Pick up your mat and walk.

I made it home alive. Barely breathing. For a holiday at the sea, it certainly lost its magic.

When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”

Those were the words I thought as I stood there staring her in the eyes, my heart pounding and tears threatening. There, and for the first time, I saw the chasm that had grown between us. I think that's what shook me to the core the most; it wasn't that I was labeled a liar because of a myspace bulletin. It wasn't that we were caught -and caught over nothing for there's nothing to catch. All those things contributed to my break down on the curb, but it was the voice of the Lord that startled me the most. It was as though he stepped down and stood between my mother and I and as she was spitting those cutting and final words his booming directions drowned out her fearful remarks and he said, immistakably and irrevocably; "Pick up your mat and walk."

To tell the truth I felt instantly liberated. (For those who don't know, and who care to, my boyfriend and I are waiting until we're married to sleep together.) We're both very honest and open about it with those around us. We choose it, we care for the commitment; it was our decision. And he's been so proactive in making my mother and my brother feel at ease on the subject, taking them each aside and telling them what we were doing -what we weren't doing.

Even so, from the first moment she asumed our failure before we even stepped out of the gate. At first Marcos was deeply burdened by her lack of trust. In my eyes the word "trust" doesn't even belong in this sentence and I was angry at her pompus attitude; this has nothing to do with her. I didn't make this commitment to her; I made it to myself and my Lord first and then to my boyfriend; Those are the only people who matter in regards to my sex life. Those are the only people who know the truth. And fighting off the feeling of insult, and of childishness for feeling insulted, I find myself standing a great deal taller, because she's right. Its none of her business anyhow.

-A.H.