“It’s here!” Carefully I opened the cardboard envelope that my step mother had mailed to me and pulled out the yellowing piece of paper. When I first looked at it, I couldn’t breathe for a few seconds. On it was a drawing I had made for my daddy when I was a child. I was simply amazed that it hadn’t been lost or torn after everything it had been through.
My stepmother had texted me a few days earlier that she had found the old drawing. A couple of years after daddy passed away. she moved back to her home state. She was unpacking when she discovered it. I know that sounds like it was no big deal, but let me tell you, it really was. To explain this, I need to back up to May 2010. That’s when we played musical houses. My dad bought a house in Jefferson City and we bought his house. Our daughter Sara wanted our old house, but she had just graduated from high school. So, we rented it until she finished college and found a job.
Guess who ended up doing most of the packing for both houses. Yep, it was Tim and myself. Naturally, we started on ours. We pulled stuff out of the closets and basement that I hadn’t seen since the 1980s. Seriously, there were cards from my sixteenth birthday party. We threw or gave away many things. You know, doing that was sort of therapeutic. Then I realized Daddy hadn’t packed hardly anything. He said he dreaded going through his stuff. Naturally, I volunteered to help. I was amazed at the amount of stuff he actually had. As we went through it, he refused to throw anything away. It was his stuff and he could do what he wanted with it. Let me tell you I don’t know how many boxes of just his things we packed. We had to get more boxes. By the way, we had a month to pack both houses. Or so we thought.
The person renting our house had to be out of their previous place a week before daddy was to move. We rushed to finish our packing and get our furniture moved to Daddy’s. So, in one house there were two households of furniture and other things. I literally had to crawl over furniture in the living room to get to the TV. We thought we could handle it for a week. We were wrong, but not in the way that you think. The man daddy bought the house from asked if he could wait for two more weeks so his daughter could finish school before they moved back to Alabama. My dad being the good guy he was, agreed. So, we had two more weeks of crawling over furniture while trying to unpack what we could of our stuff and finish his packing as well. Talk about a mess.
After Daddy finally moved into his new house, there were things he couldn’t find. That didn’t surprise me at all. A few years later, he married my stepmother. Of course, she moved her things into his new house. Then they moved to a house close to Cherokee Lake. When they moved this time, I realized he still had boxes that he hadn’t unpacked from his first move. So, the fact that my drawing stayed intact and not lost is amazing since it went through so many moves in a relatively short amount of time.
“The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” Jeremiah 31:3 (KJV)
Daddy must have kept that picture in a very safe place all these years for it be in the good shape it is in. He also took care of it while packing. That shows just how much he loved me and what the picture meant to him. You know, it’s the same with the LORD. Our Heavenly Father loves us with a love unlike any other. He always has and He always will. If you ever doubt that, read John 3:16.
When my stepmother first texted me, I thought she was talking about a drawing Sara had made for Daddy when she was little. She said that the picture had my name on it. You can’t see it in the article picture, but my full name is on the very bottom. That made me chuckle. Like he wouldn’t know who had drawn it and I had to tell him. Then I noticed I did a good job on drawing it. I don’t know how old I was, but I couldn’t draw it that well now.
Brooke Cox is an author, speaker, and storyteller. She was a 2016 Selah Awards Finalist for Debut Novel. Her children’s book: “Dinosaur Eggs,” is now available. It is based on Ephesians 6: The Armor of God. Her novel “Until the Moon Rises: A Conniving Cousin Mystery” is also available. Also, she has two books out in her storytelling series: “Saucy Southern Stories.” The Amazon links for her books may be found on her website: brookecoxstories.com. Please feel free to contact her. She would love to hear from you.