The Box | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: The Box | Previous Challenge Entry
By Dee Kyalo
11/29/14
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They had married young. He was twenty and she, eighteen. Ten months after their wedding, their first baby arrived; and the next one followed fifteen months later. Now both their children were out of the home, and he was just settling down to enjoy the new phase of life with his wife. They had plans to go on all those cruises they had previously not been able take. Then a couple of weeks before their twenty-fifth anniversary he got a shock of his life. Tucked away at the bottom of her closet was a box full of letters and cards from another man.

For a few seconds, life stood still before him and then the ache of betrayal jangled violently through his entire body and soul. He carefully carried the pink scented gift box and placed it on the blanket chest. Peering at the contents in one letter, it was apparent that this illicit affair had been ongoing when she worked at the hospital. He couldn’t understand how this was happening to him. As far as he knew, theirs was one of the most stable marriages around. This finding tore into his heart like a sharp knife. He really wanted to confront her with this box, but on second thoughts he returned the overwhelming evidence exactly where he had found it.

He was sitting at the kitchen table when she came back from the beauty salon. She was still as beautiful as when he had first laid his eyes on her. Although his heart was heavy he stood up and took her in his arms. Trembling and fighting back his tears, he mustered enough strength to say, “After all these years, I, Rodgers, still take you Armella, to be my wife, to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; until death do us part.”

She was a little puzzled by this very touching moment; however she savored it and reaffirmed her own vows back to him.

Later that night when she reached for her box of secrets, there, on top of it was a note from her husband:

“My life is so beautiful with you in it.”

Armella’s legs gave way beneath her and she sat on the floor weeping. She knew he had found out. She was extremely remorseful.

After gaining some composure, she took the box into the den. Rodgers was there reclined in his favorite seat watching a game. She tossed it into the fire. They both watched it go up in flames.

“Honey, I am very sorry…” she began.

He switched off the television and motioned her to sit beside him.

Gazing into her eyes he said, “I am too, but we can start a new box – our own memory box.”

So they did and called it “1 Peter 4:8”.

Last week they celebrated their fiftieth anniversary.

***

Let us not be afraid to call sin sin, but let us not be slow to forgive it and to look past it. It’s amazing how much beauty we can see and how much further we can go together when we choose to close our eyes to our spouse’s faults.

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