I'll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy 12, and my older sister
Darlene 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do
without many things. My dad had died 5 years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to
raise and no money. By 1946 my older sisters were married, and my brothers had left home.
A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced that a
a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save
and give sacrificially. When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to
buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20.00
of our grocery money for offering. Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights
turned out as much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save money on that
month's electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and
both of us baby sat for everyone we could. For 15 cents, we could buy enough cotton loops
to make three pot holders to sell for $1.00. We made $20.00 on pot holders.
That month was one of the best of our lives. Every day we counted
the money to see how much we had saved. At night we'd sit in the dark and talk about how
the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had
about 80 people in our church, so we figured that whatever amount we had to give, the
offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the Pastor had
reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.
The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and
got the manager to give us three crisp $20.00 bills and one $10.00 bill for all of our
change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money
before. That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn't care that we
wouldn't have new clothes for Easter, we had $70.00 for the sacrificial offering. We could
hardly wait to get to church!
On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn't own an umbrella,
and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn't seem to matter how wet we got.
Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her
feet got wet. But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith
girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt so
rich. When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the
front. Mom put in the $10.00 bill, and each of us girls put in a $20.00. As we walked home
after church, we sang all the way.
At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs,
and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes! Late afternoon the Pastor drove up
in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an
envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn't say a word. She opened the
envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20.00 bills, one $10.00
and seventeen $1.00. Mom put the money back in the envelope.
We didn't talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone
from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash. We kids had had such a
happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn't have our Mom and Dad for parents and a
house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was
fun to share silverware and see whether we got the fork or the spoon that night. We had
two knives which we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn't have a lot of
things that other people had, but I'd never thought we were poor. That Easter Day I found
out we were.
The Minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we
must be poor. I didn't like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt
so ashamed that I didn't want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew
we were poor! I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class
of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew we were poor. I decided I
could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at
that time.
We sat in silence for a long, long time. Then it got dark, and we
went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much.
Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor
people do with money? We didn't know. We'd never known we were poor.
We didn't want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to.
Although it was a sunny day, we didn't talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one
joined in, and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked
about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun-dried bricks, but they need money
to buy roofs. He said $100.00 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, "Can't
we all sacrifice to help these poor people?"
We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week.
Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene
gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering. When the offering was
counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100.00 The missionary was
excited. He hadn't expected such a large offering from our small church. He said,
"You must have some rich people in this church." Suddenly it struck us! We had
given $87.00 of that "little over $100.00." We were the rich family in the
church! Hadn't the missionary said so? From that day on I've never been poor again.
Prosperity is all a matter of perspective. Some of the poorest people have full hands, but
cold homes and empty hearts.
[author Unknown]
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