Treasures

Her handwriting was on those musty old boxes.  Her flowing cursive handwriting that was just as fluid and pretty as her singing voice was.  I didn't know what was inside, but I knew I couldn't wait until after we had finished running our errands that day to open them.

I tore into the first box on a mission.  I suppose every time I've been given something that belonged to my mother, my heart hopes to find some great treasure.  Something of hers that will bring comfort to the places inside of me that forever need a mother.  I dug through pictures and frames and old cards she had saved - some from me.  And at the bottom of the box, in old, faded brown leather, was the treasure of treasures.

Her bible.  Brenda L. Hull it read.  With a symbol of a dove next to her name.

And a journal.  Her journal.

I took them out of the box along with cards and notes and pictures that were sitting at the top.  I gathered them up in my arms and tucked them under my chin like a squirrel who had just hit an acorn jackpot and was off to hoard my find somewhere.  I stood outside and rifled through things on the hood of Todd's car.  As I flipped through her journal, I was flooded with disappointment when I discovered she had only made about ten entries.

She journaled like me, I thought.  I always have good intentions for journaling.  I want to.  I need to.  I enjoy it.  But I rarely have the time.  With work and small children and a hundred other things, who has time to journal?

Todd came outside to see me pouring over my stash on the hood of his car.

"Look what I found," I said.  I held up her Bible and looked into his eyes.

And then I lost it.  Right into his arms in the middle of the driveway.  With the neighborhood boys playing in the middle of the street, and the guy across the way mowing his lawn and his wife carrying in groceries - I sobbed.  I wept because having her Bible feels like having a piece of her heart that I always wanted to have.  Todd held me and kissed my forehead and let me cry for a few moments.

Later that afternoon, I read her entries.  I memorized some of what she wrote.  I cried when I read how about her struggles with resting, with trusting God with His best, with asking for miracles.   Reading her private thoughts to God felt like getting to have a conversation with her.

That conversation, that old leather Bible - handwritten and underlined and highlighted....oh what treasures for my heart to savor.