Shattered Dreams?

It just shattered. No forceful blows, no errant objects slammed against it, no body tosses. I went into the kitchen one winter evening and heard a crinkling sound coming from the direction of the patio doors in our then Grayson, Kentucky home. I pulled back the curtain and was shocked to see that the glass in one door was fragmenting into a million pieces.

The glass was still in place and looked rather artistic with its mosaic design, especially when the sun caught it just right. Of course, removal was necessary, calling for a whole new set of doors; frames, hardware and all.

I was questioned by our insurance adjuster and a repairman at some length.
"What happened?" they asked.
"Nothing," I replied.
"Nothing?" They continued.
"Nothing," I said with more emphasis the second time.

Of course, I didn’t really mean nothing. Obviously, one look at the door and you knew something had happened, but you understand my answer, don't you? I mean, to the best of our knowledge, neither Teresa nor I had done anything to produce the particular problem.

That's the way life is sometimes, is it not? Difficulties and problems appear out of thin air with no obvious origin. Maybe it is a health concern we wake up with one morning. We went to bed fine, but daybreak finds us writhing in pain. We search our minds as to what caused it, but come up empty. But still the ache persists.

Or our adult child gets into trouble. We rehearse our child-rearing practices and try to find the reason, but are clueless at the end.

Or we give our employer our best efforts for a dozen years and then receive a pink slip one Friday afternoon. We try to figure out how we went so quickly from being an asset to being a liability, but no answer comes.

What do we do when our neat world of cause-and-effect breaks down? When our question "why" bounces off the walls and reverberates back unanswered?

Well, I will tell you what we did with our patio doors. We laughed at our bizarre accident, replaced the doors, and trusted God. It seemed like the sensible thing to do. Please understand the emphasis is on trusting God, not on our stoic acceptance of that which we were unable to change. He'd led us through bigger problems. I knew He could handle this one. And He did!

Panefully yours,
Phil LeMaster