Miel et Lait

My dad took me out for Chinese food. The meal was lovely and it was nice to sit and have conversation with him. I rarely eat the fortunes cookies, but this time, I had a hunch that there were words of wisdom waiting for me. The simplest answer is to act. True words have never been written, right?

As a child, I understood the concept. I was seven years old and had just returned from a family vacation. Spending some time with Baba, I told her all about the beach, the shells, and the Marines that I had met.  The Marines are all over the world, protecting me, keeping me safe. Even though they haven’t all met me, they are on patrol just in case.

When I met the Marines, I told them all about Harry. As casually as I could, I tried to find out if they have come across him in their travels. “Not yet, little girl,” they said. They also said something that motivated me. They told me to keep praying, but don’t stop looking.

Back home at Baba’s, we were playing Go Fish and I explained to her that I needed to be more like the Marines, because they act! After my incident with some Brussels sprouts that were bound for Africa, my grandmother was leery whenever I concocted a plan. Her advice was that I should just pray that Harry would come into my life.

“Pray? The Bible doesn’t want me to pray. The Bible wants me to act!” I told her in an authoritative voice. She laughed, and asked me to explain.

In a haughty voice, I asked her, “Have you ever read the Bible?” The woman, whose father was a parson with the Church of England, had, in fact, read the Bible. In her sixty plus years, she had read it several times. Possibly several times a year.

I sighed and told her that she must not understand the Bible, then. Because anyone who understood the Bible saw the examples that I saw. God does not want us to sit around praying. He wants us to act!

God bless the lady, she had the patience of a saint, but it was late August and humid and her patience was worn thin with me. Harry had been eluding me for 3 and half years! She was at her wits end.

When I gave her my explanation of why He wants us to act, she nearly fainted.

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“Moses. Did Moses pray?” I asked her. Initially, she laughed, “Of course Moses prayed!”

“Moses didn’t pray. Moses went out there and he parted those seas. He acted!”

Baba is stunned. I didn’t even give her a chance to respond.

“What about Noah? Did he pray?”

“O, Maleńka, (little one) Noah prayed! He prayed!” She said in a voice that was trying to convince herself more than me.

I responded with a little Bible lecturing. “Noah did not pray. He built an ark! Noah acted.”

Now, she’s worried. I tired to find Harry in a grocery store and the police got involved. I tried to save the starving children of Africa with my leftovers, now I’m talking about parting seas and building an ark. This is not going well.

First, I weighed the pros and cons of spreading the seas, which I ruled out because I wasn’t near the ocean. Then, I thought about how silly it would be for me to build an ark, being as I was a little girl who couldn’t play with hammers or saws.

Eureka! The thought came to me in a manner that can only be described as divine intervention.

At seven years old, I knew that He didn’t want me to rely on prayer alone. He needed me to act. Through prayer and meditation, I let the spirit inspire me on how to act.

I would write a letter to Santa!

The day I wrote a letter to Santa, asking for his help in finding Harry, was one of Baba’s favorite stories. Tune in later this week for the blow-by-blow recount.

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