Once Upon a Time...

During my junior year in high school I took a ceramics class. One of the assignments that spring was to make a slab box and fill it with things that told something about oneself. This is my box, this is what was inside, and this is my story.
In some ways it is a complicated story, and in other ways it is quite simple. During the summer of 1979, my neighbor's cousin came to visit him. The cousin and I became friends. We played Frisbee under the street lamps, hide and seek in the cornfield, and one summer night in late August he gave me my first kiss. I was fifteen. Young romances seldom pass the test of time and soon we were no longer a couple. We did, however, remain friends. During the course of time this friend of mine needed a place to live and my parents agreed to become his legal guardians. (Complicated part.) Sometime between my parents becoming legal guardians and my junior year of high school, this friend again became more than just a friend.

By the time my art teacher gave this assignment, we were "in trouble" and my heart and mind were in turmoil. The heavy hearted couple on the lid of my box is us, and inside are bits and pieces of Martha; my class pin, a lock of my hair, a small magnetic stone bearing my nickname... a flower, some seashells, a bookworm bookmark my mother once made me... an Apache tear from my brother, a poem I wrote, and a small metallic cross. The slab box with the couple on it's lid is also a music box which plays the "Skater's Waltz". (I originally asked for "Music Box Dancer" but the craft store didn't have it.) Each item inside says something about me or something I treasured but only hinted at the crisis inside my soul.
Much of the spring of 1981 is still a blur. I know I cried a lot and worried about what would happen to me, to us, and to our baby. I was certain I could not abort my child, I had seen pictures of what happened to tiny unborn babies, but when someone I trusted asked me if I wanted to do that, I momentarily wondered if that was really a solution... It is a frightening thought because I realized how easily a young girl could be convinced that aborting her child is the answer. I thank God that He had given me an answer to that question years before. I considered adoption. There was even a couple at our church who told my father they would take our baby. The tears flowed and my heart broke every time I even tried to consider it. In the end, my father ended up signing for both of us to get married. James' sister took us to New Mexico about a week or so later and in late September we became the parents of a beautiful baby boy. We were both seventeen. There have been hard times, yes, but being together and having our family together is something I wouldn't trade for all the world. I'm so glad we were given the chance. Sometimes it's hard to believe the two little people on the lid of the music box are really us, they look so sad. But we aren't there anymore. God has taken us beyond and given us life and hope and for this I thank and praise Him.