We create.
Her work is beads and costumes, music and song. Mine is pies, words and babes. Thirty-two times of 4 seasons have passed since we learned
together the ways of life after high school graduation. We created research papers, junk food and
impulsive memories then. Made out of 4
girls in a cold, old apartment in a part of the city where redemption was
scarce, doors were locked and curtains closed.
Except for the apartment in the top of the house where 4 gals studied, laughed,
messed up and prepared to serve God. We
were young, doors were sometimes left unlocked, and God service was magnified
within our thoughts but blurred with shallow pools of experience. Scarcity of furniture, food and time was
nothing compared to the scarcity of understanding of the God we would serve and
what he would require. We created
"home" by hanging curtains we found, filling cupboards with borrowed
dishes and pans, and bringing leftover chairs from the homes we grew up in. With such things we filled this temporary space. But we did not fill it well with people
because life was busy. Classes, loves,
jobs, church , papers and projects kept us in and out of sync. We were as much apart as together, hiding
secrets, sharing only what was right or safe.
We have since learned that righteousness and safety are not always the
same and neither always what they seem. From
these threads we created a bond thinly braided around our young goal and naive
vision of serving God.
Now here we sit 32
more years worn and aged . Her dark blonde hair colored to hide gray and my
clothing carefully selected to hide the extra pounds, these the only secrets we keep from one another now. Our secrets exposed at
this reunion of friends, we benefit from hind sight to see their results and
purposes revealed. We marvel at how deeply we had hurt and how fiercely personal was the
enemy's attack, and how dark the decisions we made alone while dwelling
together. We feel free to be flawed now. He has created authentic desire, see through
hearts and battered weary warriors out of
years of His sovereign grace and secure love. Our wrinkled skin and larger thighs do not embarrass or detract from our bond of
past. It is found in deeper places than
our skin. The cord has grown in strength
from fragile thread with which we began.
Our laughter now says joy, our tears of sorrow now shed in the security of His love. Our purpose is the same, but gone are ideas
of mountaintop service for we have learned the cost, the fail and the gain in
serving. And so He creates in three
friends flawed work, steady purpose and steadfast hope. We part with baggage lightened, for we have shared the depth of our sin, the
redemption that has come and from the secrets He teaches us Grace. Sweet reunion.
Hosea 2:4 Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak comfortably unto her.
15 And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of
Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her
youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.
16 And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baali.
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