The Soul Felt Its Worth

Posted on December 12, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

The dawning of a deeper understanding of the incarnation began with this episode from my life.

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            I’m busy preparing for the first Christmas my daughter will probably remember. I’m the parent now, responsible for all the glittering wonder. My husband and I have trimmed the tree and hung her little stocking. I’ve baked the same star-shaped cookies my mom used to set out for Santa alongside carrots for his Reindeer. And on the bookcase beside the sofa, I’ve arranged the crèche my mom gave me when she heard I was going to church, the crèche we made together out of a cracker box when I was six.

I’m ready to put my feet up while my daughter is napping, so I make myself a cup of tea, sit on my cozy couch facing a twinkling tree, and open the latest Newsweek. My eyes fall on an article about Vietnam. In the aftermath of that hideous war, more and more stories are coming out about what really happened. It’s a piece about a young South Vietnamese soldier, who was captured by a squad of Viet Cong who tied him naked to a tree, slit him belly to groin, and pushed his face into his own intestines. Days later, his body was found by his mother and her friends. My chest contracts at the desecration of this priceless son’s life, his cold corpse, once a precious babe growing in the belly of the magazine mother just as my second child is growing in mine. It strikes me afresh, if everyone is someone’s baby, how invaluable is every soul. And how vicious the world that awaits. Vicious, without and within. To think that only months ago, I’d considered divorcing my little girl’s daddy for another man, making my unborn son fatherless before his first breath.

My daughter awakes with a cry. I hurry upstairs and lift her warm body into my arms. Holding her close, I descend to the living room and stand before the babe in the manger, who when grown to be a man, was slain not unlike that poor, Vietnamese soldier. How could any father bear to relinquish his child into a world that defiles its own. Is God’s heart engraved with a scar in the exact shape of Jesus’ name?

I stare at the wise men and their lone, chipped camel. For as long as I can remember, the purple king has carried his chest of gold, the green one his basket of myrrh, the red one his box of frankincense. Only now does it occur to me that these gifts were commonly used for both burial and worship. Only now do I comprehend that if sin is the frigid knife that cut me loose from my creator, then my name is also engraved on the heart of God and the hands and feet of his messiah.

A verse from “O Holy Night” pops into my head. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, till He appeared, and the soul felt its worth.

Thanks to Christopher Schmid for the use of his photo from Unsplash.

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged | 1 Comment

The Creche

Posted on December 5, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

This is a flash memoir about God’s patient sovereignty in a child’s life. The creche I made when I was six will reappear years later in my life with far greater understanding of the gospel.

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After the first snow, there’s a small corrugated box, a pile of Popsicle sticks, a jar full of sawdust, some huge pinecones, a few twigs, and some bark on the kitchen table.  Mommy says we are making a crèche.  I sit beside her as she sets the box on its side and folds the upper flap to make a roof.  She pulls apart the pinecone petals and shows me how to glue them on like shingles.  She opens the side flaps and the box turns into a building with wide open doors.  She tells me to glue the twigs on the doors in the shape of an X.  Now the box looks like Granddaddy’s barn.  Mommy puts glue on the back of the Popsicle sticks, and I press them against the inside walls.  She spreads more Elmer’s on the bottom of the box, and I get to sprinkle sawdust on the floor.  The tree bark goes on the outside walls.

We wash our hands and Mommy zips me into my blue parka before she pulls on her maroon coat with the fur collar and cuffs.  I climb into the back seat of the black Ford station wagon next to Bruce while Mommy reaches into her purse and pulls out a shiny tube.  Glancing in the mirror, she arches each lip with the color of a candy apple.  Her purse snaps shut, and we’re off to the ten-cent store.  

In the center of the five and dime there is a high counter where a short little old lady sits behind a cash register while her little old man wanders the store.  Bruce and I glide along the outside counters fingering the small bins of pink teddy bear erasers, the Mickey Mouse pencil cases, the blunt- tipped scissors, silver jacks, rubber balls, green dice, leather wallets branded with lariats and rearing horses, cap guns, rolls of red caps, balloons, bubbles, balsa wood gliders, Popeye Pez dispensers, Tootsie Roll Pops, all things we can only hope Santa will leave in our stockings.  Mommy is standing by the plastic folded rain hats, miniature sewing kits, darning needles, and crochet hooks when the little old man says, “May I help you?”

“Yes,” Mommy scans the shelves above the bins lined with china figurines: German shepherds, angora kittens, and nursery rhyme characters. “Do you carry nativity figures?”

“Right this way.”  The little old man leads us towards more bins chocked with ten-cent bearded men in red bathrobes, ladies in blue bathrobes and matching head scarves, and babies stuck in troughs like where Granddaddy feeds his cattle.  There are all sorts of animals too.  Mommy says I can pick out a cow, a donkey, and even a camel with a fancy red saddle.  Mommy picks out two of the bearded men.  She says one will be Joseph, the other a shepherd.  One blue lady will be Mary, the mother of the baby stuck in the trough.  Bruce gets to pick out three men dressed like kings.  The purple one carries a golden treasure chest, the green one a basket.  The red king a wooden box.

When we get home the sawdust is dry, so I can put my animals in our little barn.  Mommy puts some of the people in the barn too.  She says the baby is Jesus.  She tells Bruce to put the shepherd and his sheep on one side of the barn and the kings on the other side along with their camel because they have come across a desert to worship him.  She hangs a crocheted angel from the window latch to sing to the shepherd while he watches his little flock.  She tells me this is what Christmas is about, and yet we place the crèche on the stereo where Daddy plays Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, and Bruce and I hang up our stockings.  

Before bed we put out a plate of cookies for Santa and two carrots for his reindeer.

Lying on the carpet in front of the fireplace, in the dark living room, I stare at the Christmas tree lights, and dream up a plan.  After mommy and daddy go to sleep, I will sneak out of my bed and hide beside the couch.  From there, I’m sure to witness Santa coming down the chimney to stuff our stockings.

In the morning, I’m still under the covers, my plan failed.  Yet there is my stocking, the top bulging with a ballerina’s pink tutu.

“Mommy, Daddy, Look! Santa knew just what I wanted.”

They titter and sip their Maxwell House as I squeeze the leotard over my pajamas.

Mommy sets the arm of the record player on the Nutcracker, and I leap onto the coffee table, twirling with joy beside the crèche – waiting patiently on the stereo.  

Waiting for me to figure out that Mommy and Daddy ate Santa’s cookies, that Santa is a fraud, that shepherds are poor, dirty men nobody usually sings to, and having a baby in a barn is gross, desperate, and extraordinary.  

Posted in Flash memoir, Spiritual Growth | Tagged , | 2 Comments

From Beer to Eternity

Posted on November 28, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

I just read Gary Morland’s From Beer to Eternity, a little story of addiction and beyond, and was instantly hooked by the tell-it-like-it-is voice of the narrator who I knew instantly was going to tell me the no-nonsense truth about his life with alcohol. And I was not disappointed. In a quick series of jump cuts, Gary wastes no time in summarizing his childhood with an alcoholic father, his aimless adolescence, and his life-long pattern of finding the shortcut to pleasure and avoiding responsibility which primed him for alcohol’s lure. All this without blame, excuse, or agenda.

But what’s most captivating is the way Gary takes us not only inside his life, but also inside his head once he starts drinking and realizes he has no control over it. So many memoirs about escaping the bottle titillate and torture the reader with the drama of their protagonist’s drinking sprees. Gary doesn’t bother with that. He cuts to the chase detailing what it’s like to live with the lying voice addiction has embedded in his brain which constantly manipulates with whispers of guilt and shame. Until, one day he’s so tired of hiding and denying, he blurts out the truth to his wife, “I’m an alcoholic.”

Next comes the part I think I love the best, the nuts and bolts of a supernatural event he can’t completely explain. I won’t be a spoiler and tell you exactly what this looks like. Suffice it to say, it’s like you’re sitting across from Gary in a diner and he tells you he’s gonna tell you about some spiritual stuff that happened to him, and if you’re not into spiritual stuff, this might not be for you. And, if you’re already a Christian, it might not even sound spiritual enough. You can split or stay at any time. But we don’t split. We keep reading because Gary’s voice is so full of personality and obviously about to spill something immensely important he’s learned through desperate trial and divine intervention.

To my fellow writers, Gary’s book is not meant to be a literary masterpiece, but it is powerful in its guileless simplicity and much can be learned about the literary use of voice by reading Gary’s down-to-earth portrayal of the gospel in an ordinary life.

To my fellow humans, you or someone you sat with at your Thanksgiving table is likely struggling with alcohol, especially during this pandemic that has super stressed us all. So, I can’t recommend Gary’s book enough. Without Christian jargon or psycho-babble, he gets at the unbearable hopelessness of a life dependent on drink and/or drugs. May his very short, inexpensive e-book, offer the hope you or your loved one has been waiting for, hope that God sees, God knows, and he’s ready and able to rescue with plans for the life you’ve always craved because God made you for something better, a significant life, a life of freedom from the head games and heartbreak of addiction. 

Click here to find Gary’s book on Amazon.

Posted in Spiritual Growth, Writing Process | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Man of Sorrows

Posted on November 19, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

This is an excerpt from my memoir, Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School. I share it here in honor of the #Shameless conference I attended online sponsored by Olivia Alnes. You can check out her blog @ wildabide.com for more resources.

The chapter below occurred at an under-performing urban middle school with a challenging student in my class.

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I have never before been sexually harassed. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? When Raul tried to drag me into the eighth-grade lavatory and dared me to kiss him? In the hall. Between classes. Surrounded by other students. No teachers in sight.

Driving home, my hands clench the steering wheel. My shoulders shake as my foot presses the pedal towards the floor. I am sobbing like a kindergartener who can’t stop. I talk to myself, my words choked with herky-jerky breaths.

“Vice Principal O’Malley is so, so stupid! Blind! I hate her! Principal Reardon too! They never protect me! Or the kids!”

I feel myself morphing from mild-mannered Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. Anger bursts through my skin and out my mouth. I am a green-eyed monster raging with hurt and disappointment. Desperate with frustration, I fly past other cars in the passing lane.

At my interview they asked what I’d do if a student swears. Now I know why kids hurl the F’bomb. It’s a verbal hand-grenade when nothing else will do. “O’Malley is a total F… She treats kids with such F’ing disrespect. Reardon doesn’t have an F’ing clue and couldn’t stand up to O’Malley even if his F’ing life depended on it. Somehow I know both Raul and I are gonna be F’ed.”

What happens tomorrow? Nothing is hidden here. Gossip runs through a vena cava to the office and off to every capillary in the building. I don’t trust the administrators any more than Raul trusts me.

The reality is I’m scared of myself. I’ve been wrapped in some kind of suburban cocoon my whole life, and O’Fallon has ripped it open, so I can see what a gross worm of a person I really am. Raul called me a puta, a whore, but I’m worse than that. I’m a murderer. I want to bite O’Malley in the throat like the Rottweiler she reminds me of. I want to spill her blood like she spills accusation on form after form. I want to rip out her vocal cords, so she can no longer humiliate me or my students in the hall, the cafeteria, the playground. I want to shake her like prey like she’s shaken my confidence. I want to swallow her blood like she’s swallowed my students’ souls. I want to throw a big honking rock at Reardon’s car. I want to destroy them both before they destroy me.

God, I can’t believe what these kids have to put up with, and I can’t stand that I can’t fix it. My husband can fix anything. He knows how stuff works. He builds birds houses and houses for dolls. He sets up the generator when the power goes out.

Me? I break stuff just by looking at it. I hold parts right side up and they look upside down. I don’t understand how things fit together. I force flimsy plastic pieces into place, and they snap. What am I doing working with broken people? Complicated people who don’t want to be fixed. People who deny there’s anything wrong, even when they leave the room clanking so loudly you know something is about to fall off. People who betray you with an F’ing kiss.

I walk into my house and turn on the tea kettle. My husband is still at work, so I decide to call my mom. I need to talk to someone who will understand. Someone I trust to exonerate me, to tell me it isn’t my fault before Reardon and O’Malley tell me it is.

But how to make my mom get it? Sexual harassment will totally freak her out. She’s a nice person. My hatred will scare her. It’s beyond logic to someone wrapped in the gauze of the bourgeoisie. I take out a cup and clink it on the counter. I stare out the window until the kettle whistles. I pour the steaming liquid over the bag.

As it steeps, a deep, deep sorrow settles over me, a sorrow beyond fury, a sorrow stripped of hope by the white-hot heat of injustice, a sorrow that grieves innocence lost.

Somehow, I need to get through tomorrow. To finish my last few weeks at O’Fallon Middle School with a strength and dignity I simply don’t possess.

I set the phone down un-dialed, realizing the only one who can understand, the only one who can exonerate, has already heard my call.

Perhaps swearing is prayer’s evil twin, calling down curses from the high court of heaven, making myself the Supreme Court Justice of my own screwed up universe. And yet, that’s what I hate most about O’Fallon, all the name calling and accusation. I’m reduced to a Jerry Springer contestant. I surrender. Knee deep in quicksand, the more I struggle, the more it sucks me under. Only those you love can cause such pain.

“Jesus,” I whisper, “Surely you get this. They call you Man of Sorrows.”

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Rise Above the Chaos

Posted on November 3, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

My come to Jesus moment was during a marriage crisis. In the midst of my confusion, and guilt, unsure what path to follow, I stumbled upon a savior through a Christian neighbor who believed what the Bible said was true. True about God, and true about me. That God understood how helpless and ashamed I was and loved me anyway. Loved me so much, he came to earth with flesh on and died in my place, for all I could not fix about myself or others because he alone is perfect and good.

I was eager to learn everything I could about this new God and his ways, so my neighbor encouraged me to read the Bible every morning to get each day off on the right foot. I tried but failed. My son was an infant who got me up several times a night, and his older sister a two-year-old who awoke at dawn. The best I could do after dinner, after bath time, after story time, after tucking in my two-year-old and nursing the baby, was to read a small bit of the Bible before I fell asleep exhausted.

I also went to church, and one morning following adult Sunday School, a woman I’d never seen before, said she’d like to get to know me better and sort of invited herself over to my house for tea. By that time, my marriage was healing, and I had three toddlers. Her older daughter was the same age as my youngest. They played while we chatted, and I discovered we had much in common, among other things, both our husbands had gone back to school at U. Mass. And we both loved to write.

Before we parted, she shared it was the Army who’d sent her husband back to school for his Ph.D., and with only three years in one place, she’d learned to select friends quickly. Would I, therefore, like to be her best friend during this post? I’d never had anyone be so direct, but she was interesting and smart and sincere and became my first Christian best friend.

Romans 12:2 encapsulates what I learned from our time together. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good pleasing and perfect will.”

Knowing we’d be together only briefly, I believe she wanted to impart what she’d learned was the core of this Christian life, to trust God’s Word, and through it, maintain an intimate relationship with our heavenly father.

Years past, we kept in touch sporadically, and we both kept writing.

This week, that special friend, Sharon Gamble, launched her second book, Give me Wings to Soar: A Sweet Selah Journey towards a Deeper Walk with God. Click here to check it out https://www.amazon.com/Give-Me-Wings-Soar-Journey/dp/1946369527/

It also comes with a companion journal https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Give+me+wings+to+soar+journal&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2

By the way after thirty-eight years of walking with Jesus, and finally retired, all my children grown, you’d think it’d be easy to read my Bible first thing every morning. But true confession, without excuse, I’m still tempted to pick up my phone first to check the news or Facebook. And when I do, in these crazy times, I’m filled again with angst and confusion.

But Sharon and my old neighbor were right. When I pick up my Bible first, and rest, even for a moment in God’s truth, I’m at peace, high above the chaos of the world.

P.S. You can find my new book, Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School by clicking here or on the link at the top of the page on the menu bar. Thanks!

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The Battle of Good and Evil

Posted on October 28, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

It’s a misty, moisty October morning less than a week before election day. The air hangs gray and damp over what’s left of the vegetable garden, decaying squash vines and toughened Kale. The scene reminds me of another autumn morning when my adult children were small.

Too cold and wet to play outside, it was a perfect day for a game of pretend, so when breakfast was over, I plunked the baby on the living room rug and pressed play on a cassette of the 1812 Overture, rousing classical music you may know with cannon fire at the end. In my childhood, it was the soundtrack for a Puffed Wheat commercial. As an adult, I learned it was not only the jingle for a cereal ad, but Tchaikovsky’s portrait of Russia’s miraculous defeat of Napoleon at the battle at Borodino.

Knowing nothing of Tchaikovsky’s narrative, my two older kids responded innately to the story within the music. At the call of distant trumpets, up the stairs they raced to the dress-up box. I heard them pawing through its contents for appropriate gear. My three-year-old son came back down in a Hawaiian-print shirt down to his ankles, and an antique safari hat. Brandishing a slightly bent cardboard sword covered in aluminum foil, he leapt from sofa to armchair to coffee table. Obviously on horseback, he galloped around the dining room table as a motif of “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, whispered above humming cellos.

My five-year-old daughter descended the staircase in the sawed-off tulle skirt from my Aunt Wilma’s pale-blue prom gown. The gauzy curtain wrapped round and round her head acted as crown, veil, and train all in one.

Kettle drums boomed and an oboe whined as if evil would surely overtake our home as well as Mother Russia. But my Hawaiian soldier flashed his sword as cymbals clashed, and my diminutive princess/angel/bride swirled her skirts and veil as the battle enlisted every instrument in the orchestra.

With ever descending scales, the music slowed. In the thrall of solemn violins, my little girl paraded the living room waving a chrome baton above her head to a melody evoking the divine snowfall that froze Napoleon’s artillery in the mud causing his retreat.

Tchaikovsky wove in a chorus of the Russian hymn, “Oh, Lord, Save Our People,” and my little boy joined his sister in a kind of grand march, their small hearts somehow attuned to the sovereign omnipotence marking each note.

Again, distant trumpets echoed, the tempo sped up, and the sound of officer’s whipping their horses from trot to gallop caused both children to mount their steeds and join the thunderous advance of the Russian cavalry.

Their baby sister sat on the carpet in awe as they raced around her, horses rearing, carillons chiming, bells pealing, cannon unleashing a rhythmic, final barrage above and beyond the harmony. Victory was in the room, and even the baby knew it.

While composing this post, I’ve listened to the 1812 Overture, again and again. They say Tchaikovsky never cared much for this piece even though it’s a popular favorite.

Listen to it for yourself and see if you can’t hear what my children heard years ago, and I confess, still brings tears to my eyes, the battle of good and evil, and the mercy of an invisible, invincible God who gave triumph to a weakened, destitute people, who’d burned their own towns to starve an overwhelming enemy.

So, with only days before our own nation decides it’s new leader, I’ll go out to my garden, cut the vines, and hope for spring, knowing that no matter what we fear or long for, God almighty is in control.

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Halloween

Posted on October 22, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

This is a walk down memory lane to the Halloween of my 60’s childhood. Before the pandemic made the boogie man real. Before there were over 200,000 dead to remember on All Souls Day. Before I understood what we masquerade reveals about our true longing for a sweetness this life can never provide.   

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Halloween costumes, my mom made them all. Second grade, a hot pink gypsy skirt with black rickrack at the bottom and huge clip-on hoop earrings that I hoped made me look like dusky Mrs. Tuthill, the only mom I knew in my suburb with pierced ears.

Third grade, a glittering green tunic over pink tights, a tight bun, and a magic wand like the one Tinker Bell waved over Disney’s castle.

Fourth grade, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier, in a brown cotton shirt fringed at the bottom like buckskin and a dime-store coon-skin cap. Marie, my fourth-grade best friend, powdered her face funereal white and lay down in a Salvation Army wheelchair as a corpse. I marched behind, lamenting the fact that our teacher let another kid, who happened to show up as a grave digger, push my friend in the Halloween parade.

By fifth grade I was a hobo like all the big kids. No more mommy-made costumes. Just Dad’s ripped flannel shirt, a pair of work pants stained with WD40, and a crumpled fedora.

After supper, finally cut loose to dash through the dark with the pack, I buzzed every doorbell to catch the mother lode of free candy pouring from every front door: Baby Ruths, Snickers, Pay Days, Milky Ways, whole Hershey Bars, Almond Joys, Coconut Mounds, Mary Janes, Jujubes, Sugar Babies, Sugar Daddies and more—until the bewitching hour when the last lady of the house said, “Isn’t it getting a little late?” and offered us the bottom of her bowl with only a few puny lollipops and a roll of licorice Necco Wafers.

As every porch darkened, reluctantly, I dragged my loot home and organized it on the living room rug in preparation for serious sibling trading. “I’ll give you all my Mike& Ikes for two of your Tootsie rolls and a Butterfingers.”  

Next morning in math, secretly sucking on a Red Hot, how I grieved the return of plaid dresses, saddle shoes and cafeteria ravioli, as my teacher droned on about finding the lowest common denominator.

Looking back, as a second-grade gypsy, I suppose I wanted to stand out from the crowd like exotic Mrs. Tuthill. Little did I know standing out from the crowd was why she fled the Nazis in her native Hungary.

As Tinker Bell, I declared that ordinary life wasn’t good enough. I wanted to wave my wand and fly to a world where goodness always triumphed, and magic never ended.

As Davy Crocket, king of the wild frontier, I marched behind Marie’s pretend dead body, a prescient mourner unable to fight off the savage breast cancer that would one day bring my bosom friend to premature death.

As a hobo, perhaps some prepubescent dawning whispered we are all alike, homeless beggars before a gracious God.

Of this I’m sure, how I loved that one hallowed eve when every child, clothed in their naked hopes and fears, could walk straight into the heart of the Big Rock Candy Mountain.  

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Bleeding Heart

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

           

As we head toward Halloween, a season of the supernatural and masquerade, here is an original fairy tale about the illusion of control and the consequences of taking matters into our own hands.

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In a time when magic still quivered above the earth and wishes were sought through enchantment, there lived an old woodcutter and his wife whose desire for a child had never been fulfilled. They kept to themselves in the forest, for whenever they brought their wares to the village, children’s laughter filled the market and made the old woman long all the more for a little one. One day as their cart wended its way home, she wept, “Dearest husband, my golden braids have become a silver crown. I fear I will never be a mother.”

Drawing her close, he whispered, “Dear wife, can you not be content with my love?  Fear grows only itself, not a child.”

That very night, the old woman awoke to the jingle of a gypsy wagon rolling through the wide meadow between the forest and the village. Surely it was the fortune teller she’d seen in the market. Silently she slipped out of bed and crept down the steep stairs. Pushing, aside a basket set upon the hearth, she lifted a loose stone. Underneath was a small pouch of golden coins. Clasping the coins close to her heart, she hurried through the dark wood until at last she came into the lavender light of a full moon spread across the field.   

Running beside the wagon, she held up the pouch and pleaded with the toothless crone, “Tell me, will I ever have a babe of my own?”

The fortune teller drew her horses to a halt and opened the old woman’s palm. “Yes, I see a daughter, and her name is Lavuta.”

“The name is strange,” said the old woman, “Are you sure? My hope has drifted away like a dream in the morning light.”

“I am sure,” said the fortune teller, exchanging the clinking pouch for a wrinkled sack of seeds.” Plant these in your garden by the door, and in the spring a daughter, will be yours.” She shook the reins and vanished into the distance.  

The old woman hurried toward home clutching the charmed sack, but at the edge of the wood an owl swooped from the top of an old oak and startled her. Raising her arms above her head, the seeds scattered. She fell to her knees in tears, for there was no way to reclaim them.         

When she opened the cottage door, her husband was kneeling beside the loosed stone. “What have you done with our bit of gold?”

The old woman confessed.  

“Foolish woman,” he pounded his fist, “sorcery plays only tricks, and now our small treasure is gone for naught.”  

But in the spring a babe was born, a daughter with jet black curls.  

“What name shall we give this child?” asked the old man.  

“Lavuta,” the old woman said for fear another name would break the spell which had brought this long-awaited gift despite her fumble.    

“Why this odd name?” her husband tilted his head.  

The old woman lied, “It has such a melodious sound.”   

“Very well, Lavuta,” said her husband, “for she will be the song of our hearts.”

As Lavuta grew, she picked up her little skirts and danced for her parents in front of the winter fire.     

“Oh, child, how you warm our hearts,” her mother said.  

In the spring she waltzed about a broom made of sticks as she helped her mother sweep the cottage.  

“Someday you will make a happy home of your own,” said the old woman.  

Summers she wandered the woodlands and sang as she picked bouquets for her family.     

“You have the voice of a lark,” said her father, “and your maiden beauty rivals the petals you’ve put in our hands.”

On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Lavuta awoke to the sound of her own name. She rose from her bed and followed the call out the door, through the black tunnel of the forest and into the meadow where a full moon spilled its silver upon the dewy grass. At the center of the field, under the twinkling stars, were a dozen gypsy wagons around a blazing fire. The silhouettes of men and women whirled before the flames. They clapped and shouted, “Lavuta, Lavuta.”  Irresistibly she drew near.

At the core of the ring was a handsome young man with a shock of dark hair. He cradled a violin beneath his chin and sawed upon it like her papa sawed a log. Music soared towards the heavens with the sparks, music Lavuta seemed to know by heart, and in an instant she understood. Her name was the Roma word for his instrument shaped like a voluptuous lady. And out of its long throat, the young man caressed the very melody of her soul.  

The old woman awoke from a nightmare in which she heard Lavuta’s name.    Seeing only the curves of her daughter’s body carved in the feather bed, her fears gathered like a great storm cloud ready to burst. She scurried, gasping for breath, down the path to the meadow.    

There were the wagons, and there was Lavuta, her cheeks flushed as she danced in front of the fire. Her eyes flashed as she circled the fiddler as she’d circled her broom. Her voice harmonized with his instrument like a lark calling its mate. The old woman pushed through the throng and begged, “Please, please, don’t enchant my daughter.”

A large man in a leather vest stepped forward and silenced his people. “Old woman, it is we who have been enchanted. For this we give your daughter a gift.” He summoned the wise woman of the clan from the far side of the flames. The toothless crone laid a necklace made of golden coins around Lavuta’s neck.     

Without any thanks, her mother yanked Lavuta’s hand. “We must go.”

They spoke not a word as Lavuta fingered the necklace and looked back at the young fiddler. At the edge of the meadow, the old woman turned to her daughter and whispered,” We cannot accept this gift. I fear it’s laced with sorcery and will only play us tricks.”  She tore the chain from her daughter’s throat and watched its coins scatter under the big oak.     

Lavuta fell to her knees and sobbed. “Is it magic to fall in love?”

The old woman pulled her daughter to her feet, “It’s magic that brought you to me, and magic I fear will take you away.” They walked home as if struck dumb by a curse.  

The old man and the old woman had grown too deaf to hear the departing bells of the gypsy wagons, but with the morning light, they saw Lavuta’s bed was again empty. Hand in hand, they trudged through the wood, stopping at its edge. Before them new grass waved in the wind. In the dappled sunlight under the oak, was a blanket of brilliant pink flowers.  

The old man fell to his knees and plucked just one blossom. “Is this where you spilled the fortune teller’s seed long ago?”

“Yes.” His wife stared.  

Something sparkled amidst the blooms, and she stooped to reclaim what she knew must be the scattered coins of the necklace.     

“Foolish woman those coins are the price you paid for this.” Her husband held out the flower in his hand.

The old woman gasped at the petals shaped like a miniature heart dripping a single tear of blood.

And this, so they say, is how the wildflower, bleeding heart, found its name.   

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Over the Edge of Doubt

Posted on October 6, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Anyone remember this ditty my teacher taught us to introduce explorers of the New World?

When my youngest daughter was the same age, she crafted a two-foot papier mâché Christopher Columbus for a class project. Her father helped her make a metal skeleton that stood up, and I took her to the fabric store where she selected silky material to fashion red and gold striped bloomers, a red renaissance jacket, and a golden cap. Hands deep in newspaper glop, she carefully formed his body, and when he hardened, painted his face.

Christopher’s expression came out as surprised as she was that she couldn’t dress him. His outstretched arms didn’t bend, and his feet were sunk in a solid chunk of wood. So, she slit his jacket between his bumpy shoulder blades and sewed it back up after sliding on each sleeve. Of course, she also had to split his shorts and stitch them back on one leg at a time. She stuck a found turkey feather in his golden cap, and he was magnificent. But after his glorious moment in her fifth-grade class, poor Chris stood in the corner of our basement for a decade, staring at spider webs, until we moved and threw his silken splendor in the trash.

A few years back, I watched a documentary about Laura Dekker, a fourteen-year-old determined to sail solo around the world. Courts in the Netherlands tried to prevent her voyage, arguing her goal insane and unsafe. As looney as Columbus sailing off the edge of a planet shaped like a pancake?  Despite official discouragement, Laura completed her voyage at sixteen, setting a record as the youngest person ever to circumnavigate the globe alone. Soon after her accomplishment, she set sail again, most content at sea. 

Most content at sea. Aren’t we all? The wind at our back, bucking the waves of adventure? No one wants to be at anchor, staring rigidly at the cobwebs of their lives.

I’m sure Columbus had no idea how his discoveries would contribute to the rise and fall of many in the New World. Times have changed, and for some, Christopher’s glory has turned to infamy. Can any of us predict how our lives and work will influence others?   

And so, it is still a brave thing to set sail daily with childlike hope, over the edge of doubt, ignoring the approval or disapproval of men, to follow the trade winds of our divine destiny.

Nowadays, I weigh anchor from my desk, writing stories I hope someone will discover and enjoy.  Maybe it’s insane. Certainly, unsafe. But God gives each of us a set of sails, and there’s a new world ahead.

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Slaying the Monster Shame

Posted on October 1, 2020 by Ann C. Averill

Shame, if we’re human, we have it. It dogs us, discourages us, keeps us in hiding or striving to prove we are worth more than the whispers of our self-condemnation.  

So, where does shame come from?

How does shame affect us?

What’s the antidote to shame?

First, let’s distinguish between guilt and shame.

Guilt is the feeling that we’ve done something wrong.

Shame is the feeling that there’s something wrong with us.

How do these things affect us?

  • Confessed guilt leads to repentance. Hidden guilt leads to shame.
  • Shame leaves us hiding and masking who really are.

To show you how guilt led to shame in my own life, I include a flash memoir about when the monster shame was born in my life.

Ice Blue Secret

After Christmas vacation, after sleeping with the first boy I ever slept with for all the wrong reasons, I come home from school, turn on the tiny TV in the den, and change the channel to Dark Shadows, the soap opera I used to watch with my best friend, Linda.  Flopped in the chair, my hand deep in a can of Charles chips, an Ice Blue Secret commercial pauses the plot.  I see a young woman seated at a dressing table facing a round mirror.  She wears a satin wedding dress.  Her veil, swept back over a tiara, looks like a crown.  Her mother stands next to her in a sedate mother-of-the bride suit with matching pill box hat, demi-veil and silk pumps. The mother hands the daughter the deodorant, leans in and whispers. The daughter smiles.  The ad’s intent is clear, to link the long-awaited thrill of the wedding night with the need for an anti-perspirant able to withstand the impending steam. The implied bliss of course requires a pristine bride whose snow-white purity has never been melted, a figurine bride waiting atop a wedding cake for her perfect groom.  A princess awaiting her prince, no portcullis lowered by pot or alcohol, no pressure vented, a young woman entering the marriage bed at full throttle.

When the ad is over, I turn off the TV, pull on my coat, grab my mother’s snow shoes, and head towards the bird sanctuary at the far end of the neighborhood.  In the frigid air, I walk through the small clouds of my own breath.  At the edge of the forest, I strap the awkward rawhide netting to my feet and climb into deep powder. Tramping through the trees, I hear the coo of mourning doves, the squawk of blue jays, the chick-a-dee-dee-dee of small black-capped birds. A bright red cardinal slashes my view, and as the winter sun begins to set, I confess to no one, that by abdicating the virgin throne atop the aforementioned-cake, I am secretly damaged.  My ice blue conclusion—I’m no longer worthy of true love.  

So why did I react to my guilt this way? Why did I conclude I was no longer worthy of love? Because I am a descendant of Adam and Eve, we all are. And Adam and Eve were created without the ability to cope with sin because they were created for a world without it. Makes sense, right? Hear that. Humans have no ability to cope with sins we commit, or sins others commit against us. On our own we’re defenseless.

Defenseless because that’s how we’re made, plus we now have a sin nature and are living in a fallen world where everyone else has a sin nature too that doesn’t disappear at the moment of salvation. That means every day, like Paul says, we don’t do things that we want to do, and we do stuff we don’t want to do, stuff that’s destructive to both ourselves and others. In our flesh, we are unable to love our neighbor or even ourselves.

Sounds horrible, but God always had a plan. Jesus paid the price for all our sins on the cross. We know this.

Or, we think we do. When I was a brand-new Christian, my understanding of the cross was a kind of basic arithmetic. All my past sins plus Jesus equaled zero. The cross brought me back to ground zero, with a get-out-of hell-free card, but from then on, I assumed I was on my own to keep clean by obeying God’s commandments.

Thankfully, my early Christian arithmetic was completely wrong. Our salvation doesn’t rest on our behavior before we come to salvation or even after. Jesus plus my entire lifetime of sins past, present and future doesn’t equal zero, it equals the infinity of God’s unchanging, eternal love for me and you, and the supernatural work of his grace. This is why the gospel is good news because as long as we live, we’ll continue to screw up.

But as a believer, when God sees me naked without pretense or mask, He sees me through the lens of Christ as holy, chosen and beloved, the purified bride of Christ. The book The Cure says, “Grace, is the face love wears when it meets imperfection.” This is the face of God.

Then why do I still feel lousy about myself at times? Why won’t shame let go?

Perhaps because the past seems like more concrete evidence of our shame than the word of God.

But this is the same twisted lie straight out of the garden that asks us to trust what Satan says about us instead of what God has already done on our behalf. There is nothing wrong with me that isn’t wrong with every human on the planet. All of us are stuck with the same sin nature this side of paradise. No temptation has seized us except that which is common to man. And the sins against me may be horrific, but Jesus carried them too once and for all.

Just today, I found a letter my daughter wrote me after her divorce which said, “There is only today. God grants us freedom from worry of tomorrow, and the past is an immovable object that cannot be acted on, changed, fixed, or erased.” But God’s love is molten able to transform our past into compassion, mercy, and wisdom.

God prophesized through Isaiah 43:18-19 to, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; don’t you perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

What is that new thing? 

2Corinthians:17-20, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us.”

This is why I write memoir, as a testimony of the reconciliation of God in my own life.

My point is God hears, God sees, God knows, think, Hagar, the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery. Whether it’s sins we’ve committed, or sins committed against us, he never condemns. We blame shift, resent, and condemn ourselves. But Romans 8:1 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set you free from the law of sin and death.”

 Psalm 18:16-19 says, “He reached down from on high and took hold of me, he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from foes who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support. He brought me into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”

So, why do we still feel bad about ourselves at times?

For me, the solution lies in focusing on who God is and how much he loves me instead of focusing on all my dirt and flubs. When shame enters my mind, I recall God’s truth. As a believer I am now a child of God, the high king of heaven. I have infinite worth. No sin can be counted against me. I am not what I do or what anyone else has done to me. When God looks at me, he sees the perfection of Christ on my behalf. I am pure, loved, and in the ongoing process of redemption.

And redemption is not a re-do. It’s a re-am. God is the great I Am, and I am made in his image. God recreates me, reclaims me, re-news me, rejoices over me, and reconciles with me. Reconcile sounds like domicile, meaning he wants to live with us again like back in Eden’s garden.  Everything that’s happened that Satan meant for evil, God transforms for my good and the good of everyone I have the privilege of influencing. If I am not the product of my achievements, neither am I the product of my sins or those done against me.

It’s also important to note, God, my heavenly father, is nothing like crummy earthly fathers, absent fathers, or abusive fathers. Norm Wakefield, in Living in the Presence of God, says, “He is a joyous happy person who delights to have us near. Always immediately available and attuned to our every cry. He is a dad who cares deeply about our well-being and who wants to guide us in decision making that will be wise and fruitful. He is a father who provides security and safety in the midst of life’s storms. He is slow to anger, and rich in love. He is always seeking us. He is patient with our failure and sin, and quick to forgive.”

So, sisters, cling to these truths. Recognize toxic people and influences in your life that treat you as if you are worth less than God says you are and set boundaries. Surround yourself with a community of trustworthy friends willing to unmask and be real and remind each other of all we mean to our daddy, God.

So, this is my prayer, from Psalm 34 “May our souls boast in the Lord; let the afflicted (those still bruised and healing) hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me, let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears (that I’m not enough, worthless, bad, unusable, polluted, unlovable). Those who look to him are radiant their faces are never covered with shame. “Be radiant in the confidence of God’s over-the-moon love for you.

If you remember nothing else from what I shared today, remember this:

We are not what we do or what has been done to us. We are who we are as a result of our relationship with a God who is our savior, our redeemer, our friend, a mighty counselor, the prince of peace, the door, the way to a fresh, clean, lovable identity forever and ever AMEN! This is the antidote to shame. This is how we slay the monster.

I will leave you with these books that may help you understanding how much God loves you:

The Cure— about trusting rather than performing for God

Lay it Down— about not striving but resting in our identity in God

Who Gives a Rip About Sin— about how to overcome the power of sin by the grace of God

Living in the Presence of God—about how God is the perfect Daddy many of us never had.

Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School—about how God revealed my core identity in Christ while I was striving to prove myself at an under-performing school and felt like a failure.

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