Windy Stormy, a feisty and mercurial eighteen-year-old girl, has a personality and character that is like unto a windstorm. Her most treasured possessions are all of her odd and unique collections. But she does not have peace in her life. She needs the Prince of Peace—Jesus—to become her personal Saviour in order for her to find that peace in her life. Will she choose Jesus, or will she choose a brand new collection to live her life for?
THE ECCENTRIC GIRL
By Mr. Morgan P. McCarthy
The eccentric girl, in her bedroom, stood in front of her full-length mirror, and she said, “Mirror mirror on the wall. I am the fairest of them all.” Her overmuch brown hair was her favorite feature. On both sides of her head were white ribbons along the top with a great heap of long straight brown hair two feet long, going down way past her shoulders on each side of her. Her white ribbon were about one-and-one-half feet long along these two bundles of hair, accentuating her comeliness. Today the eccentric girl again had on her favorite outfit: a long-sleeved argyle sweater with alternating black diamonds and white diamonds up and down, left and right, front and back, and all the way down both long sleeves; and a solid gray skirt of eight box pleats that reached nearly to her knees; and gray leather boots that reached nearly to her knees. “Windy Stormy, you are a very desirable woman,” said this eccentric girl to herself in the mirror. Windy was eighteen years old, lived at home yet with Mom and Dad, and had a cute boyfriend who thought of her as she thought of herself. What was it that made Miss Stormy an eccentric girl? It was her collection. What was her collection? It was collections.
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Her boyfriend said that “she collected collections.” And that saying was most pithy about Windy Stormy’s life. And she loved it. Further, the eccentric girl’s collections themselves were most eccentric, indeed sundry and diverse queer things that fascinated only herself.
And her true favorite collection was business reply mails—11,111 of them and counting for more than a decade and a half of collecting them. Satisfied with having admired herself in the mirror for now, Windy left her reflection and skipped up to her treasure chest in the opposite corner of her bedroom. This was where she kept all of her business reply mails. With happy delights the eccentric girl opened up the lid, and there they all were. In this treasure chest were twenty shoe boxes full of five hundred business reply mails each, numbering 10,000 in sum. The other 1,111 were all loose and scattered about in the chest. Her big brother promised her another shoe box just as soon as he would buy a new pair of shoes. “He better get me that shoe box pretty soon. I’ll tell you,” she said to herself with some impatience. And Mom promised Windy’s little brother to buy him a pair of new shoes pretty soon, also. But Windy went on to complain, “That still leaves 111 of my business reply mails all scattered and loose and messy in there.” Windy was upset upon having to wait for the two promised shoe boxes. She had started this most precious collection as a girl of two years of age. Remembering this, Miss Stormy forgot her problems and smiled in reminiscence. It all started because of Dad and a fun game they had together where she had to pick a hand of his two hands. Dad, that day, held out to her both of his palms. On one palm was a one hundred dollar bill. On the other palm was a business reply mail for Bell and Howell. The cash was significant. The business reply mail was just a ploy and had nothing to do with business for his daughter. He said to her that day, “Which one? Pick one of the two for yourself. And leave the other one of the two for myself.” The little eccentric girl did not understand money at two years old. Nor did she understand business reply mails in their meager value.
And in her simple decision, little Windy Stormy reached out and grabbed the business reply mail.
“That’s my girl,” teased Dad. “My eccentric girl.” And he gave her the one-hundred dollar bill as a
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compensation gift.
And Mom said, “She’ll grab a lot more of those in time to come. I’ll bet on that.”
Mom was referring to business reply mails. And she was so right about that. Now, sixteen years later, the eccentric lass had a treasure chest full of them. And they were her most prized possession. Recollecting upon all of this, Windy smiled in gladness. And she shut the lid to this treasure chest and sighed in happiness.
Next she looked up at the wall behind her bed and gazed upon her picture of “her unicorn ‘Snow-Eagle.’” This was the name that little Windy had given him when she first saw this photograph; albeit he was a unicorn without wings and not a unicorn with wings. In this beautiful picture was an all white unicorn standing upon a snowy ground and having his head lowered toward the ground and with his unicorn horn lowered and almost touching the ground. And Snow-Eagle became the first item of her second favorite of her collections—dozens and dozens of similar unicorn photographs—all beginning for her at age three. These unicorns were the work of an artist named Robert Vavra, and his works were neither drawings nor paintings—but instead photographs enhanced with trick photography. And now all four of her walls here in this bedroom had more space occupied by unicorn pictures than they had space between the unicorn pictures. Snow-Eagle himself she had indeed discovered in a unicorn calendar by this same Robert Vavra. On her fourth birthday she asked Mom and Dad to give her a white unicorn for a birthday present. But Mom said, “Unicorns are not real.”
And Dad said, “Unicorns are make-believe.”
And little Windy’s heart was broken.
Even today, now a grown-up, she still remembered her painful disillusionment of that revelation. For consolation, she now went ahead to admire all of “her unicorns” on the walls. Then she murmured and said, “Too bad God did not make unicorns for me.” Then she said, “He really should have done that.” And she groaned in disgruntlement.
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Next, she looked down upon her bed covered by over a hundred stuffed animals. Stuffed animals were her third favorite collection, begun for her at age four with a stuffed lion. Among the one hundred upon her bed now, her stuffed lion had her pillow all to himself. In sweet reflection, Windy Stormy remembered how it had all begun for her with this special stuffed lion, the first of this collection. Mom and Dad had taken the kids to the mall, and there was Santa Claus. Knowing what to do, little Windy Stormy ran up to him and sat down upon his lap and asked, “Santa, could I have a pet lion for Christmas?” She indeed meant a real lion. Mom and Dad did not know where such a request had come from; but Big Brother knew. Big Brother and Windy often watched the TV show “Daktari” together, and a real lion was one of the cast of the show. Santa did not know how to answer the unusual request from this eccentric girl on his lap.
After some thought, he did say, “Little girl, my elves will get to work on that.”
And little Miss Stormy believed.
That year for Christmas, underneath the family Christmas tree, the eccentric girl got a stuffed lion for a present. Though this stuffed lion were not at all like the real thing, Mom and Dad told her that real lions eat people, and she was no longer disappointed in the lion that she got. And she got to love her stuffed lion. And now, herself a young lady, Windy Stormy had amassed another ninety-nine stuffed animals to add to her stuffed lion in her number three collection in her life.
In girlish delight, the eccentric woman leaped upon her bed, herself falling upon her stuffed animals. She sat back up upon the animals. Lo, a stuffed unicorn, her second favorite stuffed animal, was on the floor beside the bed. It must have fallen off of the bed when she had flung herself upon it.
Of all things that provoked her to rage, things that fell made her the most angry. She stood up on the bed and said to God, “The floor is no place for my stuffed unicorn!” She stepped off of her bed, grabbed a hold of the stuffed unicorn that had fallen, and hurled it back upon the bed in wrath. And she blamed God for this crazy thing to have happened to her like this. And Windy Stormy was mad, like a
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windstorm.
The next day, Windy had another date with her boyfriend Flanders Nickels. She was down in the basement with him and showing him her glass apparatus collection. It was displayed upon a door serving as a tabletop, resting horizontally upon two sawhorses, one sawhorse at each end. She said in a good mood, “A girl need not to be a chemist to have lots of glass apparatus, boyfriend.”
“You’re right, girl,” said Flanders, admiring this unusual collection of his eccentric girlfriend.
He then reached out to pick up a beaker.
She snapped all of a sudden, saying, “Do not touch!” He drew back his hands. She then said, “Look. But do not touch.”
Staying patient, Flanders said, “Let’s see all of your hourglasses then, instead, girl.”
They went over to an opposite corner of this basement, and there upon a metal folding table were many hourglasses and many egg-timers. “These you may touch,” said the collector woman.
He reached out to a smaller hourglass with green sand, picked it up, and asked, “Does this measure to exactly an hour?”
She said instead, “You may touch these, boyfriend. But if you break one, you have to pay for it.” Then she said, “The one that you hold in your hands measures exactly to a half-hour.”
“May I turn it upside-down and see it run down?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Windy. “Let’s both of us look at it together.”
But before they could do that, the eccentric girl went on to pick up a tiny little hourglass, and she said, “I got this one at Shopko.”
“It looks almost too small to be called ‘an hourglass,’” he said to her.
“It is called ‘an egg timer.’” she said to him.
“How long does this run down until it is done?” he asked.
“This one runs for two minutes fifty seconds,” said the eccentric girl.
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“Is that how long it takes to cook an egg?” he asked her. “Two minutes fifty seconds?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know,” said Windy. She laughed kindly. And he laughed with her.
He then returned to the hourglass with the green sand, and he carefully turned it over and set it back down. “We’ll see if this one takes that long or not,” he said. And he got out his pocket watch and looked at the time.
“I’ll take this one with the white sand and see if it runs for a whole hour,” said Miss Stormy.
“That’s a bigger hourglass,” he said to her.
“If mine is an hourglass, then yours must be a ‘halfhourglass,’” she joked.
“If you think that that is clever girl, let me tell you that your egg-timer, according to math in my head right now, I could call ‘a seventeen-three hundred sixtieth hour glass,” said Flanders Nickels.
“Boyfriend, you were always better than I was at math,” she praised him in kudos.
“I always got good comments on my report cards on how well I did with fractions,” he told her.
Then she said, “Boyfriend, would you like to come and see my collection over there?” She pointed to the center of this basement.
“Ah, the collection upon the braided rug,” he said to her, himself already knowing this basement full of collections well. “Your tubes of caulking compound, girlfriend.” They forgot the hourglasses.
And they came up to a big suitcase resting upon its edge upon this basement rug. “Shall I open it up?” she asked.
“Let’s see them all again,” he said. And she opened up this big suitcase and set it down upon its side. “Oops, one fell out.” he said.
In temper, she cursed this caulking compound tube and pushed it down into the collection forcefully in frustration. Then she said, “Don’t mind me, Flanders. You know how feisty I get from time to time.”
Then she picked out one of the caulking compounds and held it in the air before her boyfriend.
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It had a blue and red label, and it read “Servess Caulking Compound.” Flanders spoke and said, “Ah, girlfriend—your first.”
“My first, Flanders,” she said. “And now the trunk is full.”
“I would say more like overfilled,” he said, teasing her about her latest scene.
“Very clever, boyfriend,” she said. “I had that one coming.”
“All of these caulking compounds and no two of them are the same,” he said.
“Collected from throughout Wisconsin,” she bragged.
“I know why you like this collection so much, Windy,” he told her.
“I told you. Did I ever tell you?” she asked.
“Uh huh,” he said. “Caulking compound tubes with their thin cylindrical shape and their narrowing plastic tips at the ends make then look like sticks of dynamite to you.”
“Boom!” she said in fun.
“Bang!” he said right after.
“Boyfriend, you know me better even than my family knows me,” she said.
“We’ve been boyfriend-and-girlfriend for some years now,” he said.
“Flanders, your girlfriend and dynamite have a lot in common,” she teased herself. “We both blow up.”
“But your explosions are bigger,” he said to her. They laughed out loud together.
“I wonder why God had to make me this way,” she said in apparent humility.
“You are a firecracker. I am a firecracker’s boyfriend,” he said in spoken thoughts of some discontent.
Then Flanders found an index card in between two caulking compounds in the big luggage case.
“I found another of those index cards again, Windy.” he said.
“Proffery must have put it there for us again, Flanders,” said the eccentric girl.
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“My best friend,” said Flanders Nickels.
“And my biggest brother,” said Windy Stormy.
“Shall I read this one, too?” asked Flanders.
“Do you have to?” she asked.
“I must do it for him,” said Flanders.
“Read it to me, boyfriend. Then throw it out,” she said.
And Flanders read out loud what Proffery had written for Windy on the index card: “’There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked.’ Isaiah 48:22.”
“Proffery really thinks that I am wicked,” said the eccentric girl with much bitterness.
“You are not a wicked woman, Windy,” exclaimed Flanders.
“I know that. But try telling a born-again Christian that,” said Windy Stormy.
“I do not know Jesus like Proffery does, either,” said Flanders. “But he is definitely full of peace in all things that come upon him in life.”
“How can Big Brother do it?” asked the eccentric girl in frustration. “When God’s wind messes with my hair, I let Him know it. But God took Proffery’s beloved St. Bernard out of his life, and what did he do? He said, ‘Thy will be done, O Good Lord.’ And he never did get around to blaming God for that. And he loved that big dog.”
“It sounds like my best friend must have God indwelling him, girlfriend,” said Flanders.
“Proffery says that you are wicked, too,” said the eccentric woman, trying to set her boyfriend against her brother with an accusation.
To this, Flanders said, “Let him think what he wants to think. I cannot change the mind of a born-again believer living for Christ.”
“Where can I find my peace?” asked the eccentric girl.
“If only I could find what Proffery found,” lamented Flanders.
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Just then the eccentric girl spoke and said, “My hourglass…and yours, Flanders.”
‘We forgot about them,” he said.
“We wanted to time them,” she said.
He looked at his pocket watch. She looked at her basement clock. And both ran to that table back there. Both hourglasses were already quite run down, and it was too late to measure them.
“Rats,” said Flanders.
Windy Stormy said a much worse word.
And the eccentric girl said, “This date down here was a bust.”
“I’m sorry, Windy,” said Flanders. And they ended this date for the day in disappointment.
But the next day, the eccentric girl called her boyfriend and apologized to him for the previous day and asked him out for a date in her attic, where she had more collections to again share with him.
And he forgave her and accepted the invitation. And he joined her in the attic for another date.
Here in the attic of the eccentric girl’s parents’ house was a dark wooden book rack resting upon a dusty table of light wood in a corner where the ceiling rafters came together in a low place. “I know this collection,” said her doting boyfriend.
“All of my lighthouse books!” she sang out.
“A whole little shelf of them,” he said in anticipation.
She told of some of the books by saying, “Great Lakes lighthouses up here in our area and East coast lighthouses in America and West coast lighthouses also in our good old U.S.A. and Mediterranean Sea lighthouses in Europe and lots of other lighthouses from other parts of the world, Flanders.”
“These books show not only the outsides of lighthouses, but also the insides of these lighthouses, girlfriend,” he said. “What books!”
“My favorite books in the house,” she said.
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“You know more about lighthouses than anyone else I know of,” said Flanders.
“Let’s go see the Algoma lighthouse in my book of Wisconsin lighthouses, boyfriend,” said the eccentric girl.
“That’s the closest lighthouse to here, I think,” said Flanders.
Windy Stormy, in her zeal, pulled out this book so eagerly that she bumped the back of her hand against a wooden rafter in this corner. She said in discontent, “I’m cut all of a sudden, Flanders. Just like that I cut my blooming hand!”
“Is it bleeding bad?” he asked.
She looked at it for a short while and said, “I’m not bleeding.”
“That’s good,” he said.
“But it hurt, Flanders!” she yelled at him.
“Does it still hurt?” he asked.
“No,” she snapped. “I’m all right now.”
“Well, let’s go see and read about the Algoma lighthouse in your book,” he said.
She turned to the page and, lo, an index card put there by Proffery. “Another sermon from Proffery,” said Flanders in mixed emotions.
She took the index card, and she read it out loud to the both of them, “’But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.’ Isaiah 57:20-21.”
“Proffery cares for you, Windy. And Proffery cares for me,” said Flanders.
“I have peace! I have peace!” yelled Windy Stormy.
“No. You do not,” said her boyfriend. “And I do not, either.”
“Where can a decent girl go to find her peace of mind?” asked the eccentric girl in great agitation.
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“Girlfriend, it cannot be found,” said Flanders with woe.
“I’ll find it if it kills me,” said the eccentric girl.
“Let’s read about the Algoma lighthouse and forget about our problems,” said Flanders.
“I don’t feel much like reading about that blasted lighthouse anymore,” said Miss Stormy with a pout. “Let’s look into my maze books now, instead.”
“Your maze book collection is just beginning,” he said.
“Barnes and Noble has lots of maze books for me to buy,” said Windy.
“I’ve seen these mazes of yours,” said her boyfriend. “Some of them are really hard.”
“Boyfriend, when it comes to mazes, what is a hard maze to you is an easy maze to me,” bragged the eccentric girl.
They both went over to a metal magazine rack fastened to the wall by brackets at eye level. Here were ten maze books, all of them started, but not finished.
Flanders asked her, “Windy, did you ever get around to going ahead and coloring your mazes?”
“You mean that time that I said I would put a crayon to the done ones and fill in the lanes that I had already put a pencil line through?” she asked. He nodded. And she said, “I changed my mind about that. A girl like myself does not have time to do all that.”
“Too many other collections,” he said.
“A woman can never have too many collections,” snapped the eccentric girl at her boyfriend curtly.
“I’m sorry for having said that,” said Flanders.
“And so am I,” said Windy, offended. She then went on to say, “This maze is the hardest one in the world, Flanders.” And she showed him a maze that folded out from the magazine’s pages and spread out into a maze the size of four pages. “Look into this maze, Flanders.”
He looked into it, and he said, “A man can get dizzy staring down upon all of those walls and all
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of those lanes.”
“But I got it done!” bragged the eccentric girl. “Yours truly does not quit. I started it, and I finished it. That’s what I did.”
Then he noticed words written in the margins of this big maze in pencil. “What are these?” he asked. “Why, these are bad words.”
“I kept getting stuck with wrong turns, and I got mad, and I wrote down swear words,” she said.
“Whoa!” he said.
“They shouldn’t make mazes so hard,” she complained.
“Was it fun, though?” he asked.
“It was fun for a while, but then I made a wrong turn, and everything got worse after that, Flanders,” said Windy.
“Windy, sometimes you try to do fun things, but you lose it, and it is not fun for you,” said Flanders.
“That’s the story of my life,” she said.
“You got mad when we played cards yesterday,” he said in unforgiveness.
“I was winning, and all of a sudden I lost, and the game was over,” she said.
“You’re a sore loser,” he said.
“That’s only because you are a sore winner,” she chastised him. Then she said, “You may go now, boyfriend.” This date came to an abrupt end. And Flanders left for the day. He would be back tomorrow when the eccentric girl was calm and rational again.
And in revenge, Windy said to her boyfriend who was not here, “Flanders, these words are for you:” And she read out loud her curse words off of the page that were originally meant for the maze that had gotten the best of her.
The next day, the two got together in the spare room, which was upstairs. In here was a brick
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chimney from floor to ceiling. Flanders and Windy were standing around this chimney and admiring her little bell collection. Four little boards, measuring twelve inches by four inches were attached to the bricks of this chimney at about eye level. There was one such slat for each side of the four-sided chimney. And each shelf held four metal bells of various colors—some gold, some silver, some bronze, some brass, some copper.
“Flanders, could you make me feel good right now?” she asked.
“The bells make you feel good, girlfriend,” he said to her.
“Ring some for me,” she asked him.
He picked up a bell, and he rang it for her.
“Ah, a semblance of peace in my heart,” she did say.
“Do these bells fill you with good peace, Windy?” he asked.
She said, “Do not stop ringing the bells.” These bells were the one collection that brought her long-sought-for peace to her mind. Flanders continued ringing her bells.
He said, “These bells do make a nice music, girlfriend.”
“Do not talk when the bells are ringing,” she said to him. Flanders continued ringing her bells. Then she felt a wave of peace begin to leave her from within. She knew what would happen next. It happened this way every time she or Flanders rang her bells. Truly her peace was leaving her heart again, despite the ringing bells. She broke in upon the music of the bells and adjured her boyfriend, “Ring them a little louder!” He rang them a little louder. She said, “Ring them a little longer!” He rang them a little longer. She said, “Do two at once!” He picked up another bell and did ring two bells at once. Then she squeezed the sides of her head in both hands and cried out, “It’s gone. It is all gone now.” He did not stop ringing the bells. And she said rudely, “You can stop now, Flanders.” And he stopped. All was quiet in this spare room, but all was not quiet in her spirit.
“Windy, you look like you’ve been in a fight,” he said in cares for her.
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“Another fight which I lost, Flanders,” said the eccentric girl.
Flanders said, “These bells worked for you for a less time this time than they did for you last time.”
“Each time, my bells work for me less in both length and in intensity than they did the time before,” she said dolorously.
“I’m sad to hear that,” said Flanders.
“I’m a goner,” she said in sorrow.
Just then her boyfriend found a little white piece of paper set underneath a bell with a unicorn for a handle. “Look, Windy. It looks like another index card from your brother,” said Flanders. “I think that the both of us need to read what God has for him to say.”
“Go ahead and read it for me,” said Windy Stormy. “Whatever he says about Christ cannot be as bad as the discouragement that I feel now from the bells.”
Flanders Nickels took up this index card and read it out loud for the both of them: “’For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called…, The Prince of Peace.’ Isaiah 9:6.”
“There’s that blasted ‘peace’ again in a Bible verse from Big Brother,” said the eccentric girl.
“Not only ‘peace,’ Windy, but a ‘Prince of Peace,’” said her boyfriend upon having read this.
“This Prince of Peace has to be Proffery’s Jesus,” said Miss Stormy.
“Isn’t this that famous Christmas verse?” asked her boyfriend.
“Is it?” asked the eccentric girl.
“I think it is,” said Flanders. “He put an ellipsis in the verse. That means that there is more to this verse that is not written down on the card. Is there a Bible around here for me to look it up?”
“When Proffery still lived at home here, he had Holy Bibles in every room of this house,” said Windy. “But, even now that he is moved out and living on his own, we still have too many Holy Bibles
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lying around here. Big Brother left one of his Bibles here in this spare room for himself for when he visits us.”
“Where in here?” asked Flanders.
“In the spare room closet, on a high shelf in the back,” she said. “What do you have to look into the Bible for?”
“I want to check out this Isaiah 9:6, as he calls it, and find out if he has his facts straight about his Christ being ‘the Prince of Peace,’” said her boyfriend the other reason he wanted to look it up.
“Go and do that,” said Windy Stormy. “Do that for the both of us.”
Flanders Nickels found the Bible, searched the Scripture long and hard with his ignorance of the Good Book, and finally found the Christmas verse that was written on the index card.
“What’s it say? Was Proffery right? Is Jesus really called ‘the Prince of Peace?’” asked the eccentric girl.
“Indeed much more than that even, O Windy,” said her boyfriend. “In this verse He is also called, ‘Wonderful’ and ‘Counsellor’ and ‘The mighty God’ and ‘The everlasting Father.’
“All of those titles for one Man!” said Miss Stormy. “And we do not know Him like Proffery knows Him.”
“Who better to give us both peace than this Prince of Peace Himself, girlfriend?” asked Flanders Nickels.
“He surely gave it to Proffery, boyfriend,” admitted the eccentric girl.
“But He never gave it me,” said Flanders.
“Nor did He ever give it to me,” said Windy Stormy.
“Maybe a guy or a gal has to ask this Prince of Peace for peace,” said Flanders, thinking out loud with her.
“That sounds too easy,” said Miss Stormy.
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“Yeah. It does,” concurred Flanders.
“Let me show you my other collection in this spare room, Flanders,” said the eccentric girl, changing the subject.
“Your pencil collection,” he said to her.
“You know my rooms and their collections, boyfriend,” she said, her spirits lifted for now.
“Let’s see your Dixon Ticonderogas, my eccentric girl,” said Flanders Nickels. And he said, “In the desk next to the staircase, right upper drawer, totally filled to the top with pencils.”
“I know that, Flanders,” she said with a grin. He grinned back. “And all of them sharp, too, at that,” she added in brag of her myriad of yellow pencils.
She came to her desk, pulled open the pencil drawer, reached in her hand to the pencils within, and turned back to Flanders and said, “Just take a look at this!”
Suddenly Windy cried out, “Ouch! Ow!” And she cursed goodness. And she held up her hand before Flanders. And she winced in pain. What an accident!
Behold, a sharp pencil had impaled her hand and was stuck there in her palm. It was in her hand up to the where the pencil lead met the pencil wood. At first Flanders was speechless. As for Miss Stormy, she was too enraged to speak. Instead she went ahead and had her most vicious temper tantrum that her boyfriend had yet seen from her. With a little pull on the pencil with her other hand, she at once pulled out the pencil from her wounded hand. And with one mighty act of vengeance, she grabbed a hold of this opened desk drawer in both arms, marched to the window, and hurled this drawer of pencils right through it with a shattering of much glass, and looked down upon these hundreds of pencils and their desk drawer down upon the ground outside two stories below.
In a shock at seeing this angry young woman at her worst, Flanders Nickels trembled and said, “I’m afraid of you, Windy.”
And she said, “Then you better not do to me what that one did to me.”
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Windy Stormy was a tornado inside right now. Because of one pencil.
“Windy, do you know what you just did?” he asked.
“I got rid of the enemy,” she said.
“You just took away out of your life one of your own collections!” he exclaimed.
“I did. Didn’t I?” she said. “Serves it right.”
“You’re a crazy lady,” he said to her.
“Crazy? No. Lady? Yes,” said the eccentric girl.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
“My bloody hand!” she said with a snarl. “The things that God brings into people’s lives! I tell you!”
He went and got a bandage and put it on her wound. The bleeding stopped. And the pain was slight.
“Thank you, boyfriend,” said the eccentric girl. “I think that I am all right now.”
“What will become of the window that you broke?” he asked.
Mom will find out. She will tell Dad. And Dad will make me pay for a new window up here,” said Miss Stormy.
“Wild girl!” he said to her.
“I can’t help myself,” she apologized to him.
And this date ended with a discomfiture. She would make it up to him. She would do him good for having shown him her evil. And she had just the right idea to reconcile them together once again.
The next day was Flanders’s birthday. She would give him the best birthday present that she thought to give him. And they got together for his birthday at his place in the living room. She made sure to bring with her his present, all wrapped up in wrapping paper and ribbons and bows. They sat
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next to each on the living room sofa. She said, “Happy Nineteenth Birthday, Flanders,” And she gave him his birthday present. The tag read, “To: My only boyfriend ever. From: Your only girlfriend ever.” And he opened it up. It was a little wooden box with a sliding top, measuring about six inches wide by three-and-one-half inches long by two-and-one-half inches tall, and had a label reading, “Fresh Atlantic Codfish.”
He shook it. It did not sound at all like codfish in this little box. “What’s in here, girlfriend?” he asked, enjoying this happy moment between the two.
“It sure isn’t codfish, boyfriend,” she said with a giggle.
He then slid open the wooden lid to see what was in here. Lo, a box full of sardine can keys!
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“Sardine can keys!” he exclaimed in awe.
“Yeah!” she said with a nod of her head.
“This is one of your own collections!” he said.
“I was thinking about what to give you for your birthday, and this was what I thought up,” she said.
“You have never given away any of your collections before,” he said in great honor. “I must be extra special to you to get a real collection of yours for a birthday present!”
“I care about you, Flanders, and you care about me,” said the eccentric girl.
“Thank you! Thank you!” he said, duly flattered by this gift from the heart. “I do care for you, and you do care for me.”
In the magic of the moment, the two got to wrestling each other on the sofa in romance. In the end, the guy pinned the girl on her back upon the three cushions. And then they stopped their roughhousing and went about to put the sofa cushions back on the sofa.
“That was fun!” said the eccentric girl.
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“You wily vixen,” he said in flirt.
“I’m a vixen,” she said, enjoying the word.
Then Flanders saw a white index card resting upon the carpet in front of the sofa. Windy saw it right after. “That must be from Proffery,” said the eccentric girl.
“It wasn’t there before our roughhousing,” said Flanders.
“It must have fallen out from between the sofa cushions,” said Miss Stormy.
“I have to see what good Proffery has to say for us,” said Flanders.
“Do read it for me, too, boyfriend,” said Windy.
And he picked it up and read it out loud to the both of them on the sofa: “’Now the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means. The Lord be with you all.’ II Thessalonians 3:16.”
“There’s another of those Bible verses that talk about peace,” said Windy Stormy.
“Peace,” he said in contemplation.
“I have peace now after how today is going for me,” said the eccentric girl.
“I have peace today because it is my birthday and everything is going good for me,” said Flanders.
“It is so good when things go well,” said Miss Stormy.
“I know what you mean,” said Flanders.
“It is when things do not go well when I do not have peace,” said Windy.
“The same for myself,” said Flanders.
“But much more so with myself,” confessed the eccentric girl.
“For Proffery, he has peace even when things do not go well for him,” said Flanders.
“He says that when trials come his way, that he starts to think about his eternity waiting for him with Jesus Up in Heaven,” said Windy. “And that is what gives him peace in bad times.”
“Neither one of us wants to be with Jesus—even Up in Heaven,” confessed Flanders.
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“Born-again Christians think one way. You and I think the opposite way,” said the eccentric girl.
“Our happiness depends all on our circumstances,” said Flanders in rumination. “But Proffery’s happiness is fixed on God, Who will not fail him. He calls this his ‘joy in the Lord,’”
“Whatever his God-given joy might be, it sure works better for him than our circumstances do for us,” said Windy Stormy.
“We ‘build our houses on the sand.’ And Proffery ‘builds his house on the rock.’ When the floods of trials do come our way, Windy, our houses are carried away from our foundation. When the floods of trials come Proffery’s way, his house stays strong and firm on his foundation,” said Flanders.
“Where did you get that?” she asked. “Proffery must have been preaching to you,”
“It was Proffery,” said Flanders. “He knows so much about the Lord.”
“I think that I know what that is all about,” said the eccentric girl. “I think that Proffery has found the peace that you and I never found, because he makes Christ his Lord and Master.”
“I dare say, Proffery goes and says much more, Windy,” said Flanders. “Proffery tells me that making Christ one’s personal Saviour is the difference between Heaven and Hell.”
“The difference between Heaven and Hell?” asked Windy Stormy.
“Uh huh,” said Flanders. “That’s what Proffery tells me.”
“Heaven must hopefully be better than it is down here, boyfriend,” said the eccentric girl. “Do you think that Hell will be much worse than it is here on Earth?”
“Heaven will be a perfect place of perfect peace, according to Proffery,” said Flanders. “About Hell, I dare not guess.”
“If there is fire in Hell, and I go there, I will never find a moment of peace for myself again,” cried out Windy.
“Maybe the two of us should start thinking more about where we are going, and less about how
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to go and find our fun in this life,” said Flanders Nickels brand new things.
“We need to see Proffery and get ourselves saved,” said the eccentric girl.
“Right now, would you say?” asked Flanders.
“Soon,” said Windy Stormy in hesitation.
“Tomorrow,” said Flanders.
“Soon,” said Windy again in noncommittal reply.
“One of these days,” said Flanders.
“Soon,” agreed Miss Stormy.
“Soon,” agreed Flanders. And their birthday celebration date ended. He thanked his girlfriend for all of these sardine can keys. And she left for the night.
The next day, Windy and Flanders had a date walking down the Fox River Trail togethe. Flanders said, “I’m glad that we don’t have to pay in order to walk down this trail.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Bicyclists have to.”
“What wind came upon town last night in the middle of the night, girlfriend,” said Flanders.
“Mom and Dad were picking up sticks in our yard this morning,” said the eccentric girl.
“Did your power go out?” he asked.
“No. How about yours?” she asked.
“My power did not go out, either,” said Flanders.
“Boyfriend, just look at all of the sticks lying around on this trail,” she said.
“There’s a stick over here, and there’s a stick over there. They are everywhere,” he said.
The eccentric girl then picked up a stick, looked at it, and held it against her breast. She then picked up a second stick, looked upon it, and held this against herself as well. And she did the same thing with a third stick, hugging them all in sweet admiration in her arms.
Knowing his eccentric girlfriend, Flanders asked her, “Windy, is this the birth of a new
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collection that I see happening right now?”
“My new stick collection, boyfriend,” sang out Windy in jubilation.
She went on picking up sticks and filling her arms full of them.
Then she stood up straight from her work, and she asked him, “Aren’t you going to help me pick up sticks, Flanders Nickels?”
“A man needs to help his damsel in distress,” he said. And he bent down and began to pick up sticks for her.
After a while, the eccentric girl’s both arms began to drop a stick here and a stick there in her work. She was losing her collection of sticks. And things were falling down. And everything was going out of control for her. And she stopped her work in dismay and cried out, “Help me, Flanders!” He, being a man, might have the answer to her problems.
He came up with a great idea right away, saying to her, “Why not use your skirt, Windy?”
Yes! Miss Stormy could use her skirt to take home all of these wonderful new sticks! Her skirt could serve as a basket for these sticks, with her both hands holding up the edges of her skirt outward away from herself. Very grateful, she said to him, “Love you, Flanders!” And he helped her to dump her armfulls of sticks down upon her spread out skirt where she stood. And the problem was resolved. And the eccentric girl was happy again.
Flanders then asked, “Do you have a special place picked out at home yet where you will put your new collection of sticks?”
“I know that Mom will tell me, ‘Sticks do not belong in the house.’ And Dad will say to me, ‘I do not want sticks in the yard getting in the way of the lawn mowing.’ So I think that I will put this new collection in the garage,” said the eccentric girl.
Now Flanders’s arms were full of sticks.
Then Miss Stormy saw a stick upon the yellow painted line of the paved trail with a white index
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card underneath it. Flanders saw a look from his girlfriend as she stared down upon it. And he looked and saw what she was seeing now. Both walkers could tell that Proffery had been here to do his work for God.
Flanders said, “I told Proffery where you and I were going on our date.”
“I did, too,” said Windy. “He is persistent and clever.”
“My arms are full of sticks, and I cannot reach down and pick it up,” he said.
“My skirt is full of sticks, and I do not have a free hand to grab it up,” she said.
“We both need to read what he has to tell us,” said Flanders.
“The only way that either of us can do that is for us to drop all of my sticks to the ground and get at that Bible verse down there,” she said.
“I could do that for Proffery,” said Flanders.
“I don’t want you to do that,” said the eccentric girl. “Right now my new collection is more important than a verse from the Bible.”
“In that case, I will try to get at it with my feet,” he said.
“You do that,” she said. “And do not drop any of my sticks.”
With his foot, Flanders managed to push away the stick and to turn the card over onto its blank back end and to render it readable down there for the both of them where they stood. And the eccentric girl and her boyfriend read out loud from this index card: “’Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’ John 14:27.”
Never before had the Word of God convicted the eccentric girl and her boyfriend as this Word of God did so right now. In mutual repentance, both Windy Stormy and Flanders Nickels let fall all of the sticks down upon the pavement of the trail. Flanders said to her, “We will not be taking these sticks back home to your garage for a while.”
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“I don’t need any sticks,” said the eccentric girl.
“We both now need peace,” he said her thoughts.
And she went on to say, “Peace and salvation.”
And he and she grabbed each other’s hands, and they ran together to go find Proffery right away. This mighty man of God was most probably worshiping the Lord at his favorite outside place of worship—at the end of a swinging dock out into the Fox River along the shores of Voyageur Park here in eastern De Pere.
And, thank God, this place was not a far run for them away, and he was right there on the park’s dock, and he looked to have been expecting them.
“Amen! Amen! Amen!” said the born-again believer who was both brother to Windy and best friend to Flanders.
“How do you know that we would come here like this?” asked the eccentric girl.
“And how do you know why we have come?” asked Flanders.
“The Holy Spirit told me in His still small voice,” said Proffery.
They had come in order to become born-again believers in Christ.
“Let us pray now the prayer of salvation,” said Proffery. “I will lead you through it line-by-line, and all you have to do is to repeat each line in humbleness and sincerity and repentance. Are you both ready?”
“I am ready to become a born-again Christian, Big Brother,” said the eccentric girl.
“And I am ready, too, to get saved, good friend,” said Flanders.
They all three bowed their heads for the sinners’ prayer where they stood.
Just then a teenage boy’s voice yelled out in shout, “Big Brother! Big sister! We’re rich! We’re rich!”
It was Windy’s and Proffery’s little brother, having come with the worst news for a soul about to
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get saved at the most wrong time for a soul seeking salvation. It absolutely ripped the eccentric girl’s attention away from Jesus.
Windy Stormy looked up, saw the messenger, and asked in great excitement, “We’re rich, Little Brother? How did that happen? Tell me the great news!”
And he told her, “Mom and Dad both won the jackpot on the online lottery tickets that they bought at the grocery store!”
“How big did we win?” asked Miss Stormy in love of money.
“Millions!” he said. “Mom bought a Powerball ticket, and she won the jackpot. And at that same store Dad bought a Megamillions ticket, and he won the jackpot on that, too!”
The eccentric girl and her little brother grabbed arms and did a merry little dance there on the dock. “We’re rich! We’re all rich! We are the luckiest people in the world!” proclaimed Windy. Then she asked, “Little Brother, are you sure?”
“Yes. I am, Big Sister,” he said. “Mom’s numbers all matched. And Dad’s numbers all matched. We are now practically billionaires!”
And the eccentric girl looked upon Proffery and Flanders, and she said, “This is the best thing that ever happened to me in life. All of my problems are over. And I am happy,”
The man of God Proffery groaned in utter consternation. As for Flanders, he still wanted to get saved.
Upon seeing the disagreement of her fervor on the faces of Proffery and Flanders, Windy Stormy promised, “Right after I get my money, I will come to Jesus.”
But her little brother said, “Just think, Windy, when we all get rich, you can start a new collection—a collection of gold coins.”
“A gold coin collection?” said the eccentric girl in a sweet tone. “Why that would be even better than my business reply mail collection.”
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“Yeah, a whole treasure chest of gold coins,” said the little brother, “and silver coins, too.”
“Yes, Little Brother,” said the eccentric girl in reverie, “a brand new collection of gold coins and a brand new collection of silver coins, too.”
“What can beat those two collections for a woman who collects collections?” asked the little brother.
“I have found my peace, O Flanders, Proffery,” said Windy Stormy in declaration.
Just then the whole rest of her family came walking up to them. Dad was holding up his winning Megamillions ticket. Mom was holding up her winning Powerball ticket. Dad declared, “I won five hundred million!”
And Mom said, “And I won five hundred million!”
And about now Flanders was now getting into the spirit of riches, and he said, “I should try the lottery for myself. I could have five hundred million.”
And again the eccentric girl said, “I have finally found peace in a windy and stormy life, Proffery.”
Amid this reveling and great noise one man alone here still had his eyes fixed on God. He knew how bad things happen to people who win the lottery. He knew the blasphemy that Windy had spoken twice now just now about having found peace. And he knew that the love of money was the root of all evil. And he knew that only Christ can satisfy a searching soul. This man was Proffery, the only born-again Christian in this group so full of Godless celebration.
Proffery knew that he had to say something utmost cogent that would convict them of the error of their ways, and he had to say it now. Only the Word of God would make this happen. Windy was in danger of going to Hell, herself having completely forgotten her need for the Saviour. Flanders was now falling into the ways of the world in this partying going on here, and he no longer wanted to pray the prayer. And this whole rest of Proffery’s lost family was now farther away from getting saved
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than they were before winning the two jackpots. And Proffery clapped his hands together in authority before them to get their attention. And the eccentric girl and Flanders and the whole family turned to this soul-winner before them. And Proffery said point-blank two Bible verse passages of convincing Holy Spirit power: “It is written in Mark 8:36-37, ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’ It is written again in Luke 9:25, ‘For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?’”
At first he got angry looks from his captive audience. But then the eccentric girl left her family and came up to Proffery in answer to his call. She chose Jesus over money. And then Flanders spoke and said, “I want to get saved, too.” And he came up to join Windy with Proffery. The rest of the family did not step forward. But their looks in their faces all agreed with the words and the actions of the eccentric girl and her boyfriend. All now sought the Saviour. The time was right. The day of salvation now awaited them all. And Proffery was the man of God for the job.
And he led them all to salvation at once line-by-line with the following sinners’ prayer: “Dear God: I am a sinner. I am sorry for sinning. Sin is all my own fault. Please forgive me and help me to repent. I believe that Your Son, Jesus Christ the Lord, shed His perfect blood unto death on Calvary’s cross. I believe that He arose from the dead three days later on Easter Sunday. I ask You now to save my soul so that I can go to Heaven and so I do not have to go to Hell after I die. Lord Jesus, I ask You now to become my personal Saviour. Thank You, God. In Jesus’s name I pray all of this. Amen.”
Right after this, the eccentric girl promised God, “Lord, I give up my gambling winnings. I shall renounce my jackpot money. And I shall not start my collections of gold coins and of silver coins.”
The rest of her family in like vowed to their new Saviour to give up their millions, also.
Flanders asked, “Proffery, what if Windy and her family gave the money to the church,
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instead?”
And the born-again Proffery said, “All gambling is sin. God does not wish gambling winnings to be donated to His cause. God wants only righteous money to go to His churches.”
“How can we go about and get rid of one billion dollars in a way that will glorify our new Saviour?” asked the eccentric girl.
“Pray about it and wait upon God to answer your prayer,” said Proffery.
And Proffery right away had a word of prayer about this in the presence of his captive audience. Then the family left to go back home, and Flanders went back to his home, and Proffery went on to reflect on how God does work in mysterious ways.
The next day the eccentric girl got alone with her big brother Proffery at the dock out on the river again. She was alone with this man of God. He asked her, “Windy, have you found your peace now?”
“Yes, Big Brother,” she said. “My life no longer has its windy storms come up whenever I get disappointed or startled. I no longer yell at God. And my temper is no longer quick and hot. I have found peace in my personal Saviour. I cannot get mad, even if I wanted to.”
“I found some new Bible verses about peace that I had not seen before,” he told her.
“More Bible verses about peace, Proffery?” she asked.
“Two verses that I have not been able to write upon index cards for you, Little Sister,” said Proffery.
“Teach me, Proffery,” said the eccentric girl.
He held up his King James Bible, and he asked her, “Would you want to read them out loud from the open Good Book, Windy?”
“That would be even better than reading God’s Word from an index card notebook,” she said.
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He said, “The first one is Romans 5:1, Windy. And here it is,” He found it, and showed her it in his Holy Bible.
And she read out loud, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:”
“Peace with God, Little Sister,” he said. “You have that now that you are a born-again Christian.”
“I know now that I am on the road to Heaven, because I am born-again. And I know that I will never have to see one moment down in Hell now that I am saved. I no longer have to worry about where I will spend eternity after I die. I have such peace now about what comes for me after death,” she said to him. “Jesus saved me for forever,”
“That, O Windy, is a most personal definition of ‘peace with God,’” said Proffery in praise. “A most official definition of ‘peace with God’ is ‘the peace a believer has in knowing that he will be with Jesus in Heaven.’”
“What’s the next verse?” she asked, eager to learn more Scripture.
“The second one is Philippians 4:6-7,” he said, and he showed it to her.
And she read it out loud: “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
“Peace of God,” declared Proffery. “Available to all born-again believers.”
“I tell you now about my new life, Proffery, that every time something goes wrong in my life or every time I stop to worry about something or every time I am wronged by somebody, I pray to God about it. And, lo, whatever is bothering me is no longer a bother. I find peace from God the Prince of peace,” said the eccentric girl. “Things no longer set me off like they used to. Now, instead I have the daily peace that I never had before. I have Christ’s peace within my heart.”
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“That is the most sincere definition of ‘peace of God,’ that I have ever heard,” said Proffery. “An official definition of ‘peace of God’ would be ‘the peace a believer has in knowing that Jesus is with him or her in this life.’”
“I saw a verse all about peace that I found for myself in my first time at reading the Bible
this morning, Big Brother,” said the eccentric girl.
“Tell me it,” said Proffery.
She found it, and she read it to him: “’Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.’ Philippians 4:9.”
“Great verse, Windy,” he told her.
“Proffery, can I tell you my big decision?” she asked.
“You can tell me everything,” he told her.
“You will be the second one to know,” she said. “I told Flanders already last night.”
“What did you decide to do?” he asked her.
“I decided to quit my collections,” she said. “They are taking up too much of my time and too much of my life and too much of my space.”
“Windy, what a surprise this is to me,” said Proffery. “What are you going to do now instead?”
“I will spend my days and hours by reading the Bible and praying to God and going to church,” she said. “Just like you do.”
“Worship!” he said in exultation. “Nothing is as good as worship!”
“Worship is better than collecting,” said the eccentric girl.
“Amen, Windy!” he said.
“Amen!” she said.
“I see a little sister who is living all for Jesus,” said Proffery. “I am so happy for you.”
“Can I tell you another secret, Proffery?” she asked.
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“You can tell your big brother any secret,” he said.
“You’ll be the first one I told, because you’re family, and it is all about what happened to our family,” she said.
“The lottery jackpots, which almost kept you from Jesus,” said Proffery, still uncertain about
God could fix up this big problem of big money.
“Mom and Dad did not win, after all,” said the eccentric girl.
“That’s great news!” said Proffery. “How did that come about?”
“It seems that the newsman on TV made a bad mistake in reading the winning lottery numbers,” said Windy Stormy. “When he read the winning numbers of the Megamillions ticket, the numbers instead were really the winning numbers of the Powerball ticket. And when he read the winning numbers of the Powerball ticket, the numbers were really the winning numbers of the Megamillions ticket. He got the two tickets mixed up. So Mom’s Powerball ticket was not a winner after all. And Dad’s Megamillions ticket was not a winner after all, either. Not one number matched the real winning numbers at all on either ticket. We are not rich. We are still poor. And we are happy, like you, Proffery.”
“Praise the Good Lord Who works miracles!” said Proffery, looking up to Heaven. “Thank You, Father!”
“Thank You, Lord,” prayed the eccentric girl, also looking Up to Heaven.
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