Finding the Needle in the Haystack Might Not Be So Impossible After All

So I wrote this for my English III class last semester, but I was just reading it and thought I might share it. :)

Finding the Needle in the Haystack Might Not Be So Impossible After All

I believe in doing the impossible.

Audrey Hepburn proclaimed: “Nothing is impossible. The word itself says “I’m possible!” Finding the needle in the haystack might seem impossible, until that needle catches a glint of sunlight or stabs you or until you filter through the haystack piece by piece to make a spectacular discovery. Difficult, but not impossible. No one claimed that doing the impossible would be easy.

No one informed Orville and Wilbur Wright that creating and setting an airplane into its vast arena would be a simple ordeal. But in 1903, the brothers achieved their goal. People assumed that sustaining flight was impossible. After all, humans can’t fly, right? Wrong. The Wrights made it possible, and sixty-three years later, America flew two men all the way to the moon and back. So much for “impossible.”

Around the time of Orville and Wilbur Wright’s feat, Helen Keller also achieved the “impossible.” Struggling with her deaf-blindness since she was two, she could not communicate as a child. Reading, writing, hearing, and talking were not possibilities in her early development. However, with the teaching of Anne Sullivan, Helen defied all odds. She read and wrote in Braille and communicated by feeling sign language.

As a five-year-old, I conjured a complete blueprint of my life. I would attend the high school wherever my daddy was employed, earn high degrees at Union University, ride off into the sunset with Prince Charming, and then teach deaf kids for the rest of my life. The needle was not impossible, not even hard to find. I grasped the needle in my hand, ready to follow the pattern I created and stitch my future together. Anything other than the one specific life I planned was impossible.

Suddenly, there was only one thing written on the blueprint of my life, glowing in red ink. It was something new, different, adventurous. Romania. After venturing to the place I soon called my passion two years in a row, doing anything other than loving on eight-year-old David, whose shorts were in shreds, five year old Denisa with scabs and scars on her face, and the two abandoned sisters Larissa and Tanya was impossible.

Recently, my parents informed me that I would not be journeying back to Romania next year. Heartbroken at first, I could not understand why I needed the variety they told me was crucial to become a missionary.

Slowly, I am learning why. People all over the world need someone to walk on the water and help them out of the boat. Why should I limit myself to the needs of one nation? There are people here, in Jackson, Tennessee, who need a little light shining in their lives. People who need a little glint of sunlight for the needle in their haystack to catch.

Out of over 500 trailers in Rolling Acres Mobile Home Estates, surely I can influence a few lost souls living in one of them. Or two. Or three.

Or, why not all 500? Seems impossible. But so did flying people to the moon.

It is not easy. Seeing the kids being influenced by the evil at Rolling Acres before being influenced by the good is not pleasant. But I will never, ever, ever give up, even when helping just one person seems impossible.

My inspiration to press on is my faith. Jesus walked on water, caused Lazarus to wake from the dead and walk out of his own tomb, and healed thousands from terminal illnesses. He was murdered on a cross, yet lived again and performed innumerable miracles. Please enlighten me if you know of anything more impossible than what this man did.

Matthew 19:26 says, “All things are possible with God.” The needle of my future is in His hands. He may very well lead me to do the impossible; learn to see and hear through my hands, fly to the moon, or maybe even walk on water. I don’t know. But I do know one thing. And that is that if I have faith, anything is possible.

 

 

 

~c.stookey