Since my favorite thing to read and write are stories based around a person in the Bible and imagining things from their point of view, I've decided that once a month, or once every two months, I'll write a story based on someone in the Bible and post it on here to hold myself accountable to write something - if I don't post, you get to remind me! I've written a couple of stories about Mary, but in order to not "exhaust" a story line, I'm starting with Eve and seeing where it goes from there. I don't want to take too much liberty with the Bible, and nothing I write is "gospel truth". It's simply what I imagine as I sit and think about these people in the Bible.
Pulling weeds.
Day in and day out, pulling weeds with calloused
and blistered hands. Hands that used to be perfect, entirely unmarred and
exactly as they had been created. If there were a way to compare those hands
today, you wouldn’t believe they belonged to the same person. But even beyond
the scars, they were changing. The skin was looser, the veins more prominent.
She’d never seen this process before, but she supposed as time had passed and
she’d watched her sons grow up, she had been growing old.
Pulling weeds.
They were everywhere. In her garden, by the house, taking over the
pastures, and worst of all, the most stubborn ones had rooted deep by the marker
of Abel’s grave.
Ah, Abel. Just like the precious lamb that had been her first
experience with death, he had only wanted to please. Gentle and caring…and
gone. Her fault. Cain had simply acted out of the sin in his heart, sin that
wouldn’t have existed had she not done the only thing she’d ever been told not
to.
Everything was her fault.
Yanking, jerking, pulling weeds. They ripped her skin and drew blood.
She remembered the first time she ever saw a weed. Thinking back now, she
realized how pure her mind had been that she hadn’t even known what it
was...but now, they were her closest enemy. They grew everywhere, entangling,
ensnaring, and they had overgrown her heart many years ago.
“Adam, what are these?”
“They are weeds, Eve. They are punishment.”
It had been a direct slap in the face, as it should be. She placed no
blame but that she put on herself, which was the entirety of it. Who knew what
would come next? All she was sure of was that even after she was gone,
generations would be paying the price for her sin. Generations of her
offspring.
Pulling weeds.
Sweet, sweet Seth. There in the distance with his own little ones,
sweating and working and paying the price. The babes to come next would do the
same. She would die for them all if she could. She would lay it all down if it
would take this horrible curse away.
They had no idea nor would they ever know what Eden was like. As the
years passed, she and Adam had ceased talking about it. The children only began
to resent them as they grew, and it didn’t change anything to talk about it.
But there wasn’t an hour that went by that she didn’t ache for the peace of the Garden. There wasn’t a night she didn’t dream of the sweet water and lush food.
There wasn’t a problem or joy that came up that she didn’t long to talk to the
Lord about. It had been quiet for too long. They had been cut off from their
closest friend, and His silence was unbearable.
If only the debt was payable and the curse could be lifted.
She owed too much. She regretted it all, every minute of every day.
Pulling weeds.
I struggled knowing how to end Eve's story. I usually finish what I write on a positive note, but after being exiled from the Garden of Eden, Eve's story wasn't a happy one. There is a price for sin, and regret is something you simply have to live with.
