Currently in our youth group at Grace Fellowship, they are doing a series called, "Making the Bible Come Alive." Various adults have been portraying different characters in the Bible such as Ruth, Naomi, Mary Magdalene, Michael (the angel), and Peter. I volunteered to portray a character and doing so prompted an idea for me to write a series of "monologues" from the perspective of an Outsider. Below is part 1 of the Weirdo Series.
weird•o
ˈwi(ə)rdō/
Noun informal
1. a person whose behavior seems strange or eccentric.
2. an Outsider
I know you guys had been starving for rain but that you’ve been getting some good rain recently. Just imagine something with me. Imagine if it had never rained. Ever. Yeah. You don’t think people could survive like that? Well, let me tell you something, I was there. It wasn’t until I was old with grown children of my own that I had ever seen rain. Here let me tell you how it happened:
My name is…well, my name isn’t important…but you might recognize my husband’s name, Noah. When my husband was born his father said, “This one will bring us relief from the agonizing labor of our hands, caused by the ground the LORD has cursed.” Can you even imagine such a prophecy? If I had known that Lamech, that was my father-in-law, had said that about Noah, I might not have married him. That’s a lot of responsibility that I may not have wanted to be a part of. Little did I know.
One day, my husband comes to me and says that God had spoken to him. He said that God told him that He was going to destroy every creature on the earth because of their wickedness. What?! I thought that Noah was a good man and that all that praying and singing and stuff was what God wanted. I started to have a bit of a panic attack.
Well, as I was breathing into a little leather sack, Noah told me that God also commanded him to build a big ol’ boat because He was going to save our family. To which I responded, “What’s a boat?” Then Noah said that it was going to rain. To which I responded, “What’s rain?” Then Noah said that God was going to use the rain to flood the earth. To which I responded, “What’s a flood?” Noah explained that God made a covenant with him that He would save our family and a bunch of animals and plants…and only us.
Well, I knew better than to argue with God but I got a little nervous when I thought about how this was going to look to the neighbors. When I said a big ‘ol boat, I wasn’t kidding. Imagine this room times 12, and then a little more! That’s how long the boat was. Now take this room times 3, that’s how wide the boat was. And, and it was 3 stories high!!! This was not just some project boat in the backyard or basement that could be easily hidden under a tarp. No, this massive thing was out there in the open for everyone to see!! And everyone did see.
It became difficult to go to the grocery store or the fabric store because people would whisper about me as I passed. The braver ones would ask me questions which I could not answer. And people would make fun of Noah and what he was doing. Since He loved the LORD, everyone already thought he was a weirdo anyway, but then he started building a boat. I told them that he was doing what God told him to do and prepare for the big flood. To which they responded, “What’s a flood?” They called him a fool and said that he was crazy. The worst was the women who would look at me as though they felt sorry for me for having a crazy husband. People started comparing him to the man on the corner of Lexington and Vine named Henson who would randomly shout things like, “Chickens only want to rule the world” and “Shoes make good earmuffs.”
You don’t believe me? Well, I was there!
It was so hard. I believed in Noah’s God and trusted that we were doing the right thing but it became so difficult to live my day-to-day life and still do as God asked. One day Henson yelled at me, “There goes the wife of the crazy man!”
Seriously?! Well, God told us what to do and we were gonna do it!
My three boys had an easier time of it but not by much. People looked at them and said horrible things about their father. It got to a point that we all just had to stop going to town. My sons helped their father and the girls (my daughters-in-law) and I started gathering plants. Suddenly, one day animals just started showing up. They would just come up to our home as if they were looking for something. When Noah and the boys finished the boat, the animals just walked inside and started making themselves at home. We gathered up all our stuff and the plants that we gathered and got on the boat. The door was so big and heavy that God, Himself, has to close it. And He did.
Then the most amazing thing happened! Water! Water started falling from the sky!! Crazy, right? It started to rain so hard that the whole earth flooded and we on the boat were the only ones saved.
In the days leading up to the flood, people called us weirdoes. Crazy, even. But God had a plan. Being a weirdo, an outsider, is what saved our lives and thus saved all mankind. At first, I didn’t like being made fun of, or treated differently, or called a weirdo. Now, I wear the title with pride.
I’m Noah’s wife and I’m a weirdo.
Great!
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