Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: BACK TO BASICS (02/16/17)
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TITLE: New Creation | Previous Challenge Entry
By Holly Westefeld
02/23/17 -
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After packing the tablet securely and setting it aside for Dan to label later, I return to the closet and delve deep in to the back corner of the bottom shelf, tugging my old Perkins Brailler out, along with the light card stock needed for the dots to keep their shape over time. The brailler's eight pounds feels like a boulder compared to the less than two pound tablet, but it is just within the gallon of milk lifting parameter that I have set for myself, (admittedly paranoidly), since the test stick showed positive three months ago. Even though my doctor had assured me that it was unlikely that anything I had or had not done had contributed to the miscarriage last fall, anxiety persists, no matter how often I try to give it to God.
I settle in to the recliner and roll a sheet of paper in to the brailler. I have no way of knowing, until Dan gets home and pops the memory card in his laptop, if my morning's work on the last chapter of my first novel was spared, so I start reconstructing it as best I can. I am unaccustomed to the pressure necessary to depress the keys, occasionally having to go back and reinforce dots. More frustrating still, is having to rub out errant dots with my fingernail, or cross them out altogether in the absence of a delete key.
My stomach growls as I remove the twentieth page, so I throw together an overdue sandwich. I swipe through email on my phone, disposing of the abundant advertising, and dictating a short explanation to my editor of why the manuscript will be delayed. I start to automatically reach for my tablet to pick up my quiet time in 2 Corinthians. Sighing, my finger hovers over the Bible app on my phone, but I stand instead, lock the phone and drop it in my pocket, then move to the large bookcase in the den. Several times I have thought of offering my braille Bible to the school for the blind that our missionaries in Togo run, but have hesitated for some reason. Perhaps for such a time as this, a day, a stretch where I will need to revert to the basics. I slide the three-inch thick volume of epistles from the shelf, and almost return to the recliner, but a warm ray of sun, and the heavenly scent of honeysuckle wafting through the open window draw me to the hammock in the backyard instead.
Opening to chapter five, actually enjoying the feel of the pages fanning through my fingers, I begin to read, pausing at verse seven. Walking by faith, not by sight had been the theme of my testimony I shared in my sophomore year of college. It seemed easier then, when that faith was but a couple of years old, not yet tested by heartache. Well, there had been the heartache of losing my vision at the hands of a drunk driver, but that, actually, was a key turning point in me coming to trust Christ. If God had a plan to bring me to himself through that, can I not trust that He has a plan beyond last autumn's grief? I continue reading. As I reach verse seventeen, my hands freeze. Then my hand darts to my abdomen. Am I imagining things? No! There it is again. A new creation, indeed!
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Fiction
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