Baby Blue | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Baby Blue | Previous Challenge Entry
By LeslieJean Anderson
11/15/17
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I was never an atheist. Nature taught me that there had to be a Creator. As a young girl, I was often awed by natural beauty that caused my heart to swell with spiritual longing. The loveliness and complexity of animals, foliage and landscapes often took my breath away. I often wondered about the mysterious and powerful entity that had to have created it all.

But I grew up overseas, exposed to many different – and sometimes conflicting – explanations of who that Creator really was. Sadly, my father’s faith had been destroyed in WW II, so I also grew up with his anger against a God who would allow such carnage and suffering. Then I went to college during the turbulent 60’s, where I was taught Darwin’s theory of evolution, and that God was dead.

I didn’t really buy all that, because I could see that elements do not increase in complexity all by themselves. And I laughed at the hypocrisy of the God is Dead idea.

I’d say, “You folks spouting that nonsense have been saying all along that there is no God. How could he die if he never existed? Ha!”

By the time I was a young wife, I’d accepted the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule as a good guide for living. And I finally settled on the idea of God as a distant and impersonal CEO - not involved in our day-to-day choices, but still in charge of Mother Nature, and, as far as people are concerned, punishments and rewards. My new husband believed about the same way.

Then we decided to start a family, and that’s when everything changed.

When the nurse handed my new son to me, I unwrapped him and experienced again my girlhood awe of nature – only a hundred times stronger. I forgot completely about the difficult birth, and surrendered to a sense of wonder at what had been created inside of me. One moment of gazing into my infant’s bright blue eyes changed me completely. I was filled with a warm rush of hope and promise.

The work of a Creator-God was personal now.

The Giver of Life had reached inside me and produced the greatest work of art my eyes had ever beheld. By the time I had recovered from childbirth, I had begun searching for Him. Who was this Creator-God? Who could tell me more about Him? He certainly was real to me now. Soon I was attending church and teaching my son what I learned in the Bible. I was happy and satisfied.

But my then-husband had not undergone the same transformation I had. Sadly, he was not happy and satisfied. But my faith in that now-personal Creator-God enabled me to push forward alone. The One Who had reached inside me to create a magnificent work would not allow us to remain abandoned forever.

And we weren’t. A few years later, I greeted a newcomer to our church, and looked into a pair of twinkling bright blue eyes. I was so entranced that I called a friend immediately afterward.

“Carol, something significant has happened. I don’t even know his name, but he’s a Christian and I need to tell somebody that I felt a rush of hope and promise again, for the first time in many years.”

This man had experienced the same transformation that I had, but at a much younger age. Raised by a devout mother, he’d been spared the struggle over questions and issues about God. He’d always had a bone-deep faith and a sterling character. He became my husband, my rock and my comfort for almost twenty years.

I loved to look into his eyes and tell him, “If faith and loyalty and love could walk and talk, he would look just like you. Six feet tall with baby-blue eyes.” That would make him laugh.

When he retired, we bought an all-white house in Florida and had it trimmed in blue. “To match your eyes,” I told him.

He’s with God now, and I live alone, but the azure sky and a turquoise ocean continue to envelop me in contentment. I have peacock-blue rugs on my floor and Key West blue pillows on my bed. I have paintings of geese flying in an ice-blue sky and sea gulls flying towards a baby-blue and aqua horizon.

I’m surrounded by beauty in my color of hope and promise. And every day I’m reminded of the One Who created it all.

746 words This is creative non-fiction.

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