Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: MEMORY LANE (04/23/20)
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TITLE: Shattered Dream. | Previous Challenge Entry
By Gloria Pierre Dean
04/28/20 -
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I was a quiet studious girl. Many people called me an introvert.
I became a Christian at the age of ten. My family attended church three times a week and I learnt a lot about the Bible. One of the things I learned was not to be unequally yoked so in my teenage years I was careful not to pay much attention to nonbelieving guys at school.
While in college I attended the Christian club and found that meeting other young believers was great fun most of the time, but there were moments of conflict.
I will be honest and say that one young man, in particular, attracted me. I liked his quiet studious nature and his smile warmed my heart.
You might say I had developed a secret passion for Jake. We never dated but we talked a lot and even went on a short World Vision mission trip together with ten others.
After the trip, he returned to his home town and me to mine. There was no further contact until graduation day. Jake very nicely introduced me to his mother.
"So, you are Laura?" she said in an acid tone.
Her tone was unfriendly. I smiled quietly as she turned away but inwardly I quaked.
For about a year, I heard nothing from Jake. I knew that he was now a Medic in a well-known hospital. I kept my distance and did not try to make contact.
One day I said to a friend,
"I wish I could forget him. I wish him well."
I continued to attend church and worked long hours in my field of practice. One day, everything changed when I received a letter.
The room spun. There was a loud splintering sound in the room.
No one heard it but I did.
It was the sound of my breaking shattering heart.
Scattered all around my feet were the fragments of a dream.
I had opened a letter sent to me with no forwarding address. In it was a photograph of a bridal couple.
I did not know the bride but I knew the groom. It was Jake.
The failure to place a sending address stank of the malicious intent of the sender, I thought.
Even today, I have never known who sent it and today thirty years later it did not matter any more. I forgave them.
"I suppose I had to know.
It was better than the bliss of my ignorance.
It was a dream and it came to a sudden painful end" I later confessed to a close friend, but that day, I wept and wept. A dream was gone.
He had not given me any hope.
He had given me friendship.
Back then my young and foolish heart was full.
'Twas all of the thoughts of him.
I knew that we liked each other but a merging of lives would not have been possible.
'There were too many differences; age, colour, culture and social standing'. Those were the unspoken words of his mother on the occasion that I met her.
A close 'friend' Anna who was on the mission trip with us also openly declared the same differences to me.
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Many years later, Laura still remembers that day.
So much had happened...
These memories now bring a smile because she remembers that once upon a time she knew someone special.
He so easily might have been, but today was not.
She prayed that Jake and his wife were happy.
She is happily married to Phil. He is a pastor and they have three beautiful children.
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