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The
Music Box . . .
:
Our friendship began with a pen pal ad in a
monthly magazine. When I answered that ad so many
years ago, I never could have imagined the journey
I was setting out upon! My first letter to her
went unanswered for several months. I'd long
since forgotten writing it when the response
finally arrived.
In
spite of that slow start, we soon discovered much
in common -- a shared love of writing and music,
gardening, cooking and a love of animals -- but in
many ways our lives were vastly different. She
was thirty-three and recovering
from a second abusive marriage and divorce; I was
ten years older and had been married since I was a
teenager to the love of my life. She had
routinely endured abuse I could scarcely imagine.
She did not believe in God; I had a
lifelong faith which, while shaky at times, had a
firm foundation.
Our
friendship flourished by way of the inky trail.
We exchanged recipes, gardening tips and compared
our favorite singing stars. Our lives became
happily entwined as our frequent letters traveled
across the many miles between us. The friendship filled a need in both of us for
that special relationship neither of us was
fortunate enough to have with our biological
sisters. She
poured out her heart to me, as though the simple
act of telling me the horrors of her life would
somehow cleanse her soul and put her shattered
hopes and dreams back together again. I listened and prayed and tried my best to
help her find the peace she was so desperately
searching for in her life. The long letters soon
were interspersed with equally lengthy phone
calls. We laughed and cried together, and though
so many miles separated us, we became sisters of
the heart.
In the summer of
'96, her world once again came crashing down
around her as a relationship she was involved in
abruptly ended. She
became suicidal and many times in the wee hours of
the mornings to follow, I found myself on the
phone with her, reassuring my precious friend that
she was loved and that her life could again be
worth living. My insistence that she seek
professional help fell on deaf ears. It seemed as
though there was little I could do as I knelt and
prayed to God to show me a way to help her.
One day I was
walking through the mall with her very much on my
mind. I wandered into a card shop, where my
attention was immediately drawn to a music box on
a shelf among many other music boxes. It was a
small box with a short poem of friendship in its
lid. As I opened it, my mind was filled with good
memories as it played "You Are My Sunshine", a
song I'd often sung to my children in their
childhood years. I listened to the melody and
then closed the lid
and continued on my way. As I once again resumed
my shopping, I felt the gentle touch of an unseen
hand on my shoulder guiding me back to the shop
and an urgent need to send that music box to her.
I bought it and mailed it to her the following
day.
Three days passed
before I answered my phone to find her there
crying. She managed, between her tears, to
explain to me that she had decided to end her life
and had made a list of ten things she needed to do
first. One item on that list was to hear the song "You Are My Sunshine"
one last time. It was a song she'd loved as a
child and brought back happy memories of those
days. Having it come to her as it did reminded
her of the love of her faraway friend and prompted her to add one more thing to her list --
she wanted to come meet me.
Two very long days later, she arrived on my doorstep. What a joy it
was to finally meet this friend I'd come to love
so dearly. We talked and cried and laughed a lot
in the next five days and through the miracle of
our friendship, she discovered a desire to live
again. As for me, my faith in God was strengthened
as I watched in amazement the way He used a simple
childhood song in a music box sent to a friend. I
learned never to doubt the stirrings of a small
still voice or the touch of an angel's hand.
God truly
does work in mysterious ways, or perhaps His
answers to His children's heartfelt prayers are
not so mysterious at all. Whatever the
explanation, I thank Him for my friendship with
her and for that tiny treasure of a music
box.
~ Author Unknown ~
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