I’d like to dedicate this post to some old friends I have recently been reunited with. They’re not ’old flames’, (although with the wonders of facebook anything is possible), but a box of collected trinketry I have been separated from for about seven years.
The teenage Vicki Adams was quite a hoarder. I used to have a ’special box’ for each year, where I kept random things that meant nothing to anyone else, but were invaluable to me. There was the newspaper clipping of the time ’Take That’ came to Northampton, the hastily scribbled notes that my friends and I passed surrepticiously in class, a postcard from ‘BC’, who was the bear who used to read out birthday cards on childrens television years ago, and much much more.
Most of these items were of little consequence, although I did like to look back through them from time to time, and I did have an awful lot of fun on the day I came to consolidate eight shoe boxes into one larger cardboard box (the clippings went, the postcard stayed). But I did do some hoarding that meant an awful lot more to me at the time.
Under my bed, or at the bottom of my wardrobe… somewhere like that, was a box of items that I began collecting when I worked in the cookshop section of Boots (fun days…). It was like a real life version of a game me and my sister used to play as small children, where we went through the Argos catalogue and wrote down the name, catalogue number, colour and price of every item we wanted to ’buy’ for our imaginary houses. (actually, looking back I think it was just an opportunity for me to obsessively classify things… I was a funny child!).
The first item in my real life collection, was a set of five coloured hi-ball glasses. I really liked them. They were red, yellow, blue, purple and green, and they were safely ensconced in a clear plastic wrapping that ensured I could burrow them away safely. I liked to hold them up to the sun and see the different colours. They were cheery things.
Then there was a kettle, which I don’t remember much about, except that it made me feel grown up to own a kettle, even if it was kept in a box and never used. It was its potential that encouraged me.
And then lastly, there was the toaster. And this I can describe in detail (if only because it is sat contentedly in front of me). It is made by Russell Hobbs, and is silver with a black base. There are lots of buttons on it and it has that funky, burnished metal look. (I have just discovered seven year old toast crumbs inside it too, so clearly the freedom toaster had more of a chance to fulfil its destiny before being consigned back to a box).
The best thing about all these items, is that I’d rescued them from the rejected ’sale’ items, in the aforementioned cookshop department. I don’t know why they had been overlooked, and I sympathised with them for their rejection issues, and then I rescued them. And I never paid over £6 for any of them. (I think the glasses were £2.50).
Anyway, why am I rambling on about my strange teenage penchant for collecting kitchenware?
For me, those items were really not about being able to make toast or drink a cup of tea. They sat in my wardrobe as a symbol of a time that I was hoping for but could not yet see. Rather than trinkets from my past, they spoke to me of my future, of new places and explorations.
Philippians 1:6 talks about God completing the good works he started. Every so often I would pull out those boxes, look at those items, and thank him that they were mine. I would pray about the good things I believed he was doing, even when I could see no earthly evidence of them.
And then God moved, and I moved, embarking on the explorations I had once only dreamed of. The toaster, and its companions, became symbols of prayers God had answered; Prayers he had answered in ways that were beyond what I could have asked or imagined. When I set off on my most far-flung exploration, to the frozen wilds of Oldham, I took some of the items with me, while my lovely friends offered to store the others away in a box in their cosy attic for me.
A few weeks ago, said lovely friends were doing some spring cleaning, and there, in their attic, accompanied by a near-exploded bottle of flash bathroom spray (I was clearly a conscientous, house-cleaning teenager too) and some tea towels, was the toaster. They asked me if I wanted it back, I think assuming that, seven years later, I would be well equipped to make toast and therefore we would not need reuniting.
But, I am still a sentimental soul. And even though my current abode is well equipped with bread-burning apparatus, I knew immediately that I wanted to see those items again. I wanted to be reminded of the ways God moved in power back then. How he answered my prayers and set me on a journey that has brought me so much joy and excitement over the past seven years.
So last week, I opened up that box. I wondered what I had been thinking about when I parcel-taped it up. I thought about all the things I know now, that I couldn’t grasp then. I thought about how this journey has had many twists I couldn’t have foreseen; but how God has been with me at every stage, as faithful and true as he was in the days when I collected cookware and could only dream. And I thought about how I wouldn’t swap any of those paths I’ve walked, how grateful I am to him for the lessons I’ve learnt and for the love I know.
And I celebrated. God is awesome.
