Broken Zippers

January 02, 2010

My eight-year-old daughter, Katerisha, came up to me this morning with a frown. In her hand was her prized possession that she had earned at school just the day before.
She had won her little pink billfold for good behavior and for working hard in Math.

Last night was spent transferring her dollar bills, her gift card and her coins, which she proudly told me she had been collecting anywhere she finds them, into their new home.
Afterwards, she snapped what needed to be snapped, and zipped what needed to be zipped, and then proceeded to carry her billfold around with her for the rest of the night.

Unfortunately, though, we live in a world of made-in-China rewards, and this morning brought sadness to Kat when she went to unzip her treasure only to discover that the zipper zipped clear off. She brought it to me as if somehow I could make it better. Maybe she thought that I could give it a magic-kiss to fix it simply because I’m a mom. Saddened, though, I knew that I couldn’t. Moms can’t fix everything, although God knows we often try.

But this problem was beyond me, so I had to do the next best thing. I tried to encourage Kat by pointing out the good things that still remained in her prize. The purse still held her money. It was still pretty and pink. It was still her very own billfold, and she’d never had one before. By the end of it, Kat did seem a little more uplifted than before, but I could tell that her countenance was still down. And to be honest, I couldn’t blame her much at all. I was down, too, knowing how excited she had been just the day before.

This world...it has a way of bringing you up, and then without so much as a moment’s notice, it can drop you just the same. Kat’s broken reward reminded me today of the fragility of this place that we call home and these lives that house our souls.

I like to buy my clothes, for example, at second-hand shops simply because I don’t have to feel so badly if by chance I wash them with the wrong colors or on the wrong cycle or if I spill something on them and stain them (another talent of mine). Perhaps years of drying our clothes underneath the baking-sting of the African equatorial sun didn’t do much to help my confidence in things lasting or boost my desire to spend money on...cloth.

Things in this life, no matter how much we try to make them go on forever, often don’t. They wear out, tear, get lost, get old, go out of style or just break altogether. Even our relationships sometimes dissolve, changing from something that used to bring us joy into something merely bearable at best or annoying at worst. People change, move, lose interest or simply get distracted by daily life.

Knocking on the door of forty, I’m discovering how quickly our bodies wear out too. Oh joy. So much for tears over broken pink billfolds! People my age and older – or even younger – face much more than a broken, pink billfold. The aging prcess can make us wish for a return to the place where our deepest grief was merely a busted zipper on a prize purse.

Okay, I'm going on and on with thoughts that might just swipe away your smile or remove the sparkle from your eyes. That's not my intention, though I’ll admit that after four decades, I’m not nearly as keen on this life as I was at the beginning. It’s very...temporal, apparently.

Don’t misunderstand me...there is much within it that I do enjoy. I love kind people: especially funny, kind people. I love to smile. I love to laugh. Anyone who gets me to do either will be my forever-friend. But what I love even more is anyone who reminds me that this life isn’t all we have in store, anyone who reminds me that one day I will be in a better place with a better mind, better emotions, a better body, better relationships and better rewards.

Jesus reminds us of this truth when He urges in Matthew 6:19-21:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Jesus wanted us to remember that zippers will break down here where we are, but we can take heart in knowing that whatever we ‘pay forward’ into eternity will be forever ours.

Life comes with loss on this planet, some big and some small, but every loss ought to remind us that we have a higher call.