I remember her well.
A small girl engulfed in brothers who tackled her unbidden and unwanted. Scraggly hair, ever unkempt, flew through the wind when she spun in the falling leaves or raced back up the hill to ride her sled once more. Skinny legs ran wild through the sticker bushes, buttercups, and dandy lions and pushed her ever upward until the pine tree would bend. Blue eyes delighted in bike rides around the lake, towering mountains surrounding, drank in the flooding of her own creek, and looked towards the big rock to seek out her friend. Her heart loved the maple tree. It's golden leaves falling to the wet ground, the whirring sound of their helicopters as they spun, and the tappity-scrape of the branches against her frigid single pane window all soaked in, familiar and known. Dreams come true of horses and mud soup and picnics in trees filled her mind and the simplicity of a bell called her home for dinner. When time allowed, as it often did, she slept long or lined up her dolls, naming them again and again through random jabs in the worn baby name book, just to see what each new name meant. There's something in a name. Blackberries, salmon berries, and huckleberries grew at her disposal each year and she made pies, real pies, as soon as she could.
She stood beside the little creek bed, the one that was her own. Before many of these memories shaped and molded her, she stood. Perhaps five years old. She knew of God with the whole world in his hands and that he listened to little boys and little girls and everyone alike at the same time. And she knew that she needed a frog. Her older brother and the sisters two from down the street searched and they also knew that they needed a frog. They had the red wagon and the waterskeeters, two or three per bread-tied sandwich bag. But to make any money at all, there had to be a frog. There had to be!
Never in all of history, or at least her own, had there been a frog in their creek. In the boggy field next door, yes. But not at home. It ran too fast. They looked anyway where there had been none. She knew that God knew where all of the frogs lived and that he could bring one at any moment. She believed it. "We should pray!" And so she turned her back and prayed a simple frog prayer. "Ribbit!" came almost simultaneously with "Amen." "A FROG!!!" they all yelled. The brother caught it quickly as he shouted out, "This is the biggest frog we've ever found!!!"
A small child, a small bit of faith, a listening God who answers. She thought of God and knew, without a doubt, that he is in control, that he is real, and that he cared even for her concerns - a small, dirty girl standing on a creek bank.
She never forgot.
