Beloved Healer

I’d hoped and prayed that this mission would provide my great niece with a purpose for living and the meaning of perseverance. When thunder spoke from our intended direction as we neared the base of Winther Mountain, I knew if the skies delivered, this trek was certain to be a contest.

For weeks I’d questioned whether to take Kenny Jo or leave her with Lora Kay. I finally decided that leaving her behind would forego a providential opportunity at getting her out of that grievous guilt-borne wallowing. Poor child was in need of purpose and direction, even if it took push, pull and persist to mobilize her.

We were tramping through the last stretch of Crombie’s meadow when she tuned me in to one of those yarns that often circulates among the young’uns of the holler.

“I can’t fathom that folks would roll dunged outhouses down a mountainside and swath a galley of cats in ‘white lightening’ just to keep other folks from trespassing.”

“Where’d ye hear that? I asked, though it was an easy guess whose idea it’s be to cause hair-raising cat squalls.

“Over at Grissom’s when we were picking peaches. Heath Gunner had us all laughing—”

“Kenny Jo…” I couldn’t help grinning as I interrupted, “ye’d be a keen one to give no account to the jabber a caterwaulin. One thing ye ought to know bout folks, ‘n hit don’t matter if’n they’re from the mountains or back waters a the bayou, some folks just love getting their skids at throwing off on one they judge as ‘wet behind the ears’.”

“Reckon I’m wet behind the ears alright,” she mumbled with a snigger. Probably the whole reason for the fire that took Mama and Daddy and the twins.”

Despite the rain that was about to catch us in the middle of Crombie’s meadow, this was no time for hedging. I stopped and looked directly at my great niece. “Ye need to understand Kenny Jo, hit’s because you and Lora Kay survived the tragedy that your lives hold purpose. Beratin yourself makes no sense, child. And self-inflicting denial finds no useful purpose in this life. Nor does hit prepare ye for the next. Only by acknowledging that you’re human can ye begin to ‘preciate God’s abiding grace.”

We’d gone a few more steps when Kenny Jo spoke again. “Reckon I could find a purpose in all things if I could just see around the pain.”

With a sly grin, knowing what her reaction would be, I swept my staff around at the view behind us feeling somewhat akin to Moses at the Red Sea.