Letter No. 6: Lessons from the Candy Girl

“My stuff! My stuff!” — The day I started to wonder about real treasure

Dear Friend,

I saw her when I was six years old, and I have never forgotten her.

It was a straight, tree-lined street in front of my cousins’ house, the kind of suburban block where children spilled out onto the sidewalk and, in the 1960s, nobody’s mother stood guard. I had fallen in with a few of the neighborhood kids that summer day. We were playing whatever games six-year-olds invent on an empty stretch of sidewalk on a free afternoon.

Then a girl came strolling toward us, a year or two younger than the rest. She was licking a large, round lollypop and carrying a bag full of candy. Lots of candy. Saltwater taffy, caramels, chocolates — the stuff of childhood dreams, a pirate’s treasure being paraded just out of reach.

She had not brought it to share. That was obvious. She had brought it to be seen with it. She circled us, saying nothing, meeting no one’s gaze, luxuriously pulling out one bright piece after another, relishing the way we watched her with longing eyes as she unwrapped each piece and pushed it into her already bulging mouth. Purple saliva overflowed and ran down her chin, seeping into her dress. She did not speak — she did not have to. The candy did all her talking for her. We were meant to want what she had, and without question, we did.

We must have looked pitiful, standing there in a loose group, our game suddenly in time‑out, pretending not to stare while staring all the same. She knew exactly what she was doing, and we felt the sharp pinch of envy — that sudden awareness of what you don’t have. At some point we must have chosen not to pay attention, and we drifted back to our games, losing track of her for an hour or so.

Suddenly, from down the sidewalk, we heard it — a high, broken wailing. The bloodcurdling sound of grievous loss.

We looked up. There she was, standing over a wide pool of bright pink and purple vomit, splashed across the concrete and soaking into her shoes. The bag, noticeably smaller now, sat on the sidewalk beside her. As she looked at the liquified candy before her, she sobbed and cried out the same two words, over and over.

“My stuff! My stuff!”

Even at five, something in me felt a peculiar tug at that. Because it was clear what she was grieving. She was not crying because she felt sick, or because she was embarrassed, though I imagine both were true. She was crying over the loss of the candy she had eaten. The treasure was gone, spilled out onto the pavement, and I had the strange certainty that if she could have, she would have scooped every drop of it back into herself rather than lose it. That is how much it meant to her.

I did not have the categories for this scene then. I only had the experience of witnessing it. But the picture stayed, and somewhere along the years it grew into something I could not unsee.

There’s something disturbing to me about the Candy Girl. I think it’s because I have not only seen her, but I have been her.

Not with a bag of candy, but with grown-up versions of it. The thing I was a little too pleased to own. The purchase I hoped someone would notice. The muted, private satisfaction of having what another person wanted and did not have. We dress it up and call it taste, or stewardship, or simply enjoying the fruit of our labor, and some of that is fair. But underneath, often enough, is the same smug strut around the kids on the sidewalk. Look what I have. The candy does the talking.

And here is the question I cannot get past, the one that turns this from a simple story of childhood remembrance into a heart-check: if it were taken from me, would I grieve it the way she grieved hers? Would I stand over the wreckage of my comforts crying, my stuff, my stuff? Because the depth of our sorrow at losing a thing tells us, more honestly than we might like, how much of our heart was resting on it. And maybe the harder question is the one the Candy Girl asks without meaning to: how much of what you cherish, if you saw it plainly, would amount to little more than brightly colored vomit on the pavement — sweet for a moment, gone the next, and impossible to scoop back up? It is a crude picture, I know. But she has been honest with us, and honesty deserves honesty in return.

Jesus said it plainly, and it is meant for all of us. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19–21).

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. He tells us that the heart simply follows whatever we have decided is precious. The candy was never really the problem on that sidewalk. The problem was a small heart that had attached itself to something that could not last, and so was bound to be broken when the thing was gone. Pink and purple on the concrete. Moth and rust by another name.

I am not telling you to despise good gifts. Scripture clearly does not say that. But I recommend you hold them the way you would hold something on loan — lightly, gratefully, ready to open your hand. The Candy Girl had been holding her treasure in a tight grip, and that is why the loss undid her.

So, what is worth treasuring? What can be loved without the dread of moth and rust lurking in the alley? Paul, writing from prison of all places, where a man has been stripped of nearly everything, answers it like this: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8). Everything else, he says, he counts as loss next to that one possession that cannot spoil, cannot be stolen, cannot be vomited up on the pavement and grieved.

Paul knew how quietly money can take the throne. When he listed what a leader of the church must be, he set it down among the rest, plainly: “not a lover of money” (1 Timothy 3:3). I have read that line as a pastor and felt it land where it was meant to land. It is a sobering thing to realize how many of us who have been trusted to shepherd others could be quietly indicted by it — not for having money, but for loving it, for letting the candy do our talking. I do not say that to point a finger down a row of pews. I say it because the Candy Girl is in me too, and I ask the same question of myself.

I think of her sometimes, that little girl with sugar and bile on her shoes, and I do not feel superior to her. I feel exposed by her. She just had the honesty to cry it out loud. My stuff.

Maybe today is a good day to look at what you would cry over, and ask the Lord, gently, whether it is sitting where it belongs.

Grace and peace,

Pastor Neal Letteney <><
The Pastor’s Hearth

If today’s letter found you out the way the Candy Girl found me out, I’d love to hear about it. Let’s talk by the hearth: if it were taken from you tomorrow, what is the one thing you’d be tempted to stand over and cry, “My stuff!”? And here’s the harder half—seen plainly, might that treasure amount to little more than brightly colored vomit on the pavement, sweet for a moment and gone the next? Name it in the comments and let’s chat—it might be just the thing someone else needs to hear today.

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