Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Trust and Obey (don't write about the song) (05/21/15)
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TITLE: The Painting | Previous Challenge Entry
By Robyn Harbour
05/23/15 -
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Sam sat her beneath a golden wattle with her back to the trunk, looking out across the valley to the blue tinged mountains in the distance. He asked her to just sit quietly and day-dream of all her hopes and aspirations for the future. This she was able to do as she had many dreams for her future back in those days. Dreams of a successful career, a handsome husband, gorgeous well behaved children and a home that would be the envy of many. Summed up in one word, she dreamed of success.
She remembered vividly what she wore that day. A peasant skirt covered in pastel coloured flowers, a white blouse embroidered around the wide neck. She had nothing on her feet. Her long blonde hair hung loosely over her shoulders. She was carefree in those days and ever so slightly in love with Sam.
It didn’t take long for her to find her painting, still considered one of his best works. Sam had captured her thoughts in the way he had painted her. Perhaps he was also falling in love with her back then and this was interpreted through the strokes of his brush.
She sat on the long bench nearby and stared at the painting. So much had happened since that idyllic day. A month or so later they had fallen out over some trifle, she couldn’t remember what. She had married another, divorced, lost a child to cancer, and yesterday her precious daughter had informed her that her one year old marriage was over. So much pain.
As Wendy sat in contemplation about what could have been, the painting changed. She was still sitting down but this time on a bare wooden floor. Her body was still sitting upright, she was still in control, but now her bright clothes were gone, instead she was wrapped from the neck down in wide crepe bandages, tightly wound to hold in all the pain that threatened to break out for others to see.
Wendy valued her privacy, she kept her pain to herself. At work most people saw her as a successful executive, single, well dressed with a lovely home and modern car. She never let people get close to her.
The painting changed again, this time the bandages were starting to unravel and fall to the floor, exposing her nakedness. Her body was hunched over with pain, her daughter’s news had started the unraveling. No longer could she hold it all together. She had wept bucketfuls of tears last night, these tears had been held tightly inside for many years. Now her bucket of grief was full and overflowing.
Wendy thought of what might have been, if her marriage had survived, if her son had not died, and if her daughter had married someone else. She had always thought her daughter’s husband was a jerk and unreliable with wandering eyes.
A hand reached down into the painting, she looked up, the hand seemed to offer her hope and a way out of her grief. She looked closer at the hand, it was strong and masculine. As she studied the hand she saw a large scar in the center of the hand.
‘Come, follow me and I will help you deal with your pain and put you back on solid ground,’ the voice said. Wendy reached up and held onto the hand as if her whole life depended on it.
The painting faded, the girl in the painting was still sitting under the wattle tree, dreaming of the future.
Wendy rose up and walked out of the Art Gallery, determined to obediently place her future into her Saviors hand and trust him to guide her over the troubled waters of her life.
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