Feast Day

 My mom is Greek Orthodox, and has gotten pretty religious in the last couple of years. She went to church on Thursday. And tonight is at a big dinner party at church, for a holiday which is basically the feast day of the Virgin Mary. (Or, the Assumption of the Virgin Mary). 

My own religious beliefs are complicated. Despite being Greek Orthodox, my parents decided to send me to middle school at a private school associated with a Baptist church.  Then in high school, we moved to Arizona and I went to public school again. The rest is history! But whenever the Virgin Mary comes up, I think of a girl I knew in high school in Arizona. She was very devoutly Catholic. Extremely religious.  She mentioned several times that she was going to be the next mother of God. She claimed that God told her she was going to be the second woman in history to become pregnant as a virgin. All she had to do was just practice becoming more and more holy and then one day, poof!  

I remember a medium size group of us scoffing at her. Kids of other Christian denominations tried to get theological with her about why God isn’t doing that again. To my knowledge, she never became pregnant. But here’s the thing- 

Looking back on that after 30 years?  It’s so obvious what she was doing. She was obviously being sexually abused and the “God told me I’m so holy I’m going to be the next pregnant virgin” was a cover for “just in case” she did actually become pregnant from the abuse. I want to punch myself now that I’m older and wiser, because it’s just so obvious now. All the religious debates we tried to have with her when what we should have done was alert the school counselor. 

I don’t know what ever happened to her, and I can’t find her on social media because she had a very common name.