Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Gone Fishing (02/01/07)
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TITLE: The Engagement | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lorinda Cockrell
02/03/07 -
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I knew he was going to be my husband after our first date. He embodied everything I envisioned a true man would be. He was 6ft tall, with a broad chest, arms that curved and budged in all the right places, His waist was a 32 and his legs were massive with large, long hamstrings. Not only did he posses the body of the greek hero Hercules, he also had the most radiant smile I had seen on any man I’d ever known. He also was rooted and grounded in the Lord. He could make me laugh and he was so mature, I got to know him by talking to him and he was just everything I wanted in a husband.
The day that the ring came I was so overjoyed, I couldn’t wait to tell everyone else!! We were going to be husband and wife. I sat on the front porch of our apartment complex just looking at the ring over and over again as flecks of light danced on the chocolate brown wood siding of the apartment in the sunlight. I wonder what everybody else was going to say as they saw my ring and heard of our engagement. We wanted to tell everyone in person, so we were going to wait until we saw everyone to tell them.
That night our sleep was hard and we were jolted awake by the ringing phone, the next morning at 10 a.m. There was a foreboding that something was not right. Bruce answered the phone and his face dropped, all he kept saying was “he done what, he’s what, I can’t believe It”. The message was horrible, his brother Mark had been shot and he was gone, dead.
That day went by so fast, before we knew it we were in Houston. The trip there was a blur, neither one of us has any remembrance of the drive to Houston, the normally 14 hour trip seemed to take us two hours. We got into the little blue mazda B2200 in Columbia, Missouri and then it seemed we were exiting Interstate 45 onto beltway 8 and heading to Bruce’s house in no time at all.
We buried Mark on Sunday, May 11th, Mother’s Day. As we were driving to the gravesite in Wharton, Texas, I kept visualizing Mark running beside the Family car and wanting to tell us something. I saw him as tall as a giant, in the outfit that he wore on Christmas, a white turtle neck and black baggy dress slacks. He was leaping over he trees and power lines, moving the ones that were blocking his view with his hands as he ran along.
I missed Mark already, he was the only one in Bruce’s family other than his Mom and Dad, that I had a true relationship with. Whenever, he called we always had an interesting conversation or we went to Houston, Bruce and I always hung out with Mark and Nora.
Bruce and I married on May 29th and moved to Houston, Texas on May 30th. Our trip there was so long, we ran into tornados, floods and high wind from Oklahoma to Dallas. That trip took us 21 hours and when we finally made our destination we were excited, tried and grateful to be alive.
Once we got to Houston and settled in, I noticed my Father in law was gone a lot. Whenever he came back he always had fish. You see he loved to fish, he said it calmed him, I believe it was place for him to mourn the loss of his first born son Mark. Just like Peter fished after Jesus death, although most people said it was all he knew how to do, I believe he went fishing to calm himself and to mourn peacefully over the death of Jesus Christ. Although Peter’s outcome was different than ours, Jesus was raised from the dead, Mark wasn’t. I know that on the waters God will meet you and restore you just like he did Peter.
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