Eve Before Grace

Eve Before Grace

When I say I had absolutely no complaints, I mean that wholeheartedly. I mean the man was beautiful, created by God's hands, molded into an absolutely breathtaking specimen. His skin the color of caramel, his teeth white as pearls and his beautiful strong commanding voice that would call to me at all times of the day and night… for all kinds of crazy reasons… because everything was happening for the first time… every time.

Though he wasn't the best at telling me that I had his favor, I knew I did because there was no one else. And even though he could have gotten away with not even complimenting me because does it really count if someone says you're the most beautiful precious creation they've ever seen, if in fact, you are the only human creation they've ever seen? I'm not splitting hairs here, I really like when he looks at me with love in his eyes.

One time I asked him to explain the phrase “be fruitful and fill the earth” and he had me pretty excited when he started explaining what that meant. But for some reason we didn't act on it right away, perhaps he was trying to decide if he really likes me or not. I mean we've only known each other for a very brief time. This was all very new to both of us and we were experiencing it completely differently as a man and a woman.

I'm quite sure that God made us very different for a very good reason and I'm sure whatever he does compliments my uniqueness and my uniqueness compliments his. Yet I find it interesting that two brand new human beings and the only human beings on the entire planet, I might add, yet we have a surprisingly mundane relationship.

I'm sure you heard the rumors of the very first day, his chasing me through half the garden. Sadly, only to tackle me so he could stare into my eyes, then he tried to name me like the names of all the animals. I was kind of hoping he would treat me the way the animals do when they're mating. I had to put two and two together to figure out what being fruitful and fill the earth meant. Fill the earth? How big is this earth, anyway and how many times can I mate like those two lions over there, or the monkeys, who mate a lot, before the earth would be satisfied?

The monkey mothers have a lot of babies, as a matter of fact the little animal kingdom, which is what we've started calling it, are very good about filling the earth but I haven't been approached about it yet. I haven't been led to the water, gently pushed down on a nice soft patch of lush greens and handed a beautiful flower and told I was about to get my procreation on? He hasn't even so much as touched these beautiful things that are hanging on my chest but I've had to test the waters.

The father had his plans as he always does and when he made the man, he made him a certain way. And then he made me. I'm very different from the man in many ways and after watching other animals of the kingdom I certainly am anxious to be raising my own baby humans. God made the man busy and focused at harvesting and caring for his garden, which was very physically demanding. Man was strong. And I was made weepy and sentimental, in love and devoted and a little bit lonely. I watch the man and feel my body come alive. I want to run over and just start jumping on him and doing all kinds of ungodly things… but I know my place and I know that there's a reason God made me particularly soft. And the man, particularly hard… and that will probably come into play when I start the mating process with him. And then when the baby starts to grow inside me that's probably when it would come into play that we are so different, he'll want to protect, I will nurture. The man as the aggressor and his woman, contently submissive.

I'm pretty sure that's what my destiny is all about. It's not about this glorious man that's in front of me, it’s about the babies he's going to put inside of me. And how that's all going to play out can't be anything but beautiful because the man's beautiful and the Creator is beautiful. And by the way the man acts around me, I think I might be beautiful too. And it will be beautiful the day that he finally tries to mate with me.

I nap and wake up next to the lush greens and fuchsia bushes, my cheeks rosy from the sun and my lips alive with color from the berries I fell asleep eating. I noticed this in the reflection of the water.

I suddenly feel amazing and desire to see if I could entice the man to come over, and mate. Curiously as I was crouching down, something was moving, the same thing I'm now aware of has entered my garden. I now see it and it is unlike anything I've seen before. Though menacing and hissing, it felt like easy laughter as if it were sharing a joke with a group of friends.

I demanded to know why he was in my garden. What brought him to this place? And rather than answer he slithered over to me and up my leg, mind you this creature had no arms, and slithered on his belly but as he slivered up my leg he seemed to be holding me very tightly. And he continued his way up, around my shoulders and up to my head and brought his head back down to me, to face me.

And he says with much charm, “Beautiful woman you do not understand that you are being wasted, right now, all of your beauty with no one to enjoy… no one to lay with you like the animals do. Nobody to ravish your lovely form. And roughly, like the beast in the fields.”

“Glorious woman, I mean not to offend you.”

What is happening to me, I am trying to gather myself. I'm flabbergasted. I am appalled and I'm also extremely intrigued. Who is this slimy creature to roll up on me and say these things? He must really believe he's entitled but why pick on me?

And as if on queue he says, ”I talked to the man earlier. I asked him how beautiful you are and how warm you are at night, when he holds you, and the man seemed to not know what I was talking about. Does he hold you at night?”

The serpent continued, “The man thinks he frightened you. When he spoke of animal mating and fears you may be afraid of him… are you hungry, my beloved?”

I thought to myself how kind… how kind of the man to think of me this way that he would send this charming creature over to see that I was okay.

Cue the snake… “You need a beautiful name to match your beautiful face… and every part of you.. Such a stunning creature, the man is anxious to procreate with you.”

“I've been watching you both and I think I know what the problem is? Nobody knows how to approach the subject? Well, I have done a lot of procreating. You could say my seed runs strong, throughout the entire garden. First you need a name, something that will just pour from his lips like a soft breeze. May I suggest Eve, like the eve of the day when everybody comes to relax by the water. I know everybody's just you and the man and all these animals. That'll change if you really want it to… would you like to know my plan? And which of these lovely refreshments did you want, my dear Eve?”

I absently reached out to grab a handful of the raspberries and I sensually placed a few in my mouth and I saw him holding this beautiful apple, that was the most enticing piece of food I've ever laid eyes on, and my mouth was physically watering for this fruit. I pictured myself biting into it and being refreshed and replenished by its juices. I reached for it and suddenly it dawned on me that I did not know where he got all this amazing assortment of fruits.

So I asked very casually, “Oh snake, where did you acquire all this beautiful and luscious fruit? By any chance you did not pick from the tree over there did you? Because we are instructed to not eat the fruit from that tree. And so I would not be able to delight in the fruits of your basket. Please say you did not?”

“Luscious Eve, I live in this garden, and am bound by the same rules. God did say do not eat from this tree. So I have been very careful to not eat any fruit from it! Do you feel better now? Why would I present you with fruits that I could not enjoy? Now lovely Eve, please help yourself.”

This charming reptile was truly a friend. He truly cared about my well being, even acknowledging that he had lived by the same rules I was supposed to and would never touch that tree of fruit. I like the way he said my name, it made me feel special and I reached out for that most beautiful apple…and I could smell it before I brought it to my lips and it smelt like heaven and I bit into that beautiful apple expecting the most delightful sugary sweet juice but when I bit down I found my teeth deep in a pile of worms, some of them are now halved and it all happened so fast. I was gagging and spitting. Of all the things I've tried in the garden so far, I've not seen the slimy worm things. What am I to make of this, and how was this fruit so beautiful on the outside and yet rotten on the inside?

I spat at him and said in a harsh tone, ”You are a deceiving creature… you knew the apple had worms in it… you vile thing. Why would you hand a human of such beauty such an ugly refreshment? Have you no class to go with all that charm.”

The serpent was laughing at me. His eyes glinted, not with malice, but with something worse—pride. As if he had taught me a secret I'd never unlearn.

Now at this point all I can hear in my mind is the Lord's booming voice telling me that if I eat from this tree I will destroy mankind. I will die. I will suffer. Completely terrified, I screamed at the serpent, “You conniving ungodly bastard, what did you do? What could you do to help me redeem myself? I hate you and I need you all at the same time!”

“Oh spoiled little Eve, are you acting naive? If man were to fall, would you even grieve? You're not even qualified to take mankind down, you are from the rib of a man. If you want to shift responsibility then you must convince the man to take a bite. That is your wish, is it not lovely Eve? To redeem yourself. Put the blame on someone else? Eve, any ideas on how you can entice the man to sin, as you have? Perhaps with your beautiful smile, you can tell him that the apple taste is as beautiful as you, and he will be delighted at the taste of it. And that he is worthy to be pampered because he's a good man and he's worked hard and he deserves some refreshments to energize his tired body. What do you think, Eve? Mother of the world, are you up for the task?”

I just started throwing up. I retched until my insides convulsed and the taste of guilt scorched my tongue. Had I finally purged my sin. I now know what it was going to feel like to not only betray the man I was created from but betray the Creator and Father that I loved dearly, that created me. I was given this beautiful place with a beautiful man and all I had to do was procreate with him, name the animals, and enjoy the beauty of it. And somehow I had managed to start the fall of mankind.

And to make matters worse I am now as low and ugly and vile as the Serpent. I am plotting how I will get the man to bite from the fruit.

I looked at the serpent and hissed at him and said. “I will see you in hell serpent”, and he was unfazed by my outbursts of anger and rage. I believe he was amused by it. And I snatched the apple off of the ground and I tried to cover my bite area so the man wouldn't see the worms… And I began to look for him everywhere.

“Woman, where have you been?”

“Oh my dear man, I have been looking for you. I saw you up at the very crack of daylight and I wanted to refresh and replenish you with some amazing fruit. I found the greatest raspberries in the whole garden and some pretty good apples too, would you like to try?”

When I said that last sentence I was sensually implying something else, and he understood and became aroused.

“Woman, I've not seen you like this. What's gotten into you? That fruit can't be so good that it's making you desire to mate with me here? Now?”

“Oh my man, I've been enamored since the day I met you. The fruit is making me more brave and making me want to show you how enamored I am. First, refresh yourself. Let me wipe the apple, my love.”

The man was having his first taste of lust. He suddenly saw me as desirable. He had to smell me… get drunk on my essence, like with fine wine.

He wasn't even looking at the apple when he reached out and I guided it right back to his mouth, where he took a big giant bite. By his reaction, I knew he tasted the worms and was slow to realize my evil intention.

I was gagging again, my face was harsh with deceit, and my heart was dead. I trembled, not from cold, but from the shiver of my own soul recoiling. My body knew before my mind accepted what I had done.

The man was very smart and he looked at me and said, “What have you done, woman? Where did you acquire this fruit?”

“It was a gift from your serpent friend, the one you sent to make sure I knew how to entice you for mating. To procreate something I had been longing for, and you shared without considering my feelings first”, and as surely as I spoke those last words, I knew by the look on his face that he knew no such thing. And that the man had probably never even spoken with the serpent, who had just been successful at tricking me into deceiving the man and leading him into death with the rest of mankind.

Upon making my last comments, the man became inconsolable and he was screaming and marching around and the fear of what was coming wore on him like a cloak. And he said, ”Now what? Now what do you want? You have killed the future of all mankind, you are vile so get away from me and never come near me again!”.

Of course, by now we had drawn the attention of the Creator himself.

And he began to ask out loud, "Why are you both so unhappy and why are you hiding from me?”

“Did you do something wrong? You didn't eat from the tree of good and bad did you?”

I start to yell out, ”It wasn't my fault, it wasn't my fault! I was tricked by the serpent!”

The man shoves me away and says, “Father, the woman tricked me. She tricked me into eating the fruit. I need another woman. I cannot bear this one.”

And I don't have to tell you what happened after that because we all know, don't we?

In those days we knew not of a redeemer. Hopeless and devastated we were tossed out of that beautiful garden. After being told every horrible thing that would happen to us and every man, woman and child, that would be born of our seed, referring to all of mankind.

The man and I had just done the worst thing in human history. And that wasn't all. It was the look on God's Sovereign face when he realized what we had done.—a silence so thunderous it unraveled something sacred inside me. Not rage. Not wrath. Just sorrow.

And he saw us trying to blame each other and redeem ourselves while insisting justice be served.

That look of disappointment on the Lord's face would have been punishment enough.