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Pain lanced through my back like a spear. Not that I had ever been lanced before, but I have seen it. I saw the look of surprise and then the anguish of pain on the man’s face; it was not pleasant. I have been hit in the lower back before and that was most excruciating. It was a bar brawl. I was waiting tables and serving the drunks because by then there wasn’t a sober mind in the place. But, the pain of that elbow jab into my back must have been the cousin to what it feels like to be speared.

This pain was much worse. There were numerous spears within shouting distance, but none had found its way into my back. This pain came from the inside, and took me to the floor. I had bent over to pick up the basket, a simple everyday task. I rolled from my knees and sat down on the floor thankful I could lean on the basket instead of picking it up. I bit my lip to bear the pain that nearly cut me in half. This one lasted longer than the last and reached around my large belly. I was terrified that the pangs were becoming so intense and not nearly enough time between them to gather my breath or my courage.

I confess, I am a large woman. I love to eat and I serve a grand table, which is why so many travelers stay at my inn located close to the barracks. The soldiers often wander over when I’m taking the bread out of the oven so I have always baked more than necessary for the week. It is how I make a living while my husband serves in the King’s army. As I was saying, I am a large woman, but my large belly had little to do with being wantonly fat. My husband loves my softness and my large curves. He says that me being well-fed reflects well on his provision. He had been gone a very long time when he returned from his regular furlough; he closed the inn for a week and we got to know each other again in a most pleasing and satisfying way. That was nine months ago and I was soon going to see a tiny copy of my husband, Adonai willing that all goes well.

This would be our first child. We had tried for years to have a child. We had both prayed and sacrificed to Adonai, but the Lord had not granted our hearts desire until now. I wrote my husband, but he was on duty along the border and not able to return home. However, he assured me that he would be home within the year and because of the child, he would request a home guard position. We prayed the Lord would answer this prayer, for I sorely missed him.

“What are you doing on the floor, Dinah?” Agatha waddled into the hall, her expression cantankerous as usual. “If you expect me to help you, forget it. I can’t bend over to see my sandals, much less pick you up or carry that basket. I am so heavy and the heat is unbearable. When are you going to buy that fan I asked for last week? I am suffocating.” She grumbled and complained every time she opened her mouth. I was sorry that I had ever allowed her to live with me as well as work for me. She had been a constant sore tooth since the day she walked into the inn, except she did help with the chores. Her pregnancy did not affect her as mine did me. She did not get sick, so she had been a blessing for me as she took over the duties of innkeeper as I lay close to the waste bowl all morning long. I was so sick; I did not care if she dipped her hand into the money box. Business was good enough this time of year that I had no worry about money.

The nausea was almost unbearable, but I didn’t care. I looked past that to the joy of holding my first child. I yearned for the smell of him. I longed to put him to my breast and to watch him grow fat from my well-stocked milk, for by then I would have regained my appetite. Oh, that day would be so joyous. I would hold my little one close and would breathe in his scent. I would look at his tiny face which would look so much like my beloved husband. He would grow up into a stocky and sturdy little boy full of all good mischief. What songs we would sing and what stories I would tell him. If I had a little girl, I would love her no less. I would feel the same because it wasn’t the fact of boy or girl. It was my child of my womb a delightful gift from Adonai and for that it was glorious for not many more years and I would be beyond the age to conceive a child. So I savored the delight of my little family growing in my womb. Little did I know as I hummed about the house during the times I wasn’t sick, of the tragedy soon to raze all my peace and delight. If I had, I would have prayed harder and longer that the LORD would bring my beloved to me.

I leaned heavily on the basket to get up after the pain left me panting on the floor. Agatha just laughed at me. Soon she would be feeling this same pain and I had to fight off the desire to wish her agony.

“Dinah, here is a stick to help you up. You should consider losing some of that fat.” Agatha held a walking stick toward me just out of my reach. I grunted with the effort to grab the stick. “That’s it, stretch. Come on, now, stretch a bit more.” She giggled at my efforts and I gave up reaching for the stick. “Oh, all right! Here!” She tossed it my way and I grabbed it before it sailed over my head and into one of my cooking pots over the fire.

I had just risen to my feet, still leaning heavily on the stick, when an army captain knocked on my door. At that precise moment my world shifted and I was suddenly bereft of any foundation. He handed me a packet on top of which was scrawled a note which was brief to a knife-edged point. I had never known words to slice into my chest and remove my heart until I looked at those words.

If you have never loved someone with the depth and breadth of your soul and then lost that someone you could never understand how the world dropped out from under my feet at that moment. My mother lost her second husband to an ox goring him. She had mourned for years, often crying into the night and there were days when she did not eat a morsel. She would often breathe erratically as if her grief had taken her breath and she must suck it back or die. When I would sit by her side to comfort her, she would talk of the good times and the bad. She mentioned then the only thing she had ever felt that came close to that kind of pain was when her first husband rejected her; sending her off with a writ of divorcement.

Rejection… abandonment… loss… instill grief so deep and so finely etched into each fiber of the soul that there is no relief from any quarter. It scrapes at the insides leaving lacerations that bleed into the pit of despair which is never filled up, gaping and gulping for more.

I clutched at my womb, holding on to the only sweet and wonderful thing I had left. Another searing pain reminded me of sweetness to come. I knew that the babe was stretching to enter a cold, harsh world. It would be hours yet, before I would see the precious, tiny face screw up and hear that sweet little voice cry, to see that tiny chin quiver in shock at the cold world. It would be hours of pain. I actually welcomed the pain. It was fitting for my body to hurt like my heart was hurting.

My labor was two days and a night. I was singing David’s song about joy coming in the morning when my little man entered the world. He was tiny and he was loud. His little face was an exact of my late husband. I rejoiced. I did not have my husband anymore but I would have his last gift to me, our son. I cleaned him up and put him to my breast. He was lusty in his eating and gusty in his cries. While he ate, I contemplated the perfect name for him. We both drifted off to sleep.

Three days later, I screamed a scream of anguish and outrage. The scream was so loud and so long that the neighbors began banging on my door.

My son, my little man, the last gift from my husband was dead at my side, blue and cold. The world stood still and everything in it. No breath, no heart beat, no city sounds, everything was draped in a death pall. Anguish like no other washed through me, leaving a blackness akin to that of the Dragon’s Dungeons. The Angel of Death had visited my house and left my first born dead. What had I done? People called me wanton for being fat, but that was as much for my beloved husband or more so. My eyes closed, and I started a keening wail with my little son pressed to my breast. What was despair? It was joy and happiness beside what I was feeling. Darkness had the brightness of the noon day compared to where my heart plummeted. Oh, God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The prophet Job declared Let the day be darkness! Let not God look on it from above, nor let the light shine on it. Oh, God, let the day I was born perish and behold, let that night be barren and no joyful voice rise from it. Bile rose in my throat and I coughed it down.

I opened my eyes to gaze upon that little face that looked so much like my beloved husband and suddenly light returned to the sun. The world began again. My breath returned, my heart beat once more and the city was alive again for the babe in my arms was not my son.
“Agatha!” I screeched marching down the open hall to her room. I pushed on the door to storm into the room but something blocked the door. “Agatha! Give me back my son. You may steal my money while my back is turned but you will not steal my son.” She shrieked an ugly word but would have none with opening the door.

The next few hours I pounded and screamed. I thought I would faint from the anxiety and my throat ached with the force of my screams. Until the guards from across the street forced their way into the fracas. I was so thankful to hear a familiar voice, I called for them to sprout wings and fly up the stairs to knock down the door and rescue my son.

The door splintered and Agatha began a tirade of such utter nonsense that I would have laughed in her face if it concerned anyone else but my son. The wanton would not shut up. Her fat chins, all five of them, kept bobbing with her words and I was bereft of speech. She kept insisting that my child was hers and painted such a black tale of my murdering my own dear son that the guards could not make sense of any of it. One guard hefted my son to his shoulder and went down the stairs.

“Come back here with my son,” I screamed. “Where are you going?”

“Outside where your screeches do not bounce from the walls and ring my ears,” the guard shouted over his shoulder as he pushed through the outside door.

I scrambled after him, nimble even in my girth. Sincerely I pled my case and insanely she pled hers. I did not know this soldier so I could not rely upon his knowledge of my character. Since there was no one in the house to support the truth of my claim, I tried with all my persuasion to urge him to give me my son.

My child was whimpering and I knew that cry. I had heard it every three hours for the past four days. It was his, “I am wet and I am almost hungry,” cry. I tried to take him from the guard to make him more comfortable and to feed him, but the guard pushed my hands away saying, “It won’t hurt him to cry a bit. He may not live the week out anyway.”

Those words constricted my heart. How could I listen to those whimpers and stand it? I breathed a prayer for my son and for me, for I knew not how this tangle would unweave.

Today was the King’s Court day. On this day, any who had a case to be heard could bring it to the King and be heard. Since I had no witnesses in the house to help prove my case, I instantly decided to throw the case before our new king, Solomon. God willing, he would rule justly and fairly and I would get my treasure back. I looked up at the guard.

“Let us to the King’s Court. Today he hears cases and we shall let him discover the truth of the true and rightful mother of this babe.” I tugged at his arm and he fell into step beside me.
“Dinah, this won’t do. I refuse to let you bother the king with this trifling. It is my child not yours.” She waddled behind us, huffing her indignation at each step.

The court was bright and airy; the walls hung with silk from the East in purple hues. It looked like a dazzling cloud. I had time to think about what I would say as we waited for an audience. I determined to be the accuser for the burden of proof lay with the defendant. Agatha was deceitful and quick witted so the best tactic was to take the offensive. I was not a soldier’s wife for nothing. I could see God’s hand in this already. Elohim give me strength of wit and of tongue and guide your son, King Solomon’s judgment. The prayer was all I had time for because the herald called my name.

I rushed to the throne and knelt at Solomon’s feet. They were clean feet. Strange, that I should notice that detail in my distress. His feet were shod in sandals of thick leather and his toes were relaxed. That was a good sign, for it meant that he was ready to listen and was not unsettled about something else. I had learned much about feet when I was a washing girl before I washed my husband’s feet and he lifted my chin to gaze at my face. His was a sweet expression and I will never forget his smile. My son would have that smile and he would bestow it upon some young virgin who would give me grandchildren. My resolve was strengthened in the space of those few seconds. I rose and stood before King Solomon. His face was impassive, but his eyes were alight with anticipation and some other light that seemed more like kindness.

I took a deep breath and rushed into my speech before the King could say a word, nor even Agatha either. “Oh, my lord, I and this woman dwell in the same house. I was delivered of a child with her in the house. On the third day after I was delivered, she, too delivered a son. We were together and there was no one else in the house; it was only we two in the house. During the night as she slept, she rolled over onto her babe and it died. In the middle of the night, she got up and took my son from my side whilst I slept and laid my son onto her bosom and laid her dead son in my arms. When I awakened in the wee hours to give my son suck, I discovered the child was dead. When I considered it, I realized that was not my son that I did bear, but her child that was dead.”

“Nay!” Agatha screeched although the King was but a few feet away, “The living is my son and the dead is your son.” She would have continued except the King spoke.

“The one says, ‘This is my son that lives and your son that is dead.’ The other says: ‘Nay, but your son is dead and my son the living.’” Solomon took only a second’s pause, then said, “Bring me a sword.” The guard stepped forward with his sword drawn.

“Divide the child in two and give half to the one and half to the other.”

Darkness pierced my heart that moment. Nay, it could not be that the King would so divide my son. I would not let that happen. I dropped to my knees placing myself between the sword and my son. “Nay, my lord, in no wise slay the child! Give her the living child.”

Agatha snarled, “Divide it! Let it be neither yours nor mine.”

I pleaded with my eyes for Solomon’s pity. I did not like for the woman raising my son, but where there is breath there is hope. I would that I could gaze upon the face of my son for many years rather than burying him as my husband had been buried. I love my son with every breath of my soul and I would die rather than that sharp blade should hack him in two. I was willing to barter my life for his which was better than my life without him.

Solomon’s lips curled in a half smile and his eyes filled with satisfaction. He leaned back and said, “Give this one the living child, for she is the true mother.”

The very brightness of the sun shone in my face as I picked up my son and gazed upon the exactness of my husband’s countenance. Thank you, Adonai, thank you!

This is an excerpt from my new book, Refreshment in Refuge, published by Westbow Press, March 2011

"Voice of Inspiration" from Andy Castro

Mangled Mind-Psalms 91:15