Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Soul (07/13/06)
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TITLE: The Rest of the Story | Previous Challenge Entry
By Dawn Dale
07/19/06 -
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They're filled with pictures that span the life of my mother. She turned 80 a little over a year ago. We had created the posters for her birthday, and displayed them at a party where she was surrounded by many friends and family.
I learned a lot about my mother, as I pondered the pictures that we chose. We even had pictures of my mother as a toddler. And that was from the 1920's! Yes, very vintage photographs. And, they tell a story.
You can see how my mother grew up in a loving, yet meager, home. The youngest photograph we have of her is with her mother and father. The are enveloping her in their loving arms, her parents are both quite lean, facing much sparser times than we do now.
The background in that photograph is a cobblestone brick building. Though the photograph is from the 1920's, I would say that the building, itself, looks quite vintage. Perhaps it was a turn-of-the-century structure.
I've come up with quite a bit of information from just one photograph, haven't I? I'm quibbley reminded of an old song that I used to like, when I was a bit younger, "If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can't I paint you?".1 Do you remember that old song?
I actually think I can see it throughout my mother's life span, even as told by the story of the posters in my room. There's something deeper, something more three-dimensional. Maybe it's hidden in the eyes, maybe in the smile that is so charming, gay, and lovely. There's something deeper than a photograph, something that can't be captured, yet, you know it's still there.
It must be God-given. Something so holy that it is not able to be captured in the photograph, but, decency and honor places it there without letting me see the form. You and I recognize it, without being able to wrap it up in words.
The soul of mankind cannot be captured in words or photographs. It's lived in a life well spent and deeply loved. It's evident in a life that seeks to go higher, led by the calling to do better and to grasp all that God has in store for those that love Him.
I've left you, my reader, stuck in my mother's childhood. You see, I know the rest of the story! I know the heartaches and the triumphs that my mother faced. I'll tell you only the captions, here, and you can give this story "soul".
My mother was the youngest of nine children. At a young age, she experienced the loss of her 15 year-old sister from an acute appendicitis. When my mother was 14, she experienced the loss of her mother from heart trouble.
At the age of 21, during the winter of 1946, my mother married the greatest man living on the face of this earth, my father! They would begin a life of 51 years and four days together. Together, they also had nine children.
Yes, it was four days after my parents 51st wedding anniversary that we gathered around my father's hospital bed and he faced his last battle with leukemia, winning the right to rest his weary "soul" in the arms of the Lord. All but my youngest sister were gathered around him. My mother leaned over and whispered in his ear, "It's been a good life".
Only in mankind has God placed a soul. And, only in God can a soul find peace. Every life that comes from mankind has it, whether we know "the rest of the story". The outcome, the color, the form, we don't know. The ending , "the rest of the story", is all determined on one pivotal point in life.
Where does God fit in? Has the soul found rest and peace, or not?
Now, let me say it one more time, you also know "the rest of the story".
"If", Bread, David Gates, 1973.
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