Hallowed Sister

My sister has a great ass! my reptilian brain was screaming at the top of its lungs. Let me squeeze it! my Three 6 Mafia brain began to rap.

And then my Christian brain shouted another word.

Respect.

Pastor Ralph's word reverberated through my brain. It was followed by my own mind's hermeneutical interpretation: Not just respect for her decisions. Respect for her person. For her mind. For her soul. And yes, for her body.

Shelly's lithe form moved with grace, smacking the ball over the net so hard that the girls on the other side backed away and let it drop. The ball bounced off the floor and into the back wall. The teammates on her side of the net jumped up and down, shouting, giving each other high fives. Apparently, they had just won the scrimmage game. Several of them gave Shelly hugs.

I smiled internally, knowing that Shelly would be happy but humble. As the excitement settled down and the coach finished his post-game wrap-up, they began to head to the girls' locker room. Shelly scanned the bleachers and caught my eye. I nodded and waved with one lazy finger. She gave me an electric megawatt smile and waved back.

My heart did a little flip, but I regained my composure and motioned to her that I'd meet her at the car. My hands gripped the imaginary steering wheel and moved back and forth in a crude pantomime for Shelly's benefit, before I pointed in the direction of the parking lot. She nodded her understanding, then turned and sauntered toward the locker room. I stood riveted to the spot, my eyes locked on those tight, form-fitting black shorts - and trying not to picture what was underneath them.

Jason Mraz was happily crooning "I'm Yours" on my car radio when Shelly opened the rear passenger door to throw her gym bag in the back seat. Then she climbed into the front passenger seat to join me. She was wearing baggy sweatpants and a light jacket over her uniform.

"Shoulda showered," I teased as she buckled up. "Eau de skunk does you no favors."

"Shut it, loser," she shot back. Her taut smile disclosed the humor beneath.

As I put my Ford Fusion in reverse, I made a mock point of airing out the odor. I rolled down the electric windows and vigorously waved my hands. Shelly rolled her eyes. I laughed.

"I was thinking about taking you for ice cream, but I'm not sure I want to be associated with that smell," I taunted.

"S'alright," she said, "I don't wanna smell me either. Just didn't want to get nakey in front of all the other girls. I'll shower at home."

Nakey. Shower. Lord, help me!

I pulled to a stop at the exit from the school parking lot.

"Now or never," I said. "Ice cream or not?"

"Not. I need some real food before dessert."

I turned the blinker to the left, heading for home rather than turning right toward the Baskin Robbins.

"Too bad," I teased. "Ice cream would help to fatten you up."

"Like I really need fattening up...." she said.

"Somebody's fishing for a compliment," I replied.

"I weigh 135, Steve," she answered.

"All muscle," I said. "Plus, you're 5'10". You're underweight. You could easily weigh 15 more pounds and still look good."

Shelly shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

"I... I look good?"

"Well, let's just say you look better than you smell," I joked.

"Doofus!" she laughed, then flicked my right kneecap with her thumb and forefinger.

We chatted the rest of the way home, mostly about volleyball and her classes at school. I hesitated to bring up the conversation I'd had with Pastor Steve. I figured it could wait until we could sit across a table and look each other in the eye. I knew she needed to see my body language and not just hear my words. If only a certain part of my anatomy will avoid a more intimate kind of body language....

* * * * * *

Shelly ran up the stairs when we got home. I took my time, reaching the top of the stairs just in time to see her toss her gym bag into her bedroom and dash toward the bathroom. The baggy sweatpants were not revealing enough to lure me into following too closely.

"I'll take the shower after you," I hollered after her. "Leave me some hot water!"

"It might take it all to get the stink off!" she shouted merrily. I couldn't help but smile at my sister's goofy sense of humor.

Within seconds, I heard the water running.

I went to my bedroom and tossed my keys and wallet on the desk. Flinging my jacket toward the closet, I lay back on the bed. A million thoughts were flitting through my mind, most of them related to my sister. And that, I realized, was the problem.

I'm blood-related to my sister. If she were any other girl in the world and I knew her the way I knew Shelly, I'd be doing everything I could to get her to go out with me. But if she were any other girl in the world, I almost certainly wouldn't know here the way I did. Talk about a paradox!

As I lay there thinking, I suddenly heard a voice. A female voice. Singing. It was coming from the shower. Of course, it was Shelly. And she was singing beautifully. A hymn. With the voice of an angel, she was lifting up a powerful praise anthem: "How Deep the Father's Love For Us" by Stuart Townend.

Shelly's faith was probably the thing that attracted me most to her. Sure, she was beautiful, athletic, kind and intelligent. But she was a person of genuine faith and conviction. That's what started this whole problem with the haunted house. And even that wasn't about being "holier than thou." She was worried about her unchurched friends and the mixed message that a haunted house at a church would send to them.

Shelly had become serious about her faith as a younger teenager. It was through seeing the change in her and the way she treated others - Mom, Dad, her classmates, and of course me - that I began to question my own faith. And eventually I came to a place where I owned it for myself, not just as something that somebody else wanted for me. I had a "come to Jesus" moment where I realized that it was all about God's love for me, not my own ability to perform. From that point on, I viewed God as my Father - especially after my own Dad died. And not as some authority figure with a lightning bolt ready to blast me when I messed up. But, like my Dad, somebody who loved me unconditionally for who I was, not for what I did. Someone who rooted for me and would gladly help me to become all that I could be.

But right now, I wanted to forget that God was always there. Because I wanted my sister as more than a sister, and I was pretty sure that that wasn't what God wanted for me.

Or was it? A voice somewhere deep inside me seemed to whisper.

I listened to Shelly's voice rising in perfect pitch as she finished the refrain:

"Why should I gain from His reward?

I cannot give an answer -

But this I know with all my heart

His wounds have paid my ransom."

The emotion in her voice touched me in a way that both captivated and crushed my heart. This pure girl with sincere faith, wanting to be God's vessel of love, but loved by her brother in a way that -- by all appearances in both society and the church -- could never legitimately be consummated. A true conundrum of biblical proportions.

Shelly's knock at my door a few minutes later drew me out of my reverie.

"Shower's all yours, dork," she said through the panel, giggling as she proceeded down the hallway. Moments later, I heard her bedroom door open and shut.

As I adjusted the shower head and leaned under its potent stream, I was happy to find that there was plenty of hot water left. Shelly didn't have a genuinely mean bone in her body, and I was pretty sure she'd deliberately saved me as much as she could.

After I washed my hair, I lathered up my loofah with some body wash for sensitive skin. And as I began to rub my body, I encountered some genuinely sensitive skin. Down there.

I thought about the fact that Shelly had been in here not 5 minutes before. Just as naked as I was now. Nakey.

And I thought about that snapshot in time before she served the volleyball to end the game. About her tight, black, form-fitting short shorts. And her cute little butt. And suddenly that sensitive skin was getting uncomfortably hard.

Hopefully God is looking the other way, I thought. Or at least He understands.

My hand grasped my soapy dick and began to stroke.

I'd long before resolved that masturbation - in and of itself - wasn't sinful. The Bible never condemns it. The closest it comes is an Old Testament passage where God struck down a man for "spilling his seed upon the ground." But the point there was that the guy was deliberately foregoing his duty to provide a child to his wife through a Levirate marriage. It wasn't the act of masturbation itself that was the problem.

Where things become a bit more dicey is with the thoughts that make masturbation possible, or at least bring it to its most effective conclusion. Jesus taught that "anyone who looks upon a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

So, if I'm thinking about a woman - let's say some random woman in tight, black volleyball shorts - while I stroke my dick in the shower, am I committing adultery with her in my heart?

Well, if she's unmarried - say, like my sister - can it be adultery? And if she's not aware I'm doing it, can it be "with her"?

Okay, so I'm looking for a technicality. Maybe the answer is simpler. Maybe Jesus was pointing out our weaknesses so that we didn't think we had the strength on our own to overcome them. After all, didn't his teaching about "anyone who looks upon a woman" follow right after He said, "You have heard it said not to commit adultery, but I say to you...." He basically raised the stakes to say it's not just the actions, but the thoughts, that lead to sin. And nobody is good enough to completely control their thoughts -- so everybody sins. And that's why we all need God's grace, rather than our own perfection.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. God knows my weaknesses - and when it comes to my sister, God knows -- I'm weak.

As I stroked my soapy dick, I tried to show my sister some respect -- and to somewhat control my thoughts -- by not completely undressing her in my mind. That tight little butt in those cute little shorts were enough. Shelly's smile in my mind's eye was what ultimately put me over the top. I felt my cock starting to pulse as I stroked faster. My body shuddered and I grasped the shower head with my left hand for balance. I was about to explode in a massive orgasm, and I called out to the girl in my mind as my cock began to erupt.

"Ah - ah - Shelly!" I hissed through clenched teeth, as spurt after spurt of white creamy globs painted the shower wall.

"Um.... Steve?" I heard Shelly's surprised voice from the other side of the shower door.

Busted. My mind kicked into survival mode. Rapidly exiting my orgasmic nirvana, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the "fight or flight" instinct.

"Shel? What're you doin' here?"

"I was just grabbing the hair dryer," she said. "What are you doing?"

"Taking a shower, Einstein," I retorted.

"But - why did you call me?" she asked.

I grasped for straws. "I... um... I, uh, needed to ask you a question."

"Well - what about?"

"Um...." I stumbled for anything. "What time is Mom getting home from work?"

"Steve - what's wrong with you?"

I turned the shower stream off to hear her better. I noticed a glob of cum stuck to a nearby tile as I released the knob.

"Shel, I'm confused..." I said.

"It's the first Thursday in October, right?" she asked.

"Um, yeah...."

"Well, what has Mom been doing on every first Thursday evening of the month for the last three years?"

My orgasm had momentarily robbed me of my other senses. "Oh, yeah," I replied. "Grief group at the church."

I reached for my washcloth and wiped the cum off the tile, erasing the physical evidence of my desire for my sister.

"So... we won't see her until after dinner, right? Since they share a meal? Remember?" Shelly continued.

With the shower turned off and me dripping wet, I was starting to get cold.

"Um... right..."

My eloquence was astounding, I'm sure.

"So, there's no need to call out to your baby sister from the shower..." Shelly replied.

I blushed the length of my entire body, probably emanating from my guilty dick. I decided to change the subject.

"Um, Shel... could you hand me my towel?"

"Sure, bro. But you're gonna have to slide the door open a bit."

Our shower was one of those with a sliding door and a panel at the top to keep the water in, so there was no way to toss a towel over to the other side without opening the door a crack. Thankfully, the swirly pattern on the shower door was opaque enough that Shelly couldn't see the activity I had been engaged in when she had entered the bathroom. At least, I didn't think so.

I slid the door carefully open. Well, I'm sure I thought I was being careful. Unfortunately, I lost my balance and had to grasp the handle harder, pulling it wider open as I regained my stance.

Shelly's mouth gaped open and her eyes widened as she looked down at my floppy, flaccid cock. She was bundled to the gills with a heavy terry cloth robe and her hair wrapped in a towel, but I was stark naked and totally exposed to her view.

Having just lost my load to thoughts of my sister, my dangling dick was more embarrassing for its small size than for the fact that Shelly saw me in the buff. If she was going to see it, at the very least it could have been in a state where I'd have been prouder of its length and girth. I half expected her to tease me with her twisted take on the "wee wee-wee, all the way home" line from the "This Little Piggy" toe-pulling game from when we were kids. "It's not a little toe that got pulled; it was his little wee-wee getting pulled that made him cry," she had always insisted as a juvenile joke.

There was no mirth on her face now. Instead, she was completely flustered.

"Here!" she said, throwing the towel in my general direction and fleeing the scene. I caught it before it hit the shower floor, but Shelly was already gone. I noticed that she'd left the hair dryer behind.

* * * * * *

As was our custom on the Thursday evenings when our mom was gone to her grief recovery group, Shelly and I settled in at the kitchen table to share a frozen pizza. It wasn't frozen, actually -- Shel had heated it in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for the required 18 to 20 minutes.

"Which kind did you fix?" I asked.

"Delissio thin crust -- 4 cheese," she replied quietly, without looking up from the table.

I could see immediately that she was troubled. It had only been half an hour since our awkward little shower scene. My hair was even still a little bit wet. So was Shelly's. She'd never returned for the hair dryer.

Shelly had changed from her terry cloth robe into track pants and a white tank top. While modest, the top hugged her bosom in a way that inspired adoration. For my part, I was the epitome of fashion in an old pair of jeans and a Casting Crowns t-shirt.

"Do you want to do the honors?" she asked.

I hesitated a second, thinking she wanted me to slice the pizza -- but it had already been cut. Then realization dawned. I bowed my head and closed my eyes.

"Sure," I said. She was asking me to offer thanks to God for our food.

"Father," I said, trying to visualize God and really talk to Him, "We thank you for this meal, and for the chance to share some time around the table together as brother and sister. Biological siblings, as well as brother and sister in Christ. We ask that you'd give Mom a good evening sharing with her group, knowing that she's fulfilling your word to 'mourn with those who mourn.' And we ask that you forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. We pray in Jesus' name... Amen."

Shelly kept her eyes downcast as I raised my head.

"Um, Steve," she said, a hint of a question mark raising the pitch of her voice as she spoke my name.

"Yeah, Shel?" I asked as I took my first bite of pizza.

"You, uh, mentioned 'trespasses' when you were praying," she said, again almost a question rather than a statement. Her pizza slice remained on her plate.

"Yup..." A string of cheese pulled away from my pizza and landed on my chin.

"Why'd'ja do that?"

"Well, I dunno..." I stopped chewing and hesitated. "Maybe because it's part of the Lord's prayer? Y'know, a model prayer for us to use when we pray?"

"Oh...." she said, still with a question in her voice. "I thought maybe it was because of me walking in on you in the shower."

"What?" I asked, perhaps a little more emphatically than I had intended.

"Y'know," she said, "I sorta trespassed against you when I came in the bathroom while you were still showering."

"And you think I was pointing out your need for forgiveness when I prayed?"

"Well, y'know...." She stopped again, looking up from her pizza and holding my gaze. "I probably shouldn't have come into the bathroom with you all nakey and everything...."

Nakey, indeed. With my sister in the room, catching a glimpse of my shrunken phallus. But she's thinking about it. Just not sure whether because of guilt -- or perhaps curiosity....

My heart raced, and my dick galloped ahead of it. But my brain said, "Whoa."

"Shel, that was nothing more than an accident. An unfortunate, uncomfortable, innocent situation."

"Well... maybe. Uncomfortable, yes. Unfortunate -- I don't know. I'm not big on the role of 'fortune' or coincidence. And innocent?" She paused, her cheeks flushing, and took a sip of her Diet Coke. "Maybe not so innocent...."

My poor, dear sister was struggling with guilt. She looked back down at her plate, frowning, flexing her fingers. I was determined to relieve her of her sense of responsibility.

"What are you talking about, Sis?" I asked. "I know you won't even go into the shower with the girls on the volleyball team. And I certainly didn't mean to show you my junk -- such as it was, all shriveled and all."

Her frown transformed into a mischievous grin.

"So you'd have purposely showed it to me if it wasn't all shriveled?"

I harrumphed. "That was not my proudest moment. But no, I was not trying to flash you. If I had, I'd have been more prepared and done a better job of it. Bad enough that I gave you a glimpse. Worse yet that the flagpole was well below half-mast."

Shelly giggled at that, her cheeks turning rosy. She was naughtier than I suspected.

I took another bite of my pizza, while Shelly flashed a grin at me.

"Well, Steve," she laughed, "was it at half-mast because someone had died? Perhaps 'the little death'?"

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Was she saying what I thought she was?

"I'll have you know, my dear little sister, that I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."

Shelly looked down again, then caught my gaze again and batted her eyes.

"We both aced our French classes in high school, dear brother," she said meaningfully, "and you're trying to tell me you don't know what 'la petite mort' means?"

I nearly choked on my last bite of pizza, while Shelly's remained untouched.

"Please, please -- enlighten me, little Sis," I said.

"It refers to an orgasm, dear brother," she replied saucily.

I laid my hands flat on the table. I knew the jig was up. No lying, no excuses. The Bible talks about the importance of confession. Not to a priest, but to those we've wronged, both human and divine. I looked her in the eye.

"Okay, Shel -- I'll bite. Let me start by saying that I was not pointing out your need for forgiveness when I prayed about trespasses. I would never use a prayer to communicate someone else's faults to them. But maybe I subconsciously was thinking about the shower scene and my own need for forgiveness...."