Her Gifted Hands

To all of my sisters at church (and elsewhere) who feel that you aren’t talented enough, or productive enough, or something enough, I wrote these lines of poetry with you in mind:

With her

long and slender

  graceful

    smooth and pale

      immaculate

        manicured

hands

that have

gripped a pen

wielded a paintbrush

danced over piano keys

typed on a computer keyboard

handled a Sunday School book

cradled a choir binder,

designed a craft

arranged a bouquet…

With her

sturdy

calloused

stained

creased

weathered

work-worn

reddened

hands

that have

milked cows

podded peas and snapped beans

shaped bread dough into loaves

scrubbed a toilet

pulled thistles

repaired appliances

wrestled ornery creatures

varnished woodwork…

My sister

has been to me

the creative hands

of Jesus.

This Post’s Quotable:

One mom’s way of describing her adventure-loving, risk-taking son: “He keeps my prayers fresh.”

This Post’s Childhood Memory:

When we lived in Northwoods Beach, one of our fascinating neighbors was a German lady whom we called Mrs. Sperling. I remember going to her house for tea. She peered at us children through her coke-bottle glasses while she spoke to my mom in a strong, heavily-German-accented voice. I got the impression that, had she been a school teacher, she would’ve been of the very strictest sort. Once, she described a special German dish to Mom, and she kept referring to letting the milk get “sick” in the making of it. Later Mom explained to me that Mrs. Sperling meant allowing the milk to get thick, instead of sick. I figured that if one added curdled milk to a food, it would certainly be “sick”, as well as thick!