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Topic: Hotel/Motel (09/12/05)
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TITLE: Hotel on the Beach | Previous Challenge Entry
By Diane Daugherty
09/16/05 -
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“Sure, I’ll just be a minute. I have to go back to the room to make some sandwiches and grab the snack bags. Honey, you’ve got the kids, right?” Then, off I run, taking the task upon myself as if the starting gun shot has just fired, and I am up against a field of other runners to reach a finished line that no one can see.
I don’t know why I do this to myself. Why is it that I cannot relax and enjoy the things that God provides? Instead, it is always this incessant ticking sound… time is passing, and the race is on.
I quickly threw the sandwiches together, knowing they would be gone in seconds
anyway. I grabbed the bags of snacks and rushed back out the door. I crossed the glaring wood of the boardwalk, and lunged out into the hot sand, walking as quickly as I could to get back to my hungry family. I found our chairs. I dropped the bag of food on our beach towels, as I searched around for the location of the kids. I located my husband, and then one by one I checked for the kids… except, where was the youngest? I went to my husband, and asked him. “Where is Nathan?” Dread had begun to fill my heart as he replied, “I thought he went with you?”
”No! I told you I was leaving them with you.” He replied, “I thought he went with you anyway”. Utter panic began to sink into my body, as I frantically began to look this way and that. Nathan was gone. Immediately, my mind began to fill with the most dreadful circumstances possible. Did he drown? Did someone take him? What should I do? Oh, God! How could you let this happen?
I rushed to the lifeguard, and my words rushed out. “My son, he’s missing!” He began to signal down the line of lifeguards. Then, he asked me for a description of my son. I told him he was five, blonde with blue eyes…. My mind continued… lovely blue eyes that a person could get lost inside, blonde hair that turns almost white in the summer sun and a smile that can stop any person in their tracks… my precious boy!
My husband started off down the beach searching in one direction. Our other two kids went a different direction. I retraced my steps to see if he had tried to follow me back to the room. Our family split in different directions in search of a vital part of our life, all of us had forgotten our hunger in the depth of our anxiety. I had forgotten my dissatisfaction in life’s chores. Oh, God! Oh, my precious son! I came back from the room. I stopped and alerted the hotel desk clerk that I was looking for my son, who was missing. I only paused a minute because I had to get back to the sand and the search. As I rushed back to the spot we had carefully selected that morning, my mind raced through many promises. God, if you give my boy back to me today, I promise to enjoy every minute I get to spend with him, but please, bring him back to me!
I find my husband in the sea of people out enjoying the sun for the day. He shouts to me, “They found him! He’s over here!”
Joy floods into my whole body, as I begin to violently shake from the relief. I rush towards them. I embrace them so tight, that I risk squeezing the very life out of them.
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