My eyes fluttered open, and I was jolted awake. My heart
seemed as if it were pounding out of my chest. Where was I? Nothing looked familiar. Was I in a motel
room?
Then suddenly it dawned on me that I had bought new
bedroom furniture, the first in 18 years of marriage. I was in my
own room.
Glancing at the clock, I could see that it was 6:03 a.m.
Slowly I made my way to the kitchen. The constant gnawing pain in my
side was growing with each step I took.
Recently I have been crying out to God that I don’t want all my rewards in this life. Once my mother found me weeping in my hotel room and asked what was wrong.
“I don’t want to receive all my rewards on this earth so that when I get to heaven all I have is a crummy rhinestone Jesus pin,” I told her. “When Jesus passes by there will be many wonderful people throwing crowns at His feet, and there I’ll be, throwing this dumb rhinestone pin, picking it up and throwing it down, again and again and again!”
I don’t want to get all my rewards here on earth! I want some things saved for me.
“You ought to let me cut and highlight your hair.” I heard the voice over my shoulder. When I turned around, my eyes had to look down about two feet to find the source of the offer, one that came with a long, Southern drawl.
“Hi, my name is Hepsiba. (That’s in the Bible.) I do hair. I do pastor’s hair, associate minister Calvin’s hair and administrator-apostle Johnson’s hair. Now he’s actually bald, but I put a thick, all-natural beeswax with Retin-ATM on his hair, and then I pull it through a rice paper sorta hat.
turned the thick envelope
over and over in my hands. Guessing what was inside, I hesitated to open
it and confirm my suspicions.
With heart pounding, I broke
the seal. Underneath it lay an invitation to a wedding—a wedding that
should have been mine. I was being invited to celebrate the marriage of
the man I thought I still loved and the woman who had broken up our
engagement. Surely they didn’t think I would attend!
As horrible as this
experience was, it was not unique to me. Every woman knows someone she
thought would love her forever who later said, “I don’t want you
anymore. I don’t love you or need you. I want out of this friendship,
this marriage, this church, this job, this business.” We have all been
victims of rejection.
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