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…”for the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn His face from you if you return to Him.” 2Chronicles 30:9b NKJV
THE ROAD BACK
Two young sisters joined the dozen or so other children gathered in the tiny living room of our trailer, where we met for Sunday School each week. As the trailer park housed a transient group of people, I wasn’t sure who would be there from one week to the next for our Bible story.
The sisters listened intently. When I finished reading, the older girl, Amy *(names have been changed) said softly, “We go to the Catholic church, and this is sorta Protestant, but Mom said we can come ’cause the good stuff is sorta all the same.”
I hugged her. “You’re right. The Good is the same.”
She became my favorite. Amy never missed a Sunday. She memorized more verses than anyone else.
The Bracelet
At the end of the year, I found a tiny bracelet at the dime store that had the Ten Commandments printed on its ten small discs. We made a big deal of it’s presentation and it went to Amy.
The First Shock
It came as a double shock, when Amy’s mother died unexpectedly, a year after Amy’s father’s death. We learned that the two young sisters were split up and sent off to older married siblings out of state. Yet another married sister, Sue, had become a close friend of mine and she kept me up to date over the years on Amy’s well-being.
I heard that Amy didn’t do well in junior high and then of problems in high school. I heard when tales of wild friends and lifestyle filtered back to Sue, who was heartbroken.
Time passed.
Bad to Worse
Rumors of Amy kept going from bad to worse. Finally, word came that Amy had become a prostitute.
Then came Sue’s frantic phone call to me. Amy had been out drinking with three men. There had been a fiery wreck. Amy was trapped in the back seat, trapped in the flames. There were life-threatening injuries.
In A Coma
She remained in a coma for three weeks before regaining consciousness.
Sue kept calling me, updating me in the months that followed. She told me of the rehab program, of physical therapy, and skin grafts.
Finally, released from the rehab center, Sue brought Amy home with her. For the first time in years, Amy was coming back to our area.
Amy Comes Home
Once again, the phone rang and it was Sue. “Amy wants to see you…” Her voice broke.
I hadn’t seen Amy in years. Nothing could have prepared me for the shock of seeing her now. The brain injury had damaged her speech so badly, her once beautiful voice was now low, gasping, garbled. Her face was scarred. She dragged her leg in a slow, halting process to navigate her way into my arms. She looked around the room.
“Sunday School here,” she managed.
It was hard to respond back….”You were my best student.” I tried to sound better than I felt.
“Matthew. Heidi. The Adams, “she whispered slowly, one at a time, the remembered people from our little Sunday School class and trailer park.
One by one, I told her where the other kids had gone.
Work. College. Marriage.
I told her where families had moved, over the years.
She smiled through it all, gazing off somewhere I couldn’t follow.
Finally, she brought her eyes to meet mine. “Still have it!”
“What?” I tried to follow her train of thought.
“Still have what, Amy?” I thought her mind had wandered.
“Bracelet. I won. Still have.”
“Oh, Amy, do you?” I somehow managed.
Then my voice broke…and I too spoke in fragments….” after all this time”…” the Ten Commandments….”
She looked as though this was the purpose of her whole trip to me, to make me understand something that she needed to say.
“Broke most.” Her eyes were tortured. “But STILL HAVE. Now, I ok.”
Back to Jesus
Yes, you’ll be fine now, Amy, I thought. You made the way back from breaking Commandments to embracing them with your soul…from wearing them on your arm, to holding them in your heart.
Finally, her words, “But STILL HAVE” held her promise, her hope. Perhaps, she would come to fully understand she still had HIM, the Author of those Commandments.
She hadn’t just come back to her old Sunday School classroom that day.
She had come back….. to Him.