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And the Thief Wins! (Or if Not…)

And the Thief Wins! (Or if Not…)

Last updated on: July 13, 2017 at 9:14 am by Margaret Blair Young

And the Thief Wins! (Or if Not…) 2017-07-13T09:14:01-07:00 Margaret Blair Young

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We sit in our hotel room in Kinshasa, Bruce and I, and it is lovely. Oh, there a few little problems. Bruce has no change of clothes, none of his pills, and no underwear but what he’s wearing now. A thief stole my brother’s passport and visa, and we were all stopped just before boarding the plane from Paris to Kinshasa. Everyone was so sorry that Dell’s papers had been stolen. In fact, they were downright ashamed that humanity could stoop so low. Nonetheless, you don’t board a plane without papers, and your luggage cannot go on without you. Except that Dell’s luggage included one of Bruce’s suitcases. So Dell and the luggage were detained in Paris. They are still there at this writing.

Well, the papers will be straightened out, and Dell will join us in Kinshasa eventually, and none of us has any inclination to steal things. So we are in better shape than the thief, and we can be patient.

Years ago, I wrote about a thief who gets away with stealing a man’s reputation and his money. The man is Mr. Potter. These are my words from back then:

Are you bothered that Old Man Potter doesn’t get his just desserts in It’s a Wonderful Life?
I’ve been thinking about the “Happily Ever After–except that. . .” endings. I have had one or two Mr. Potters in my life–someone who has drawn my anger, invited my obsessive thoughts, and conjured my most malicious speech-making even during my dreams. Sometimes my Mr. Potter has humiliated me, but more often he has made life difficult for a loved one of mine–a parent, a sibling, my spouse, my children. It’s most difficult to forgive when the offense is continuous, when Potter STILL has our money or our reputation, and no angels are in sight.
As I’ve pondered forgiving Mr. Potter, I have found myself thinking, “As soon as he restores what he took, I can forgive this.” Usually, I would prefer (and envision) that the restoration take place after he has been made to feel the full impact of his actions and after I’ve found the perfect adjective to describe him–which I’ve uttered in dramatic contempt, and to his face.

What I have realized as I have considered the little thorns in my side and the Mr. Potters who had some part in putting them there, is that anger is faithless. The object of my anger becomes my god, because I am continually returning to it to mentally pronounce yet one more, better-phrased rebuke–the precise opposite of praising the Lord. I have left the true God and am paying obeisance to an image I have patched together from my own scabbed perceptions.

When faith is at my center, I understand that the outcome of whatever machinations Mr. Potter can set into motion will be nothing compared to the miracles of God. If I truly believe, I must somehow declare–even while I’m still bleeding–that God is yet my God.

I lie here on my bed in the Congo contemplating thieves and what they get away with. (The evidence is all around me in Kinshasa.) And yet, my solid belief is that everything works out, and that being frantic helps nothing. Will my brother be at the Kinshasa airport tomorrow? I don’t know. Probably not. I’m not timing this detour. Timing a disruption or insisting that God meet our demands by 2:00 tomorrow changes nothing except our level of frustration.

My beloved god-son, Aime Mbuyi, who greeted us at the Kinshasa airport, has taught me about faith. Five years ago, I helped him apply to BYU-Hawaii. Not only was he accepted, but he got a scholarship. A month later, he received another letter telling him that he was no longer admitted. It was a bad letter, an insulting letter, which I will not quote here. It was clearly written by someone who didn’t understand how consequential her words could be. She also didn’t know that Aime had an ally. I called upon a few of my connections and soon, Aime was offered admission to BYU-H–on condition that he be married. He did have a girlfriend, but her father considered her too young and was opposed to the marriage. Aime wrote to me that apparently, he would have to marry someone else, not the young woman (Steffy) whom he loved. If he was to get that priceless education–which had an expiration date on it–he would have to find a different wife. The next day, however, I had a new letter from him. It said simply that he was choosing Steffy over his education. The following summer, I attended their wedding.

Recently, Aime has been given an important church assignment as Facilities Manager for the soon-to-be finished Kinshasa Temple. He said to me, “I know now why I did not go to BYU-Hawaii. The Lord needed me to watch over His House.”

My faith has grown now for sixty-two years—from the time I recognized that my mother’s body produced something exclusively for me which calmed me; from the time I started recognizing the connection between sounds and sentences; from the time I wrote my first poem; from the time I got married; from the time my body stretched beyond anything I imagined possible to birth my first born; the time I knew in my every cell that God was real and that faith usually included waiting—and stretching towards Heaven.

I remember reciting the definition of faith when I was still a child: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). It wasn’t until thirty years ago that I connected that scripture with my actual life. I finally understood the words I had known since childhood. Darius Gray and I called the sudden appearance of needed information “manna” when we were writing our trilogy, and understood that we were getting help from beyond the mortal sphere. I began noticing the “synchronicities” in my life, the abundance of not-really-coincidences which suggested that there was design to my days, and that I was somehow being assisted by angels.

BUT IF NOT

Such a testimony can appear to trivialize suffering, of course. A dear friend lost her ten-year-old son to leukemia a month ago. Another friend is on hospice, dying of brain cancer. Yet another friend is plumbing the depths of grief in the aftermath of his grandson’s suicide. For them, faith includes different kinds of miracles–along with incomprehensible stretching. Sometimes the miracle is simply getting through another day. This scripture is theirs:

[O]ur God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. (Daniel 3: 17-18)

So, here we are in Kinshasa, missing one member of our team. My faithful guess is that great things will happen to my brother while he waits on the inconvenient paper work—and that the thief will get away with his thieving, and feel empowered to do it again, just like Mr. Potter.

Whatever the date be when we go to the Kinshasa airport to get my brother, I know that miracles will have been all around us. Seek and ye shall find. Seek things to complain about and they will multiply and eventually thwart your steps. Seek to open your eyes to a full vista of miracles and–ah! Bright stars!*

*(Not plagiarism, but Keats is always worth quoting.)

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