Sentimental Things

My cat, Stormy, taught me a valuable lessons years ago, which I hope to never forget.

I had a desire to own a hand-made Amish quilt for many years.  Finally, once I’d saved enough money and was on the East Coast for a business trip, I splurged and bought it.  I should have built a shrine for it because I nearly worshipped that quilt.  It was the single most expensive thing I had ever purchased, save for a car.  I spread it across my bed with great pride and even just a glimpse of it made me smile.  Unless, of course, the glimpse included my cat Stormy, sleeping on it.  Cat hair was a blemish I would not tolerate.

Each day, when I left for work, I covered the quilt with a sheet, just to protect it, because I knew Stormy would be curled up near the pillow when I got home.  It was a solution that worked fine, until the day I forgot to put the sheet over the quilt.  When I came home and saw Stormy lying directly on the quilt, I panicked and quickly lifted him off. He had just woken up and hadn’t done his obligatory clawing into the bedding routine, so when I snatched him away, his claw were out and snagged my quilt.  I was devastated.  This was a blemish that wouldn’t wash out, as the cat hair could.

Each following day as I made my bed, I stared at that snag in the quilt and my heart sank.  I was so mad at myself for forgetting the sheet and mad at Stormy for wrecking the quilt.  Then soon afterwards, Stormy came down with cancer and died.  I loved that cat, in spite of his little annoyances.  I’d had him for fifteen years and I truly grieved his loss. 

The day after he died, when I made my bed and my eyes fell on that snag in the quilt, I cried.  Not because there was now a flaw in my precious Amish quilt, but because it was really the only tangible evidence I now had of having Stormy in my life for all those years.  Instead of thinking of that snag as a flaw, I now saw it as a treasure.  A hard and fast daily reminder of my precious kitty.  The quilt had became sentimental and far more meaningful to me BECAUSE of the snag, and I treasured it all the more.

I applied that lesson many times over in the years following.  After Kaleb was born, many things in our house were broken.  I got out the glue and smiled.  I thought of the future and that one day, he’ll be grown and gone, but I’ll still have the crack in the whatever as a reminder that he was once a blonde haired little two year old breaking my things.  I just had to let go of the idea of everything being nice and realize all our “stuff” is just that, and no one says it has to be perfect.

So this week, I’ve been praying earnestly for my step-niece to find some funding to pay for her second semester of college.  She was more than a few thousand short and she asked if we’d co-sign a loan for her.  Kory wouldn’t agree to it, mostly because of the outrageous interest rates, but my heart was all about helping her.  The very day I spent a great deal of time talking to God about that situation and asking how in the world we can help, since all our money is ear-marked for different things in our life and it seemed we didn’t have a dollar to spare, He came up with a creative solution. 

I was driving Kaleb to a meeting in our Lexus, and I got rear-ended.  It was a low-speed impact so no one got hurt but the back end of the car got pretty roughed up.  Thankfully, the lights still worked, the trunk opened and closed and the driver had insurance, so now we’ll be getting some unexpected money soon in order to fix the car – or not.  Kory says he can buy parts from the junkyard to fix the worst of it and he already popped out the biggest ding by hooking a chain around a tree, attaching a hook to the open trunk and having me drive forward.  It allowed the trunk to close better and it’s a good enough fix for me, especially since Kory agreed to give whatever money we get from the insurance company to my step-niece to help her with college tuition.  I couldn’t be more pleased.  The car has over 293,000 miles on it so putting money into it at this point seemed insane, anyway.

After Kaleb looked at the damage on the car, knowing we aren’t going to get it fixed and we’d be driving around in a less than perfect Lexus, he said, “Now I suppose this car is going to have special meaning, too?”  And I said, “Yep.”  And every time I look at the ding in the backend I’ll smile and thank God for how he helped us help my niece.  Hallelujah!