Of Boats and Bags...and the Search for Faithfulness

I was aggravated.  The old boat sitting in my garage wasn't cooperating.  I was trying to rewire it and replace the switches that controlled the lights and pumps.  It was chilly too and the lighting wasn't the greatest.  The scrapes and traces of blood on my knuckles proved the extent of earlier struggles with the wire stripper and crimping tool. 

Then she came in.

My daughter, Mary, walked through the darkness of the front yard and driveway and up into the cramped space where I worked.  She hopped up onto the step of the trailer and hurled herself onto the back seat of the boat.  She carried a spiral notebook with colorful stripes on the cover which I quickly noticed was the journal she kept. 

"What are you doing, Daddy?" she asked.

 "Just making a mess," I said.  I never really looked up and now in retrospect I'm sure my response communicated little interest in furthering the conversation.  I didn't even ask her what she was doing.

She moved the process along.  "Guess what I'm doing?" she now asked. 

"What?" was my curt response.

 "Writing poetry," she said.

 "Oh, that's nice," I replied, still fuming at my mechanical failures with the wires.  I wanted to just finish up and get to a point where I could go inside.  "Shouldn't you be getting ready for bed?" I inquired, still keeping my head low and avoiding eye contact.

"Well, I wanted to come out and show you the poem I wrote.  It's about you," she pronounced.

Suddenly, she had my attention.  I immediately sensed the need to drop down on my knees and beg forgiveness from God above. 

"Can I read it to you?" she asked.  I carefully put down the twisted puzzle of wires and connectors in my hands and looked at her intently.  There in the quiet of our old, musty garage she bashfully read her piece.  She spoke the words quickly as if to hasten the end of a peculiar anxiety she felt about the vulnerability she was exposing to her father. It was sweet.

 "Read it again," I said.

"Oh, it's not that good."  

"Please, Mary," I begged.  Feigning reluctance, she read it again, only this time slower with subdued nervousness from having completed one performance.

When she finished she offered an odd proposition.  "You want to throw the football in here?" she asked.

"Sure," I said knowing what she really wanted was to feel a connection doing something she knew I liked.  She wanted attention. She wanted nothing more grand than time itself. She wanted to feel my faithfulness to her and know it was true.  We stood there for a few minutes in the crowded garage with little space for us to stand passing the small, rubber football between ourselves.

As we continued my thoughts wandered back to another little girl, younger than my own eleven year old.  I thought of a foster daughter unexpectedly placed in our home nearly a year earlier. I remembered her showing up at our door with nothing more than the clothes on her back and one solitary bag of things. 

That single bag is usually how they appear.  Her stuff was in a simple white trash bag adding further insult.  The sum of her four year old life lay there in that solitary heap.  I've always hated the notion of  that one bag being the lone tether connecting a child to the broken past of innocence lost.  I wanted to burn everything in it and start over. 

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I thought about her though. I wondered what she was doing at the very moment in time we were passing a football back and forth.  I wondered what was happening in the home she came from where she now lived reunited with her real dad. 

I wondered if she was crying or hurting.  I wondered what was going on in her head...and in her heart.  I wondered about her future and if she shared the same prospects as my own daughter. 

I knew a few things they both shared, however. Both looked for attention.  Both searched for time and connections with those they loved. 

Mostly, both searched for faithfulness from the men they knew should love them  most.

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And standing there in the dimly lit garage of a late evening in March, I fought back tears wondering if either one had found it...





Psalms 116:6 NIRV

The LORD takes care of those who are as helpless as children. When I was in great need, he saved me.

 

Psalms 127:3 NIRV

Children are a gift from the Lord. They are a reward from him.

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For more about faithfulness go to:  http://www.bridgetchumbley.com/2010/03/faithfulness-blog-carnival/