God Rest Ye

On a rainy Thursday evening in late July of any year, raggy-haired and dirty Tamara McFarland spilled her trouble before a cast of almost forty other middle schoolers, four adult chaperones, one youth minister, and one music minister, all members of the First Fundamentalist Bible-Thumping, Hell-Fire Preaching, Damn Fine Southern Baptist Church.

It was the night of their candlelight share time, during their annual youth choir tour, when blossoming teens were given ample opportunity to address their deepest pains. Tommy Martin shed an angelic tear because he didn't make first string on the varsity team, and he was comforted with warmth and enthusiasm. Sheila Hanson told them all, through fished-eyed weeping, that she could not, for the life of her, persuade her mother to let her attend her first date, and so discover the joys of courtship, and she was likewise comforted. And Tamara McFarland, raggy-haired and dirty Tamara McFarland, suddenly confessed to the group that her father was raping her on a regular basis, sometimes three or four times a week.

She didn't enjoy their stares.

The music minister immediately called his wife (when the share time was over, of course, after Minnie Simpleton bawled about striking out at the church softball game, and Johnny Fossom talked about a friend who had stolen his tie). Brother Pharis, as he was called, asked his dear wife to pray that raggy-haired and dirty Tamara McFarland be delivered from sin. Following suit, the attending youth minister called his wife and together they prayed the same.

That night, all four slept well.

When the group of almost forty middle schoolers, four adult chaperones, one youth minister, and one music minister returned to their church home several days later to give their homecoming concert, a concerned adult chaperone had a sit down with the pastor of the First Fundamentalist Bible-Thumping, Hell-Fire Preaching, Damn Fine Southern Baptist Church. (After the standing ovation was finished, of course). Hand in hand, they prayed that raggy-haired and dirty Tamara McFarland be delivered from sin. That chaperone slept well.

But the pastor, whose conscience came a knockin' by the prompting of the Holy of Holies, knew that although able to conquer the fiercest demons and the sneaky ways of the great Satan, prayer simply wasn't enough for raggy-haired and dirty Tamara McFarland. So he prepared a sermon, just for her.

"’And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck,’" he hailed from the pulpit the following Sunday morning. "Mark Nine Forty Two. It would...be better for him...to be thrown into the sea..." The Pastor closed his Bible with a dusty thud. "With a large millstone tied around his neck."

He didn’t know if the McFarlands were there that morning, but that was in the Lord’s hands. And with that done, he slept well.

Meanwhile, the bug-eyed youngsters who witnessed the confession of raggy-haired and dirty Tamara McFarland told their parents what they saw and heard.

"Stay away," they all ordered. "No need to add insult on top of injury."

That done, the children slept well.

So those parents told other parents (over dinner and a movie; they all slept well). And then the news traveled to Betty Busybody, who quickly consulted her pocket church directory and hopped on the phone, calling every member in alphabetical order, not to worry because the McFarland family didn't attend the First Fundamentalist Bible-Thumping, Hell-Fire Preaching, Damn Fine Southern Baptist Church. Inspired by the pastor's sermon, she gratefully spilled all the burden of her pure heart, cleansing her hands, and asked her patrons to pray that raggy-haired and dirty Tamara McFarland be delivered from sin.

She and her callers slept well.

Only a week later, the prayer chain was complete, and raggy-haired and dirty Tamara McFarland was finally, finally delivered from sin when she swallowed the contents in the barrel of her Daddy's shotgun.

At the funeral, all wept, all comforted each other in the knowledge that they had done all they could--Hail Father!--to help, and all slept well.

And afterwards, when new gossip replaced the old, the McFarlands slept well: Because no one had bothered to tell the Law,

And they were in no trouble at all.

And Missy Overbright, Jackie Thomason, and Billy Bisselton, all victims of various abuses, all members of the First Fundamentalist Bible-Thumping, Hell-Fire Preaching, Damn Fine Southern Baptist Church, quickly learned to keep their trouble to themselves.