Thought Bubbles

The Sunday paper arrives on the driveway each week.
I can almost guarantee its placement as the driver tosses it to each customer.
Like clockwork, it arrives wrapped in plastic; double-wrapped in the rain.

I was sorting through the advertisements, looking for the one from my favorite store.
I laid the coupons aside to look through later.
I stopped when I saw the comics.

There they were with the multicolored pictures, bright and cheerful.
The characters that many have grown to love over the years.
It brought me back to what seems like only yesterday.

My husband would always get to the paper first.
He would take out the comics and lay them aside for our youngest daughter.
She would get home from church, still dressed in her church clothes and read them.

Read them the way young children read most everything.
Laying on the floor, on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, knees bent, feet in the air.
Looking terribly uncomfortable to me, but the preferred position for her.

She had her favorite comics and sometimes I would hear her giggle as I prepared lunch.
Then one Sunday, the comics stayed where my husband left them.
The next Sunday, they stayed there as well.

She outgrew them.
Just like that; just like her favorite doll, just as it should be.
It still gives a mother’s heart that little familiar pain of growing up and moving on.

I looked through the paper and stopped at the comics, remembering.
I then I began to ponder.
What if my ideas, my thoughts, were in a thought bubble above my head?

What if my innermost thoughts were laid bare for the entire world to see?
What if the words coming out of my mouth were not the thoughts inside my head?
What if everyone knew?

What if my sarcastic comments were visible?
What if my nasty thoughts about a difficult person were in a bold font?
What if nothing was private and everything was fair game for the world to see?

For some strange, unexplained reason, I never liked red hair when I was a little girl.
It didn’t make any sense; no one I knew had red hair; I just didn’t like it.
When I went to elementary school, there was a boy and girl with flaming red hair.

They were nice, friendly, easy to get along with, but I kept my distance.
I never told anyone but I knew the reason why.
Oh, if my thought bubbles were above my head back then.

One day, coming out of church, the little girl with the red hair said Hi to me.
I ignored her.
My mother pulled me aside and said, Regina, you ignored that little girl.

I wouldn’t look my mother in the eye.
She grabbed my chin in her hand and asked me to explain.
She has red hair, I said.

I can see that, but what does that have to do with anything?
I don’t like red hair, thinking that was a logical reason for ignoring someone.
You will go over to her, apologize for being so rude, and tell her it will never happen again!

I did just that and the girl was extremely gracious.
But my thought bubbles…
I apologized; I didn’t want to hurt her, but I still didn’t like red hair.

If my thoughts could be read above my head, I would have been embarrassed.
Eventually, the personality of the girl was all I saw.
The color of her hair didn’t matter.
I grew to love red hair in others and now in the highlights of my own children’s hair.

My mother put it all in perspective for me later that day.
What if someone didn’t talk to you because you had freckles?
What if someone disliked you because you have brown eyes?

She had quite a few more “what-ifs” up her sleeve and each sounded more absurd.
Pray and God will help you when unkind thoughts came in your head.
I did pray, often.

I was so grateful that God was the only one who knew my thought bubbles.
He knew them and He loved me anyway.
I was so grateful that I could leave my thought bubbles in a safe place.

Today, my thought bubbles may not be as absurd as when I was in elementary school.
But then again, maybe they are!
It is comforting to know that God is the only One who can redeem us.
God is the only One who can redeem everything, even our thought bubbles.

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
(2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

Thought bubbles are known by God.
Thought bubbles are laid bare before Him.
If we are in Christ, there is no condemnation, no shame.

There is forgiveness.
Our life has been redeemed in Christ.
Even our thought life.

Praise God.