The Stories Jenny Held (7)

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Jenny

I wonder what it was like before I arrived. Sarah filled me in on her first few years. It seems I have joined a sweet little family. Sarah's Mommy and Daddy have told her all about how much they wanted to have children. And how hard it was to wait and pray and pray and wait and still, no baby came. They were both school teachers and figured they would make great parents since they knew how to run a classroom! I felt bad for them that they couldn't have children for so long. But then I think they might not have gotten Cathy if babies came easily for them. And where would we be without her?! 

I can tell by the way Sarah plays with me that she really likes to have things her own way. She lines me up with all the other toys and stuffed animals and arranges us just so. And she spends hours re-arranging us so that we are all placed together as a great menagerie of imaginary beings. She has named us all and has her favourites. Apparently, adults aren't supposed to have favourites for their children. But Sarah told me that since she's not an adult, it doesn't really matter. She likes the soft ears on her puppy stuffed animal, and then she likes the scruffy teddy bear that is kind of shabby, but her Grandma gave it to her, so it gets 'favourite' status.

She also has this Koala bear that has velcro on its paws and a baby koala that it hugs. This is one of her most special animals. Sarah loves her doll family, and I get special status because I am like Mother To Them All. And yet I'm not the bossy type. I'm just everyone's friend, and Sarah likes that about me.

I think she wants to be like me someday.

Sarah

 Through some divine intervention, my mother did conceive and I was born in December 1976, a week before Christmas.  I later came to believe that it was indeed a divine act, since God knew my self-absorbed heart would be hyper-focused on me, and only gave me one week to revel in birthday luxury before needing to refocus on the birth of the Saviour of the World, the Lord Jesus. 

By Christmas each year, I would reflect that truly I needed a change of heart, and a re-focus, since celebrating me was tantamount to robbing God of the worship He so deserved.  This was the way I processed and framed my outlook on things - I included God-thoughts on every level. I don’t see this as problematic in and of itself, because I still value the inclusion of God in all I think and do; but I do question some of my conclusions, and see woven throughout my childhood narrative that my view of God was laden with guilt, judgement and an overarching sense of my own inadequacies and failures to be what He must want. I often felt that I didn't do, feel, think, or respond to all of life with a holy godliness.

My earliest memories are of trying to drink a concentrated syrup (Ribena) when I was 2 years old and being scolded for spilling the purple sticky stuff all over my dress.  The other of my earliest memories is when I broke a vase and it made my mom sad enough to cry.  Perhaps I hadn’t known that big people ever get sad enough to cry, so that is probably what made the lasting impression.  When I think of the kind of life she was living – a transplant having grown up in Cuba, studied in the U.S., travelled in Spain and then ending up in Hong Kong, adopting one child there and having me, I realize there were incredible burdens and stresses on her – and erratic displays of emotion are understandable.  Cross-cultural ministry is not for the faint of heart.

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