Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: TRUST (07/21/16)
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TITLE: Borrowed Treasure | Previous Challenge Entry
By Cindy Duncan
07/28/16 -
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I had always wanted one. But not just any one. I wanted one with dark hair and blue eyes. But after three sons, all of whom I love dearly, I was not holding out much hope for a daughter. The eye color was especially unlikely, considering my husband’s eyes were brown, mine hazel, and our boys a mixture of the two. But you specialize in unlikely.
I had picked out the frilliest newborn dress I could find for her to wear home from the hospital. When I lifted her perfectly shaped head, covered with dark brown hair, and pulled the dress over it, she looked right at me. My heart tightened with love and responsibility for this precious gift. She really still belonged to you, yet you trusted me with her.
You knew there would be times I would fail; yet you made me her caretaker. You could have stepped in at any time, and there were assuredly times that you did, but there were also times that you just trusted in my love for her.
There was the time I took my eyes off her for a second, only to find her standing in a bed of ants. She screamed as the fiery red creatures climbed her soft, chubby legs, feasting on her flesh along the way. Minutes later, as her face began to swell, we realized she was having an allergic reaction, and we headed to the hospital. Why hadn’t I checked the yard for ant beds?
Her second trip to the hospital came when her older brother accidently hit her in the eye with a stick. She immediately closed her eyes, covered them with her hands, and repeated in her still limited language, “My eye, my eye,” the entire ride to the hospital. I could only think of her beautiful blue eyes being blinded, and how it was my fault. Who lets their kids play with sticks anyway? Maybe you intervened that day, because it was only a scratch.
Did I teach her the right thing the day she was acting like the three-year old that she was, when I sarcastically called her an angel? She clenched her little fists in front of her and screamed with enraged anger, “I’m not an angel!”
When she was five, she climbed up on my lap and asked me to read a children’s gospel tract she had gotten at church to her. I turned the television off and read the tract to her, because you trusted me with the most important responsibility of all-to introduce her to you. After explaining to her the meaning of sin, I asked her if she understood.
“I hid Daddy’s keys under my bed.”
I suddenly remembered the day several weeks before, when he was running late for work because he couldn’t find his keys. He had ended up using his spare key, and I later found the others under her bed, briefly wondering how they had gotten there. Now I knew.
“Honey, you knew we were looking for his keys. I think we even asked if you had seen them, and you said that you hadn’t.”
“I hid them because I didn’t want him to go to work, and then I lied about it.” She looked at me with her sky blue eyes sparkling with unshed tears. “I sinned, Mommy.”
We sat on the sofa and cried together as I listened to the sweet voice of my youngest child, praying to you. She trusted in you to forgive her, and to save her. And you did.
The years flew by, full of baby dolls and ballet slippers, piano recitals and pretty dresses, and then I turned around and she turned twenty-one. She has become a sweet, loving and faithful, yet strong and fiercely independent young woman. She is everything I could have ever asked for in a daughter, and I would have never trusted anyone else to raise her, yet you trusted me.
I don’t understand why, but I’m thankful that you had confidence in me. She will be moving into her own home soon, and when the temptation to worry about her comes creeping into my thoughts, I remember this. You trusted me, an imperfect person, to watch over her; the least I can do is to trust you, a holy God, to do the same.
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