Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Work (07/27/06)
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TITLE: The Work of One Extraordinary Man | Previous Challenge Entry
By Stephanie Urich
07/27/06 -
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You see, my mother was growing tired of her newest man. “This relationship is too much work,” I heard her nag as they argued this morning before breakfast. Why she chose this particular morning to break it off, I also do not know. We were supposed to be going to church, as a whole family.
I could just picture the scene unfolding in our little kitchen, not because I was watching, but because we’ve been here before. Man after man, boyfriend after boyfriend…even husband after husband. I was certain that relationships weren’t supposed to be easy, but then again I was desperate that my own would not be so hard.
The truth is, my mother used these men to fill a void in her that I’m afraid was impossible to fill. I knew this even in my innocent young age.
I suspected that at some point she had been damaged beyond repair, but that morning I did not care anymore.
I walked out the front door, my stomach rumbling of hunger but knowing I would rather starve than witness the tragic display of emotion in the kitchen. I strode to my hiding place, under a bridge in the park a few blocks from our house. It was the most perfect place I’d ever found, in all of the places we’d lived, as though someone had made it just for me.
A smooth stone jutted out slightly over the sorry excuse for a stream. It was just large enough for me sit on, a place where I could lean back and just relax.
Cry, if I wanted to.
Where no one could tell me it was wrong, that in light of the world I had nothing to cry about.
Today, that is what I did. I sobbed in anger at the things I’d seen and heard in my young life. I cried out in fear over things that would happen next. I wept in sadness for the shadow of a woman I had seen my mother become in these recent years.
It was then that I heard wailing more desperate than my own, the terrible sound moving closer to where I sat, unknowing of my presence. I heard the shuffle of feet stop directly above my head, could just barely make out through the cracks the shoes of my mother. My mother!
I listened to her mumble words that I could hardly distinguish, but whimpers that I understood easily enough. My mother was broken. And because of that, I was broken. We needed so much to be saved from this hopelessness.
When I had emptied myself completely, I felt the bitterness leave my body. Lying down, spent from the truth held in my raw emotion, I was filled with something I could only describe as...peace. Where my breathing was steady, my stomach did not feel queasy for the first time in months, and my mind was just…blank.
Blissfully blank.
I didn’t make the connection until much later, but my mother must have felt it too, for she didn’t make a noise from that point forward.
I heard a voice so clearly…He could have been sitting right next to me (though I checked several times—He wasn’t). I just heard love, constant whispers of love and burning desire.
I felt arms wrapping themselves around me, and warmth inside that I could see spreading light from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. And all this time my head was filled with thoughts of certainty that I was going to be rescued, because I was worth it.
We did go to church that morning.
That long walk up the aisle, my mother and I hand in hand, changed our lives forever. My mother was looking for the extraordinary work in one man, one man to complete her. What we found that morning instead was the work of one extraordinary man, and now our lives will never be the same.
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You'll be moving up soon I think!
Good job.
God Bless.
Stay encouraged and God Bless