In mid-November, Marc Garman sat in the waiting room of Joe Denspot’s psychiatry office, turning the pages of a magazine with obvious disinterest. He glanced around the room from time to time, feeling totally out of place. A pert little woman immaculately dressed sat across from him, and he wondered what problem had brought her to this same doctor. As he made yet another sweep of the room, a brochure in the stand on the table a few feet away caught his eye. He half stood up, leaning over to grasp one of the flyers with its title of “Post Abortion Syndrome” in bold black letters.
He sat back with the pleasant thought that he would at least be entertained during the rest of his waiting. But before he could get past a study of the cover, the doctor himself opened the door to the waiting room.
“Marc?”
Marc rose and let the doctor usher him into his office.
“Hi, Marc. Joe Denspot.” The doctor reached out his hand in greeting.
“Nice to meet you.”
“You look familiar. Have we met before?”
“Well, yes and no.” Marc smiled sheepishly. “I’m afraid I got the idea of making an appointment with you from overhearing you and a client talking over lunch.”
“Really. When was that?”
“About a month ago.”
“Mmm.” Dr. Denspot discreetly dismissed the subject, which Marc was thankful for, although it left him uncertain as to whether the doctor remembered the client and the restaurant. “And what brings you here today?”
“I guess I would qualify for post abortion counseling, although I feel like I might be on the way out of my depression.”
“Tell me about yourself,” the doctor said as he made his way to his desk and sat down, gesturing to Mark to sit down on the other side. Marc unconsciously moved the chair back further from the desk before sitting down.
“Well, I’m 29. I’m not married.”
“Never married?”
“No, but I lived with a woman for almost two years. I head up a small engineering firm that’s a division of a company called Curricott.”
Dr. Denspot raised his eyebrows as if impressed that a man so young could hold such a position.
“My parents are both deceased, and I’m healthy, as far as I know. Things were going very well for me, I thought, and I was looking forward to becoming a father until about three months ago, when my girlfriend shocked my by telling me she didn’t want the baby and didn’t want an adoption plan either. I wanted the baby and told her so. I would have employed a nanny and done whatever else was necessary, but she refused. I came to understand that she wanted to abort the baby and had some crazy notion that she could help shape history by ‘donating’ our baby for his body parts. It was a perverted, sick sense of altruism that I couldn’t believe, and I still can’t.”
“Wait a minute,” Dr. Denspot interrupted. “I think you’ll have to back up and give me more detail. Why don’t you start by telling me all that comes to mind about you and…”
“Patrice.”
“…you and Patrice and the first time you learned she was pregnant.”
Marc thought back to the vacation in Mexico. He told the psychiatrist every detail he could remember, including his separation from Patrice and of their meeting at the Blue Spruce. He tried to be honest in describing the tirade of accusations he had unleashed on Patrice that day. Finally, he told him of his concern for Patrice and that he had asked his secretary to track her to make sure she was coping in the aftermath of the abortion and separation.
When he was finished, Marc watched as Denspot slowly put down his pen and put his hands together, tapping both index fingers on his mouth for a pensive moment. “And just why did you come to me?”
“Uh… Well, I… I guess I want to resolve this crisis in my life.”
“And what is the crisis?” It was a calculated question.
“The main crisis is the death of my child.”
“Ah, yes. Before we go there, let’s talk about your relationship with Patrice. Would you like to restore it?”
“No,” Marc answered immediately. “I realize now that I loved only the part of her that I knew. The part of her I didn’t know is all I see in her now, and I have no regret about ending our relationship.”
“Well, then. Let’s deal with the death of your child.” He drew a deep breath, held it, and exhaled slowly. “I do have some answers for you. I’m certain I can help you, but on this subject, my expertise I draw from personal experience, and I rely upon an unconventional, non–secular, and definitely nonscientific treatment plan. If you’re OK with that, we’ll proceed. I don’t expect you to give me a yes or no answer. I do expect you to understand that I won’t be offended if you stop me at any time and say, ‘Adios, doc.’ And…because this is so unconventional—experimental, actually—there’s no charge.” He cleared his throat. “Are you OK with that arrangement?”
“Uhmm…Sure,” Marc answered, but there was guarded apprehension on his face.
“Now I could tell you that you’re not the first man to endure the pain of his child’s being aborted without his permission—in fact, over his objection. I can also tell you that time heals, and that’s more than a half-truth. But too often the job is never fully completed.”
The doctor cleared his throat again and went on. “I can teach you to avoid thinking about it, and I can help you get through it by careful justification that would dismiss your own culpability. If need be, I can prescribe an antidepressant to help you cope with the nasty guilt that can rise up even when you’ve trained it to stay below surface. In a nutshell, we can justify the act, or at least your position in it. But if you want real resolution, I’d like to go at it from a different angle.”
The doctor stood up. “This is an approach I can personally vouch for.” He walked around the large desk over to where Marc was sitting and leaned over him, looking him directly in the eyes. “Do you want to hear it?”
Marc felt as if he were asking the question to feel Marc’s response as much as to listen for it. If the doctor only knew how glad Marc was to be hearing this “approach!” He couldn’t help but believe he was going to hear exactly the solution the doctor had promised “Chemosh” in the booth at Covella’s.
“Yes, sir, I do,” Marc answered confidently.
“All right then.” He walked back to his swivel chair behind the desk and sat down. “When I was a young man about your age, I had my own set of rules to live by. I studied hard and played hard. I had respect for rules only if they helped me attain my own career and financial goals.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I had no respect for any kind of ‘morality,’ if you will. ‘Live and let live’ was my set of standards. I was a little shy in college, studying more than partying, because I really wanted to make it into medical school. Once there, my confidence soared, and I lived by my own rules.
“As a result, I managed to get three different women pregnant. Of course, abortion was the only option for me, and I didn’t have much trouble convincing my girlfriends. At the risk of sounding crass, I didn’t even come out too bad financially: I paid half for the first two abortions, and the last one nothing—the girl paid for it on her own.
“I didn’t really give the matter any thought until after I was married and my wife got pregnant. Then I started thinking about it. It wasn’t that I wanted to, of course. But when that baby started kicking, and I felt those movements in my wife’s belly, I began thinking about the three other children I had already sired. What would they have looked like? Which of my genes would have been passed to these older children? A strange question, you might say, but I have three living children, and none of them is interested in medicine like I was at their age. I was also a rock hound, and not one of my kids sees anything in a rock except something to step on.” He smiled wistfully and sighed.
“My wife has believed in God from the time she was a little girl. Although I fell in love with her just about the time I laid eyes on her, I never took her to bed until our wedding night. Not that I didn’t want to—she wouldn’t let me! She told me her chastity was a covenant she’d made with God, and I came after God. I thought that was a little silly and told her so, because I knew she really cared for me. But I also knew I’d lose her if I insisted on my own way. She had a strength of character that I knew was lacking in my own life.
“This nonphysical relationship was frustrating to me as a young man with his own fair share of testosterone, but I have to admit that the novelty of it—of my wife’s commitment—was intriguing to me. The bottom line was that for her, sex came with marriage—and only marriage.”
Marc was obviously listening intently, and Denspot went on. “I’m surprised, really, that my wife married me, knowing I didn’t believe in a god of any sort. But she did marry me. Afterwards, on Sundays, she’d go to church while I stayed home relaxing. I never brought up the abortions of my three children, as you can imagine. But one day she said, out of the blue, ‘Joe, what do you think about abortion?’”
“‘I don’t know,’ I remember saying.” Denspot scratched his head. “‘What should I think about it?’’’
“‘Well,’ she told me, ‘it’s wrong, of course. It’s murdering a child.’”
“I thought, ‘Oh, boy! Hide that truth serum.’” The doctor stood up and walked around his desk to plant himself once again in front of Marc’s chair. “Shortly afterwards, I started spending longer hours at work and having a drink—by myself—before going to bed, which had an effect of alienating my wife, an effect I subconsciously wanted. I certainly didn’t want to have the subject of abortion brought up again, and I was afraid closeness might precipitate that.”
“But during that time I was really missing my wife. We were still living in the same house, taking care of the same kids, and sleeping together. But even without any physical change in our relationship, there just wasn’t the intimacy we’d had before. I finally decided to tell her. I was hoping to reestablish the closeness we’d had before—but not just that. I was also banking on her being able to help me deal with the guilt that had now come to the forefront of my being and had begun to plague me at the strangest times and triggered by the most bizarre incidents.
“One time, for instance, we were at a friend’s farm looking at a new litter of pigs nestled up to the sow and sucking for all they were worth. They were cute little suckers.” The men both smiled at the pun, but Denspot’s smile vanished immediately, and his eyes squinted in troubled concentration.
“I came away from there with an image in my mind of six little babies lined up in a row, three of them squirming and three—dead. That picture stayed in the back of my mind for almost a month, before I decided to come clean with my wife.
“Well, so, I told her. She just listened, and then tears came into her eyes.”
“‘You’ve got to take care of this, Joe,’ she finally said.”
“‘What do you mean, ‘take care of it’? I remember snapping back at her. I was irritated for some reason. It had been difficult enough just telling her, and then she expects me to do something about it? I told her, ‘It’s over, Sharon! Done. There’s nothing I can do.’”
“‘Yes, there is,’ she said. ‘Three children are dead, and the guilt rests on you. You’ve got to make it right.’”
“Well, like I say, I was angry. I told her, ‘They’re dead—gone! There’s nothing I can do. You think I can bring them back?’”
The doctor half seated himself on the edge of his desk and leaned forward as if he were about to divulge a secret only for Marc’s ears. “It was then, Marc, that I learned firsthand how to resolve guilt, when it seems impossible to make it right again. My wife shared with me at that moment that we can make our own laws and change our own laws. But sooner or later in the process, we end up breaking one of God’s laws.”
“The Ten Commandments?”
The doctor nodded. “Simply put, yes, the Ten Commandments. And when we break one of God’s laws, there’s trouble. Now if we’re lucky enough—although I don’t put much stock in luck anymore—we will feel remorse. We’ll feel guilty. We’ll feel bad. We’ll be depressed. Because all those feelings help us recognize a void in our lives. It’s the need we have—as created beings—for our Creator, to bond with Him, and to have nothing separating us from Him.”
Marc shifted in his seat. Certainly he was surprised to hear the psychiatrist say such unconventional—indeed unprofessional things. But there was something in Joe Denspot’s sincere manner that almost held him spellbound.
“I didn’t learn this in medical school,” the doctor went on, smiling. “I learned many facts. But I never learned truth. The truth is that we were created to be dependent upon our Creator. In our society today, we learn a lot about His creation, even though we don’t call it that. But if we don’t learn about the Creator, we have totally missed the boat.” Joe Denspot stood up and took a step closer to Marc. “There is meaning to life. We’re not created solely to be born, to live, maybe have children, and then die. We are created to relate to an eternal Creator—not just for forty, sixty, eighty years, but eternally. That relationship is there for the asking, but it doesn’t start until we recognize the need we have for that relationship. And until we recognize that need and do something about it, each of us—universally—lives with a void that no matter how much it is squelched, yearns to be filled. Which, I suppose, is part and parcel of the Creator’s plan.”
The doctor looked intently at his client. “That’s when we make a choice to base our lives on faith in God or on faith in humanity. Faith in humanity says we’ll make our own laws, and they’ll be just and fair, and practical and…” the doctor paused for emphasis and then said flatly, “…relative. Everything will be relative. As our needs change, our laws change. Ultimately we want to live and let live, and we don’t want anybody interfering with or judging us for the choices we make. And people won’t interfere as long as they’re in agreement. As a case in point, just a few years before my first child was aborted, it would have been against the law to kill that child. The vast majority of people endorsed that law, because the vast majority believed it was wrong to kill a child in utero.
“But by the time I needed a quick fix for the pregnancies I’d caused, the men serving on the Supreme Court had told the people it was OK to kill an unborn child. Secular people welcomed that ruling, and it didn’t take long for most of society to get used to it. But to this day, there are still people who adamantly consider it wrong. Why? Why?” He looked piercingly at Marc almost as if he were demanding an answer, but after a brief silence, he continued. “It’s not against the law. Society says it’s OK. Why do they believe it’s wrong? The answer is that they do not subscribe to man’s relative laws and they do not place their trust in humanity. They believe the absolute laws stated in ancient scripture are immutable and remain viable, rain or shine, regardless of whatever rulers sit in the driver’s seat of humanity.
“But what’s interesting—in fact, absolutely intriguing for me—is that this is unique to a relatively few church members. A growing number don’t subscribe to the absolute laws of the Bible or the Torah. They might read the Bible, or have heard what it teaches, but when the rubber meets the road and there is a conflict between scripture and the changing moral attitudes of society, the conclusions of their contemporaries take preeminence.”
He stopped, as if in deep thought, for a very long moment, until finally Marc offered, “I guess I can somewhat relate to that. I grew up as a kid thinking a man and a woman were supposed to be married before they started living together, but it was easy enough to throw off that idea and do my own thing.”
“Ah, yes” Joe Denspot replied, “and you hit the central nerve when you said it was easy enough to throw off that idea and do your own thing—living together without being married. You see, you were calling the shots. And the ‘void’ that is universal to people is not the need to follow religious or social traditions—right or wrong. Rather, it is the need we have for our Creator—not ourselves—to call the shots in our lives. His rules are different from ours—as different as our flesh is from our mind. But I’m not talking about either flesh or mind right now. The Creator calls the shots through an entirely different realm—the spirit realm.” The doctor slowed his speech now, emphasizing each word. “And it is not the human spirit projecting itself outside ourselves, because any projection of our own human spirit will only mirror what the flesh demands—our own self-centeredness. No, it’s the Holy Spirit—the counselor and comforter whom Jesus Christ promised He would send, and we get to know that true and Holy Spirit of God through the Word of God. And what is the Word of God? It’s that five letter word—the archenemy of humanism.”
“The Bible?”
Denspot looked at his young patient, smiling and nodding. “Very good. Yes. Precisely.” The psychiatrist, now half-seated on the side of his desk, was silent for a moment before asking, “Are you still with me?”
“I hear what you’re saying, but I’m not sure how to process it,” Marc replied, adding, a bit sheepishly “—or even if I want to try, if you want to know the truth.”
The older man nodded. “I appreciate your candor. Well, just try to hang on for another moment. I’m almost finished.” He smiled reassuringly. “So now we have three realms to consider—flesh, mind, and the supernatural Holy Spirit of God. And here’s my point. If we allow the Holy Spirit to call the shots, He can bring resolution to any problem we face. If He hasn’t called the shots in the past, we do have a bit of a problem, because the way we’ve called the shots indubitably flies in the face of God’s absolute law. The fact is, the Holy Spirit doesn’t seem to put much stock in our relative laws, Marc. More often than not, He totally disagrees with them.
“It would be nice if we never felt any guilt,” he continued, “but there actually is an upside to guilt. You see, it’s the feeling of guilt that draws some people—like yourself—to look for a resolution. Some of the people looking for a resolution come face to face with that void—that need for God I’ve talked about. Not all of them will pursue an answer to the void, but of those that do, some come face to face with the Creator.” Denspot smiled. “For those few, after all the sifting, a resolution is guaranteed.”
Denspot paused, nodding, and then continued, again punctuating each word. “God wants our guilt to be erased, Marc. But, it will never happen without His first filling the void—by our own desire to have Him sit on the throne of our lives.”
“I think you’re as much a preacher as a psychiatrist,” Marc interjected.
“A sincere psychiatrist and a sincere preacher are both counselors. I’ve discovered the tools a preacher has, and I’ve found them to be quite effective.”
Marc stood up with a bit of hesitance. “Well, I don’t want to take any more of your time. I know you have another client.” His mind was on the prim little lady no doubt still sitting in the waiting room.
The doctor smiled. “You mean the lady in the waiting room? No. She works in this building and was waiting for a ride home with my secretary.”
“Oh. Well, I really should get going anyway,” Marc persisted. As interesting as the doctor’s spiel had been, he felt uncomfortable with the direction it was taking. “I’m supposed to meet a friend at six o’clock,” he lied. “What do I owe you?”
Denspot smiled. “No charge, remember?” Marc was struck with the sincerity that seemed to emanate from the doctor’s eyes even more than from his mouth.
“Well, hey…” Marc protested.
“Good night.” Denspot’s smile stayed on his face as he moved to open the door. He emanated the utmost confidence, and Marc deferred to him, solely because there was a presence about the older man that made any protest inconceivable.
“Well…thank you, sir.”
“Take care.”
“Yes. I will.”