Nothing

"Nothing," Joan said.

"Nothing?" Gertrude echoed.

"And that was the entire problem. He was asexual."

"Asexual?"

"He didn't experience sexual attraction for anybody. Not me, not . . . anybody." Joan retracted her hand from her mother and tackled another beer.

"That sounds like a blessing. He could go into the priesthood."

"No." Joan sighed. "Just no. I couldn't even get him to join me at Campus Crusade for Christ meetings, let alone mass. Tímo wasn't celibate for any faith-based reason. He simply didn't have the usual chemicals floating around in his brain."

"But you struggled with lust?"

Joan dismissed the worn-out phrase. "Father John said something I'll never forget. He said that sexuality is a gift to express your love for someone, never to be used for manipulation. I wanted that more than anything with Tímo. I love him. I still do. At the time though, I thought he had to be my one and only. I pushed too hard for physical intimacy, and that drove him away from me."

"If you really loved him that much, why didn't you pray and wait for him?"

"Love, not loved," Joan corrected. "Besides, I thought you wanted grandchildren, and that doesn't happen without sex. Tímo is not going to change his mind about being asexual any more than I will change mine about loving him. We both got slapped by the wrong set of hormones in the wrong place at the wrong time. Tímo wanted me to move on, to be happy with someone else, so I had what most people would call a rebound relationship."

"Didn't your father and I meet him once? At the Blooming Planet Festival?"

"Yes. He was a good man, but I never loved him. I channeled my feelings for Tímo into what I did with that man, and I knew it was a lie, and it tore me apart inside, so I told him. I told him that I love Tímo, and strangely he was OK with that. I wasn't manipulating him, so I slept with him again, and again, and I searched my heart. I slept with him a few times even after breaking up with him, but it was merely fooling around, not love, and we both knew it."

"But physical intimacy is supposed to be sacred," Gertrude reminded Joan.

"It can be sometimes, but it doesn't have to be. Problems arise when people go into it with too many expectations. Look, I listened to people testify at Campus Crusade for Christ meetings. One girl spoke about all the guilt she felt over all the sex she had in high school before she got saved. I searched my heart, but the guilt wasn't there. It vanished the moment I started being honest with the men in my life."

"Honest? But you're deceiving yourself," Gertrude said. "The real you hungers and thirsts for Christ's light."

Joan finished the last of her beer and noticed that the Kaiba brothers had already done the same. A pleasant buzz permeated her head. She slipped her free hand under the table and found Mokuba's. "If, and that's if, God is real, He put me through that suffering for a reason. He's slow to anger, rich in kindness, and I highly doubt He put me through that just to keep me on my knees for the rest of my life. Otherwise He would have said something by now."

Gertrude felt her wits' end nearing. "Do you remember when you joined the church choir? You said that you felt God's love through the music. I think you need to come back to church and sing with us."

Joan had tried that already, more times than she could count. It helped in the moment, but Joan knew that had been a product of her imagination, and the human imagination had conjured countless mystical beings since the days of cave paintings. She still loved the old songs, but they had a different meaning to her now. [The Summons by David Peacock, Graham Maule & John L. Bell - permission to use lyrics denied] God was in the people around her, not looking down on everyone from Heaven. Joan prayed that these men sitting with her here and now wouldn't leave her high and dry when she needed them the most, even if it meant risking their reputations.