Just a bad idea

LES SILLARS, HOST: From WORLD Radio, this is Doubletake. I’m Les Sillars

Everybody knows you’re not supposed to bargain with God. It’s just a bad idea. God doesn’t answer prayers that begin, “Dear God, if you just give me this one thing I’ll do this other thing. For the rest of my life. I promise.”

Theologically speaking, we don’t give God our terms. He gives us His.

But today we have an essay from someone who actually did bargain with God. Trinity Klomparens is a journalism student at Patrick Henry College.

Here’s Trinity.

TRINITY KLOMPARENS: Still…

I’ll just … stay still.

My room is so quiet. My older sister Sophie turned off all of the lights hours ago. My parents set up the room so that our three beds line up in a row along our room’s wall. Either way I turn I can see my sisters sleeping—Charity is halfway off of her bed, but she’s still fast asleep. Sophie’s computer is humming faintly from the corner of the room. It’s the only noise I can hear.

I turn and look at my alarm clock. Bright red block numbers: 2:03 a.m.

I’m sitting bolt upright on top of my covers. I can only think one thing:

This is an embarrassing way to die.

My head hurts. My head hurts, but only at the top right. It’s a stabbing pain. I can feel it just beneath my skull and just above my right eye.

A tumor. A neurological malfunction. An aneurysm. It could be cancer, or… or… I don’t know enough about biology. Something else horrifying.

Eight years old. I could see the headlines in the local paper: “Eight year old found dead in her home from …” Fill in the blank. I figured I wasn’t important enough to be getting headlines, but I don’t know … maybe if the disease was rare enough.

The truth is, I only had a headache.

But I was an eight year old hypochondriac.

I suppose that I can’t actually say that for sure, because I was never diagnosed as a hypochondriac. I was too afraid to go to the doctor to get diagnosed. But I was cripplingly afraid of disease. I was paralyzed by the very thought of the doctor. When my mom took me along with her to Safeway, the road we drove happened to pass a highway that led to our local doctor’s office; I would turn my head the other way. Maybe, somehow, if I looked down that road, I would catch a glimpse of the office. Maybe I would get cancer.

It was superstitious. It was stupid. But I dreaded that drive to Safeway.

I couldn’t even say the word. Cancer. I couldn’t think it. I couldn’t say it. My stomach would drop at the sight of it on hospital signs. My blood would go cold at the mention of the disease in TV shows or movies.

For years, I didn’t want to touch anything in my room. I liked painting, but I didn’t want to paint. I liked coloring books, but I was hesitant to color. Through my eight to twelve year old eyes, everything that I made and everything that I did was just something else I would leave behind when I died. And I thought my death was soon. I thought of my family who would have to walk into my room, see my coloring book, and remember their little girl—a cancer patient, now gone.

I couldn’t do that to them.

It didn’t make sense. I know.

I was so afraid. I loved my family too much to leave them. I had six brothers and sisters, three older and three younger. I couldn’t bear the thought of them being sad—especially my brother Ransom. He had Down Syndrome, a genetic disorder that slows down your mental development.

I don’t think he would even understand if I was gone. I don’t think my parents could explain it to him.

See, Ransom always understood me. He couldn’t communicate very well, but he could understand. When I was sad, he knew. When I was scared, he could tell. Even when no one else did. He would walk into my room, sit down on the floor, look me in the eye, and say,

“Don’t sad, Qwinny.”

He couldn’t say Trinity.

It always comforted me.

Ransom is the glue of my family. He is the best of us, and we all know it. He cares about three things: Walmart, Pepsi, and WWE. I can barely get through a conversation with him without him asking me about my favorite restaurant, soda, and WWE wrestler. He is so full of life—so full of love. He keeps all nine of us sane, my parents included.

Please God, don’t let me get sick. For Ransom. Don’t let me get sick.

Senior year of high school. The COVID pandemic shut everything down, so I spend all day at home. I spend most of my time painting and worrying. I am still so afraid of dying. My hands break apart, and burn, and bleed from stress.

One day, my family and I were sitting together for dinner and we all noticed something odd. I turn to my right and see my Ransom spitting his food back onto his plate.

It’s mac-n-cheese. He loves mac-n-cheese.

“Ransom, why did you do that?” I put my hand on his shoulder, chuckling a bit as I ask.

Ransom doesn’t smile back. He just shrugs his shoulders.

Weird.

But then it was every meal. I started watching him. Every bite. Every bite, he was spitting out his food.

My parents ask him why he’s doing it. He won’t say. He just shrugs his shoulders.

Ransom, why aren’t you eating?

A few weeks pass. He’s losing so much weight.

I have never seen Ransom cry. I have never really seen him sad. He doesn’t communicate his feelings or talk about himself. He’s just quietly not eating anything.

Oh. Oh, this is my worst nightmare.

I had been so afraid that something might happen to me, I didn’t even consider what I would do if something happened to Ransom. Please God, not to Ransom.

The next few weeks were torture. The thought of the doctor still made my stomach drop. My parents would take Ransom to the office, and the doctors never seemed to have anything to say. It was test after test after test, with no results.

What was happening to Ransom? Why didn’t they know?

He was getting worse. We were all watching.

He probably doesn’t understand what’s happening. He can’t even tell us what’s going on.

After a month of this, I found myself in my room. Typically, this was when Ransom would find me and tell me, “Don’t sad, Qwinny.”

I was on the ground. I was on my knees, in front of my desk. I was so scared.

God, what do I do? What do you want me to do?

I leaned over until my head was touching the carpet, too. Tears filled my eyes. And then I bargained.

I knew I shouldn’t. I knew that it wasn’t how God works, but I bargained with Him.

“I promise you… I promise you… I won’t be afraid of anything. Ever again. I know I’ve been too afraid. I know…”

Tears dropped on the carpet.

“I swear to you. I swear I won’t be afraid of anything. I’ll trust you. I will. I’ll trust you.”

I grip the carpet with my hands.

“Just don’t take Ransom. Don’t do it. Please, don’t do it.”

I always used to hate it when people said that they had “heard the voice of God.” How pretentious, I would think. Nobody can say definitively that they have “heard the voice of God.” Nobody knows what God sounds like.

But I know what I heard that day.

Kneeling, head on the ground, tears pouring down my face, I heard a voice that I cannot describe. It was commanding, but soft; gentle, but fierce. He did not speak my language, but I couldn’t place what language He spoke. I’m unsure that it even was a language so much as it was a transfusion of thought into me. As if someone were pouring their mind into my own.

Sometimes, in a dream, you see a person and you know exactly who they are. You see your sister in your dream, and you know it’s her. But when you wake up, you can’t remember what she looked like.

That was this voice. This was God.

I can’t tell you what He said, because I couldn’t understand it. But I knew what He told me:

“Take heart. Do not be afraid. I have overcome the world.”

Okay.

Okay.

After a few months had passed, Ransom slowly began eating more. He took some medicine, but it seemed like more of a miracle than anything. He ate cautiously when he ate, but he slowly gained weight. We still don’t know what happened, and he still won’t tell us, even years later.

I still don’t think that we can bargain with God. But also, maybe that’s just the wrong word. When you look at Scripture, it makes you wonder. Abraham spoke with God, and got him down to five righteous people to spare Sodom. And God didn’t fault Abraham for trying. Jacob wrestled with God, and he actually won. “I will not let you go,” said Jacob, “until you bless me.”

Maybe God sees us as the children we are, begging our Father for help. And, like a good Father, He doesn’t always give us what we’re asking for. But perhaps sometimes, He looks through our sad little attempts to manipulate Him. And instead, He looks at our heart. And gives us what we actually need instead of what we’re asking for.

SILLARS: Trinity Klomparens wrote and narrated this essay. This is Doubletake and I’m Les Sillars.

And before we go, I’ll just note that this is the last episode in Season 3. We’re still working on a few longform audio stories but we hope to release those as we finish them. Instead of waiting to release them as a season.

And before we sign off, here’s something else I’ll just mention. If you get Doubletake on the Doubletake channel, you may not realize that this is not WORLD Radio’s only program. In fact, it’s not even our main one. WORLD’s flagship program is a half-hour daily audio newsmagazine. It’s called The World and Everything in It. It’s really terrific. It starts with headline news, followed by thoughtful and insightful features and commentary. If you like Doubletake, I think you’re going to like The World and Everything in It. So, look for it on your podcast app. It has an orange square.

And that’s not all. WORLD News Group also has a monthly magazine called WORLD. And you can find it all by going to wng.org That’s wng.org.

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

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