Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: PUT YOUR BEST FOOT FORWARD (07/23/20)
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TITLE: Measuring Up | Previous Challenge Entry
By Debra Brand
07/30/20 -
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She grew up in a good home but as a ‘latch-key’ child of the sixties. Weekly supper meals to prep for her parents and cleaning house on Saturdays while humming Beethoven or Mozart waltzes were her chores. She didn’t mind. Their home, comfortable and neat, lacked stylish furniture and exterior décor. The second-class part of town also played against her induction to the ‘chosen few’ in school.
Her teacher announced the homework. In an instant, she felt crushed in defeat. It required repurposing an item from home. Cellophane tape, nevermind glue, did not exist for her use. How was she going to create something out of nothing without anything to hold it together!
She searched high and low trying to find a purposeful object. Mom wasn’t crafty at all. Siblings had moved away from home on to their careers. She had no friends to help. Finally, she found a small old wooden hinged box.
Going to the kitchen, she gathered some dried macaroni and worn out jewelry in her mother’s dresser. Good thing school had taught her to mix flour and water to form a paste. So, she ‘glued’ the dry noodles and bits of jewelry onto the cover of the box. Rummaging through a closet she found some of her brother’s gold metallic model car paint and proceeded to paint the entire box, including the decorations. She let it dry, satisfied with her creation.
When she entered the classroom, everyone had brought their projects. She walked over to the table and placed her homework next to her name. Her face flamed with embarrassment as she heard their giggles and derisive comments. Peers are brutal, especially young teens. She had done what she could with what she had but it wasn’t good enough.
She never forgot that feeling of incompetency and failure to ‘make the grade’. It haunted her for a long time and even now at the start of any new project, it rises like a dragon waiting to throw his flame to devour her.
But, her home is stocked with tape and glue. She has an art studio and a computer station where she is free to write. Her position at church allows for all kinds of creativity with free reign and praises for jobs well done. She has embraced her fear of failure, turning it ‘as to the Lord.’
‘God is within her. She will not fail,’ is her strength every day. Each project begins with ‘Do your best and let God do the rest.’
Psalm 46:5 (NASB)
Non-fiction (mostly)
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