Sounds of Hope

I was in Aldi’s today.  For those of you not fortunate to have an Aldi’s near you, it is a grocery store plus.  To a lot of people, Aldi’s is new.  I was shopping with food stamps at an Aldi’s near the corner of Garth and the Business Loop in Columbia MO when my kids were little.  I’d do some laundry next door at the Laundromat and go to Temple Stephens grocery store for the things I couldn’t get at Aldi’s.  The quality and choice keeps getting better at Aldi’s.  Today I was on a quest to quickly buy one of the few carpet steam cleaners they had on sale.  As I meandered through the aisles I kept intersecting with this woman.  She looked to be in her mid-60’s.  She was tall and had pure white hair.  Dressed in simple light blue pants there was nothing unusual about her except her hairdo.  Now this was a “hairdo” not necessarily a hair style.  The word “do” fits.  As a lifelong Pentecostal, I’ve seen this do many times be...

We came back from Tulsa with just a little more information. It was late summer. It was time to go back to St. Louis. I come from a Christian tradition that does not baptize infants. Rather we dedicate them as Hannah did Samuel. My husband chose to never participate in these experiences. At the time he assumed that a dedication made them permanently Christian – oh that it would! I had opted to participate in this ritual alone with each of our children. Bethany was the first one that I dedicated alone. Her father having beaten and deserted me when I was pregnant with her, I had no choice. Our pastor at the time had my mother participate. It was just so difficult for the church to deal with a single mother in those days. (Read about her birth here and the beating here .) I remember he used the passage from Timothy about Timothy’s Mother Lois and Grandmother Eunice . He did do a wonderful job. Now it was time to take my son alone. I was rather used to this by now but I never liked it....

I’ve been looking at a lot of old photographs lately. I picked up a very odd collection of photographs my mother had in her room. I take greater delight than most in finding an old photograph. A house fire and too many moves have claimed our treasures forever. I was particularly delighted to find this assortment. It included photos of my dad as a young man, some of his brother and sister-in-law’s trip from Norway to visit us, his son and the 1963 New York City World’s Fair. There were photos of my mother with her siblings. I found photos of my mother as a very young woman with her first two children. How very young my mother looked. Her youthful beauty that she never saw in herself was striking. She always referred to herself as “homely” and as I looked at those pictures, I thought how sad that she never saw what an attractive woman she was. There have been other old pictures to look at as well. I’ve written before that I had the very unique and wondrous experience of ha...