couldn’t help but notice how beat down and drained she looked.
“You have a picture of me here?” she asked, interrupting my thoughts of concern. She got up from the chair and walked over to the frame that encased a memory of her on my wall.
“I have many pictures of members of the congregation in my office.”
Her eyes drifted across the many photographs, souvenirs of my twenty years as a pastor at First Light Lutheran. Arms around the shoulders of members of my congregation made up the bulk of them. So many photos at so many functions. The Santa Lucia Festival. Lenten soup suppers. The outdoor bluegrass concert to raise money for the church addition.
“But this one,” she said, pointing to the picture of her, “is different. My picture isn’t from anything that happened at church.”
“You’re right,” I said, rising. “Stefia, you must realize that I don’t spend my entire life in church.”
“I know, but this picture is of…”
“Your first play,” I finished, with a reminiscing smile. “Yes. We were all so proud of you…our little Stefia, shining like the brightest star up there on that big stage.”
She squinted at the picture like she didn’t know what it was, and then shook her head ever so slightly.
“But why not a picture of me teaching Sunday school?” she argued. “Or singing with the choir? Or serving a soup supper?”
“Oh, I have pictures of you doing all those wonderful things, too. I guess I’ve just grown accustomed to looking at this one from my desk.”
I expected even a half smile, but nothing came.
“Stefia, is something troubling you?”
She walked from picture to picture, running her fingers over the multicolored frames. Then she opened her mouth to speak, but was so quiet it almost seemed as though she was whispering to the people staring back at her from the wall.
“I need to know that I matter.”
“What?”
“That’s all I need,” she said, turning around to look at me squarely. “I need to know that I matter. Stefia Lenae Krist. I need to know that she matters to the world.”
“Oh, dear Stefia.” I walked around the front of my desk and put my hand on her shoulder. “You, of all people, should know that you matter.”
“Why?” She turned and my hand dropped from where it had rested. “What does that even mean? You of all people should know…”
Her eyes showed she was irked, bothered by something I’d insinuated. She deflated back into her chair, frustration seeming to weigh her down.
“Stefia, let’s be serious,” I said. I moved back to the desk, sat down in my chair, and sighed. I felt we were destined for a game of cat and mouse. Hide and seek. I would chase her around the room, hoping for answers she would only give in riddles. “How in the world could you believe that you don’t matter?”
“Give me a reason that I should assume I do.”
Riddles and side steps. Impossibilities to decode. Questions with responses that meant something entirely different.
I reached across the desk and took Stefia’s hands in mine.
“Stefia, listen to me. You are a valuable person. You are a beautiful and talented young woman who…”
“I’m pregnant.”
Her fleshy words slopped ungraciously over the edge of her lips, like muck over a beautiful waterfall. They filled up my ears until they rang with disbelief.
“Did you hear me, Pastor? Pregnant. I’m pregnant.”
“Stefia, I…”
“You don’t know what to say, right?”
Autopilot helped me to squeeze Stefia’s hands with a polite smile. Then I let go and leaned back in my chair. I sighed. It was a sigh that seemed to take forever, and the time it took did not help me to come up with the right response to her news.
“Stefia…
My inept attempt at words of comfort spilled out in a string of stutters.
“I get it,” she said. “Shocking, I know. Knocks me right down off that pedestal the whole town has me on.”
“
No,” I said, emphatically. “It doesn’t. This isn’t about judgment, Stefia. I just…it’s not what I was expecting you to come in here and talk to me about.”
“Trust me,” she said. “This wasn’t something I planned. I should be worrying about lines on stage rather than how to break this news in real life.”
The longer I stumbled over my response, the more the bubble of discomfort grew. It ballooned and threatened to pop.
Why won’t the words come?
“So…the father,” I began. “Is he in the picture?”
She nodded.
“Have you told him?”
She bit on her lip.
“I haven’t told anyone yet. Well, except for you.”
Did she see the look of surprise wash over my face? Why me? Stefia, with her multitude of friends, who got along with everyone…chose to give me first dibs on her news?
She looked down in her lap.
Why not her girl friends? Why not her sisters?
I swallowed hard.
“The first thing you asked me when you came here today,” I said finally, “was about whether or not you matter. How can you think you don’t matter, Stefia? Especially now, when you tell me you’re going to have a baby…”
“I didn’t say I was having a baby,” she said, a solid stop on the last word. “I said I was pregnant.”
Her words mashed through my head, swirling into the ugliest of messes.
“You’re planning to have an abortion?”
“I didn’t say that either.”
Oh, god. The riddles. Why didn’t she come out and say what she wanted?
“You’re…here to get advice on what to do,” I said.
“No, I’m here to find out if anyone can tell me if I really matter.”
“I’ve already told you that you matter, Stefia. The whole town knows you matter. They don’t generally place people who don’t matter up on a pedestal.”
“I didn’t ask to be put on that pedestal.”
She wanted me to drag it out of her.
I was determined to see inside her head.
“See, Stefia, that doesn’t make sense to me. You want to know if you matter…but, if I’m reading you correctly, you’re almost acting annoyed for the attention. I’m confused.” Then I stopped. “I think you really came here to get advice on what to do.”
I got up from my chair and walked over to my Keurig. I started another cup, Dark Jungle Blend. The sound of the machine spitting extra strong coffee into my mug sounded louder than it should have in the room fat with silence.
“Stefia, you know I’m going to tell you not to have an abortion,” I said, taking the mug, and raising it to my lips. “You know that’s my job, right?”
“Maybe you could try stepping away from your job. Maybe you could try saying something other than what people expect you to say.”
“You almost sound like you want me to tell you that you should abort the baby…” I sipped carefully at the edge of the mug.
“No. That’s not what I want. I just want someone to be honest with me and say what they really think. That’s why I came here, Pastor. I want the truth, not some scripted answer. I figured I could trust you for the truth…”
“I am telling you the truth!” I said, passion filling my mouth as I set the mug down on my desk. “Stefia, abortion is wrong. That baby is God’s creation…”
“That baby was put there by a man, not God,” Stefia shot back. “Why in the world would God want me to have a baby?”
“Why are you playing devil’s advocate?”
“It’s how I know what the right decision is.”
“God sees something for you that you can’t possibly see yet. I believe that God chooses the best parents for each child…”
“Pastor, really?” She stood up from her chair, raising her voice. “You’re going to use that line?”
“Stefia, it’s the truth that I believe…”
“Seriously? I mean…seriously, Pastor Walt? My mother left when I was thirteen. You know that. And you’ve seen that now my father is completely hollow and unattached. My sisters and I were baggage to them. So don’t tell me God chooses the right parents. Don’t give me some line about how we get the parents we were supposed to have…”
“Stefia, you have a choice! We can all make choices. Your mother chose to leave. You can choose to not be like your mother! Stay with what God has given you!”
She shook her head, in frustration or disbelief, I wasn’t sure. She leaned back in her chair and her eyes fell in line with the inspirational poster I’d thumb tacked to the ceiling two months earlier.
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein
She closed her eyes.
“Have you ever thought that maybe God makes mistakes?” she asked.
“No. I have never thought that. I think that God challenges us. I think God stretches us. But I don’t think He ever makes mistakes.”
She still hadn’t opened her eyes. With her head settled on the back of the chair, she jutted out her chin and tipped her head to one side and then the other.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
I shuddered. I hated it when people cracked their neck.
“You said you haven’t told the father yet, right?” I asked, taking a seat.
“Yeah,” she answered.
“How do you think he’s going to react?”
“He will be angry.”
“Why do you say that? How do you know?”
“I just know.”
She opened her eyes and they scanned the room. She focused on the jade plant that sat on my window ledge, a malachite gem against the vast chalky whiteness of the snow outside.
“Was this relationship…?” I stopped, carefully choosing the words for what I wanted to know. “I mean, have you been together long?”
“It wasn’t a one night stand,” she said, with a razor sharp edge to her voice.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that…well, to be honest, I didn’t think you had a boyfriend. I mean, I’ve never seen you with anyone.”
“Surely you must realize, Pastor, that I don’t live my entire life on stage.”
“Touché.”
I tried not to wonder, but couldn’t stop my vagrant mind from land loping to who the father might be. Was it someone in our church? Someone outside the community? A fellow actor?
“Regardless of who this guy is that you’ve been with for…how long have you been together?”
“Long enough,” she answered.
“Okay, regardless of who it is…”
“I’m not telling you who it is.”
“I’m not asking you to. What I’m saying is that people have a way of surprising us, Stefia. Human beings are unpredictable and oftentimes react differently than we expect. Honestly, I’ve counseled so many people in the church who have gone through this same thing.”
“This same thing?”
“Yes, Stefia. The same exact thing. The reality is that unexpected pregnancies happen all the time…”
“This same thing?”
It was like she was stuck on the phrase.
“Stefia, whether we like to admit it, we’re all the same. We try to make our situations different, for whatever reason, but really…we’re all the same.”
“I guarantee you, this situation is different.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Is this a game, Stefia?”
There was so much being said. Her unwillingness to speak was saying more than the thing she wasn’t saying.
Too bad I couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Babies are a gift from God,” I said. “And I would be willing to bet my reputation that this boyfriend of yours will step up and be the man God wants him to be. He may be surprised, Stefia, but if he loves you…”
“It’s not love, pastor,” she said. “I don’t mean to be phil
osophical but I wouldn’t describe it as love. And I wouldn’t necessarily call him my boyfriend.”
“So it’s not a good relationship, then?”
“It’s a complicated relationship. I don’t know if it is good or bad.”
“Stefia, I’m feeling like maybe I need to be worried about you. Is there something else that we should be talking about?”
“I assure you, there is no need to worry. This man and I…we have a history together. And he is, quite literally, why I have all that I have.”
“Including,” I said, derailing her philosophical tirade, “the baby in your belly.” I couldn’t handle anymore teasing or enigmatic answers. If she couldn’t answer, I would stop asking.
She ran her fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp. I tried not to drive myself crazy wondering who else it was that had done that for her.
“I’ll pray for you,” I finally said. Because I would. I would pray for her.
But something sour churned in my gut because I knew I’d said it simply because I didn’t know what else to say.
There was a quiet knock at the door, and then it opened just a crack.
“Pastor Walter?”
It was my secretary, and I’d never been more thankful for an intrusion.
“Your three ‘o clock is waiting for you,” she said. “Do you want me to tell them to come back?”
“No,” I said, standing up and smoothing my khaki slacks. “Send them down.”
She closed the door quietly, and I turned back to Stefia with an apologetic look.
“Looks like our conversation is over,” she said.
I nodded, and she rose.
“Stefia, I’m not going to judge you,” I said. “Only you can make this decision. But I know you. I know your heart. I know that you will choose the right thing.”
“I know what’s right, Pastor,” she said. “I knew before I got here. I just wanted to talk to someone about it.”
“Everything will be okay,” I said, opening the office door for her. “I promise. You will get through this.”
“It’s just like a new show, right? Like…another performance. Come one, come all to see Stefia and the Baby…”
“I’m sure you’re in for a standing ovation,” I smirked.
“Yeah,” she said, with a grin. “Maybe.”
**
People are expecting words of wisdom. People are expecting me to approach the pulpit and recite some pat answer for how there is a reason for everything and God doesn’t make mistakes and we will all get through this, let us pray, amen.
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