The Fallen Queen (Winner of the Write Way Award 2013) #Wattys2015 #MyWattysChoice #Featured

Chapter 16: The House of Cards

Let me know if you can read this chapter. There seems to be a problem with Wattpad and people can't see the chapters after Chapter 10.

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My childhood was like a house of cards, fragile and unstable. I feared it was going to collapse at any time. My life had a poor foundation and was built mainly by chance. I doubt this was the best way to create a solid future. I was taught that everything was based on a simple fact: God's will. God did everything for you. He made everything possible.

God wanted us to multiply. It was what he ordered Adam and Eve. It was his plan for us. But personally I did not want to be the mere mathematical result of my mother's breeding experience. I was not sure what I wanted to be, but I knew I did not want to be just that.

My parents showed me how to live my life according to God's will. Always. Whenever a decision had to be made, we asked God what we should do. We did not have to worry about anything. God would tell us what to do.

Basically, the church told us that God gave us the agency: we had the choice between what was good and evil. If you wanted to be good, then you would not think and would simply let God decide for you—and you would also spend most of your life pregnant and caring after your incessantly growing family. If you chose to be evil, it meant doing anything else.

We were taught to obey God's decision by interpreting any sign, even a toss of a coin.

I remember that summer my father tossed a coin in the air to decide whether or not we would go camping that week. Heads or tails. The divine response came shortly after and we all packed our bags and tent in the car, ready to go.

Our journey led us north. At nightfall, we stopped to set up the family tent in a campground we came across. The owner showed my mother where she could find fresh water to drink. The spring the owner showed her was blocked. When he saw the problem and thought my mother was not looking, the owner pulled a drowned rat from the pipe and threw it away.

My mother refused to fill her bottle with such water.

"Only people possessed by the devil can let human beings drink contaminated water," said my mother when she came back from the spring.

Jeremy, Audrey, and I went to bed while my parents stayed up by the campfire. During the night, my father woke us up and told us to get out of the tent. He said we were leaving that campground and going to sleep in the nearest motel. My mother had concluded the rat was a sign from the Holy Spirit. It was a sign that this campground was not a holy place; it was a place unworthy of the children of God. Moreover, there was a bar in the proximity. We could hear the sinful music they were playing.

People in the church constantly witnessed "signs" like this. Many people do feel comforted when they believe that heaven is talking to them. Many people think that to feel God's unlimited power is the only thing that pushes them forward in life.

My mother had a dream that she thought was a premonition. She dreamed she had another child, a boy. She dreamed her boy and her were together and that there were doves flying all around them and they suddenly rose to heaven together.

She immediately took a pregnancy test. It turned out to be positive. My mother was pregnant. She was now certain her son-to-be would save her and bring her joy.

She prayed for God to choose a name for her.

"Our Heavenly Father, I beg thee to show me your wisdom one more time. I beg thee to show me what name I should give my son. I thank thee in the name of thy son, Jesus Christ. Amen."

She opened the Bible to the story where Moses led the Israelites to the Promised Land. She had goose bumps. It was decided—her son would be named after Moses. Moses, her son, would bring her to heaven.