IN HIS HANDS | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: IN HIS HANDS | Previous Challenge Entry
By Dixie Koch
06/03/15
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IN HIS HANDS

The world isn't big enough for God not to see our broken hearts.

My mom had an anxious and sad heart.

When I was seven years old, I couldn't understood why at times my mother seemed so sad and so afraid.

I was a late bloomer, so my siblings by this time were married and had begun families of their own. My dad was gone often and busy providing for us.

We lived on a small farm in the country. Dad had the cows milked by six in the morning because he had to drive about 20 miles to the rural town of Mora, Minnesota, where he also worked as a welder. In the evening he would come home only to work in the fields, or repair something.
Mom would have supper waiting for him and it usually consisted of fried potatoes, garden vegetables and left over meat. Dad would barely have time for a good burp before heading back to the barn.

With every one else gone, mom had more reason to worry about me every day.
I had a horse named Lily, and I rode her through the woods, and over every dirt road for miles around. My mom's foot steps were often seen along those dusty roads right next to my mare's tracks. She would be searching for me. Just wanting to be sure I was okay. All the while, worry lines were etching paths across her brows.

Summer time brought night storms, and sometimes only wind. But wind or rain or a down right storm ignited a spooky spirit in my mom. She would pull me out of bed, and half drag me to the couch, where I would spend the rest of the night. She would set my shoes beside me and she would pace back and forth from window to window watching the skies just in case we might need to rush to the basement. I knew she loved me because she was trying to protect me.

Yes, and mom had lots of love in her heart. I had many summer opportunities to prove her love. I brought every hurt or abandoned critter I found to her. She splinted a leg of an injured bunny. She bottled wobbly little lambs, and soon they'd be skipping and hopping. And, she sighed whenever I would bring her the tiny hairless mice, the ones I had rescued from the hay mower.

But, there were times I wondered if mom loved herself. She seemed so loving toward all the little creatures, but aloof from herself. There were the the times I sprinted home from school, down that longer than a mile country road, to a mom who had locked herself in the bathroom. I would knock and plead with her to come out. I couldn't understand her deep sadness, and it left me with an awkward uneasiness. But God could understand, because His eyes can see way inside where the painful stuff is buried. He just needed to get her attention.

Mom talked a lot about God, and she was searching for Him. It was a good thing a Sunday school opened up the summer when I was eight years old. It was an answer to my mom's prayers. She loved music and singing, and it cheered her soul.

Both dad and mom found Jesus in that old country school church. They discovered that God sent His Son Jesus to die for the sins and hurts of the whole world. He sent love walking everywhere.

And, God's love showed up in a special way to mom one night. It was something she never forgot. His love wasn't tied up in a church, nor was He too busy helping people in another part of the world to care about her. He was in her heart, and she was in His hands.

On that night, when most of my siblings were visiting, and when the wind began to howl, and when the moon frowned at the dark angry clouds trying to block its bright face, my mom stood looking out the big east window. Suddenly she took a deep startled breath and called us to the most amazing scene!

Two big hands, both with five formed fingers, moved through the lightning and the wind, one coming from the north and the other from the south, until their fingers locked together.

Two big loving hands reached out to mom that night, touching her sad and anxious heart.

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