i met a woman at church in eastlake who told me that she was lost in a desert, a forty year desert. as a young woman, she was vivacious, blonde, always in trouble. she went to university in boston, where several men proposed to her and she refused them all. one of the best pranks she ever pulled, she said, was stealing the lofty stone busts of great theologians and historical figures that lined the entrance of her school and arranging them so that it looked like they were having a lively conversation. she even put wigs on several of them.
after years of refusing men and running wild in boston, she said she made a deal with god that she would accept the next christian man to propose to her. within a month, a dashing stranger from london had asked her to marry him and she consented.
they lived between london and the states, switching back and forth every few years with their five children. she said that her husband was brilliant and stingy and that for the majority of their married life she raised her five kids in a two-room flat without heat, an oven, or a bath. she called it a loveless marriage, proudly showing me a picture of her handsome husband that she carried in her wallet. he had been dead for several years, and her house was full of his oil paintings, perched on every wall.
i met her sitting in a pew at church, and she told me that her heart was dead and barren. she said that she had not felt the lord's presence or the blooming of anything in forty years, but she kept coming to church every sunday in the hopes that her desert would blossom one day.
PSALM 107: 35-38 "he turned the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs; there he brought the hungry to live and founded a city where they could settle. they sowed fields and planted vineyards that yielded a fruitful harvest... and the LORD blessed them."
No comments:
Post a Comment