Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: WHISPER (12/08/22)
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TITLE: Baby | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
12/15/22 -
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“Baby.”
This was the worst time of year to be delivering crates of cokes to entertainment centers. People were loud and noisy. Children were hyped on sugar. Every street and shopping mall was jammed. Despite the chaos, the whisper came through.
It was a single word from a child peering into a stroller. “Baby.”
The monitor nestled in the blanket and the receiver held to the ear of the mother next to him provided the perfect conduit. Spotting the child didn’t take long. The mother hurtled through the mob of knee-high partiers and wrenched her little one into the air.
Benji turned away and half-stumbled over a young girl with a cabbage patch doll. The lurch in his stomach twisted into a pretzel of angst. Why did everything at this time of year have to focus on a baby?
Backpedaling away from the girl, he spun and half-trotted out of the amusement center. The glistening lights and tinsel, the blow-up snowman outside the door, the life-size sleigh on the roof and the wreath on the door hardly registered in his peripheral vision as a nativity scene was assembled in the cobblestone plaza near the curb.
“Baby!” he whispered.
“Isn’t it great?” a young brunette beside him said. “Who could believe that God would wrap up the best gift of all in a baby?”
Benji grit his teeth. “As if he even knows or cares about giving us anything.” He pushed his two-wheeled dolly toward his truck. The woman followed.
“What do you mean?” the woman responded. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son… everyone knows that.”
Benji backed away. “The last thing I need right now is someone preaching at me. Last Christmas my wife and newborn son were killed in the hospital parking lot by an ambulance whose brakes failed. Do you call that the gift of love from a caring God?”
The woman covered her mouth with her hand. Tears slid down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t know.”
“Well, you should know what you’re talking about before you open your mouth,” he said.
“I do,” she said, sniffing and wiping her nose with the back of her mitten. “I’m Ann. Two months before Christmas last year I had a miscarriage. I thought my world had ended. I went into a depression.” She backed up and sat on a bench nearby. “All I wanted for Christmas was my baby. Instead, I got an empty nursery. My husband couldn’t handle my hysteria and he moved back in with his parents until I got it together.” She glanced toward the manger scene. “It was right here last year that I saw the manger scene and it was here that I realized that God had given up a baby for me. Oh, I know a little of what you’re going through but I also know a little of what God did to fill the hole in my heart. In a world that is screaming to be seen and cared for the baby was a whisper of love.”
Mark released his dolly and ignored it as it clattered to the ground. He knelt on one knee before the woman and took her hand. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “You do understand.” He shifted up and sat on the bench beside her. “I’ve never heard Christmas explained that way before.”
“What do you mean?” Ann asked.
“That, ‘in a world screaming to be seen and cared for the baby was a whisper of love.’”
“It’s the only thing that got me through last Christmas,” she said.
“I’m Benji,” he said. “I’ve learned to hate the bustle and noise, the children screaming, even babies crying. I can’t get the nightmare about what could have been out of my head.”
Ann reached out and took his hand. “I can’t take all that away but if you’ve got time for a hot chocolate I can let you know how one certain baby saved my life. You don’t have to do life alone,” she whispered.
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