Everyday Gospels, Living Words
by Bill Musser,
She knew how to let go of unfulfilled dreams and disappointment and find something bigger to put in their place.
As a five year-old child, she lost all her thick, blonde hair during a high fever, and it never grew back. She wore little caps on her head, the kind of caps you see housekeepers and maids wear in old movies. Her parents ordered a wig for her confirmation. The wig didn't arrive in time for the confirmation photograph, the image that would last, but it did come in time for the ceremony, and she wore it proudly.
Years later, it was one of her confirmation classmates who offered her a ride home after a dance at a neighbor's house. She innocently welcomed his offer. On the way home he raped her. She maintained her dignity, wrote nothing but his initials in her diary on the date it occurred, kept quiet. When she discovered she was pregnant, however, she had to give up her job as a teacher, and so returned to the home farm and, with her parents' help, raised the boy. She filed a paternity suit against the father of her child and won a modest settlement. She was not afraid to demand justice where injustice had occurred.
She found a gentle man, a quiet man who loved her. They met at church. They courted and married and he adopted her son. They had more children together. They both lived to ripe old ages. For years she did not tell her other children about the circumstances of the conception of their brother. She simply kept it quiet, making sure that her first child was viewed by the others as a full member of the family. She let painful things go, and loved all her children.
Though she lost her hair to a fever and her innocence to a cruel man, she maintained her dignity and stood solidly against an injustice by simply living a life that refused to be extinguished by disappointment. She let go of one set of dreams, and rather than indulging in regret, she found something bigger, she expanded her life in a courageous move—she accepted herself, moved on, transformed pain into love. And her story is now an everyday gospel, the gospel told by her son.
We of the Christian tradition speak of incarnation as though it happened once, and gospels as though they are confined to thin paper in a black leather-bound book. But new gospels are being written every day; we see them walking and talking among us. We witness incarnations of faith, hope, and love. We know great lives among us, lives that are expanded by courage, lives that transform deep suffering into broad love.
Each of us, in fact, is an everyday gospel, a living word. Each of us has power to transform pain into love. But such a transformation demands courage. And courage requires examples like the woman whose gospel story I have shared. We love to tell their stories because they empower us, they embolden us, they tell us that we need not be afraid, because we are not alone. We need not let our lives shrink. We need only take heart, stop worrying about what others will say, and see how our lives expand before us!