Chapter 2

Mary grew up in Magdala. A city seated on the western shores of Gailee. There Mary would watch the daily exports of materials come and go. It was where her father first began his business as a shipbuilder. A business that created great wealth for his family. Mary was an only child. A miracle of God as her mother would say. Mary looked at it not as a miracle, but as acurse. She wanted brothers and sisters and would beg her mother to have another baby, but her mother would gently remind her that she was the only miracle God wanted. In reality, Mary’s mother had suffered long and almost lost her life to bring Mary into the world. Her mother never told her, but she heard stories from the servants in her home. She knew the suffering her mother went through, but being an only child didn’t seem fair to Mary. She secretly resented a god who would not give her siblings, especially a brother to take over the family business. Instead she was left with the burden of having to marry and stay in Magdala to run a business that would tie her down. Mary knew the ways of the world, and the small place that women held in it. Her father’s business would someday bear her name, but the fact remained, her husband would have all control. She did not want to submit to anyone, especially a husband who only wanted he r money, or rather, her father’s money.
Even though she was Jewish and grew up in a traditional home, her father cared little about religion and Mary followed in his footsteps. Mary’s mother, on the other hand, was a very religious woman and even though she was not allowed in the temple with the men, she listened intently to the men’s conversations on matters of the scriptures and tried to teach her daughter. Mary resisted. She lived with constant reminders of the faith but secretly wanted nothing to do with her mother’s beliefs. It was her father’s lifestyle that she wanted to emulate. He was a free thinker. Money, power, and self sufficiency were his gods. Mary’s devotion was divided when it came to her parents. She loved her mother, her gentle ways and peaceful contenence, but it was her father’s freedom that she longed for. There are no rules to follow when you are god.
The one thing she and her father disagreed upon was marriage. Mary knew the time would come when she would have to get married but her fathers absence with the business and Mary’s head strong attitude toward tradition bought her time. She wanted to experience the world. To taste the adventures that money and freedom from responsibility could give her. She wanted to be different from other women. Only later, would she learn the consquences of her desires.
When Mary was eighteen, her mother and father died. They had been on a voyage with her father’s business and on their return trip from Alexandrium, bad weather had developed and all lives and goods were lost onboard the ship; Mary had been at home without her parents for the first time in her life. She was surrounded by maidservants and guardians who kept a watchful eye on her but Mary would elude them to wander the streets of Magdala, daring to venture outside the city gates. She loved adventure so much, she had a hard time focuing on the daily tasks of learning to run a house and a business. She received the news that her father and mother had died while she was on one such adventure. It was such an enormous shock to her that she thought it was a cruel joke made up by the servants that disliked her for her unorthodox ways. As the weeks wore on she began to realize that her parents were never coming home.
After the confirmation of the horrible accident, Mary went into a deep depression. Anger and fear gripped her. She would burst into rages and curse the only God she ever knew, the God her mother had taught her about. How could a loving God take away the only two people she cared for? And what was she to do now? There was a house to care for and a business to run. If only she had listened more intently when her father brought her to sit in with his business associates. Mary knew she had no choice but to fulfill the wishes of her parents; she would marry and help run the business with a husband.
Finding a husband was not a problem for Mary. As soon as word got out that she was intending to marry, men came from everywhere. Rich and handsome, poor and old, charming and rotten. What Mary didn’t realize, was she was beautiful. Men always stared at her. But all she saw was the money that accompanied the flesh. And because of that, Mary didn’t make it easy on any man that came to call on her. She was purposely rude and seemed uninterested in even the most suitable of men. She simply didn’t trust men and she resented that she had been forced into the dredges of finding a husband. because of either the bad luck that had been thrown on her, or the God who had cursed her. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to marry, she wanted to experience life and freedom from caring for others first. The fear of being wanted for something other than love hardend her heart to any man who might sincerely want to marry her. And who could she talk to when all this happened? She confided in no one. Even her father and mother couldn’t pull information out of her. Mary lived so much within herself, she never let anyone close enough to see that the beauty outside was not the only beauty she possessed.
Her father’s business associates and overseer’s came to visit her often to report on what needed to be done to maintain the business and keep it lucritive. They were men who had been good to her father and men that he had trusted. She would listen to their words but could not concentrate on the meaning. The longer she listenend, the more their voices seemed to grate on her and the sounds became like a foreign language. Something was taking up residence in her but she couldn’t explain what it was. She would question herself and mistrust would build with those around her. Even her most faithful maidservants were more cautious as her moods became darker and more volitale.
Mary began to hide herself more and more in her room. She wouldn’t eat and elegible men stopped coming by. It was no secret to anyone in town that she was a free thinker, but lately she had become more and more unstable. She was seen in the middle of the night, wandering the streets. Her once beautiful wavy dark hair became matted and patches missing, as if they had been torn from the scalp. Her colorful clothes, which signified her family’s wealth, were ripped and muddy from sitting in the dirt as the rain fell around her. Her servants would take shifts during the night and try to keep her safe from herself and others, but she would always find a way to escape. She had bruses on her arms and legs from the manservants trying to keep her in the house or trying to bring her home from the streets. She didn’t care about anything. Her depression started slow, then built as one responsibility piled on another and fear of failure thrust her into a world she couldn’t control. There were moments of lucidity, times of clarity of and purpose, but then something like a cloud would cover her eyes and drown her in its vicious thoughts and random acts of self destruction. Fear, mistrust, abandonment, unworthiness, loneliness, guilt and hopelessness were her seven demons.

Chapter 3

“Did you sleep well, child?” Mary jumped. She blinked her eyes several times and slowly looked around the room , trying to remember where she was. She fixed her eyes on a crippled old woman standing over her.
“Where am I?”
“You are in my home, dear one. I brought you cool water and some bread. You need to eat and regain your strength.” Her voice was soft and comforting. It didn’t match her physical frame. She was bent over from some ailment, a large knot on her back. Her hair was gray. It was braided and set over one shoulder. Her face, wrinkled and sun worn, however she carried the sweetest smile.
“Do I know you?”. Mary asked.
“No, dear. You don’t, but I know you. Eat, drink and then we will talk of what and who we know.” Mary’s hunger caught up with her as the smell of the warm bread crept up her nostrils. Her hands, trembling from the lack of nourishment, took the bread. As Mary ate, the old woman laborously pulled a small chair across the dirt floor and sat as comfortably as she could waiting silently while Mary ate and drank. So many thoughts ran through Mary’s mind.
“Tell me about you and the Master. How did you meet? What was it like to be among the brethen for so long?” Mary stared hard.
“How did you know I was with them?”
“I knew. Tell me Mary. Tell me everything. From the very beginning until now. And not just the facts, but your thoughts, your inner thoughts that you try so hard to hide. I’ll wait until you’re ready.” Mary began to cry. How does this woman know me? Why does she want me to remember when I’m so confused by all that happened? Can I tell her everything. My deepest thoughts? My deepest feelings? Will she judge me? Will she believe what I’ve seen? Will I be crucified too, for what I say?
“Trust me.” The old woman said. With that simple phrase, Mary lifted her eyes and looked intensly into the old woman’s and her story began.
“When I was eighteen, my parents died. I got everything I had ever wanted. I had money and freedom to choose my own lifestyle. I answered to no one, and did whatever I wanted. Some forms of freedom always come with chains. Loneliness and guilt became my companions for a while. Then wine and drug inducing herbs followed. Hopelessness drove me to insanity and that’s where I met Jesus. A few years ago, He was traveling through Magdala. I didn’t know or care, but a few of my servants had heard of Him and the miracles He did for others. They loved me enough to convince me to go with them and ask for help. If He had come three months earlier, I would have fought everything and everyone who tried to get me to Him but my anger and bitterness had dissolved into helplessness and I wanted to die. I would have killed myself, had it not been for the faithfulness of the servants who kept watch over me.
I don’t remember much about the first time I saw Him. It was when He touched me that I thought I had died. He cupped my face into His hands and spoke words I couldn’t understand or couldn’t hear, but in that moment, a rush of something unexplainable flowed through my body. I know now it was hope.
My eyes began to burn and the sound of voices pierced my ears. Had I been blind and deaf? I was suddenly aware of everything around me. The faces of my servants, the throngs of people staring at me, and the face of this man who touched me. I squinted my eyes, desperatly trying to focus on His. He still held my face in his strong hands and the warmth I felt was almost overpowering. But His eyes, the way He looked at me, as if He could see every part of me. Every past word, every deed, every evil. And He smiled, and said, “come”. I can’t explain why I followed. I just did. It went against every ideal I had. I even asked myself why I was following Him. It was because I saw something in his eyes that I wanted. Something that I had never seen in anyone else. Not my father, my mother or any man. I didn’t fully understand what I was doing, I was just following. You should have seen my servants. They were stunned beyond words. The girls were franticly trying to fix my matted hair as we walked and the menservants had run home to give the good news of my miracle to the others in the household and to gather some decent clothes for me to wear. I had never spent a lot of time on my appearance but I could only imagine how I looked at that moment.
“The crowd followed Jesus to the outskirts of town. That’s where I first heard Him speak. He always spoke in parables, in stories. Some I understood and some are still a mystery to me. The first story He told was of a farmer and his seeds. I listened intently while my servants still fussed over the care of my outer appearance. But inward, I felt whole. Beautiful.
“Over the past two years, I have heard Jesus tell this story of the farmer many times as we traveled, and each time, I would glean something new about who He is and who I am in Him. God’s kingdom. That’s what His stories were always about.