JENNY LAY QUIETLY, THINKING OF what to do, but there was nothing but to stay here for now, stuck somewhere in the dark pit of a cave. Her mind played back a memory buried deep in her youth of another time when she was trapped. It was in a car, and she was very small. She had been cold, looking out of a car window as the wind howled like raging demons and the snow blew fiercely.
Outside the car window was ice, but there was a hole and water splashing. Then a man’s face rose up out of the water. Jenny thought the face would see her, but the eyes were raised to heaven and the lips were moving soundlessly. It was a man with stringy hair, and he was struggling to get out of the water, but the edge of the hole kept breaking. And then he looked straight at her and reached for her—but suddenly he disappeared under the water. The wind howled and the snow slowly covered the window bit by bit until she couldn’t see the hole anymore.
The roar of the wind had grown louder, and Jenny felt the cold encase her body…and then something wonderful happened. She heard a sound like a scraping at the window. She looked up and saw something moving outside, brushing and cleaning the snow away from the glass. The movement continued, and suddenly the little girl was looking up into the most beautiful face she had ever seen. The eyes stared back at her, and the mouth opened in surprise. It was her mama! She was kneeling in the snow, looking at Jenny through the window.
Jenny cried out, “Mama, Mama, I’m here! Mama, come find me!”
Jenny could see her mama struggling with the door of the car, but she couldn’t open it. Her mama got up and went around to the other side of the car. The door slowly opened, but then everything got mixed up. Her mama was in the car with her, and they were huddled together, and then her mama was gone but she was covered by something like feathers—and then her mama was back and she was wrapping Jenny in something wonderfully warm and soft, and Jenny could see there was a flower, a rose. And then her mama was carrying her through the howling wind, and Jenny was safe and warm in the quilt.
The memory faded, and Jenny returned to reality as a stab of pain shot through her, almost causing her pass to out.
I’m in a cave, and I slid down. I may have fallen a long way. I was dreaming about the car again. I was back in the car by the pond, and I was freezing to death, and my mama found me and wrapped me in a warm quilt.
Jenny thought about the quilt. Her mama had called it the Rose of Sharon. It had been Jenna’s quilt, but her mama used it to save her when she was lost in the big storm, and then it was her quilt. She remembered the last time she had seen it a few years earlier. She came home and couldn’t find her mama, and she looked all through the house. Then she peeked in her mama’s sewing room. Jerusha was sitting in her rocking chair, holding the quilt close to her, tears glistening down her cheek.
“Mama?” she asked.
“Come in, dochter,” Jerusha said, and she did. She stood at her mother’s side and looked down at the quilt.
“That’s my quilt,” she said. “The one you wrapped me in to save my life.”
“Yes, Jenny, this is your quilt,” Jerusha said. “It’s a strange and wonderful story, how it came to be yours.”
Jenny sat down at her mother’s feet and laid her head on Jerusha’s lap. “Tell me again, Mama,” she said.
Jerusha laid her hand gently on her daughter’s head and began to stroke her hair as she spoke.
“I made this quilt for our Jenna when I was running away from God and from my faith. This quilt was my way out. But then God led me to you, and I had to make a choice—hold on to my pride and keep the quilt unspoiled, or use it to save you. I made the right choice.”
You had to make a choice to save me, and the way you saved me was to ruin the quilt.
“And how did you get me?” Jenny had asked.
“No one knew where you came from or who your parents were,” Jerusha said. “By the time the police went to Jepson’s Pond to pull out the car, it was already spring. In the bottom of the pond they found the body of a man. He had been there too long for them to take any fingerprints. When they checked on the car, they found that it was stolen in New York City. He may have been your father, but no one knows.”
He may have been my father, but he hurt me, and he did something bad to my first mama.
Jerusha kept telling the story. “Well, since you were all alone, we applied to take you into foster care while the authorities looked for any relatives. That was a fruitless search, so we adopted you, and that’s how you became our daughter. And a wonderful daughter you have been.”
“Mama, did you ever regret having me instead of Jenna?” Jenny asked as she looked up into her mother’s face.
“Jenna was a wonderful child. She already had a special relationship with the Lord when she died. It was an easy and pleasant task to raise her.”
Jenny wondered what her mama had meant about Jenna already having a special relationship with the Lord. As she lay in the darkness of the cave, she tried to remember the rest of the conversation.
“You were a stronger child than Jenna, more determined and self-willed. God knew that you needed your papa and me to raise you, to bring order to your life, and to give you the opportunity to have a relationship with Him,” Jerusha said.
Jenny wondered how being stronger made her different from Jenna. Wouldn’t that make her better? And then Jenny remembered a scripture verse she had been taught as a child. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.
Jenny lay in the dark, pondering what that meant. It didn’t make sense to her. She had always been able to solve her problems by exerting her own will. She took pride in her ability to work her way through any difficulty and solve the problem with her mind and her knowledge. Jenny closed her eyes and thought about her childhood. It had been difficult, but somehow she had always found a way to get through the hard times. Or had she? She thought about what her mama had said to her that day as she told her the story of the quilt.
“Who knows what would have happened to you or me or your papa if God had not put us together? We all needed each other.”
Jenny considered those words. Her mama said that God had put them together and that their lives might have been different if He had not made them a family. As she lay alone in the cave, she began to see things in a new way. All her life she had believed that people made their own way through life—they used whatever talents they had to face each day and somehow make it through. But now she was beginning to see that behind her life, a hand had been guiding and directing her. What if the bad man hadn’t crashed the car? What if her mama hadn’t been out in the storm? What if her mama hadn’t made the quilt for Jenna, and what if she hadn’t had it with her to wrap Jenny in and save her? The quilt! There was something about the quilt that she needed to understand.
Her mama had told her that she had come upon the beautiful silk she used for the red rose by accident. But was it really an accident? All the pieces that made up the quilt were somehow like her life, stitched together in a perfect pattern, yet done so skillfully that even when she looked closely, Jenny had never seen how it was fitted together. It was just a quilt, wasn’t it? But as she thought about it, she remembered how difficult it was for her to even stitch, much less make a beautiful quilt the way her mama did.
Another stab of pain shot through her leg. She reached down and carefully pulled her right leg out straight. Her injured left leg was wedged against something, and she tried to pull it loose, but it wouldn’t budge. She gasped with the pain.
She had to get out of this place. No one would ever find her. It was up to her now. She reached out her hands and felt the walls that were close to her on both sides. She was in some sort of a narrow passage that slanted upward toward the place where a dim light was now coming in as the sun outside rose. She had slid down on the rocks when she was trying to find the matches to light the candle. She tried to sit up, but the pain in her side and leg was too much to bear, and she fell back.
She lay there helpless, and it occurred to her that all of the times that she had saved herself had only led up to this moment, and now she didn’t know what to do or how to get out of her predicament. She thought of what her mama had said—that she was stronger than Jenna but that Jenna had a special relationship with the Lord. And then, almost like an audible voice, the words came to her. My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
Like a light in the darkness it came to her. God had been waiting all these years for Jenny to place her complete trust in Him. He was the Master Quilter who had stitched her life together with her mama’s and papa’s lives so seamlessly and so perfectly that she had never even seen how He had done it. He had given her mama the quilt, and the story of their lives was written there. She thought about the quilt, torn and stained but still beautiful.
She could see it. God wanted her to let Him be Lord in her life, to put down her plans and her desires. Suddenly she realized that it wasn’t finding her real mother that would give her peace, it was finding Him and placing her life in His hands, letting Him wrap her in His love and care.
Just like my mama wrapped me in the quilt.
And again, like an audible voice, the words of a psalm her mother taught her came to her. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty…He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust.
And then Jenny remembered the wings, the feathers. She had been freezing in the car, and someone or something had come and covered her with something wonderfully warm that felt like…like…like feathers! And then Jenny knew that He had always been with her and that He had been waiting for her to see how much He loved her and cared for her and how much He wanted her to trust Him completely. And in that moment she put down her burden and spoke to her God.