Mrs. Jackson, our junior high girls’ Sunday School teacher, had sent her two children off to a Christian college, leaving her with time on her hands and a giving heart. She seemed old to me, but I think now that it was simply that she was overweight and did not dress stylishly—not that my church was a place for fashionistas, but the wardrobe options for plus-size women were even more dismal in the 1960s than they are now. But she had beautiful, porcelain skin. She was not much older than my mother, but she was soft and squishy (as I am now). And she giggled—not obnoxiously, but when she got “tickled” about something. She could make herself laugh thinking of the image of a person with a flat head when someone was described as “level-headed.”
I have no idea what, if anything, I learned from her about the Bible, working our way each week through the Sunday School quarterlies. (They were called quarterlies because each covered 13 weeks, so we went through four of them a year. They were usually Scripture-focused.) But Mrs. Jackson was an example of how to live, how to love adolescents. Sunday School teaching didn’t offer her enough scope, so she founded the Girls’ Missionary Society (GMS) to complement the Women’s Missionary Society (WMS). We met once a month, just as WMS did, but at her home instead of at the church. There were snacks and projects; these were often making clothing or baby blankets for missionaries to give away. We also read and wrote letters to and from missionaries. At the end of our time, we stood in a circle holding hands and sang a song that ended with the words, “You pray for me and I’ll pray for you.” Mrs. Jackson also made sure we had transportation to and from her house. I lived the furthest away, which gave me more time with her alone. One day, I was complaining about how easily hurt, how soft I was. I wanted to be harder so I could avoid all the emotional pain of being me. “But honey,” she said, “I think God means for us to be soft, to be able to be hurt.” With one sentence, she affirmed my sensitive girl-self. I became president of GMS, in large part, I suspect, because no one else wanted the job. So I was the one who presented our missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. Stansberry, with gifts for the children at their orphanage. Years later, when my college was sponsoring a Missionary Internship Service, I knew the missionaries I wanted to help. Decades later, when I began teaching junior high Sunday School, it was Mrs. Jackson's example I tried to follow.
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Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
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