All Alone | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: All Alone | Previous Challenge Entry
By JK Stenger
05/08/14
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Mary had not expected this. The message on the post-it note hit her like an express train.

"I moved in with Amanda. Sorry."

Struggling to comprehend what it said she read it again, but tears stung her eyes, blurring her vision. Gone… Jake is gone…? Why had she not seen it coming? Just like that it is over. He is gone.

A tear fell on the note Mary was holding, smudging the ink on the paper. Did the room always move like that? She had never noticed it before. Better sit down. Now her tears flowed freely and her shoulders shuddered.

How could he run off like that? And then with Amanda? She crumpled the note and threw it on the floor. Amanda? ‘Ha, it won't take too long before she'll dump him.’ That would be justice…
But what good would that do? It wouldn’t solve anything, and she knew it. In a daze she stumbled to the kitchen. After all Justin would be coming home and he needed lunch.
Where was the bread again? She couldn’t even find the peanutbutter.
So this is what darkness looked like! Deep and scary. Black and menacing. And she had to cross it all alone.
A picture of Grandmother appeared in her mind. Where did that come from?
She hadn’t thought of Grandmother in years. What was it that Grandmother used to say? “There is no darkness so deep that God’s love cannot break through it…”
What a strange thought. She didn’t believe in God. God didn’t care. Today proved that again sufficiently.

She forced her attention back to Justin’s lunch. Maybe it was just a bad dream and she would wake up in her warm bed next to Jake’s secure body.

The door opened and a little curly-headed boy stepped into the room. She forced a smile and tried to hide her tears.

"Hi honey…How was the art class?"

"Mommy…Mommy…Mrs. Jennifer liked my drawing! Look Mommy…This is you, this is Daddy and this is me…" He pointed to some unrecognizable stick figures with huge smiles on a smudgy paper and plopped himself next to Mommy on the couch.

"And now I am hungry!" He looked expectantly at Mommy while rubbing his tummy.

The food!! O God…I’ve got to get myself together. What do I tell Justin? How can I make him understand? She fought back a new wave of tears.

"I’ve got a sandwich for you, sweetheart!"

Her hand shook when she handed Justin the plate. Oh, she wanted to yell and scream. But she had to stay calm. She had to hold on. Hold on?
To what?

No, her life would never be the same. She opened the fridge and grabbed the milk carton, but it slipped out of her hands and spilled all over the floor. She couldn't care less. Justin stood wide-eyed and faced his Mommy.

“Aren’t you going to clean that up, Mommy?”

But she didn’t seem to hear him, as a new wave of tears threatened to overwhelm her. She was a little bird with a broken wing and of one thing she was certain: she would never fly again.

And there was Grandmother’s face again: “There is no darkness so deep that God’s love cannot break through it…”

********

We live in a broken world, a world in shambles and confusion. A world in which Jesus shed His own tears. After all, the shortest verse in the Bible couldn’t be more revealing: "Jesus wept" *

Jesus wept? The King of the universe wept? Yes He did, because that's how He is. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. *
He saw the multitudes, and was moved with compassion, because the people fainted and were scattered as sheep having no shepherd. *

He wept then, and He still weeps today.
For all those Mary’s with Justins. And for Daddies without Mommies and even for all the Jake’s who don’t understand. And for so much more.

But He doesn’t shed His tears without reason. For each tear He sheds will grow into a flower that will change this desert-world into God’s most beautiful garden.

For Grandmother was right: “There is no darkness so deep that God’s love cannot break through it…”

* John 11:35
* Isaiah 53:3
* Matthew 9:36

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