Seeking and receiving help to untangle life's struggles

Father Bill always said we are the real gifts, and during collection time, as we place our monetary gifts in the basket, and as the gifts of bread and wine are brought forward, we should place ourselves on the altar. We should place our struggles there, too, and believe they and ourselves, like the other gifts, can be transformed.

This past Sunday in church, during the collection, I did just that; during the presentation of the gifts, I gave God something I saw as a problem and asked him to transform it.

I also apologized for it being a pretty lame gift.

That was when I thought of four fourth-grade girls in my summer camp class.

Sofia, Lia, Elektra and Maro are inseparable best friends.

They are patient in waiting for each friend to be ready to leave when they are going somewhere. They are protective of each other. They stand up for one another and work to get good things and equal treatment. Their loyalty to each other is beautiful and admirable.

Each of these girls has a friendship necklace or two they wear every day to declare their friendship to the world.

There was one problem, though: Somehow, during PE and recess, the girls' necklaces always worked themselves into messes of tangled knots their little fingers and short attention spans couldn't get out.

The result? Each day of summer camp, I was presented with several knotted necklaces and faces begging me to please get them untangled.

There was confidence behind their pleading eyes, and no question in their minds that I wouldn't be able to get the knots out. These necklaces meant so much to them, and they were trusting me to make them right. I treasured and protected those necklaces as priceless gifts. After all, these girls were mine; If I couldn't do it, who would?

Their confidence in me made me determined; of course I could get these knots out, and of course I would.

They had given me one of their treasured belongings, a symbol of something that meant so much to them. There was no way I couldn't or wouldn't untangle them. They trusted me as competent and capable of getting all those stubborn knots out. And that meant everything to me.

This memory is what I thought about Sunday as I realized, of course God wants to and will transform all the things that seem like problems and struggles and fears, and how much delight and gratitude he must feel when we trust him to do this -- how great a gift it is to present him with things that seem knotted up and trust he will make them right.

After all, I don't think God minds untangling necklaces, either.