“Mom! Come quick! I just broke your favorite dish and I need help cleaning all the pieces from the floor. They seemed to splatter everywhere! I’m SO sorry Mom!”

“That’s ok Sweety. It was an accident,” Sidney’s mother replied.

As soon as all the dangerous broken pieces of beautiful porcelain were swept away, with only the memory of glory remaining, Sidney went outside to see if any of the neighbor kids were out playing, in spite of the thick, sticky air quality that morning in late July.

‘Even though mom’s not mad at me, I still feel SO bad about breaking that dish, especially knowing how much she loved it,’ Sidney thought, as she sat quietly not swinging on the swing she regularly declared ‘the best and highest swing’ in her best friend Amy’s yard.

“Ok what’s wrong Sid? Why do you look so sad?” Amy asked about two minutes later.

“Oh nothing……I just broke a dish a little while ago.”

“SO you broke a dish, big deal,” Amy replied using the sort of logic that Sidney usually responded positively to, but not this time...

“Well, you don’t understand, this was no ordinary dish, it was one that my father brought home from Japan when he was in the Navy and I was just a newborn. And I was just being a big airhead when  Igrabbed a mug that was underneath it in the drainboard…..it never should have happened,” she said, her voice trailing off…

Meanwhile, her mother was busy trying to come to terms with the loss and wondering whether or not she would be able to replace the dish.

After a couple of hours of debate with Amy, Sidney went running back to her house and burst through the front door. “Mom, Mom! Where are you?” she screeched in uncontrollable excitement.

“I’m right here Sweety,” her mother said coming out of the kitchen with a big bowl of cake batter in her arms and flour smears on her face.

“I see you’re feeling better about the dish, but I have a cool idea about how we might replace it.”

“That’s so sweet of you Sid Sweety, but it’s not necessary; I certainly don’t want you using your allowance to buy another plate.”

“This has nothing to do with buying anything……That’s the really cool part! Mom, do you remember there was this big box we had in the cellar with all kinds of pretty dishes and other cool kitchen stuff that we decided to keep in the box because we had too much stuff to fit it all in the kitchen cabinets? I'm sure you told me there are a few more of that kind of dish from Japan?”

“Oh yeah!.....I guess I did forget about that! Come on with me down to the cellar and we’ll look for it.”

Sidney are her mom went down to the cellar and began their three hour long search; one that quickly proved to be far more interesting than either of them expected.

They found old sporting equipment, lost clothes, shoes, boots and jackets, items they could definitely use and items they could not and while they searched they began to make new piles of things to be boxed up. Finally after basically spending the afternoon cleaning out the cellar, they came upon the large kitchen box in question.

“Here it is! I found it!” Yelled Sidney; loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear.

“Awesome!” her mother replied, as she ran over to inspect the contents.

“Wow Mom! Check it out! There are gorgeous things in here!”

Then she carefully pulled out each item and she and her mom closely looked over each one.

“I feel like a kid in a candy store,” her mother suddenly blurted out; breaking the silence.

“Hahahaha,” Sidney giggled, as she dug deeper into the box and pulled out a stunning white serving dish with beautiful pastel flowers in an eye-catching pattern. “Mom, look at this!”

“Ooohhh!.....Let me see that,” she replied; taking the delicate treasure slowly into her eager hands.

“Is it just me or does that plate look exactly like the one I broke?!”

“It does look at lot like it, it’s a very similar one that I forgot I had!”

Sidney and her mom finished cleaning up the cellar and then took the items upstairs that they decided from now to keep, including the beautiful serving plate and a few other kitchen treasures.

That night Sidney had a dream about the plate. She ran to find her mother as soon as she woke up.

“Mom! I had such a cool dream last night about the plate.”

“Wow….I didn’t have a dream, but I do believe that God is showing me something. It was so strange, when I saw the broken dish on the floor, I couldn’t help but wonder why am I not more upset and it was because I had this weird, but wonderful feeling that something good was going to come of it. The first thing that He brought to my mind was that expression: ‘Everything happens for a reason,’ the next thing was that verse about how God turns our bad into good. Then I got thinking that if that didn’t happen….if the first dish didn’t break, we may not ever have remembered that box. We may not be able to use it all, but I got my favorite plate back! Thanks so much for caring enough to think about that forgotten box,” she replied with her arms stretched out. “I’m glad it happened now. Thank you for breaking that dish. I'm not happy that it's gone, but I DID have fun yesterday going through all that great old stuff!"

Sidney hugged her mom and laughed. “Like you said Mom, if it weren’t for that broken dish we may not have remembered we had another one just as pretty packed away. And not only did God give me a dream, I’m also very sure the only reason I remembered the box was because He was bringing it to my mind. And that’s what I dreamed, that this was God turning our bad into good (Romans 8:28)……and it was, wasn’t it Mom?”

“Yes Sweetheart I do believe it was,” her mother replied, with a tearful smile.

Linzy is a certified Bible Counsellor, with countless republications on her viewers blogs, Bible Studies, Ezines and the like. Her portfolio includes, non-fiction articles, short stories for all ages, and Christian poetry.