A week ago I am driving in the car with our 13 year old son when I decide to brave the sex talk. It has come to my attention that our junior higher doesn’t know much about the birds and bees. Down deep this pleases me, that we’ve done a decent job sheltering our son. Confident I can answer any question from a boy who isn’t quite sure how babies are made, I boldly say, “Ask me anything, honey. Whatever you want to know I will tell you.”

After briefly assuring him with my eyes, I look out the window at the sheep along the road. Lambs everywhere. The grass emerald green on the rolling hills of the Sutter Buttes.

“What’s a condom?” he inquires softly.

I swallow… here we go… I watch a lamb race away from his mother across a meadow with a meandering stream. How I love driving through these buttes every day with my children to get to town. “A condom stops babies from coming…” I pray as I talk. Please, Jesus help me explain this well. I give a brief lesson on the way babies arrive as we drive. My son listens hard.

“Any more questions?” I say, feeling as if we’re doing fine. Good talk so far. More lambs and sheep along the road. I’m smiling. We are his sheep, he knows us by name. We are fearfully and wonderfully made.

“What’s a flavored condom?” My son says soft as the eye of a storm. He watches the lambs too, his gaze intent on avoidance.

Did I hit the breaks? I hear screeching in my mind for a hundred miles. A flavored condom? I’ve never heard of such a thing. My son’s eyes collide with mine for a moment. We are both baffled, yet something is dawning. The knowledge of good and evil. We turn back to the lambs and they still look innocent, but now I see how they must be slaughtered. Grief sweeps over me. I search for fig leaves to cover my mental nakedness.

“Well… that’s quite a question…” I’m swallowing hard now. “Condoms are also used for STDs. Do you know what an STD is?”

“No,” he admits.

I rephrase it. “What VD is?”

I’m so missing the ABCs right now. I flash back to singing in the car with my little boy the ABC song along a distant country road. Have we driven that far away from his childhood?

“No, don’t know VD.” He’s shaking his head, his sun-blonded bangs sweeping his forehead. He looks so young. Everything in me screams that my son will not be slaughtered by sin, but it has already started. My heart aches.

I tell him about STDs. Talk it up trying to scare him. “Sex outside of marriage can kill you…” I find myself sliding into paranoid parent mode and my grief intensifies. Finally I sigh in resignation. “You’re going to have to talk to your dad about the rest of this stuff.”

We leave the buttes and roll into the valley where my son’s school is… Jesus must hike through the Kidron Valley on his way to Jerusalem. Passover on the horizon, and beyond that, the crucifixion. In the Kidron Valley lambs are being slaughtered by the thousands for the upcoming feast. Every Jewish household will need a dead lamb. The streams of the Kidron Valley run red with blood. In sandals, Jesus walks through these streams of sacrifice. Does he see his own sacrifice that will soon bleed him dead?

My son nods looking relieved. In giving up, I’m relieved too. I dwell on why this world needs a flavored condom and how many of those sweet lambs in the Sutter Buttes will be eaten come autumn.

A few days later, I find myself in Sam’s club picking up Axe deodorant for my son. All junior high boys wear Axe, I’m told. On the Axe shelf are two choices of fragrance: Dark Temptations and Phoenix. Of course I choose Phoenix. I don’t want my son covered in Dark Temptation. In the meat section my gaze drifts over the lamb chops. I pick up beef instead.

In Matthew and Luke, chapter 4 of both gospels, the temptation of Jesus is addressed. I read each one and my heart quiets. The devil is defeated. Today is Good Friday. The lamb that takes away the sin of the world has been slain.