Mailboxes

I'm sitting out on the front porch, in my nifty rocking chair, waiting for Scott to get home from work. As I sit here, I can't help but notice that our mailbox is crooked. This is not a new realization. We have known it is crooked for some time now, and we know why it is in that subtle state of disrepair.

Our mailbox is a frequent target for wayward cars. Since Scott moved out here about 6 years ago, this mailbox has been hit by a car 12 times. The post has been shattered, splintered, and replaced several times. The whole setup - mailbox, post, and all - has taken more than one flight across our yard, and the most recent of which sent it sailing across our driveway and into the other half of the yard. The box has been run over, smashed, sent airborne, and attacked with beer bottles and baseball bats. The hole it sits in has been cemented over and over again, and while I desperately want to plant some flowers out there around it, I can't help but think that before long, they will probably die a violent and untimely death that has nothing to do with my own botanical incompetence. It is a sad state of affairs, let me tell you.

There are several strange things about this whole situation. First, if you've been to our house, hitting our mailbox seems almost physically impossible. We do not live on a curve; in fact, the road in front of our house is wider than in the rest of the neighborhood, because we live near the entrance and the road is widening to accommodate the median/flowerbed at the entrance. Second, the mailbox in question sits not 20 feet from a light post, which has never been hit in one of these crazed fits of mailbox destruction. There have been tracks in our yard that seemed to lead toward it, but veered at the last possible moment. Third, my dear husband - for whatever reason - has never replaced the box. The post has been replaced countless times, but each time it happens, Scott just pounds the dents and dings back out and remounts the invincible mailbox. I think it is a test of will, at this point, and I think (whether he would admit it or not) Scott is somewhat attached to the mailbox. They've been through so much together that it would be hard to let it go. Scott has even said that if we ever move, the mailbox is coming with us.

The most recent attempt at mailbox demolition came at around 6:00 in the morning a couple of weeks ago. Scott awoke to our neighbor calling and laughing, saying that she was outside with a lady whose son had just plowed over our mailbox. (The story was that the kid's windshield was fogged up and he couldn't see, and he hit the mailbox with his mirror. Now, call me crazy, but would a side mirror ever be low or strong enough to break the post off at ground level and send the whole shebang 50 feet in the air across our yard? I think not.) Cheryl - our neighbor - was not being insensitive; she merely recognized the humor of the situation. She has lived here longer than Scott has and has witnessed all of the violent episodes directed at our poor, innocent mailbox. (Prior to this last one, Cheryl's stepdaughter backed into it and - after a very nice job rebuilding it - the box was back in business.....for awhile.) The lady promised that her son would be back that afternoon to fix the mailbox, and Scott told her - you guessed it - that she didn't have to worry about replacing the mailbox itself, but that if she wanted to have her son build a new post, that'd be great. We got home late that night from cell group and Scott went out to check out the teenager's craftsmanship. Irritated, he came back up the driveway and said that the kid hadn't even cemented it into the ground. Scott had been able to pick the thing - post and all - up out of the humongous hole the kid dug. No concrete. After a week or so, Scott called the kid's dad and told him about the bad job his son had done and, well....long story short, the kid came back and fixed it with concrete.....sort of. Now it's concreted in, all right, but it's crooked. Crooked in two directions. Apparently today's youth don't know how to use a level, and that's where we are today.

Being the way that I am, I was able to come up with a spiritual application for this whole thing. The youth minister inside of me will not give up! This is what I came up with: We are all like my mailbox. We get banged up, broken, chipped, and on the verge of ruin, but God keeps banging the dents out of us. He never gives up on us or revokes the special calling He has on our lives. He never says, "Well, maybe I'll get someone else." He wants us, and no matter what happens to us - no matter how the world beats us up and sin tries to take us down - he keeps reshaping us and putting us back into operation. He never gives up on us and refuses to believe we could be so messed up that He can't use us. How great is that?