Note: It's a Two-fer Friday! Here's my second entry for today! A little look back at the past! Hope you enjoy it!!
The moment my mom and dad put down their first moving box in that tiny little house in Flomaton over 50 years ago, the next door neighbors were there with a friendly hello and a piping hot meal to greet them. Thus began a friendship that would span the next 50 years! I was born just 5 short months after my parents moved in. Our two families celebrated together often. It didn’t matter what. Everyday accomplishments, good grades, birthdays, and as we children grew there came larger celebrations: graduations, weddings and then, the births of our children! We supported one another through the bad times too. It was a friendship God made to last! This is a story that begins during one of those early birthdays, carries through the sadness of death and comes out in joy on the other side!
My mother was not well for much of my life, “Aunt Nell”, as my neighbor loved to be called, often filled in, making birthday cakes, and helping out with birthday celebrations! On my 7th birthday, Aunt Nell made a cake and in the center placed a ballerina. She was a little girl’s dream! Her porcelain skin was radiant against her golden hair. Her arms perfectly poised as she twirled on her little stand. And her lace tutu . . . oh that pale pink lace tutu! It stood out from the porcelain figurine just like a tutu should! It was the most graceful, gorgeous thing I had ever seen in my young life! As I blew out the candles and she cut the cake, Aunt Nell told me the beautiful twirling ballerina was mine to keep! I treasured her! I played with her daily and when playing with her became “childish,” I placed the lovely ballerina in a place of honor in my room. But with time, the delicate lace of her tutu tore. It came loose from the porcelain. After a while, it became so tattered that it came off entirely. So, I finally put my treasure away, but with the hope that I would someday find the perfect lace that would make her as good as new. I loved that ballerina so! From time to time, I’d come across her, packed away so carefully, and I’d search for the lace so I could restore her to her former glory, but I never found it.
That is, until one Saturday almost 40 years later!
My husband, John and I had a big Yard Sale that day. We had cleaned out the last items from my parents home who had long since passed away, and were finishing up the second yard sale with those items. Amazingly, folks had passed over the big basket of my Mom’s sewing notions all day long. I was looking though it one last time before sending it on to a local charity. There, at the bottom of the basket was a beautiful and somehow vaguely familiar looking pink lace. I didn’t know why, but something made me put the lace in my pocket for later. The next day, once again, I came across my now long “tutu-less” porcelain ballerina! And slowly the miracle began to dawn on me.
Before her last stroke, mother must have found the perfect lace for my ballerina’s tutu. She just had not been able to get it to me before she died. As we packed up the items in mom and dad’s home after their deaths, the lace simply became mixed in with all the other sewing notions mom had there. I became overwhelmed with the magnitude of finalizing mothers affairs when we found out Daddy had terminal cancer. After his death, I still had not found the lace. But God, willing to spare nothing to show His love, in means as huge as His Son dying on the cross, or as tiny as finding a way to get a yard of pale pink lace to me, found a way for that basket to sit unsold through not one but two yard sales!
Now, the pale pink lace is where it was meant to be since the day my sweet Mom bought it--safely glued onto the beautiful porcelain ballerina. I’ve put her back into a place of honor and have looked at her no less than a thousand times! I suppose I am as much a little girl today as I was the day Mom and Aunt Nell walked in with that cake on my 7th birthday, because I think that ballerina is a lovely now as she was then! Maybe I just love the happy memory! Either way, I am more in love than ever with a God who would go to such elaborate lengths to make sure I got the perfect piece of pale pink lace, even if it did take 40 years to make it into my hands! Truly, God is in the details!!
The Lord [earnestly] waits [expecting, looking and longing] to be gracious to me. Blessed are all those who [earnestly] wait for Him, who expect and look and long for Him [for His victory, His favor, His love, His peace, His joy, and His matchless, unbroken companionship]! Isaiah 30:18
I am convinced there is NOTHING in our lives that does not concern Him!!
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