The Auction
Summers in Vermont brought about many different
activities but my favorite was the auction.
Two ladies from the church were going to the Wallingford auction
and asked me to join them. I was so excited! To be able to go out without the
children and to go to this auction was a real treat. The fact that I had only
two dollars I could spend did not dampen my spirits.
Time passed so quickly as item after item was brought up for bids.
Soon the crowd began to thin out. (Maybe, just maybe my two dollars would buy
some unique treasure.)
The men began moving things closer to the platform for the
auctioneer. That's when I saw it. My heart began to pound! There was the most
beautiful oak bed I had ever seen! "How much do you think it will go for?" I
breathlessly asked my friends. "Probably for :fifty to a hundred dollars," was
the reply. "Why don't we stay to see what it goes for, you never know," one of
the ladies said. By now it was 11 P.M., and there were only a handful of people
left.
Just as we were about to give up hope two men carried the bed up on
the platform. "What am I bid for this fine oak bed?", the auctioneer began.
There was silence! Who'll start the bidding at twenty-five dollars?" he
continued. My heart sank. It was going to go as high as we had thought. Still no
one bid.
The auctioneer kept going lower and lower but there was still no response.
"Who'll give me a two dollar bid?" he asked. There was silence. "Alright who
will give me fifty cents?" With that, my hand went up like a shot. Then it
happened, the auctioneer shouted "SOLD". The bed was mine!
Everyone was sleeping when I got home so I quietly slipped into
bed. "Did you have a good time?" mY sleepy husband asked. "Oh, yes I had a
wonderful time. Thanks for watching the kids."
The next morning I told Bob I needed to go to Wallingford to pick up
something. "What did you buy?" he
asked. I explained how I had bought the bed for only fifty cents and had agreed
to pick it up today.In my excitement, I forgot to mention that it was a rather
large bed.
"Alright, where is this bed?" he asked. "Right over here. Isn't it
beautiful? I just fell in love with it theminute I saw it. I never thought I'd
get it. Don't you just love it?... .", I rattled on.
From the look on my husband's face, he didn't "just love it."
"You've got to be kidding? How am I suppose to get that "thing" home? The
headboard is over six feet tall. It will never fit into the station wagon." It
didn't look that big last night," I replied. That bed seemed to get bigger every
time I looked at it!
After struggling to get the bed home he asked, "Well, where do you
want this 'thing'?" "I thought we could move our bed into the girls' room and
this could be our bed." I suggested. "I will not sleep in that 'thing'!" he
firmly replied.
I wanted that bed in our room. Wasn't
it MY room too? Didn't I have rights? Everything in me wanted to fight to have
that bed in our room. But God was teaching me a very important lesson one that I
had been slow learning.
A portion of I Corinthians 13:5 kept going through my mind, "seeketh
not her own, seeketh not her own." It was difficult for me to put aside my own
desires for that of my husband's. It was only through God's Word that I was
reminded what love really was, and He finally helped me to be submissive. Being
a submissive wife does not come naturally for most of us. But if we are to be
the kind of wives God intends us to be we must accept the principles He has set
before us in His Word.
I had to settle for my bed being in the. girls' room for the first
year or so. In time, my husband stopped calling it that "thing" and agreed we
could switch beds.
At last my "beautiful bed" was in our bedroom. I could hardly wait
to sleep in it. Just when I thought things were going well, we made an
unpleasant discovery. The bed was only six feet long and my husband was six feet
two and a half inches tall. With a headboard and a foot board, there wasn't
any place for him to comfortably put those extra two and a half inches. He
complained that with his feet against the footboard it felt like he had walked
five miles during the night. (But that was better than banging his head on the
headboard.) There was a lot of grumbling and even a threat to use the bed for
firewood, but he soon adjusted.
Had I insisted on my own way who knows where the bed would be
today. By being willing to learn the principles of submission, I began to learn
to love the way God intends us to love. The bed remains in our room to this day
and my husband is all too happy to tell the story of the "bargain" his wife got
at an auction.
Mabel Flatt reprinted from Keystone Baptist
