Double minded Man

Are you a person who says they are going to do one thing and then shortly after you are doing another?

Look at the life of Pharaoh and king Saul to see what this looks like in the flesh.

Pharaoh would promise Moses that he would release the Israelites...when things were going bad [plague in full force], but when things began to lighten up...then he turned back on his word and went back to his old ways.

See how many times king Saul promised David that he would no longer hunt him down and try to kill him...he even told David that David was a better man then he...then the next thing you know king Saul is back to his old ways...hunting down the better man.

May the Lord grant us single-mindedness...that we would live our lives according to His word, and nothing less.

Don't Blink

It is amazing how fast time goes by.

You are walking along...life is big and you are young...

...then a piece of dust flies into your eye...

...you blink a couple of times...

...all of a sudden you are forty...

Happy birthday to my big brother...Lewis turned 46 today...

God bless you bro.

Love your brother, dale

The Lord of Death and Fish

The Bible shows us that Jonah was a type of Christ.

As Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and nights so too Jesus was in the grave for three days and nights.

It is amazing to see Christians getting sucked into the worlds way of thinking...its like a very subtle trap.

The unbeliever says "How could a whale swallow a man, it is impossible".

Then the Christian goes to show that it doesn't have to be a whale...it could be a great fish [and they are correct].

The point is, the Christian doesn't have to prove how a man can be "naturally" swallowed by a fish...God supernaturally "prepared" a fish to swallow Jonah.

In the same way we don't need the "Discovery Channel" trying to show how it is 'naturally' possible for a virgin birth to take place because Jesus birth wasn't a natural occurence...it was a supernatural birth.

Jesus resurrection was not a human body "naturally" coming back to life...God supernaturally raised His Son from the grave, in His glorified body.

So when the unbeliever says prove to me how a man can be swallowed by a fish, we must not lower our thinking to his...his thoughts are limited to the natural...ours are not.

God is the Almighty, nothing is too difficult for Him.

The Simple Life

Our lives are filled with choices.

Choices between things that are really important and those things that only may appear important.

Here's the catch.

The world will announce loud and long that the things that are really important [building the Kingdom of Christ] are only for the 'duhs' of this life.

Oh, but the things that are not really important? these are the things that Satan and world spend extra time making them 'seem' really important.

The result?

Relationships lag
marriages fail
children grow up in daycares
pockets grow full and hearts grow empty
everyone carries around a cell phone because they are sooo busy... but no-one has time for anyone else...face to face.
the church is left to slowly fall apart [but she won't because the Lord is still in the business of building her].

Its not too late...re-evaluate your choices...are they good or not.

If their not then don't cry over your coffee about it, confess your sins to God, and ask Him to give you the wisdom to make the right decisions in life...even if it means the world thinks your an idiot and your bank accound dwindles.

When you do thing out of a love for Christ and a love for your neighbor, others may think you are some fool doing something for nothing...but Jesus says you are investing in a Kingdom that will never end...depositing in a bank account that will never be stolen from.

As missionary Jim Elliot once said "He is no fool who gives what he cannot not keep to gain what he cannot lose."

Unclean hands or unclean heart

George preached at church this last Lord's day...it was a good message...on Mark 7...Jesus disciples getting raked over the coals by the Pharisees for not washing their hands according to the "tradition" handed down by the elders.

When Jesus quotes the Old Testament He is quoting Isa 29;

This people honors Me with their lips,
But their heart is far from Me.
7 And in vain they worship Me,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

When you read Isa 29 you see Israel in one of her low states...being idolatrous again.

What happens when you have a ship that has rebelled against her captain?

Mutiny!!

How would the rebellious crew view someone in their midst who balked at their agenda, and who thought they should serve the Captain?

The rebels would view this position as mutiny...mutiny against their mutiny.

When men set up their traditions it is usually with good intentions...but good intentions are not good if they are not founded on God's word.

Jesus was saying it is better to have dirty hands and not follow the idolatrous beliefs of the Pharisees, who exalted their own traditions above God's word, then to have dirty hearts, idolatrous hearts

Dirty hearts that manifest themselves by teaching and following traditions that are not supported by God's word...teachings that actually make void God's word.

Jesus says clean the inside of the cup and the outside will be clean also.

Have a clean heart and your hands will follow.

This is just a Test

We need to be aware that our culture has a very strong influence on us...it is the air we breathe. We have to constantly make the conscious decision to have our thoughts and actions guided by God's Word and not the surrounding culture.

I will give you a test on this to prove my point.

Before I became a Christian I lived a very wicked...even criminal life.

I have sold drugs, broken into peoples homes and stolen things, mugged people and the ugly list goes on.

But when I get to the place where I tell people I even murdered someone else...they look at me in shock...what is going through their mind is "why is this guy on the outside?"

But then I go on and tell them I actually didn't murder the person...I hired someone else to murder them for me.

Funny, the look on their face doesn't change a whole lot.

Then, I tell them when I was 17 years old I got my girl friend pregnant and we decided to get an abortion.

All of a sudden there is a change in the persons facial features...almost a relief.

There face says something like "Oooohh...so it wasn't like you dragged someone into an alley and shot them" type of murder.

All of a sudden people become "more" understanding...why?

Because our culture has accepted abortion...they really don't view it as murder.

But it is.

Hands Of Time [Chapter 16, last chapter]

As I sat at the dinner table that evening, I looked at my four beautiful children and thanked God for each and every one of them. Our supper table had six chairs around it, all of them filled with an occupant. When we bought our kitchen table the sales person threw in an extra chair, ‘just in case one got broken’, an added bonus. For convenience sake we had kept this chair in the corner of the kitchen, in case we had an extra mouth to feed. This evening as we sat, eating and talking, our youngest turned his head and asked me, “Dad, why do we have one extra chair that’s empty?” As I looked into his young, inquisitive eyes I thought I was going to explode. Emotions from deep inside my heart strained and struggled to break loose. How would I tell him that the chair was meant for the “unwanted” child? How could I tell my children of the sibling they would never meet, of memories that were never given the chance to materialize? How could I tell them of the child, who now would be an adult? As I looked at my children and remembered all the phases of their childhood, all the things we did, I simultaneously thought of my eldest child and his/her non-life, all the things that could have been and were not. I fought the back the tears like a mighty dam against a torrent of bashing waves against its walls. As I sat in the defense seat, speechless, no answer coming forth from my lips, my wife suddenly broke the uncomfortable silence with a message sent from above. “We reserve that seat for our most special guest, it reminds us that Jesus is always with us, even when we sit to eat.”
My wife gave us all her usual wonderful smile, not really knowing what her simple answer had accomplished in my heart. A single tear escaped from each of my eyes. One was a tear of regret for the past that I could never change, the other a tear of infinite gratitude for the One who had given me a new start in life, and had forever changed my future. As I stared across the table into my wife’s face, I noticed myself rubbing my wrist where time held me in its grasp, and nevertheless smiled the smile that only a pardoned man could.




Dale Callahan

Hands Of Time [Chapter 15]

Once again I found myself pausing outside a room in my own house, heart pounding, mind racing, arguing with myself what to do. I had to know the truth, I couldn’t just stand there, I had to open the door. I took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and firmly grabbed hold of the doorknob. I softly counted to myself, “one, two”, and then swung the door open upon the next number, “THREE”! My eyes must have been as wide as saucers as I scanned the room for intruders, my head swiftly moving from one side of the room to the other. After a couple rapid visual sweeps across the room I actually started to breathe again. From where I was standing it appeared that there was no one up in the attic. I looked at my wrist and simultaneously moved my right foot forward, noticing that there was no wire. As I moved unrestrictedly and easily into the attic I realized that I was now in the environment that I so earnestly desired, and struggled so desperately to be in last night. Everything was now calm and quiet; there were no intruders, no actors for the morning performance. I momentarily stood there breathing in the silence and again trying to decipher what exactly had taken place here a mere twelve hours ago. It all still seemed so real to me and so fresh in my mind’s eye. But then as I looked around for one last time, looking for any sign of life or movement [but finding none], I broke the solemn silence of the attic by declaring to myself, “it was only a bad dream”. As I started to turn myself in the direction of the door, to finally give the call for last curtain, that the play was officially over, my eye caught sight of something that caused me to pause. Hold that curtain! Sitting on the old couch was a thin black, hard-covered book, it seemed to be pleading with me to come over and look at it. I felt a nervous tension come over me as I started to walk in the direction of the book, the kind of tension a person has who senses that a well kept secret of theirs was about to fall into the wrong hands. When I finally reached center-stage I stood before the couch and looked down at the dusty book sitting on the worn out cushions. I bent over slightly and picked up the book from its padded resting-place and then substituted my own rear end down in its stead. As I sat on what used to have been my parent’s old couch I rested the book in my lap, just looking at it in deep contemplation. What was the meaning of all of this? In my lap sat my grade eleven high school yearbook. It had been many numerous years since I had leafed through its old pages. As I opened its stiff cover I knew what I was looking for even though I was reluctant to find it. My fingers intuitively began to flip the book’s stiff pages, passing over faces of friends, acquaintances, and even enemies of years long gone by. Then my fingers began to slow their pace as they approached their desired objective. My hands sat still, slightly trembling, when my eyes beheld a face all too familiar to me. I knew what her name was; all too well, but still checked the corresponding name that matched her picture, all the while tears began welling up within my eyes. It was her; it was the young woman who stood before this very spot last night. The girl so troubled with all the grief and hardship of last nights tragedy! I increasingly began to understand what happened last night, what the whole attic performance really meant. One last piece had to be placed in the puzzle for the picture to clearly portray its meaning. I flipped in the book to search for the young man. After a couple pages I was confronted with the young face of the boy who had been intruding in my attic the night before. As I looked at his face I squeezed my eyes shut in anguish, the agony of the truth piercing into my inner most being. A face, in whose image, I had seen a multitude of times before, but not for many long years. I pulled my face away from his so as not to be any longer reminded of the reality of last nights encounter. As my eyes left the book they pointed towards the lonely corner in which the young man stood last night, it looked somehow different; the mirror was now missing. I set the book down on the couch and quickly walked over to the corner to investigate the scene. When I reached the corner of the room I discovered the source of the noise that brought me up to the attic in the first place. The mirror had fallen from the wall and now lay unbroken on the floor. My heart again pounded as I picked up the mirror so as to replace it in its old spot. At first my concentration was directed primarily on the task at hand, getting the mirror back onto the wall. After a little bit of struggle and a few readjustments I finally accomplished my goal and the mirror was firmly anchored back into its old place. It was at this dreadful moment that my focus switched from reattaching the mirror to the wall, to the actual mirror itself. It was also at this very same time that I realized that the night before had not been a miserable dream after all, but was as real as life itself. I stood in the lonely corner of my attic staring into the mirror and the reflection of the young man stared back at me. It had not been a dream. The last piece of the puzzle fell into place, everything “clicked”, everything now made sense. As I stared at the face in the mirror, all I could keep asking myself was “what have I done?”

Hands Of Time [Chapter 14]

The next thing that I knew I had suddenly reentered into the land of the conscious, my body was extremely tensed, soaked with sweat, and I was instinctively slapping my bedside table on which my alarm clock sat, like I did every week day morning. “It was only a dream”, I whispered to myself as I wiped the sweat from my face. Once I muzzled the alarmclock I flopped my feet over the side of the bed, onto the floor, and just sat there for a second, trying to gather myself enough to stand up and walk. Why did I feel so tired, I usually woke up feeling refreshed? It must have been that horrible nightmare. As this first thought of the day was brewing in my mind my eyes caught a glimpse of the alarm clock, it was 5:26 a.m. The kids must have been fooling around with my clock again, I usually didn’t get up until 6:30 a.m. An hour early or not I decided to get up for the day instead of going back to sleep. Quietly I dressed and made myself presentable for the work world. I quietly tip toed downstairs not wanting to disturb the rest of the family. I crept into the kitchen and made myself a new cup of fresh coffee, the smell of it spread throughout the kitchen. As I walked out of the kitchen I spotted my captor of the day before, the grandfather clock, the time was 5:57 a.m. The house was so quiet, so peaceful in the early morning before all the little feet started to patter and the children’s voices began to echo throughout the house. I sipped my coffee slowly as I made my way across the living room floor to the front window. I looked out to the street to where my car was parked and mumbled under my breath, “was there a van out there last night”? After a couple more sips from my cup I turned to head back into the kitchen for some breakfast, when my eyes again were drawn to the time,
5:59 a.m. As I stood there staring into the clock’s face it suddenly dawned on me that something very strange was going on again. It could have been merely a coincidence but as I stood there burning holes into the clock with my eyes I very much doubted it. The times were exactly the same, only twelve hours apart! Every time I had looked at the clock last night he announced the very same times as this morning. Just as this new truth sank into my mind the clock began to gong, it was six o’clock. The clock struck six times then silence once again overcame the house. Just as I was about to laugh at myself for being so silly I heard a thumping sound come from up in the attic. As my feet made for the stairs up to the attic I could feel my pulse pounding in my neck, what was happening up there? I tried to convince myself that I was hearing things, as I opened the door exposing the stairs to the attic. I tried to tell myself that older houses shift and make all kinds of weird noises, as I cautiously made my way up the stairs. But when I stood outside of the attic door and light was creeping out from underneath it I was simply terrified as to what may lay on the other side.

Hands Of Time [Chapter 13]

One of my children lay safely in my arms, warm and sleeping. Suddenly I stumble, a horrible fall, and as I tumble to the ground, my child falls as well. My fall is merely to the awaiting ground, but the child falls through the floor and continues to plunge into the blackness below. As the child falls it screams out, “Save me, Daddy”. My arms flail out to grab the child, but grasps nothing but darkness and thin air. My arms continue to stretch towards the falling child, until the child is swallowed by the darkness.

Hands Of Time [Chapter 12]

As I lay in bed that night, trying to drift off to sleep, I could not stop thinking about what I thought I witnessed in my attic. Was there any meaning to it or was it a senseless daydream? Who were those two young people? Who was that little baby? As I asked myself these things I was reassured that it very likely had no meaning at all and it would be best to forget the whole thing. As hard as I tried to convince myself of this truth I found my mind gravitating back to these people. My mind inquired easily about the, ‘who’, ‘why’ and ‘where’s’ of the girl but I found that questions pertaining to the young man were far more elusive. I struggled, even to the slightest degree, to try and keep my mind focused on him. Every time I tried to think of him my mind would naturally slip away to thoughts of my wife and children, my work or other occurrences in my day to day living. Why was it that I could not seem to get a mental hold on this young stranger? My drifting thoughts about this young couple eventually caused me to drift off into the world of slumber. And when sleep finally overcame my tired mind and body it was deep, and dream-filled.

Hands Of Time [Chapter 11]

When I reached the front door I found it locked. My wife probably locked it trying to protect the children. I started groping in my coat pockets, in search for my house keys, when all of a sudden the front door swung open revealing the face of my wife. I felt my knees begin to shake as she looked at me with a peaceful smile, followed by a hearty laugh and the question of how could I have misplaced my keys from my car up to the house? I wanted to turn away from her, running and screaming into the dark night but instead I quickly calmed myself, laughed along with her and shrugged my shoulders indecisively. As I came into the house I noticed that I had my coat on, but how could that be, I had taken it off before dinner over an hour ago? My lips met with my wife’s and then I faked a smiled at her as I began to take off my coat. It was at this moment that I noticed that I no longer had the wire binding me to our clock. “Now, how did that get off” I asked myself silently? I felt my head begin to swim in confusion, my stomach was turning, why was I reliving all of this again, why was I caught in this rerun of events? Was I losing my mind or was all of this but a demented dream? As these thoughts filled my mind I saw my wife’s mouth open to speak to me. Before a single word exited her lips I already knew exactly what she was going to say. When the words came out of her mouth I had to keep my own from flopping open in bewilderment. According to some unannounced cue my eyes automatically turned to look into old grandfather clocks’ face and I noted that it was for the second time this day, 5:26 p.m. This no longer surprised me; maybe I was starting to nicely adjust to my new condition of insanity. Crazy or not I played my part, like a true actor, and told her I couldn’t remember why I was late and didn’t know where I had been. I again spoke my lines, with repetitive accuracy, asking for a few minutes to try and recall my whereabouts for the last hour. Even though this time I really did have an answer to this question. My wife looked deep into my eyes, smiled sweetly at me and then turned her face towards the house’s bedrooms and called the children to the dinner table. My children were not cowering under their beds in terror but were laughing without a fear before me at our dinner table and didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Not a mention of the events that went on previously, just hearty laughing, loud talking, and sloppy eating, like all earlier events of the evening had been erased from their memory banks. This time supper went by without a peep of a siren; there wasn’t any loud noises, any van, soldiers or any of the earlier events that interrupted our dinner. As the last of the children excused themselves from the table I heard the sound of the grandfather clock. He was announcing to all within hearing distance that it was now six o’clock. As the last bong of the clock faded into the annuls of history, I strained my ears, trying to detect the slightest noise coming from above. All of my most intense concentration could not generate the sound that I had earlier heard from the attic immediately following the sixth bong from the clock. As the children played in their rooms and my wife worked on one of her fancy art crafts, I sat at the supper table trying to understand what had happened earlier on. Was it a dream, was I losing my mind, I really didn’t know? I strolled over to the front window and looked outside, all that was there was my car, nothing else, no van. I felt my body begins to relax, it must have all been some hallucination or bad dream or who knows what.

Hands Of Time [Chapter 10]

How long I was unconscious I do not know? All I do know is that when I regained my senses all I felt was the chill of the cold sidewalk throughout my whole body. As I lay on my back on the sidewalk I could hear the sound of course laughing and then the closing of vehicle doors, the vehicle starting, and the vehicle driving away until its sound vanished into the black night. I could not move my body; it and my mind were numb, almost paralyzed. The pain that I felt upstairs, outside the attic, had returned with a vengeance and with double the intensity of my earlier attacks. The only sign of life that my body indicated was the involuntary heaving up and down of my chest as I desperately tried to catch my breath after my exerting race to this final destination point. As I lay on the ground with my eyes squeezed shut, I felt tears push their way out passed the corners my eyes and work their way down the side of my face, depositing finally in my ears. I knew that I would never see the child again, he or she was now beyond any hope of rescue, and my efforts were in vain, too late. I slowly opened my eyes and was confronted with a dazzling display of God’s handiwork, the billions of stars in all their splendid glory were shining on the black canvas of the night sky, and to think my eyes could only taste but a tidbit of this wondrous spectacle. I slowly pivoted my head to the side, so as to observe with my eyes what I already knew in my heart, the wire still binding my wrist. I continued to lie there in the cool night air, sobbing and staring at my wrist and its captor. I prayed with my whole heart that somehow I could be free from the restraint that held me steadfastly to the clock, knowing deep down in my soul that this wish would not be granted. If it were not for this bondage on my wrist, I thought to myself, then I very well could have had the chance to save that little child. But I knew that I was not free, from this impediment that bound me to the clock, and therefore also knew that no matter how great my desire was to save the baby that it was now too late. I moved my body into the seated position and stared at the empty space on the street in front of my house, the spot that just a few moments earlier was filled with the black van. Now, only thing that caught my eyes gaze was my own car that I drove home in. I struggled to stand up, my legs were weak and my body was aching from lying on the cold ground for too long a time. As I turned from the street my eyes fell upon the sight of my house and the thought of my own aches and pains vanished. My thoughts rushed towards my wife and little ones inside the house. My children were still hiding under their beds, terrified. My wife was probably beside herself in fear, thinking that the black van had taken me away, along with the child. As I hurriedly moved to the front door of the house I noticed that light was pouring out from all of its windows, all but one. The attic window was dark and lonely, there was no figure of a young woman there any longer, the light had been extinguished, and the window seemed tightly shut.

Hands Of Time [Chapter 9]

From an onlookers point of view I must have looked like a guard dog in hot pursuit of its mark, reaching the length of its leash before it had a chance to sink in its teeth. Instantaneously I went from what seemed like a hundred miles an hour down to absolute zero. For one moment I could almost feel the warmth of the baby in my arms, but in the next, everything went dark and silent.

Hands Of Time [Chapter 8]

As the young man stood at the window he was closer to me now then he had been earlier. With this closer position I could see his face more clearly now. Why did he seem so familiar to me? I was sure that I had never crossed paths before with this young stranger, who was now intruding my attic. So why then was there this fleeting thought in my head that I knew him, that I had seen his face somewhere or at sometime before? The answer to this question would eventually come to me but for the time being it would remain out of my mind’s grasp, like the proverbial carrot hanging before the working horse. In an instant another reality, one that was much more concrete and urgent, replaced this allusive thought. “The child”! I cried aloud to myself. The melodrama in my attic had reached its climax, I had been prevented from joining the earlier acts of this play but maybe, just maybe, I could be an actor in the last scene of this performance. Maybe I could prevent this play from truly being, from what up to this point was classic tragedy. Once again I bolted down the stairs, this time with a driving focus that fueled my body to move like it has never moved before. In a flash I had hit the bottom of the stairs and continued to propel past the grandfather clock, turned around the corner and dashed towards the front door of my house. I was moving in such a fast paced frenzy that I did not even have the chance to look into the face of Father time to see what he announced. All I could think of was reaching my front yard and rescuing that child. I would tell them that the child was not un-wanted, because I wanted it, and hopefully they would listen and understand. My forward motion was halted, only momentarily, as what I thought was my last obstacle to reaching the child stood before me. I quickly had to apply the brakes to my legs to prevent me from slamming face first into the inside of my front door. Once at the door my hands moved with lightening fast speed to unlatch the two locks so as to remove that seemingly one last hindrance to my final goal. Once the door was flung open, I shot out of it like a speeding bullet. The four men were slowly making their way back to the van; they must have taken a few last moments to finish their cigarettes and conversations before getting back into the van with the sole reason for their little visit, in hand. I saw the object of my hearts’ desire being held in the arms of one of these monsters and this only enhanced my bodies’ speed and my heart’s determination to rescue the baby. As I flew off my front porch I had only one thought coursing through my brain and that was the all consuming conviction that I needed to save that child. Within a blink of an eye I was upon my target, I was within a few feet of the soldier who was carrying the child. I stretched out my arms to grab the child, thoughts of victory pulsing through my mind, when all of a sudden disaster struck, and defeat was my only consolation prize.

Hands Of Time [Chapter 7]

The young woman inched her body towards the open window until her legs were pressed against its ledge. I again screamed for her not to do what she was about to do. But my pleas evaporated into the vacuum of expanse that lay between us. The girl looked down to the child, one last look, and one last goodbye. Her arms hesitatingly moved towards the open window, but move they did. Soon the baby was hanging in the black night air, its only support, was mothers’ trembling arms. “Drop it” I heard some voices call up, in unison, from the ground below. “Please don’t!” I again yelled to her. I looked at the boy and wanted to shake him for his unshakable selfishness. All he cared about was his pleasure, freedom, and future. It was obvious that no other player then himself, in this sad scene, was consuming his now so focused thoughts. As I watched what happened next I wished that the young girl’s arms were as faithful to their task as this blasted wire was that bound me. The wire would not let me go for any reason. In the blink of an eye the three became two, the girl stood at the window silently weeping, head down looking at the bundle below. Finally sensing that it was now safe to come to the girl’s side the boy pulled himself away from his lonely corner and moved toward her by the window. He spoke to her in an assuring tone, trying to convince the young woman that what they had just done was all for the best. I could not keep my mouth closed and barked insults at him. “What do you mean what ‘we’ just did”, I heckled. “You hid in your corner and made her do it alone”, I hissed with venomous contempt towards him. As I was about to open my mouth and let another torrent of hateful verbal abuse pour out, I noticed something that caused me to press my lips tight together.

Hands Of Time [Chapter 6]

Back at the window she stood, her eyes focused outward and down. She seemed to be looking at the small gathering on my front lawn. One of her hands left the child and reached out to grasp the handle on the window. Her face grimaced as she tried to turn it and open the window. “Hey, What are you doing”, I yelled? She acted as if she heard nothing. He also did not even flinch at the bark of my voice intruding their silence; his face did not waver from the mirror. Could they hear me, I wondered? After a moment of struggle the young woman took her other hand away from supporting the child and moved it up to help turn the window handle. To my utter amazement the child remained pressed to her stomach while she used both hands to manipulate the handle to the desired position. It was if the young girl was performing some incredible slight of hand magic act for a mere two man audience, one of whom was willfully ignorant of her every move and the other questioning his very own sanity. How the infant remained glued to the girl’s stomach while she struggled with both hands to open a window was a mystery to me. Then without warning the handle surrendered to the young girl’s manipulation with a loud crack. Her body lurched slightly forward and to the left, due to the sudden lack of resistance from the once sticky window. The young woman now momentarily paused, head down, thoughtfully gazing at the child in her arms. The young man had torn himself away from his earlier preoccupation and had his head turned to the side, away from the forward focus into the mirror. He was for a moment trying to watch her next move through his peripheral vision; his back was still to her. The girl lifted her head from looking at the bundle in her arms and turned her head to look over her shoulder, one last look to the boy. As her head moved across the room to observe him, his also selfishly moved, with masterful timing, back to its position of utter indifference, facing into mirror. With new tears in her eyes she returned her face toward the window. In utter silence both of them stood peering out through their own personal looking glasses. His gave him only a dismal view of his own inadequacy and because hers lacked the ‘silver lining’ it therefore only pointed out to the cold, dark emptiness. With resolve in her face she lifted her hand to once again grasp the window’s handle, momentarily pausing as if almost waiting to hear the boy’s cry to stop. In that split second I did not waste my breath but with all my lunges ability screamed for her not to open the window. Her arm was free to allow her to do want she wanted to, and that was to open the window. I again discovered that my arm did not enjoy that same freedom. I gave one last attempt to enter the room, but once again was foiled by that blasted clock. My doubled-over body stood erect in an instant when I heard new voices in this all too weird play that I had been observing. I knew immediately who these new voices were. They told her to toss down the bundle and everything would be just fine. I retaliated with a shout for her not to listen to their lies, and for ‘the boy’ to be a man and help her. Both of them ignored me.