You’re just tired, I tell myself. You need to catch a few hours’ sleep, then go to work. Stay on the routine. Keep up the hope. Dispatchers aren’t supposed to get involved with the cases that come through the 911 phone lines, but the truth is, the calls stay with you. You go into the profession because you want to help people. You can’t just turn that on and off.
A blonde curl peeks from the shadows of my purse —the photograph on a flyer seeking any news of Emily. They called off the search for her today. There’s simply nowhere else to look.
I remind myself again to have hope. If you give up, it’s like saying that little girl isn’t coming home.
But the tears press anyway, and I pull the shades, slide into bed, and close my eyes. I’m just . . . so . . . tired. . . .
The doorbell rings downstairs as I finally start to drift. Who in the world? No one in the family would bother ringing the bell. They’d come in through the garage.
I ignore it, hoping it’s just a package delivery, something Robert ordered online for the cabin. With so much vacation built up after seventeen years with the auto company, he has plenty of time to work on the place.
The doorbell rings again. Twice. Close together. Insistent.
I get up, put on a robe, and head downstairs. Before I reach the front door, I recognize the halo of auburn hair on the other side of the leaded glass. Mom. Why she’s ringing the bell, I can’t imagine.
I open the door, and she thrusts a white pet carrier my way. She has her cat, Honey, dangling under one arm and a sack of kitty chow under the other. “You’ll have to keep Honey for me.” As usual, it’s an order, not a question. She jabs the pet carrier outward again. “Here. Take this.”
I relieve her of the carrier and the cat chow as she breezes past me into the house. “Mom, what are you talking about?”
She strokes Honey’s head so hard that the cat’s eyes bug out with every pass. “I’m going to Sandy’s and talking some sense into her. It’s the only way. I am not having this family, or this farm, torn apart so my sister can sink the last of her money into that stupid shop of hers. Mother and Daddy didn’t give us this land so we could sell it and run off to some hut on the beach.”
“Mom, in the first place, it’s a store, not a hut. In the second place, she’s a grown woman. And in the third place, she’s been there for almost twenty years now. She knows what she wants.”
“She doesn’t know anything. She’s sixty-five years old, for heaven’s sake. How much longer does she think she and George will be able to stay there anyway?” Mom paces down the entryway, Honey’s rear end swinging against her hip. The cat’s feet flail, searching for a toehold. I know the feeling.
“Mom, you can’t make Aunt Sandy and Uncle George pull up stakes and come back. Maybe they never will. Maybe when they finally can’t run the shell shop anymore, they’ll just . . . retire there on the Outer Banks.” It sounds nice. Retiring on an island.
Mom pulls a sheet of instructions from her pocket and leaves it on the dining table as she passes. Honey braces a claw on my mother’s hip, tries to retract herself from the elbow hold. Mom hasn’t even noticed so far.
“I’ll tell you what’ll happen. She’ll sell that property and throw the money into that shop, and then when another storm comes along, or she or George experience a health crisis and they can’t live in such a remote place anymore, they won’t have anywhere to come home to. And we’ll be stuck with strangers building houses right in the middle of all of our places. Butch doesn’t have the money to buy the land from her, and neither do I.”
Honey has finally gone into full-out escape mode. My mother releases her, and she jumps to the floor and skitters away, skidding on the tile as she disappears around the corner.
Mom barely gives the cat a second glance. She has bigger fish to fry. “I’m going there to talk some sense into her, face-to-face. That’s all there is to it.”
That’s the second time she’s said it. And this time, it genuinely worries me. “Mom, you’ve never once been out to Aunt Sandy’s place in all these years, and now, suddenly, you’re going? And then what? You’ll kidnap Aunt Sandy and Uncle George and force them to come back to Michigan?”
Her green eyes flare, then narrow beneath windblown shocks of hair. She’s not used to being talked to like this. No one talks back to the principal. It’s hard for her to get used to civilian life. Even harder, since, after nearly thirty years of dedicated service, she was caught in the squeeze play of an unpleasant consolidation between two schools.
Retirement isn’t suiting my mother. That school was her heart and soul. “George isn’t even there with her right now. He’s in Kalamazoo, taking care of his mother. He has been there off and on for months. The poor man is commuting back and forth between Michigan and Hatteras Island, trying to see to his mother’s care and help Sandy keep that shop afloat. It’s ridiculous. Their family is here. Their children and grandchildren are here. Someone has to force Sandy to see reason.”
“Mother, you cannot fly to North Carolina on your own.”
“I’m not flying. I’m driving.”
“You definitely can’t drive to North Carolina.” I’m guessing that trip would take twelve to fourteen hours. Just a couple months ago, Mom ran her car into a ditch during a three-hour drive to my great-aunt’s house. I think she fell asleep at the wheel, but she won’t admit it.
“Oh yes, I can. There’s some worry about a storm on the East Coast mucking up the airports. I don’t want to fly and end up trapped out there.”
“So your solution is to drive?” Like Uncle Butch burning rubber in his old Suburban, this would be funny if it weren’t so serious.
“Yes, that’s my solution. And if you’re so worried about it, you can come with me. We’ll only be gone a few days.”
Her gaze catches mine, and suddenly I realize this is why she’s really here. This is what she’s had in mind all along.
A Note from the Author
DEAR READER,
This is how The Prayer Box came to be: by accident, if you believe in accidents. I glanced across the room one day, saw the small prayer box that had been gifted to me, and a story began to spin through my mind. What if that box contained many prayers accumulated over time? What if there were dozens of boxes? What if they contained the prayers of a lifetime?
What could more fully tell the truth about a person than words written to God in solitude?
Of course, Iola would say those random questions that popped into my mind, and The Prayer Box story itself, weren’t accidents at all. She would say it was divine providence. Something that was meant to be.
I believe divine providence has brought this story into your hands too. I hope you enjoyed the journey through Iola’s prayer boxes as much as I did. If the journey is still ahead of you, I hope that it takes you to far-off places . . . and into inner spaces as well. More than that, I hope it will inspire you to think about keeping a prayer box of your own and maybe giving one to somebody else.
The little box that was given to me was by no means unique. I’d heard of prayer boxes, and I knew what they were for. Either they’re keeping places for favorite Scriptures, or they’re similar to a prayer journal, only more flexible. Any scrap of paper will do, anywhere, anytime of the day or night. The important part, in a world of fractured thoughts, hurried moments, and scattershot prayers, is to take the time to think through, to write down, to clarify in your own mind the things you’re asking for, the things you’re grateful for, the things you’re troubled about, the hopes you’ve been nurturing.
And then?
Put them in the box and . . .
Let. Them. Go.
That’s what trust is. It’s letting go of the worry. It’s the way of peace and also the way of God. Such a hard road to travel for people like me, who are worriers. When I’m writing a story, I control the whole universe. In life . . . not so much. Actually, not at all. Things happen that I hadn’t anticipated and wouldn’t choose and can’t change. That’s the tough part.
Closing the lid on a prayer box is symbolic of so many things. When we give a prayer over to God, it’s supposed to be in God’s hands after that. I think that’s what Sister Marguerite was trying to teach Iola when she gave her that very first prayer box. Life is, so often, beyond our control, just as it was for that little ten-year-old girl, far from home. I like to imagine that Sister Marguerite decorated that box herself, preparing it with young Iola in mind.
After studying more about prayer boxes and using them myself, I’m surprised we don’t do this more often. Prayer boxes have a long-standing tradition, both among early Christians and among Jewish families. Jews and early Christians often wore small leather or carved bone boxes on the body. These phylacteries or tefillin were a means of keeping Scripture close to the wearer. Large boxes called mezuzah cases are still affixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes today.