Cindy

I'm sitting here in my big green chair where God holds me close, watching my fake fire glow in my electric heater and unable to get myself to stop crying.  Today hit me hard in the heart.  I sat close up to a woman tonight I'd never met and she let me into her world, whether I'd proved myself to her or not, whether I deserved to be trusted or not.  She didn't know me.  Didn't have time to.  And she'd right near been scraped clean of anything to hang onto in this world.   But she laid herself bare open because I told her I wanted to know.  It's not like I could do anything to change it.

"You and I.  We both started out as little girls.  How did this happen?  Where did this turn course for you?"

"I was 16 years old.  My dad abused me and I had his baby.  My mom took it from me."  She said it with no trace of sadness or shame.  She said it right out loud.  Like reading the news.  And she shrugged.  Oh well.  Those things happen.  "My man.  We've been together 13 years.  I did whatever he wanted to make him happy.  And now he's gone.  I feel....(she searches for the word)....abandoned.  This is hard.  Being on my own?  This is harder than I thought it'd be."  Her look is blank, her eyes go off in the distance somewhere.  "I miss my dog"  And there it was.  There were the tears.  That, she could risk crying for.  That was the one thing that hadn't hurt her, abandoned her.  She could cry for that.  And my eyes filled with tears too.

She wiped away the give away to her pain and smiled at me.  "I bet I'm way older than you," she said playful.  I played back and grabbed a pen.  "Let's write our ages on our hands.  That way we'll trust each other to be telling the truth."  She liked that idea.  1, 2, 3....our hands open to each other.  Turns out, she's a decade younger than I.  And I am shocked.  Harsh wears old on a woman's face.

She turns to go get ready to eat.  What's your name?  I want to remember you.  "Cindy."  I hesitate to find some way to give her something.  Something to leave with her; to put a period on the end of the conversation.  I reach out careful and lay my hand softly on her arm.  "I speak life over you, Cindy.  I speak life into you."  It feels a pitiful thing and yet I sense God heard me and took it up with Him into His heart.  She turned and walked away.

I will never know what happens; how this story plays itself out.  Two women, two complete strangers,  encountered one another today.   Two women who, in different ways, understand the yearning to be loved and cherished, the feeling of having been abandoned.

Her name is Cindy.  And she let me in tonight.  I won't squander that trust.  Remember her with me.