GROWING UP JASON ~ Too Late (Patreon)

Spring of 2020 came, and the mission work was still going great. One day, Steve McDonald announced that the group scheduled to come in for a week had canceled. He’d shuffled plans and decided he’d take the the long-term team to Angel Falls.

I’ll tell you it was an adventure getting there—it entailed a boat ride, a portage across a peninsula, another boat ride up the river, then an hour-long trek before we came to the viewing area.

At times, it felt like we were in a movie. As we navigated upstream, wildlife was watching from the banks. The trip itself was an amazing adventure. Actually reaching the place where we could see the falls was icing on the cake.

Among the long-term team were a few young women who were my age. I mentioned in the previous chapter how I had realized none of them would be right for me.

While I had come to believe at that time that Ailana wouldn’t be part of my future, I still looked on our years together as the standard by which I’d have to judge any future relationships.

Steve, it turned out, had noticed. When we got back to the dorms, he and I ended up talking about it.

“I think it’s interesting how you treat the girls on the team,” he said.

“In what way? Am I doing anything out of line?”

“You treat them like sisters. You care deeply, but only so far.”

“I guess that’s good, right?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it, but I have to wonder…” He paused and took a deep breath. “I’ve seen a lot of young people in your position. A year in close quarters… It’s not uncommon to see relationships put down roots.”

I tried to be honest without saying too much. “I guess these girls aren’t what I’m looking for.”

Steve left the door open. “I’d be happy to hear your thinking about it.”

I decided I’d just lay it all out and see what he had to say.

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I told him about Ailana and the modeling work and how it seemed to go against my grain. “Bras and panties were tough enough for me to handle. Then, she decided to take the job modeling nude for an anatomy book.”

“You didn’t care for that…”

“No… Then she did another job for a breast augmentation clinic. She was the ‘before’ example.”

Steve just nodded so I went on. “Then last September, the photographer that did the augmentation ad asked her to pose for a gallery showing. She told me about it… Even sent a couple of pictures to try and convince me that she didn’t show anything. I don't know… She had an agent already, but the agent wasn't using Ailana full-time… Just as needed, so when the ad and gallery jobs were offered, that just between her and the photographer.”

I paused and tried to get the memories out of my head, then I added. “The thing is, should I be okay with her naked in some studio with a photographer? Even if the images weren’t explicit, she was posing nude.”

“So you saw the images…”

I nodded. “A few. It was like she wanted me to tell her it was okay—or maybe she wanted me to like them… I don't know… I just said, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ She texted back telling me that her agent had moved her onto the full-time schedule. ‘So I won’t be doing anything like that in the future. You can stop worrying.’”

“What did you say?”

“I told her it didn’t matter. I’d stopped worrying already.”

A long pause followed as I replayed what I’d said—both to Steve at that moment and to Ailana back in September. It was, as far as I was concerned, a closed door. I’d lost her to her choices and to my inability to accept them.

Finally Steve said something. “Why do you think she did it?”

“For the money.”

I went on to explain that she had grown up poor. I told him about her having to live in a homeless shelter and how her dad had tried hard to keep things together after her mother had left.

I finally returned to my point. “But there are a lot of things more important than having money.”

Steve shrugged. “I guess you’ve never gone to bed hungry knowing there’d be nothing for breakfast the next day, have you?”

I shook my head and mumbled, “That still doesn’t make it right.”

“But it does make it worthy of grace—unmerited forgiveness.”

“Grace?” I looked up.

Steve nodded. “The Bible teaches that grace provides a means for us to become righteous, right? ‘For by grace are you saved through faith…’ Right?”

I nodded.

Steve went on. “You played baseball in college. I bet you can throw the ball… what? Three hundred… Four hundred feet?”

I shrugged, and he went on. “Let's say righteousness is obtained by how far you can throw the ball. You chuck it four hundred feet. Pretty good. Me? I chunk it forty feet. Looks like you’re a lot more righteous than me.”

I looked at him to figure out what he was getting at.

He smiled. “So someone standing beside us says, ‘Woo… Look how far Jason threw the ball! He must be pretty righteous. Way more so than Steve!’ But… Jason… Here's the thing… For either of us to be truly righteous, we’d have to throw the ball four thousand… not feet… miles. Neither one of us is even close to righteous. Grace is what moves our baseballs from where they land the rest of the way to the four-thousand-mile line.

I just looked down and whispered. “Grace…”

“The grace God gives us is a model of the grace we should give those around us who’ve stumbled. If she’s not doing that anymore, maybe you need to find a way to see it from her perspective and find forgiveness.”

“It still won’t be okay to pose nude just for money.”

Steve seemed to both understand and disagree at the same time. “Maybe it wasn’t right. But grace isn’t something we only offer after people make choices we understand. I’m not asking you to pretend you weren’t hurt. I’m asking whether hurt is all you’re going to let yourself see.”

I shrugged. “You’re probably right. But I’m sure any chance I had with her is spoiled.”

“Maybe… Maybe not. See if you can work it out in your thinking, then decide what you want to do.”

I thanked him and went to my room. As I sat there, I guess I forgave her for the nude modeling. But I still couldn’t get past the idea enough to see any change in how I felt about our relationship.

I told myself that any man in my place would probably feel the same way about a potential wife modeling nude. I could forgive her, but that didn’t mean I could handle the choices she made.

I spent my last weeks in Venezuela trying, but when I started getting calls about potential jobs, I buried my feelings and focused on getting home and starting a career.

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