Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Start (01/16/06)
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TITLE: Trust in starting over | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jillian Hill
01/23/06 -
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“Jenna please wait!” Sandra ran after her daughter.
“I’ll call mom!” Jenna yelled out the window.
Sandra ran back in to the house and grabbed the phone. “Jim, she’s gone!”
“What do you mean she’s gone?”
“Jenna came in and said that she loves this guy and she is going to marry him.” Sandra began sobbing.
“Honey, I’m coming home.”
For the next month Sandra jumped at every phone call and cried each night she did not hear from Jenna. Eighteen years old and she thinks she is in love. Sandra wondered where she went wrong.
One Saturday Sandra sat looking through scrapbooks. Jenna in cheerleading, Jenna playing soccer, Jenna and her friends, she was smiling in all of them. “She seemed so happy. Why would she leave home like this?”
Sandra’s husband Jim walked into the room. “Honey, you have to get out of this house for a little while.”
“What if she calls and I am not here?”
“She will call back if she wants to talk.”
“How can you be ok with this? I am going out of my mind and you are so…so…calm.”
“Honey, I am worried about her too, but I have to trust her to God.”
“Don’t start now with that God stuff. God has done nothing for me.”
“Sandra, God has done everything for you. God knows exactly how you feel right now.”
“God could have saved his son. I don’t have that power.”
“Yes, he could have, but because of his love for us he chose not to.” Sandra walked to the window trembling. Jim stood behind her “John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
“Jim, I don’t know what to do.”
“Sweetheart remember last year Jenna gave her life to the Lord. She knows who to call out to with her needs. Call out to him Sandra; I can’t do it for you.”
“Can you help me?” Jim and Sandra knelt together in Jenna’s room and prayed.
Two years later Jim again found Sandra standing at Jenna’s window. He paused in the doorway. “Sandra the last of our guests are about to leave.”
Sandra turned towards him her eyes were red from crying. “I trusted him with her and I put her in the ground today.”
“I don’t have an answer for you. You have to continue to trust him.” His voice was husky with emotion.
“I can’t promise you anything. I am not sure if I can start again. I had to start all over when she left. Now I have to start all over now that she is gone for good.”
Jim held her while she cried. “That night we got the phone call about the car wreck I nearly lost it.” he told her. “Only through God did I have the strength to keep going. If we are going to have to start again let’s start the same way we did last time.”
With the sun setting outside Jim and Sandra knelt together. ‘Lord, carry us through this,’ was their simple prayer.
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