Only days after that trip to the club, my doctor’s office called. I was curled up reading Craving Grace when the phone rang. The medical assistant spoke slowly and kindly asked, “How are you?” My heart sank. Something must be wrong, I thought. Every prior call for Pap smear results over the last thirteen years was the same. They would just quickly notify me it was negative before disconnecting. I flipped to the inside cover of the book which I was still holding, and scribbled down the words she was saying. Squamous cells. Pre-cancerous. HPV.
I thought, Who is going to take care of my kids If I die?
I didn’t feel just fear. I felt terror. My next thoughts were, I can’t die. My kids need me. I fluctuated between hope and hopelessness as I started researching. I realized that Bob’s STD test results didn’t mention HPV because there wasn’t a blood test for it. At that time, it was projected that 80-90% of sexually active people would be infected with HPV in their lifetime. And no, I didn’t remember any of those specifics from nursing school. My specialties up to that point were hospice, long-term care and geriatric-psych.
THANK YOU FOR USING MY AFFILIATE LINK HERE TO PURCHASE LISA’S BOOK.
Then I remembered it was a Tuesday which meant the healing rooms at church were open. I left the kids, whom were old enough to stay by themselves together, and hit the road. That was the first and only time I attended on behalf of myself. Laying on of hands and anointing with oil weren’t practices widely endorsed in the particular IFB sects from which I came. Over the years, I had gradually moved from my father’s severe Fundamentalism to less severe Fundamentalism to a non-denominational but slightly Pentecostal resembling church.
There, they had healing rooms, spoke in tongues, preached from different versions of the Bible and had had dancing and drums in the praise and worship service. The ladies even wore pants. I arrived at the church that evening and was escorted to a room where I was encircled by church members who prayed while laying hands on me and anointing me with oil. I felt it deeply. I felt their love and sincerity and I truly believe they wanted nothing but wellness for me. Separately, in the main auditorium, I also spoke with the wife of one of the the pastors.
Even though I felt embarrassed and vulnerable, I sobbed while pouring out my heart about Bob and the pre-cancerous STD cells on my cervix. With all the kindness in her heart she handed me tissues and gently reassured me, “It’s okay. I know you have repented and God has already forgiven you.” I froze. She was, of course, talking about the sin of fornication, specifically sex outside of marriage. Unexpectedly, every emotion within me came to a screeching halt as a wave of rebellion took the floor.
Suddenly, I knew three things for sure. I wasn’t sorry. I had not repented. And as soon as I beat this thing, I was going to resume fornicating, just not with Bob.
It was the greatest aha moment I had ever come to within the four walls of a church. My cognitive dissonance had cleared. I couldn’t articulate it then, but my black and white thinking had caused me to make a poor judgment call. I’d assumed that since this church seemed to be about worship instead of punishment, it was a safe place to tell the truth. After all, they allowed many things which my father condemned.
Somewhere, though, in the crevices of my mind, I had to have known it wasn’t safe because in so many words, they had told me so. I had taken my children to church many a morning after having committed fornication the previous night. And for many weeks the topic in the women’s Sunday school class was sexual purity. Pre-marital sex simply didn’t feel wrong to me. I asked myself why I should have to risk another divorce just to have sex. It didn’t make sense.
Perhaps, for me, the most alluring forbidden fruit is the metaphorical eggplant.
In the weeks that followed, I began researching and treating myself with nutrition and herbs while simultaneously finishing Lisa Velthouse’s book. She spoke that familiar legalistic-like language which was somehow intertwined with overtones of grace. After publishing her first book, Saving My First Kiss, Lisa kind of accidentally didn’t save it. As a result, Craving Grace was born. In strict fundamentalism, it is a given that sex will be saved for marriage. However, if you can save the first kiss for marriage, that’s bonus points right there!
For me, Lisa’s book was like a plank on a bridge, on which I was walking, away from where I was, and towards where I wanted to be.
I have often thought how truly coincidental or synchronistic it was that I was reading that particular book at the time of that particular call. And when I went for my follow-up Pap smear a couple of months later, It was all clear. Negative. I didn’t tell my doctor about the herbal tampons I made and I didn’t mention the healing rooms at church. After all, the immune system can clear HPV without any intervention.
However, in my heart, I was convinced that all of it, including my herbal concoctions, played a part. This STD saga sparked my desire to go to be a naturopathic doctor. I’d come a long way since my teenage years when I was embarrassed that my mother told people about alternative medicine hacks which had worked for her five kids. And in case you’re wondering, my HPV infection was so new that I didn’t develop external symptoms until a day or two after the doctor’s office called. Let me go back now in time, and give you some history as a frame of reference for the rest of my story.
By the way, Bob never got a tattoo of my name.