By The Reverend Mrs. Silence DoGood
Dear Editor,
Even visits to the nutritionist didn’t help. My eighteen year old daughter Sarah with an H continued to medicate herself with sugar.
As a mother I sometimes wonder how many times I have to point out the correct actions for my children. Do this! Don’t do that! Year after year I continued to guide my daughter with the hope that she would learn to eat properly. But for years I have watched her spend her allowance on candy and hide it in her bedroom. Wrappers under the bed. Candy bars in the pockets of her jackets hanging in her closet.
I believe in talking to my children and I believe in listening. But when I would talk to my daughter about her diet it was more or less always the same:
“I feel squirrelly. I need something that makes me feel good.”
“But what about your diet? You promised.”
“What difference does it make? No one loves me anyway.”
As a mother I live to tell my daughter that I love her but it hadn’t made a difference. That is until recently. Maybe sugar won’t win.
“Why don’t we eat more organic food? Like short-grain-organic-brown rice” she said as she opened the refrigerator looking for a snack.
“We can do that. What brought this on?”
“I was over at Flossie’s and a new farm hand mentioned that organic grains are the only way to eat. His name is Julian.”
Flossie is Sarah with an H’s eighteen year old girlfriend who she has known all of her life. Flossie is Streckfus Weedelmeyer’s daughter. He is known locally as “The Corn King” because he grows hundreds of acres of sweet corn and then turns it into “Weedelmeyer’s Corn Premiums” which he sells nationally.
“How old is Julian?”
“About twenty.”
And there it was. A mysterious outside force that comes into our lives moving us from here to there. A medical doctor and mother couldn’t do it, but a twenty year old farm hand has awakened my daughter’s interest in better nutrition.
“Can I invite Julian to dinner? I told him what a great cook you are.”
“Of course I would love to meet him.”
I tell my congregation that I am an “over the stove minister” meaning that I prepare how I can spiritually nourish my congregation as I am preparing nourishment for my family. Now my cooking was making me a match maker as well.
When Julian came to dinner and I saw him I couldn’t believe my emotions. I am a happily married woman, mother of two and the pastor of a growing congregation at the First Church of God’s Love in the bucolic hamlet of Halo, Pennsylvania. I have always had disdain for cougars but I couldn’t belie my feelings. How was it that I felt overwhelming emotions for a twenty year old man who I didn’t know? This is my confession so that we can all learn from my experience.
France. I immediately thought of France. Emmanuel Macron is the President of France. He is 43 years old and his wife Brigitte is 67. She was married and the mother of three when in 1993 they met. She was his 40 year old teacher and he was her 15 year old student. Their bond was overwhelmingly emotional and intense. They began their relationship when he turned 18. She divorced her first husband in 2006 and married Macron in 2007.
“But no, I am not Brigitte. I am a rational and spiritual woman.” As tears of fulfillment hid in my eyes I tried to explain to myself why I felt whole and complete just seeing Julian.
Dinner conversation continued. My imagination took hold when I asked Julian his last name and he answered “I didn’t know I needed a last name when I came here.” Images of the fifteen students in my Sunday school drawing an alien space craft over the school bus flashed before me.
The foolish fantasies of a wife, mother and pastor.
Amen.
The Reverend Mrs. Silence DoGood
Senior Pastor
Executive Director
President
Chairman
Choir Master (part-time)
The First Church of God’s Love