The Assignment- Moments When the World Stood Still

To celebrate her one year blogversary, Mrs. E, a real live teacher from Midwest, U.S.A. has given an assignment- a contest. You can read all about it on her blog Easy Street.


Moments When the World Stood Still
by Heidi 2Thinks

We're walking beneath a sky full of stars in the clear, winter silence, holding mittened hands. When the steps are before me bathed in porch light, I advance one, then turn to look him in his gray-blue eyes. He reaches up and brushes a stray lock of hair from my cheek and tucks it back into my hat. Snowflakes fall- on his eyelash, on my lip. "Good-night," my words quietly ride on visible breath. "See ya later," he says through his smile.

"Until death do us part," says the minister. "Until death do us part," I repeat. "Until death do us part," says the minister. "Until death do us part, " he repeats.

At 6:30 a.m. he kisses me good-by and leaves for work. I sit in the rocker, singing to our newborn son. At 5 o'clock he rushes right home to kiss me. I am sitting in the rocker, singing to our newborn son.

The apartment is perfect! Two bedrooms instead of one! And across the street from our landlords- our friends, the kind of friends who believe in you and love you for real and forever. They invite us for pizza and we eat it outside in the cool of the summer evening, while the baby sleeps.

"Look mom, the original woodwork! And the porch - oh, isn't it great! And right across from the park!" We buy it. Our first house. I hang homemade lace curtains, a gift from the new neighbor. He builds a swingset with my dad. We play and play and play...

We sit on the sofa in our new house with pre-school boy on his lap and marvel at the baby brother. Unwrapping the soft, blue blanket, we count fingers and toes and coo at his tiny smile.

Three days after baby brother is two days short of two years old, we sit on the sofa in our new house with pre-school boy on his left knee and baby brother on his right and gaze bleary eyed into the pink bundle in my arms. The brothers lightly touch her head, covered mostly with a pink, cotton cap. They gently squeeze her booties, knitted with pink yarn and love, to see if any feet are in there. We laugh. It's a lot of pink.

Our family sits on the dock. All is still. Suddenly a steamy fog rolls towards us from across the lake. The fog hits, overtakes us, blows through us like a ghost. The waves wash the shore. And it is gone, just as it came.

We're in the car, driving home from a wonderful weekend of skiing. It is dark and very cold outside. There's lots of snow. Watching out the window, someone realizes that every beam of visible light is pointing straight up to the heavens. Car headlights, instead of beaming forward- point up. Red light from the radio tower, emits a red streak straight up to God. Billboard lights all point long beams north. We focus on as many lights as we can see at once. The lights don't usually beam straight up to the clouds this way. It's brilliant and odd. A mystery.

All five of us pile onto my dad's bass boat we borrowed for our vacation to the cottage. It's nighttime in warm summer. Not a cloud in the sky. Millions of stars are dancing. We shove off from the dock and float in the middle of the lake laying on our backs on the boat, watching the stars glimmer and shine. It's marvelous!
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I've gotten carried away! I haven't counted the words. I know it's too long, but I can't delete it now, because these are some of the best I've ever lived- these moments when the world stood still.

God's word promises that eternal life is unsurpassed- better than anything we have ever known. I can't comprehend it- though I believe him. If I am offered one last look before I go, I'll step back into one of these moments, take my Savior's hand- and leave while the world stands still.

(I'm sorry I forgot about the word limit, Mrs. E. I just got going and it turned out like this. I've never been very good at following directions or staying within the parameters. I know I will be disqualified, but that's ok. It was fun remembering. Thanks for the assignment. I enjoyed it. At least my dog didn't eat it.)