Ann C. Averill Author

I went to church my entire childhood, but coming of age during the Woodstock Generation, I drifted farther and farther away from God. Looking back, no matter how far away I got, God was drawing me closer to his plan for my life. If I hadn’t resisted, I wouldn’t understand his faithfulness.

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I was a junior in college in the fall of 1973 and had the privilege of a semester abroad in London. One night my roommate, Lydia, and I took the Tube to Picadilly and wandered the West End looking for a club that was hopping. We entered a small establishment with a dance floor crammed with bodies flailing under a disco ball. I ordered a hard cider from the bar and swallowed its tang.  

A guy in a gray suit asked me to dance. Shards of light glinted off his wire-rimmed glasses as the base throbbed. He shouted, “I’m Swiss.” 

I shouted back, “American.”

We gyrated with the others until the music slowed. He took me in his arms and said, “My family is wealthy. Would you like to visit Switzerland? Go skiing?” He checked his glittering watch. “We could go to my apartment and get to know each other better.”

I looked over his shoulder for Lydia. She was at a table on the perimeter sipping a foamy stout.

“Not tonight.” I slipped his arm from my waist. “I need to check in with my friend.”  Before I even settled on the bench, there was a voice behind me. “Mind if we join you?”

A tall guy with shaggy chestnut hair sat down beside Lydia, and with an Irish brogue, said, “Names Ian. What’s yours?”

Another guy, with straight black hair and smiling brown eyes took my hand. “I’m Selva. Want to dance?”

I followed him back to the dance floor. “Selva means jungle in Spanish, right?” I suppose I was trying to impress him.  

 “I don’t speak Spanish,” he said with a British accent. “I’m from Malaysia where Selva means lucky person or jewel.” He pulled me closer for a slow dance and grinned.  

“What if I don’t believe in luck?” I pulled back slightly from his embrace.  

“Well, something has brought us together.” His white teeth flashed another smile, and I danced with him the rest of the evening until we were both sweaty and exhausted.

 Finally, Ian hailed a hack and we all climbed in the backseat.  

The driver asked, “Where to?” with a Jamaican accent.  

Ian leaned forward. “Croydon.”

I turned to Selva. “No one in England seems to be English. My landlord and his sister are from Poland. I buy naan from a Pakistani tandoori. The kebab shop on Bayswater is run by Turks.”

Selva smiled and put his arm around me. “No escaping The Empire.” 

After a twenty-minute ride, the car parked in front of what looked like a haunted mansion. Selva helped me out of the vehicle.  

While Ian paid the cabby in November moonlight, I surveyed the vast lawns and dormant flower beds. Skeletal bushes and swaying tree limbs scratched the sky.  

Lydia took my arm. “Is this where you guys live?”

Ian opened a rusty iron gate and said, “Yes.”

Selva walked through the opening. “But we also work here.”

Lydia hesitated. “What do you do? What is this place?”

Selva laughed. “It’s an asylum.”

 “As in insane?” I remained beside Lydia.  

“As in psychiatric hospital. Ian and I are attendants, and we have rooms on the grounds.”  

Ian beckoned. “Come on, we’ll show you.”

Under the circumstances, I couldn’t believe I said no to Swiss aristocracy.  

I took Selva’s hand. Lydia took Ian’s, and we entered the side door of what looked like a long dormitory.  

Selva opened one of the doors and turned on the light. “These are my quarters.”

I saw Lydia and Ian disappear into the room next door. There was nowhere to sit in Selva’s room but on an iron bed pushed against the wall. A sink opposite completed the accommodations. Above the sink was a mirror and a glass shelf featuring a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a figurine with multiple arms and the head of an elephant.  

I pointed to the small statue. “What’s that?”

Selva sat beside me. “That’s Ganesh, the Hindu god who removes obstacles whenever you begin something new.”  He grinned and laid back on the bed.  

“Oh.” I remained upright with my feet on the floor.  

He caressed my long hair. “You remind me of my mother.”

I twisted to face him. “Your mother?”

He smoothed the bed for me to lie down beside him. “She’s beautiful and kind.”

I squinted at his line. “You’ve only known me a few hours. How can you know I’m kind?”

“Well, you danced with me, and I’m not a very good dancer,” he burst out laughing.

I laughed too and laid back. “This whole situation is bizarre.”

“Yet, you are here with me.” He smiled.  

When Lydia interrupted by opening the door, I agreed to see Selva again.  

Next weekend Ian and Selva invited us to go dancing at another club. When we took a break at a tiny table, Selva leaned in. “I’m going to visit my parents in Kuala Lumpur for three weeks. Would you like to come?” 

I was tempted to ask if his family was wealthy and would there be skiing. “You’re kidding right? About me going with you—halfway around the world?”

 “No, I am not kidding.” He suddenly sounded so formal. “I want you to meet my mother.”  

“My semester is over in about three weeks, and Lydia and I have already booked a flight to Paris before we head home to the States.”

“Bummer.”  

I hated the word bummer, but his accent made everything sound cool.  

“Can I at least call you when I get back? I really like you.” The light in his eye told me it was true, for now, but I didn’t really expect to hear from him.  

The week Selva left for Malaysia, Princess Anne and Mark Phillips were married in Westminster Abbey. Lydia and I were among the throng gathered near Buckingham Palace, the destination of the royal couple’s fairy tale coach. We watched stoic guards in red coats and bearskin hats open the iconic gate and waited with the crowd for the newlyweds to enter the palace and wave from the balcony in all their finery.  

This launched a last-minute blitz of all things British whenever I wasn’t studying for finals. I checked out Covent Garden where Eliza Doolittle sold her flowers and the British Museum full of foreign gods and ideal marble men plundered while Britannia ruled the waves. I took the Tube to The Tate Museum full of moody Turner landscapes, and massive Henry Moore figures. I wandered through Kensington Gardens and discovered the Peter Pan statue. Lydia and I made a point to return to Johnny’s Fish and Chips served in newspaper, at the foot of Tower Bridge, a stone’s throw from Big Ben, Parliament, and the Tower of London where Henry the VIII lopped the heads off wives he’d grown tired of.  

It was so hard to leave that legendary city, I neglected packing until the night before our flight to France. How to fit my few mementos into a small blue American Tourister? I rolled a package of British biscuits in my pajamas and folded a mohair shawl from Scotland for my mom on top of my sweaters.   

As I was trying to figure out what to do with the black derby I bought on Portobello Road for my dad, and the antique safari helmet for my brother, the phone rang.  

“It’s Selva. I’m back. How about a party at a friend’s house tonight? I have gifts from Malaysia.”

“I’m leaving in the morning.” I looked at Lydia, also packing, and mouthed, “Croydon?”

Lydia shook her head, “Are you crazy?”

“Yes,” I spoke into the phone, and wrote down the party’s address.  

It was almost midnight by the time I navigated to a townhouse jammed with people. I was introduced as Selva’s American girlfriend. We drank in the kitchen, danced in the living room, and around three in the morning, as the crowd thinned, he pulled out a cheap necklace dangling a crucifix. “This is your gift.” 

I took the crucifix, “What am I supposed to do with this? Put it on a shelf beside my toothbrush?”

“Very funny. You wear it over your heart. You’re a Christian, aren’t you? You’re American.”

He hung the broken man on a cross around my neck and hooked the clasp before I had time or words to explain the distinction between culture and faith or the fact that I and my young country were drifting farther and farther away from Sunday School and closer to New Age spirituality that felt more mysterious than singing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” like a dirge.

“Thanks,” I whispered, “but I really have to go,” thinking I would ditch the superstitious hunk of junk ASAP.

“Wait,” he put another slim package in front of me. “These are for your mother.” 

I opened the box to find four placemats made from tightly woven palm fronds like the ones I received as a child on Palm Sunday. “These are beautiful!” This time I really meant it.

Selva beamed. “I bought them from an indigenous tribe and paid for them with salt.”

“Salt?” I tilted my head.

“It’s more valuable than money in the jungle. It’s used to cure fish and meat, to flavor bland cassava, and as an antiseptic.”

“Interesting. My mom will love these, but I really have to go.”

“There are no more trains at this hour.”  He plumped a pillow from the couch and laid down on the living room floor. Why don’t you spend the night? Gatwick is only twenty minutes away.” I looked at others already crashed on the carpet and curled up in his arms.  

In the morning light, heavy headed and rumpled, I checked a map of London and realized the airport was twenty minutes south of Croydon. My flat, where I still had to retrieve my stuff, was twenty minutes north. Panicked, I stepped over snoring bodies, and Selva helped me call a hack. We kissed good-bye, and I pressed my face against the window as the cab pulled away.  

When we got to my flat, I told to the driver, “Please, wait!” and ran up three flights of stairs, strapped on my brother’s safari helmet, grabbed my suitcase in one hand and my dad’s derby in the other, dashed back down, and lunged into the vehicle.

When we got to Gatwick, Lydia was wringing her hands at the gate. I sighed. We boarded and took off for the City of Lights.  

High above the earth, where country and kingdom vanish to the human eye, I peered out the tiny airplane portal and thought I was indeed lucky to meet a young man with a light in his eye that made me feel beautiful. A young man who offered me far more than our short courtship deserved, an extravagant invitation to his home far away along with so many symbols of a God I didn’t know back in 1973 when I was a swine before pearls.

But I’m no longer that vulnerable, young woman without a clue. Now I understand the crazy love of the cross that offers me a fresh identity as the beloved child of a living God.

I have a place set at the wedding feast of the lamb.

And until that day, I’ll shout Hosanna to the King of all nations—along with my brothers and sisters called to be the salt of the earth, bringing hope and healing to people hungry for a God too big to sit on a shelf.

I have been crucified with the Anointed One—I am no longer alive—but the Anointed is living in me; and whatever life I have left in this failing body I live by the faithfulness of God’s Son, the One who loves me and gave His body on the cross for me.

Galatians 2:20 (VOICE)

Cover photo by Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash

The growing war in Ukraine has made me much more aware of the freedom, comfort, and family I enjoy. Sometimes you don’t know what you have until it’s threatened or gone. Such was the case when I was in fourth grade on a cold, gray day in March 1963.

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It was snowing when I raced off the school bus, eager to get home, out of my wool skirt, and into my snow pants. Helen Thompson and I were were going to build a fort in the massive snowbank at the end of her driveway, but Mrs. Thompson flagged me down in the middle of the street before I got home. Her dilated pupils, searching for light in the storm, focused on my face. “Your Dad called to say your Mom had an accident.  He wants you to wait here until he comes home.”

Worry lines pinched her black eyebrows, as I pondered the word accident. Polly Handel had a skiing accident, broke her leg, and everyone signed her cast. Laura Leary had broken her foot fooling around with a baseball bat. She got a walking cast and could still hobble around the bases. It never occurred to me that accident meant Mommy would be in the hospital for five weeks. That her accident would make the front page of the Schenectady Gazette, “Woman Hit by Bus.” That the photo would show snowbanks on the corners of Balltown Road and Route 7 even more colossal than those at the end of the Thompson’s driveway. That the police would report an impatient bus driver rushed a red light, hit Mommy broadside, threw her barely hundred-pound body out of our two-ton Ford station wagon, across four lanes of traffic, and onto another snowbank the size of the Rock of Gibraltar.

No, the reaction Mrs. Thompson was looking for wasn’t on my own face. My ten-year-old mind was intent on simply filling my snowball arsenal for an icy Armageddon. Me and my friend against a world of invisible enemies on the other side of the driveway.    

Daddy picked me up from Helen’s and my brother from Eric Snell’s. I slithered out of Helen’s borrowed snow pants and hung my frozen mittens on the heater grate. Daddy popped my favorite TV dinner, Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes and peas, and Bruce’s, spaghetti and garlic bread, into the oven. Bruce and I set up TV trays in the den because Daddy said we could watch a Tarzan movie on the Early Show while we ate supper–something unheard of unless Mommy and Daddy were going out.  

I had no idea Daddy had been waiting for the doctors to remove Mommy’s ruptured spleen, set her broken collar bone and pelvis, and re-inflate her punctured lung. I had no idea that while I was heaving snowball after snowball at the invisible bad guys, Daddy was waiting to see if Mommy’s brain still worked after sloshing around her skull like the contents of a snow globe.

In the morning Daddy dropped Bruce and I off at the Palmeris, family friends. Mrs. Palmeri gave us strawberry Pop-Tarts, and we watched Captain Kangaroo with Tony Palmeri until the school bus arrived.  

After school, Mrs. Spath, a gray-haired woman I’ve never seen before, was in our kitchen making ham steaks and succotash. She didn’t know I didn’t especially like ham and Bruce hated succotash because it contained lima beans. But every day the old lady in the belted black dress came back to do our laundry, make dinner, and babysit, even though we weren’t babies anymore.   

My teacher, Mrs. Barrington, was teaching us how to add fractions and find the lowest common denominator. One Thursday during math, my new best friend, Marie invited me to sleep over. Since Mommy was still in the hospital, Daddy said an easy yes.    

Friday after school, I rode bus number four instead of bus number twenty-two, and Marie and I got off at her stop. Marie’s mom was divorced and worked, so we walked into a motherless kitchen. Marie got a Pepperidge Farm chocolate cake out of the freezer and handed me a fork. We hacked at it until the whole package was gone. She showed me the phone in her tiny room. It had a long, curly cord that we stretched into her closet to make prank phone calls.   

When her mother came home later, she said we could sleep in Marie’s older brother’s room because he had a double bed. There was a TV right in his room, and we stayed up way past the Flintstones watching the Tonight Show with Jack Parr. The audience was laughing, but I didn’t get the jokes. When the only thing broadcast was the Indian chief test pattern, Marie turned off the set, and hauled an 8mm projector out of her brother’s closet. I fell asleep watching home movies of her father with her whole family skiing down Mt. Fujiyama in Japan where her dad was stationed before the divorce.   

I didn’t see Mommy until they took all the tubes out and she could smile. She was cranked up in traction as I told her about Lum Fung’s Chinese restaurant where Daddy took us after church for Sunday dinner. I told her how Bruce and I tried moo goo gai pan, egg foo young, egg rolls, and wonton soup, and how there was a huge picture of a red dragon hovering over our table.  

After Easter, Mommy came home, but not before I learned what it was to have a kitchen without a mother in it, and that a father could leave you without a trace of his existence except grainy films taken in a foreign country. And not before Marie showed me the broken-down piano in her garage and taught me to play my part of the duet, “Heart and Soul.”  

So, sisters in Christ, let’s pray for those caught in the war in Ukraine, and may it remind us that daily we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. That sounds ominous except as an encouragement to trust God to fight the battles we could never win on our own and to hold each other tight until kingdom come.

Even in the unending shadows of death’s darkness,

    I am not overcome by fear.

Because You are with me in those dark moments,

    near with Your protection and guidance,

    I am comforted.

You spread out a table before me,

    provisions in the midst of attack from my enemies;

You care for all my needs, anointing my head with soothing, fragrant oil,

    filling my cup again and again with Your grace.

Certainly Your faithful protection and loving provision will pursue me

    where I go, always, everywhere.

I will always be with the Eternal,

    in Your house forever.

Psalm 23: 4-6 (VOC)

Cover photo by Jessica Fadel on Unsplash

Shame is a powerful tool of the enemy, able to morph into a million avatars, but no match for God’s sovereignty and grace. Here’s what I mean.

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It’s 1967 at the tail end of the summer, and my mom’s hairstylist, Mr. John, gives me a Twiggy cut. My mom makes my new school clothes: a brown polyester mini dress with wide lapels and bell sleeves, brown wool culottes, and a Black Watch plaid hip hugger skirt. With new tortoise shell, octagonal glasses I am as cool as a skinny fourteen-year-old can be.   

My first day of high school I discover my best friends, Linda and Marie are in none of my classes. Alone, I follow my ninth-grade schedule: algebra, world history, biology, English, French, gym, home economics, and personal typing.   

The building is a one-story sprawl with a maze of corridors, but no matter where you’re headed, you need to pass the Crossroads, a key intersection where the upperclassmen hang out at round tables.  

Within a week Linda, Marie, and I are rushed for Kappa Beta Epsilon, the high school sorority Linda’s older sister, Laura belongs to. At an introductory meeting, I listen to the bylaws. Basically, I have to pin a blue and white bow to my clothing at all times, learn the Greek alphabet, and memorize all the KBE sisters in my school, so I can say hi whenever I see them. Not saying hi is a demerit that might keep me out of something I’m not sure I want into.

Most of the cheerleaders are in KBE and sit by the Crossroads with senior guys. Don Bouchard is a senior who’s always there seventh period on my way to gym. Cindy Dickinson, KBE cheerleader, slouches at his table.  

I turn my head. “Hi, Cindy.”

Don gives me a mincing wave. “Hi, sweetheart.” Cindy laughs.  

That night, after dinner, the phone rings. I answer, “Hello.”

“Don’t you mean, hi? It’s Don Bouchard.”

I can’t think.  

“I was wondering if you want to go out with me Saturday.”

I want to scream no, I think you were making fun of me, but “I’ll ask my mom,” comes out my mouth.  

“Okey dokey.” He snickers.   

I drop the phone on my mom’s desk and poke my head around the corner of the living room. Mom is reading the paper. Dad is snoozing in his naugahyde recliner. “Can I go out with a senior on Saturday?”

“What?” My father is alert. My question hangs in the air. I can’t say it again.

They glance at each other. Dad speaks, “Your mom and I agreed you’re not allowed to date until you’re sixteen.”

My shoulders relax. “Okay.”

I sprint for the phone. “Sorry, I’m not allowed,” and hang up.  

Next day, at the Crossroads, Cindy and Laura catch up to me.  

“Hi.”

Cindy walks to my right. “You going to the dance on Saturday?”

Laura walks to my left. “My parents said they can take us if your parents can pick us up.”

I gulp. “Probably, I’ll ask.”

There’s no parental sanction against school dances, so Saturday at eight o’clock, wearing my Black Watch hip hugger skirt, and a green poor boy sweater, I enter the gym with Linda and Laura. Linda is instantly asked to dance, and Laura disappears. I’m abandoned to scan the room for girls I have to say hi to.   

Danny Gallagher, a cute junior with dark eyes and dark eyebrows pulls me onto the dance floor. He shakes his curly brown hair to the beat of “A Little Bit of Soul” and flashes a goofy smile. I shake my Twiggy cut and shuffle my feet.

Groovin’ by The Rascals plays next, and I let Danny enfold me in his arms as the dance floor swells with bear-hugging couples.  

“Respect” is the next song, one of my favorites, and I cut loose when Aretha belts out, “What you want, baby I got it.”

Laura swoops in. “Linda and I are taking off with Dale Eagan. There’s a party at Phil Blomberg’s house.”

I hesitate.  

“Come on! We’ll be back before your parents pick us up.”

Danny Gallagher takes my hand, and we all exit the gym.

A white Chevy wagon with fake wood paneling idles at the curb where my dad’s car will be parked by eleven o’clock. Linda is already in the back seat on an upperclassman’s lap. Laura squishes in the middle. Danny Gallagher slides next to Laura and gives me a place on his lap. Marie climbs onto the roof rack with Hawley Jenkins. Upper classmen I don’t know fill the front seat and the way back. By the time Dale squeals out of the parking lot, there must be a dozen kids packed inside. Someone passes me a bottle of Ripple. I down the whole thing since it’s the size of a Coke. But if this is what wine tastes like, yuck.  

We take a right out of the parking lot and another at the light. The tires scream around the traffic circle, and we blow by the farm where my mom buys summer corn. I hope Marie is still on the roof. We jerk another right, and I realize my head is spinning.  

The next thing I know, the car door opens. I get out. The ground tilts. I guess this is Phil Blomberg’s, a well-kept split level surrounded by rhododendrons. The Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun” blasts into the street. Kids pour past me into the front door. There are two stairwells in the entry, one goes up, one down. My head swims. I grab the upstairs railing, raise my eyes, and blink.   

Don Bouchard stands at the top of the steps, wearing nothing but a paisley tie. He shouts down at me, “Aren’t you going to say hi?”

Cindy Dickinson tickles him in the ribs and cackles.  

“Hi,” I don’t know where to put my eyes. “I mean, hi.”

“Out of the way Bouchard!” Danny helps me into the kitchen. “Want something to eat?”  

I grab a handful of potato chips from a bowl on the kitchen table, but my head feels sloshy. The living room lights are off. The couch and chairs are filled with kids making out. I just need to lie down and find a spot on the carpet beneath the grand piano. Danny crawls under too and cradles my head for I don’t know how long until someone down the hall yells, “Everybody, out! The neighbors called the cops.”

I squint at Danny. “Is that Phil Blomberg?”

Danny ushers me back into the front seat of Dale’s Chevy. My sick head hangs out the window like a dog’s. We’re flying down the road, when my purple potato chip puke splatters the station wagon’s wood paneling. Danny rummages in the glove compartment and hands me a mashed packet of dusty Kleenex.   

Back in the school lot, He puts his arm around me, and escorts me to the restroom as if I’m the perfect date. I drink water out of my hand and spit in the sink. I take off my cool octagonal glasses and splash my face. I finger my Twiggy cut into place. By the time I come out of the bathroom, the dance is over. I look for Danny, but he’s gone. Following the crowd out to the curb, I find my mom waiting in the car. Linda and Laura materialize from the dark and hop in the backseat. As we pull away from the school, I’m relieved to see Marie alive and making out with Hawley Jenkins by the flagpole.   

My mom stops at the red light by the First National Bank. “Have a good time?” she asks without turning around.  

“Yes,” we mumble in unison.  

We drop off Linda and Laura. “Good night.” My mom waves.  

Back in my bed, my head swirls. I can’t believe what I’ve gotten away with.  

But Monday morning the gauntlet awaits.  

Don Bouchard is grinning at his table. “Hi, again.”

I can’t believe I say, “Hi,” back.

And I can’t believe Danny Gallagher gave me even a little bit of R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

I had no idea how much self-respect meant, until I began to lose it.

Looking back, I can’t thank dark-eyed, Danny Gallagher (obviously not his real name) enough! He was with me in my humiliation, offering me far more than I deserved, long before I could see him as an unknowing avatar of Christ.

How about you sister? Don’t let shame bully you into thinking your most regrettable moments equal your identity.

“All of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. But God treats us much better than we deserve, and because of Christ Jesus, he freely accepts us and sets us free from our sins.”

Romans 3:23-24 (CEV)

Cover photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash