In Christ Alone My Hope is Found

Today I’ve completed 70 years of life. Where has the time gone? Days flash by in a blur. Is it a Wednesday or a Thursday? I’m only aware of the exact date if I’m scheduled to babysit a grandchild, take a walk with a friend, or when I punctuate the week with Sunday at church.

As a little girl, time was so much longer. Maybe because there was still so much ahead. In third grade, I remember sitting in my classroom at the end of June watching the janitor mow the lawn out the open window. I could smell the grass, and longed for the school day to be over, but the five minutes left before the bell felt like hours. In fourth grade, I visited my grandmother’s farm for a month that felt like a year. And every year of my childhood, waiting for Christmas felt like forever!

Over my lifetime so much has changed. I was born before pomegranates and avocados were in grocery stores across the nation. I remember when TV dinners seemed like a treat, not a gross substitute for a real meal. I remember when every family I knew sat down to supper together and there was no such thing as fast food.

In first grade, I stood in line to receive a pink sugar cube containing the polio vaccine booster from the school nurse. One of my dad’s friends had had polio as a child and walked with a cane. Other children didn’t survive the disease, or lived the rest of their lives in an iron lung.

When I came of age, as a peer said recently, “Hippies roamed the earth.” Guys had long hair and women didn’t shave their legs or armpit. In college, streaking was a new phenomenon, meaning students ran naked through the cafeteria, across campus, or down dormitory halls. And pot was sold in dime bags, not chic dispensaries.

My first airline flight as a young adult felt glamorous. I dressed up in a linen suit and walked across the runway to board the plane via a portable stairway. I was served a hot, full-course meal by a stewardess, that’s what we called them back in the day, who was always a woman expected to look like a model. There was no security check, travelers were polite, and the plane took off and landed on time—with your luggage.

I know I’m sounding like an old fogey, as if times were better back in the good old days when we walked two miles to school in a snowstorm and didn’t complain. No, I rode the bus, and kids were both as silly and mean as they are today.

Somethings, though, were definitely worse. Women went to the hairdresser once a week, and sat under a stationary hairdryer with their hair in bristly curlers until the hairdresser sprayed the finished coif with hairspray until it had the hardness of a military helmet. Women wore shirtwaist dresses and wore high heels while preparing meatloaf recipes from Betty Crocker or ambrosia salads made from canned mandarin oranges and marshmallows. Most ladies, that’s what women were called, were secretaries, teachers, or nurses, and all were underpaid, called things like sweetie, or honeybun, and expected to fetch the boss’s coffee.

My adoptive mom was one of the first few women to attend her state college, and graduated with a degree in home economics, before other studies were offered to female students. My birth mom started out at college but ended up getting pregnant with me out of wedlock, what we now call an unplanned pregnancy. As a result, she left school and went into hiding until my birth. As the unwanted infant, I was placed in a foster home for nine months and adopted by my mom and dad who longed for a child and didn’t have the benefit of fertility treatments available today.

All to say, there’s been a torrent of water under the bridge these 70 years. I made my own mistakes, and through them found the one true God and the meaning of life. That sentence might sound grandiose or  pompous, but actually, finding Jesus was as humiliating as it was exhilarating, and experiencing his amazing grace in my ordinary life is still awesome.

Dear readers, I’ve tried to describe all this and more in granular detail, in the form of a memoir, so you can relate on some parallel thread of your own life.

Fellow writers, I just sent the first few chapters and a full chapter summary to editor and fellow Hopewriter, Mara Eller, for her suggestions and critique.

Last Sunday we sang the song, ”In Christ Alone My Hope is Found,” so I will leave you with these lyrics that struck my heart, knowing that no matter how your years have added up, these words are true for all who call on the name of the Lord of heaven and earth.

Cover photo by  Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash

Copyright Ann C. Averill 2023