By Awara Fernandez

Annie, Want a Cracker?

I was in the kitchen finishing dinner preparations when I was interrupted by a sudden storm as my two-year-old granddaughter, Anna, shaking with fury, spit out her rage, aiming each word like a bullet at her mother, my daughter Kathryn.

“Why. Annie. Not. Have. More. Crackers.”
She sucked in her breath and let it out in a roar, blanketed in invisible flames, “NOW!”

Ah, I love this child, mirror image of my own heart, walking around on two feet. Her volcanic ferocity, always simmering, foreshadows a passionate intensity that, if used for good, will be world-changing. But, as a two-year-old, she didn’t know what she didn’t know, and that day her frustration bubbled up to the surface and spewed out, momentarily sucking the air out of the room.

Kathryn whispered to Anna, so gently, that dinnertime was near, and, surprisingly, this explanation did not satisfy Anna’s desire for more crackers! Anna knew little of nutrition, the need for a balanced diet, how vitamins and minerals are the tools that build healthy bodies.

But, her mother knew. And, her mother was committed to Anna’s good.

Like all of us who live here, outside of the locked Garden, my years have piled up loss, ranging from small disappointments to the larger, life-shattering losses of children, grandchildren, an only sibling. In the face of heartbreak, I have wept, and raged, and, launching myself at my Father, have driven a desperate stake into the unscalable mountain of His providence.* Because there is one loss that festers, and, even though I know this loss will be righted in heaven, I still hold a grudge, repeatedly returning to it and demanding,

“Why. Nana. Not. Have. This. NOW!”

As a sixty-year-old, I don’t know what I don’t know, and any explanation given by my Father, Job’s God, will not satisfy my hunger for what is missing. So, He does not explain, but instead whispers to me, so gently, that I know little of whirling planets, and star birth, and the song that light sings as it flashes throughout the universe.

But, He knows. And He is committed to my good.

*”The unscalable wall of His providence” as described by Dr. Michael Milton

About the Author

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