That cross has seen it all from my window: petty second grade worries, fourth grade giggles, sixth grade loneliness, eighth grade sisterhood. It has watched my walls turn from pink to blue and my hair change from long to short and my stories change from good to really good. It is always there.

It wasn’t easy to make. I sat in first grade Sunday school, in a poufy dress and little white shoes, trying to configure iron nails and copper wire and glue dots into a little cross. I struggled, but was determined to succeed. It was intended for the older kids, and I wanted to show that I was just like the mighty fourth graders. I asked the teacher for help (if I was to show I was like the older kids I’d need a little assistance), and she graciously bent down to assist me. Slowly, over time, each nail came together with glue to form a cross with copper wire. I held it in my small hands. My work was done.

I skipped up to the teacher to have a purple string tied to it. I swung it from its little thread, this thing I had made. I had done it. It was all me, it was all mine, it was my moment, and in that moment that cross was the most important thing in the whole world to me.

That day I went up to my room and hung it on the lock switches of my east window. I then changed out of my poufy dress and little white shoes.

That cross still hangs in my window.

I walk to my window and hold it in my long, skinny fingers. The nails are starting to slide out of place and the copper wire is pulling apart. The sparkly threads in the purple string are separating and poking out. I guess time has changed the little things, but left the important ones the same. The details of quality are faltering but the bones of what it is stand strong. In that big poufy dress, I saw the cross as an accomplishment, I saw it as a treasure, I saw it as a Sunday. It still stands in the same way. It was crafted by me, and I am proud. It was a beautiful little ornament, and I adore it. It embodies that Sunday school classroom, the teacher bending down to help me, that place of love, and I love it.
Today my feet would tear the little white shoes but I can cradle the cross. And the cross can cradle me, too. It can remind me what’s really important. Sundays. It can bring me back to who I was. That poufy dress, those little white shoes. The things we should never lose and never forget, it will replant in me.
That cross will be the same when nothing is.

That cross will always be hanging in my window. This I believe.