tullos.org \o/

Coach Tupper called a practice for Monday afternoon. Usually Monday was a free day but after the teams lackluster performance Saturday night, Tupper and Lundsford decided to set a fire under the team.
"The team you played Saturday night was worse than last year's squad that you beat by twenty- some-odd points!" Tupper looked like a drill sergeant. The veins in his neck protruded with every accented syllable that exploded from his mouth. "What's the matter with you guys? You acted like this was some kind of square dance." The Clipper fought with every bit of mental toughness not to crack up. When Tupper was mad he said some pretty kooky things. Clipper could only imagine the players dressed in cowboy boots and basketball shorts. Swing yer partner round and round. Get rebound and doe see doe.
"Clipper! What the heck are your smiling about? You think this is funny, don't you? Well let me tell you something. I put you on the team and I can take you off the team."
Clipper's heart raced. Why do I have this crazy imagination! Stay focused!, He thought to himself.
Coach Tupper kick the rolling ball rack and everyone stood at attention. "Clipper! Drop down and give me 100 push-ups." Clipper's eyes expanded to saucer proportion. Coach Lunsford jerked his head over to Tupper, as Tupper realized what he had just demanded. "OK Maybe... 50... 25... Oh," he said in frustration, "Just strat and I'll tell you when to quit," Tupper said and then continued the sermon. "Saturday night will not. I repeated, NOT happen again. If you lose it won't be because you loaf all over the court like you did SATURDAY NIGHT. It won't be that you were flat footed when the ball hit the floor, LIKE SATURDAY NIGHT. It won't be because you weren't playing like a bunch of Pre-madonnas LIKE SATURDAY NIGHT!"
No one was prepared for the volume, force and total, all-out veracity that would spew from the mouth of this veteran head coach: "NO ONE'S GONNA HUMILIATE ME OR THEMSELVES LIKE THAT AGAIN!" Clipper thought, "This man needs serious counseling."
Tupper continued this coach's fit to end all coach's fits for another two or three minutes. Finally, he took a deep breath and looked around. He appeared puzzled with his hands on his hips and his brow furrowed. "Where's Clipper!?" The players looked at each other wondering who would refresh his memory.
"He's behind you doing push-ups," Lunsford said calmly.
"Right. Right. GET OFF YOUR NOSE, CLIPPER!!"
In a state of gleeful surprise, Clipper jumped to his feet after only four push-ups.
This particular practice made Saturday's game look like tennis. They crashed the boards for every rebound. Two or three times pushing matches and threats broke out. Out of frustration, fear and desperation, Justin watched the clock on the wall with distinct interest. In a few minutes around twenty students would be welcomed into his home for a Bible Study. Justin sacrificed his body and his time but his thoughts were drawn to the question-- would Kandi be there.

After the practice, Justin raced home. When he got there several students waited for him. Slightly embarrassed by his appearance, he greeted everyone, then darted for the shower. When he returned to the living room, clothed and in his right mind, he couldn't believe it. He slightly under estimated how many students would come. He navigated his way across the bulging room to the kitchen. Justin's step-mom glared at him. He knew that this ultimate organizational genius would be a little uneasy about the situation.
"Thirty-five," she said with the personality of Rod Serling, "Thirty-five kids. You said 15 or 20?"
"That's really all I thought would come."
"What did you tell them?"
"I just invited them to come to a Bible study on sex."
Justin looked around for Kandi, but he didn't see her. But as everyone found a seat on the floor or the furniture he saw her sitting in the corner of the room by herself. He made his way over to her.
"Hey! Thanks for coming. Sorry I was so late, we had a last minute practice. How'd you get here?"
"I had my Mom drop me off. We just have one car and she-"
"Do you need a ride back after this is over?"
She thought for a moment, "Mom was going to come by and-"
"I don't mind."
Still hesitant because of the experience with Troy, she didn't answer right away. "I was just going to call Mom. I mean, You're already home and-"
"She's already home, too. Give her a break. I'm a safe driver and I promise I won't bite."
She smiled.
"Did I bite you the other day when I picked you up from your stroll in the rain? See? There you go. I have a history of driving without biting."
She laughed, "You are nuts."
"Plus if you thought I was a good driver the other day, you should see me drive when the road is dry. It's a thing of beauty."
"OK, OK," she relented.
"Great. Gotta do the host thing."
Justin stood up and cleared his throat in an overly dramatic, ?shut up and listen to me' way. "Hey, glad you could make it to my house tonight. We really weren't expecting this many or else I would have had my parents build a bigger house. Do to our large size.. uh I mean number, I think my mom would like us to limit our soda intake to 2 ounces each." Several groans and wads of paper were thrown in Justin's direction. "Just kidding... Hey watch it with the paper. You don't know my mom like I do or you wouldn't do that. Shawn?"
Shawn stood up. He was the twenty-three year old youth minster at Justin's church. Shawn was a great asset to the group. He wasn't your average cookie cutter youth minister. He had long hair that he wore in a pony tail. This drove some of the older folks in the church crazy, but they couldn't argue with the results of his work.
Shawn welcomed everyone and prayed. Then Shawn and Kelsey, a sophomore from Summit, played guitars and led the group in some simple upbeat praise songs. At first Kandi felt uncomfortable. She'd never been in this kind of thing her whole life. But as they sang she felt something deeply soothing, even healing, about the atmosphere. They sang a song "We believe in God" and something inside her wanted to weep. She didn't know why at first. She looked at the faces of the students and their togetherness. She felt the warmth of the group and yet she had never felt so alone in her entire life. Perhaps because she had never seen God as a friend. To Kandi, the eyes of God had been the eyes of her father: unpredictable, unreliable, ready to blame, and destroy. But within the hush of this crowded room, God was quite different. Did she believe in God? Did she need Jesus? This was beyond the "pray for us sinners in the hour of our death" religion. The leader talked about something different. This was a relationship with a real and living Being who wanted a relationship with her in the here and now. Kandi felt a glimmer of hope even though still not convinced. A Bible Study on sex? Kandi thought. This should be interesting.
It started with a little scripture and lots of nervous laughter. Justin wondered from across the room what Kandi was thinking about all this and he had to admit that his mind wandered from the discussion to Kandi. He found himself staring at her until her eyes cut over to him and then he would glance quickly back to Shawn or the person who was speaking at the time. This must have happened three or four times. So many times that he blushed. He thought, It's hard to be spiritual when you're ga-ga. He also thought as he felt his wet hair dripping from the recent shower onto his neck, Why is it that when we meet, one of us has wet hair. Is this some type of sign?
After the group read scriptures about the holiness of the sexual relationship, the people in scripture who were destroyed by sex outside God's perfect plan and those in the Bible who were blessed by healthy sexual relationships within marriage, the discussion led to their own lives and how these principles rang true in Indy. Shawn asked the group, "What are some of the benefits to having premarital sex? Now be honest. No one's going to be criticized for their opinion."
After reading all the scriptures and looking at several practical examples of how premarital sex destroys, they awkwardly shifted gears and talked about the good side of premarital sex. Finally one of the seventh grade guys in the back said timidly, "I'd have to say, it feels good!" He quickly caught himself, "Of course I'm just supposing that it feels good." This brought an avalanche of nervous laughter.
"That's honest! Thanks Roger." Shawn said, "You're right, sex is awesome there's no doubt about it."
Another guy chimed in "But the feeling only lasts a little while and then you've got to deal with the consequences."
"Like what?" Shawn proposed.
Others chimed in quickly.
"You feel guilty."
"And overly obligated to something you're not even sure about."
"It's scary these days. You might contract AIDS or some disease."
"You're going to regret it later when you meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with."
"It changes the whole relationship."
Finally one girl boldly began to talk about her experiences. "The relationship was going great," she said. "And neither one of us planned to do the things we did. Neither one of us, but we thought we were in love. I remember our parents weren't too hot on us spending a lot of time together, and that seemed to draw us even closer. It's crazy how the mind works when you think you've met the one you want to spend the rest of your life with. After about three, we finally gave in. But I can tell you from experience that it didn't draw us any closer. After a while our relationship was totally... well... deflated. We were just like strangers to each other. It even destroyed our friendship." The girl wiped a tear that rolled down her face. "Well I still do miss the friendship. It was taken from me. It was like the sex destroyed everything that we had, and believe me, we had a whole lot going for us before then. When I moved here someone invited me to come to one of these Bible studies, and I accepted Christ about three weeks ago when Stephanie and Shawn prayed with me." Warm applause echoed through the room. Stephanie, who was sitting next to her, put her arm around her shoulder. The girl once again wiped a tear away. "And I know that Christ has forgiven me. But I'm having a hard time forgiving myself. I wasted a precious part of myself on someone that I'll probably never see again in my life. And every time that I'm with a guy, I feel guilty- almost like I'm not clean. It's like when I go to church Satan shoves the mistake right in front of my face."
Silence pervaded the room. The students gathered around her and prayed. Kandi sat back and watched in amazement. It was totally different from what she expected. She was expecting a lecture or a persuasive speech. Instead she heard students speaking more honestly about life than she had ever heard before. It intrigued and yet frightened her. Could she be as open? Could she trust in God?

After the Bible Study, the students hung out until Justin's mom began dropping hints. The music and laughter shook the house. Several of the girls in the group introduced themselves to Kandi and exchanged phone numbers. Kandi went from extremely skeptical to nearly euphoric about the experience.
Justin tapped her on the shoulder. "Are you ready?"
Kandi nodded her head although she really didn't want to leave.
They walked out to Justin's car. "So..."
"So what?"
"What did you think?"
"I had a good time."
"I want to ask you a question and you don't have to answer it. OK?"
She knew what was coming. "OK."
"What happened the other day?"
She really didn't want to talk about it. "I made a mistake. I trusted somebody."
"This somebody that you trusted-," Justin and Kandi both danced around the name Troy as they talked. "Did he... or she hurt you."
"No. We just had an argument and I had to get out of there."
"Listen Kandi. I know I'm a guy and your a girl and-" Kandi laughed as Justin tried to recover from the statement of the obvious. "I'm not finished. Where was I?"
"You were defining what sex we are."
"Right. What I'm trying to say is that you probably wouldn't have called me if my phone number wasn't the only phone number in your pocket. Right?"
"Right."
"I just want you to feel like you can call on me if you ever need anything at all."
"Why?" Kandi asked.
"Why what?" Justin asked
"Why are you being so uh... willing to help?"
"Basically?" he asked.
"Basically will do," she said
"I'm a sucker for brown eyes."
She gritted her teeth and swung her small purse at him.
"Just joking. It's true, but I'm kidding!" he said as he laughed. "I don't know. Some things you just can't explain."
As Justin drove Kandi home she feared that he would try to make his move that night and ask her out on a date or even reach for her hand. She had hope that Justin was being truthful, that he really enjoyed the friendship, that he wasn't solely interested in her as a prospective girlfriend. As they traveled down the road toward Kandi's apartment, talking and enjoying the night, Kandi felt a glimmer of hope. Hope mingled with insecurity, fear, and disillusionment in the past few days, but hope nonetheless.

That night Kandi wrote in her journal in a way that she'd never written before:

God, I've never trusted you. To tell the truth I've probably doubted that you even existed. I don't know why. I want to believe in you. Maybe that's because I need to believe that there is some reason for all this pain. It's hard to believe when I'm so angry. Whenever I'm alone, when the music, and the noise dies down, I realize that I'm a very bitter person and bitter people aren't believers in miracles, or angels or providence. But I don't want to be like this forever. I used to look up into the sky at night and say what kids say, ?Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight...' But the wishes that I had never came true. I never felt the kind of security I wished for at home. I never had that knight in shining armor whisk me away on a white horse. I guess that's why I became such a sceptic. I look at my life and I don't like what I see. Will I be able to believe in you? God, why can't I trust you?