Dew on Cracked Clay

Jessica sat looking out the window at the steady downpour of rain.  The gloomy day fit her mood.  It had not rained continuously for over a year, but her mood had been dismal for that long.  Her only child, her son David, had been snatched from her by a drunken driver 14 months ago.  As a single mother, her life had revolved around her handsome son who held such promise.  He should have graduated from high school by now and been off to college.  She should have been baking cookies to mail to him.

But, every day she sat motionless, “nearly catatonic,” her friends said behind her back.  She rarely bathed or combed her hair.  She ate little.  Jessica had been a highly creative woman….an artist.  She rented a studio in a building downtown where interaction with other artists was stimulating.  She no longer wanted to be stimulated.  Awareness of life was too painful, because the light of her life had been snuffed.

As the stream of creativity which had characterized her life slowed so that not even a trickle was evident, her soul became parched and cracked and the worst of her was exposed.  She sat alone in the dark refusing to leave the house.  She stared out through unseeing eyes, unkempt, disheveled. She did not answer her phone or emails.  Friends worried as she withdrew from social interaction previously enjoyed.  In her bitterness of spirit, she said mean and hateful things even to those who did their best to console and support her.

“If this continues, it is not just her spirit which will dry up.  It is her very life which is at risk,” her friends murmured.

Once a soul reaches a certain point of hardness, even a torrent cannot penetrate the cracked clay of despair.  Especially a torrent accomplishes nothing as it bounces off and runs away.  A drop….on the other hand….a single drop….

Each day as Jessica sat at the window, a child passed on her way to school.  Many days passed before she noticed the child….a girl with misshapen hands.  As an artist who had done portraits, she could not help but notice and analyze the strange hands.

On another one of those rainy dismal days, the child walked through the sprinkles singing, “If you’re happy and you know it...”

Jessica almost smiled. How ironic!  The child with missing fingers and strange stubs sticking out was singing, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.”

 Jessica looked down at her own delicate hands and lovely fingers...wonderfully talented hands and fingers capable of visually interpreting the creativity of her mind.  She had not recently cared for her nails, so she picked up an emery board.

A tiny individual drop of moisture fell on the barren earth within her.  It softened the soil ever so slightly, so little as to be almost imperceptible.

The next day the rain had stopped and the sun shone brilliantly.  She watched for the child.  This time she was skipping and singing, “There is sunshine in my soul…”

“There is no sunshine in my soul,” Jessica thought. ”I don’t want it.  If I sit in the darkness of death, it is my business.”

Still….the contrast between herself and the girl was inescapable.  A child with deformed hands sang.  Her hands lay idly in her lap.  She picked up a pencil and sketch pad and started to draw a picture of deformed hands, but a tiny trickle of hope seeped into the parched soul moistened by the one earlier drop of dew.

Each day she watched for the child.  Wanting a closer look, she eventually moved a chair outside, not realizing she had moved into the sunlight.  Paradoxically, she had also moved into the rain….the thirsty ground of her spirit began to allow refreshing drops to fall and fill her painful emptiness.

She wanted to talk to the child, but knew her disheveled appearance might frighten her.

She washed her clothes, took a shower, shampooed her hair, and put on some lipstick.

“Hello,” she called to the little girl the following day. “I see you pass every day.  What is your name?”

“Angela, but my family calls me Angel,” she replied with a radiant smile.

One cannot expect deep conversation from a child.  Jessica began to desire it.  She picked up the phone and called a friend she had not talked to in months.

Every day as she passed, the child waved her strange hands and smiled. Every day she seemed to be singing a different song. One day she did not pass, but Jessica didn’t notice.  She was enjoying coffee with a group of friends at a café near her long unvisited studio.

Actually, the child never passed again, but Jessica was rarely at the window watching.  She had returned to her studio and creativity had begun to flow from her crushed brokenness. Her paintings which had previously been beautiful were now also infused with palpable emotion.

Sitting in the café with her friends, she shared her thoughts about the little girl whose deformed hands clapped with joy.  She knew that seeing the child had precipitated the healing of her spirit, but how this had happened eluded her.

Lily, who was an atheist, dismissed the whole business as nothing more than coincidence.  She was sure Jessica would have come out of her funk on her own.  Time just needed to pass.

Heather, who was a new-ager, fingered her crystal necklace and declared that although there certainly was a spiritual component to the renewal, it was a mystery which would never be understood.

Judith, who was the Bible-reading, church-goer in the group, was certain the child had actually been a ministering angel.

Jessica knew how close she had come to the edge of an inescapable abyss.  But now, her hidden and painful wounds were replaced with a flood of peace.  It bubbled up from within her spirit and overflowed into conversation, laughter, productivity and the renewed joy of life. 

She couldn’t believe it was a coincidence.

She certainly hoped it was not a mystery. 

She wanted to know the origin of the joy that could somehow coexist with pain.  She determined to seek the source.