Special Affinities

Hearing giggles and muffled conversation, I had to go and check things out for myself. What was going on? When I walked into the room, I spied my daughter Elizabeth carefully polishing her nieces’ tiny toenails. Excited at their fuchsia colored nails, they were sitting perfectly still while Elizabeth worked her magic. Brooke and Emma both adore their aunt, but it seems to me that there’s a special bond between Elizabeth and Emma Elizabeth. Is it because of their names? No, I don’t think so. Is it because they’re both girlie girls? No, I think it’s deeper than that, something more mystifying.


One of the topics studied by social psychologists is the mysterious attraction that exists between individuals. For reasons beyond my comprehension, there’s often an affinity between two people that not even psychology can explain. Sometimes they’re related, and sometimes they’re not. My sister-in-law Becky shares no DNA with my daughter Elizabeth, and yet the two of them seem connected in a special way. My niece Sarah Beth and I are kindred spirits. It could be our love of fashion, art, and all things a little offbeat. Then there are friends, those people who waltz into our lives and somehow connect with us in a way that the other thousands of people in our community and workplace didn’t or couldn’t.

Pondering these relationships gives me a tiny bit more insight into Mary, the mother of Christ, and her cousin Elisabeth. I’ve always been perplexed about why Mary chose to go and visit Elisabeth and spend three months with her before she even told Joseph about the baby she was carrying. I don’t even know whether she told her mother before she spoke with Elisabeth. Did she not have a friend she could confide in? The scriptures are silent on the WHY. All we know for certain is that when Elisabeth saw Mary, her son John leapt within her womb, and somehow Elisabeth knew that her young cousin was also carrying a child. Not just any child, but THE CHILD.

I’m wondering if these special affinities we have for some people exist for a reason. Perhaps we’re meant to take special care of each other, to listen without judgment, and to fill in the gap(s) that no one else can .Even the most loving of mothers can’t understand everything about their children. Sometimes their temperaments are different, and sometimes they just flat out don’t have the time.

Bathsheba's Charm

I've been thinking about Bathsheba lately. Remember her? She's the woman David spotted while she was bathing on a rooftop and decided that he had to have her for himself. He was the king, and I imagine it would be both hard and foolhardy to deny the king. As a result of their union, Bathsheba conceived a baby. This is where the plot thickens, for you see, she was married to Uriah, one of David's soldiers who was off fighting a war.

To wiggle his way out of the dilemma, David arranged for Uriah to come home, thinking that he would sleep with his wife and thus provide a legitimate reason for her pregnancy. Uriah, however, had too much integrity for that, so the king actually gave orders to send him to the front of the battle hoping Uriah would be killed. The plan worked, and David and Bathsheba were free to marry without shame. No one would be the wiser, right?

But wait, God knew of David's wicked scheme. So did the prophet Nathan. Nathan came to David with a story involving a rich man and a poor man. The rich man had many flocks and herds while the poor man had only one little lamb whom he loved and nourished. The rich man took the poor man's lamb and killed and dressed it for a traveler and spared his own large flock. In telling the story, Nathan made David see that what he had done was the exact same thing. He, the rich king, had taken Uriah's only lamb, Bathsheba. Although David clearly saw his sin and felt sorrow, God was displeased and took the life of his and Bathsheba's child.

I've read this story many times, even studied it in Sunday school classes, but it was only recently that I began to empathize with Bathsheba. Why was she on the rooftop bathing instead of the privacy of her own home? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that this wasn’t done in broad daylight. I’m thinking that it was when everyone else was sleeping and that perhaps David was having a bout of insomnia that led him outside to overlook the rooftops of the city.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this except to say that Bathsheba, in my opinion, was not as culpable as the king, and yet she too had to pay a huge price: the death of her husband and of her son. That was somewhat of a revelation to me because previously I had erroneously thought that she and David were “partners in crime.”

My other revelation is that I sense that many, many young women don’t realize the effect they have on men when they dress in provocative ways. They are often simply following the fashion trends of the day and are not deliberately seeking the attention of males. I’m not saying all skimpily dressed women are ignorant of their charms because that’d be false. In fact, many are expert in exhibiting their feminine wiles and attributes to attract male attention.

Still, aren’t there some who are like lambs? Are there some women who are unaware of the sexual interest they attract, those who are sending out signals that they aren’t aware of? Are there times when women are taken advantage of by men who misread their signals?