Mustard Seed Faith

In the 1960s charm bracelets were a trend, and teenage Mom had one full of charms. During a Thursday morning visit in December, she brought out a small silk pouch and handed it to me. She was in the dividing-up-her-jewelry stage of dying and wanted me to have her bracelet of stories, a reminder of our story work together.

As a child, I loved this bracelet. On the rare occasion she wore it to church, if I happened to be sitting by her, I carefully turned it on her wrist, examining each intricate charm. My favorite was the baby with the bottle that moved to its mouth. I loved feeding that tiny baby.

A seed of mothering dropped into my heart with the tenderness I felt toward that silver charm.

Other charms were less explicit. While the spinning trolley from San Francisco was easily identified, it wasn’t until recently that I learned one of the charms was an abstract sculpture from The Art Institute of Chicago. A winged roller skate held her story of skate lessons, performing routines in tiny-skirted outfits, gliding across the roller rink floor.

She attached the key to her boyfriend’s bassoon case, maybe hoping it was the key to his heart, and many other musical charms. French horn, trumpet, saxophone, a staff with red enamel hearts for notes, Interlochen charm—they each held meaning.

One charm that struck me as odd was a round ball. It looked like a clear marble with a tiny yellow speck inside. A band of silver circled it to provide the attachment point. I learned that the tiny yellow speck was a mustard seed. I don’t know how or when she acquired this charm, but it speaks to a young girl’s mustard seed faith and how it influenced her walk.

It is the smallest of all seeds, but it becomes the largest of garden plants; it grows into a tree, and birds come and make nests in its branches. Matthew 13:32

The morning Mom gave me the bracelet was wintery and cold. Snow covered the ground, and Steve picked me up from my parents’ house in his work truck. The bracelet jingled festively on my wrist as I climbed up into the passenger seat, eager to tell him about it.

We drove to Costco, talking about the bracelet and our current state of pre-holiday affairs. While exiting the truck, I looked down to find the marble missing. The mustard-seed faith charm had fallen off.

“Oh no! I’ve lost my faith!” I cried, as we began looking. I felt myself growing frantic inside, yet Steve’s calming presence grounded me.

“We’ll find it. It’s in here somewhere,” he said, methodically searching the floor. 

Sure enough, it had fallen into the gear shift mechanism. He patiently maneuvered it until the charm could be fished out with care and minimal damage. It was only slightly scuffed.

I recently talked with Cathy, Mom’s best childhood friend, asking questions about charm bracelets in the 1960s. Along with the fact that her own charm bracelet was stolen at school, she told me stories, including one confirming what I knew of my mom’s faith experience. 

“Your mom and I had a blast at church,” she said.

This resonates with what Mom told me about her early church years and faith formation. One of her stories was learning about prayer in Bible school: “God answers yes, no, or wait awhile.”

She knew the answer to her deepest prayer was to wait awhile. One day her prayer to marry the boy across the street would be answered.

That girl wasn’t a passive waiter. She took active steps to be in proximity to him—walking past his house with Cathy, singing, “I’m in the mood for looooove!” and taking up French horn and joining band to be in his circle. She was determined.

“I really should have set more goals,” she confided as her days grew shorter.

By faith she journeyed, joining her life to the boy across the street, unaware of where her mustard seed faith would take her or how it would grow an (unlikely) kingdom.

Seeds are interesting. They have to break open—to die—in order to live.

Writing this, I think of Mom’s mustard seed of faith as a girl. I think of how her joy was lost and swallowed by duty, her faith twisted by spiritual abuse. I remember her joy returning, the healing that came, and the comfort that her faith brought in the last years, and months, of her life.

I wish there hadn’t been all of the harm in the middle. I was born into that harm, lived there, survived, and remember, yet somehow I sit here with a dog on my lap, still holding faith. It is not contained, and it’s certainly not tidy, but I’m healing in my own way, on my own journey. 

Maybe I’m not so much holding faith as I’m nesting in the branches of faith that was once a mustard seed in the heart of a girl whose name was Caryn and who loved birds.

Unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels, a plentiful harvest of new lives. John 12:24

---

Julie McClay lives in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley with her partner of 31 years, four of their eight children, and six fur and feather babies. Two precious grandchildren bring deep joy and delight. Julie is a lover of stories and words. She serves clients, both in person and virtually, through Heart Path Story Coaching, offering a creative space of kindness, curiosity, and Story Work. Writing and Art Journaling are key elements of her process.