The cardboard boxes have destroyed my hands. I have been folding and filling them for hours. I've run out of tape closing them up. I've been carefully stacking them and labeling the sides. I step back, now, and realize that postage will be monstrous. You'll have to do without.
I pull out my knife and cut into the first box. Its contents spill out on the floor, skittering across the tile, smashing against the grout and rolling, slowly, under the fridge. I tear the next box open with my hands, my ruined hands, and the contents softly plop onto the oozing remains of the first box's more delicate containers. I'm frantically slashing through boxes now, heaving the empty ones away into the living room. My heartbeat is wild and my breathing erratic. There, in the bottom of the last prison I open, I find it. The shoebox with all your letters to me. I crawl over the jumbled piles of past neatness and good memories into the kitchen. I set this most precious box on the stove and set alight the burner tik tik tik woosh.
I snatch the box.
I swear.
I bash the flames with an open palm, half fanning, half smothering, until the fire chokes. The letters are singed, but the shoebox is ruined.
I put the shoebox back on the shelf and walk back to the pile to pick up the mess I made for you.
You are the most precious gift given. Some have not seen that. It is not you. Your torn hands are like the torn hands of Jesus. He gave of His heart for us ungrateful wretches. His pain is as real and impossible to bear as yours. He knows that in the end, the Spirit and God will heal all his wounds. The scars will remain in His hands. They will be gone from yours. They will be gone from your heart.
ReplyDeleteYou are more precious than anything on this Earth. That is not just me speaking. God knows it. The boxes can wait, I will take them away from your sight or not. I will do what ever you want. I am your biggest fan and my love has no end.
ReplyDelete