A Lump of Coal and Lot's Wife

Dear Readers: Yes, all four of you. This is my first crack at poetry since junior high, so bear with me.

A sometimes mischevious Idaho farm boy
Feeling his stocking one Great Depression winter
A lump of coal?
Surely, it must be.
Oh, to have been better in the weeks leading up to Christmas!

Lot's wife
Longing
Not just for Sodom and Gomorrah and their sins
For home
For friends
For family
For familiarity
Longing

A job? Where? Move?
But I'm happy
When? A year? The irony of knowing change is coming

A journal entry two and a half years ago
Six months before my last big move
"Once again I feel like I have to give up everything that is constant and happy in my life and start all over again."
The past two and a half years have been better than anything prior

Lot's wife looked back
Longingly
"Perrenially dissatisfied with present circumstances"
"Only dismal views of the future"
Salt

The farm boy
Maybe an orange
Maybe not a lump of coal
Anticipation

New city, new job
Maybe like the girl scout song
"Make new friends, but keep the old
One is silver and the other's gold"
Maybe silver and gold

Christmas morning
The farm boy opens his stocking
Not coal
Not an orange
A special toy
A great surprise
A spinning top!

Maybe the next city will be good too
Maybe the next Christmas will bring a surprise
Not like Lot's wife
Instead like Joshua
"Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest."

References: Talk by Elder Jeffery R. Holland on Remember Lot's Wife, see Ensign, January 2010; Joshua 1:9