Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: SEA CHANGE or TREE CHANGE (07/13/17)
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TITLE: Trials and Transformations | Previous Challenge Entry
By JC Hummel
07/19/17 -
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“You stay here mom. Dad and I will be right back with the French toast,” she said, and headed into the kitchen.
Stella read the card a second time. “Thank you, Lord,” she whispered.
She remembered how much happiness the news of Christa’s impending arrival had brought her after her first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. The pain of losing a baby and the fear of not having another was finally eased when she gave birth to their little girl.
Stella knew raising a teenager would be challenging, and presumed any teenage angst would be about boys or curfew, but Christa’s problems were about making friends and fitting in. Recognizing that her daughter was a quiet, introverted, creative child, Stella suggested she have some people over, but Christa only shrugged her shoulders and went to her room to draw.
Most days when Christa came home from school she headed to the den to do her homework. “How was your day, honey?” Stella aways asked. “Fine,” was the usual response, until one day she said she no longer had a seat at the lunch table and had to eat standing up. Stella was furious and wanted to meet with the principal or call the parents of the girls involved, but Christa was adamant that her mother not intervene. A few weeks later Christa found a new place to sit, but Stella still ached for what her daughter had endured.
By tenth grade Christa had become more distant. Each day Stella made a point of asking her how she was doing. One day she finally opened up and confided that her only friend, Megan, was depressed.
“Mom, I’m not sure what to do. Megan is cutting herself.”
Stella tried to stay composed. “She needs help, sweetie. Can you tell one of your teachers?”
“NO! Of course not.”
“But Megan is doing this because she’s hurting.”
“Gosh mom, I wish I hadn’t told you.”
Stella felt like she could never do or say anything right, and it hurt her deeply. She prayed, “Oh Lord, please help my child and help me be the mother she needs me to be.”
One evening when Christa was in the eleventh grade Stella noticed, again, that her daughter was picking at her food and not engaging in any family conversations. She wanted to scream at the top of her voice, ‘Please speak to me. Why don’t you talk to us anymore?’ but she stayed silent and pleaded to God. Then she heard a simple, beautiful message. ‘It’s going to be okay.’
Those words would keep Stella calm during Christa’s senior year when she told her parents she planned on attending a very expensive, progressive college. They kept her focused when her daughter's rudeness and belligerence caused arguments with her siblings, and they kept her strong when she wondered if her daughter loved her anymore. Today during her reflection Stella realized that God had kept His word, and it had been okay.
“Here you go mom,” Christa said, putting a plate of French toast in front of her. “Do you like your gifts?”
“Oh yes, thank you.”
“I know how much you love to read and thought a gift card for the bookstore would be the perfect gift for you.”
“It is,” Stella said, but her daughter had no idea that the cardboard gift holder with the words, ‘I love you, Christa, was most precious gift she had ever received.
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