You've been Home so many years by now I've lost track. Twenty-five maybe? But it doesn't surprise me at all that, when I realized today was International Women's Day, you were the first person who came to my mind.
A withdrawn 11 year old girl, fascinated with Helen Keller at the time, and awestruck because a real live blind person started coming to her church, shyly handed you a wretched and unreadable attempt at a braille note.
And you were not offended, but full of grace, and oh so kind, and oh how I needed that then! Your offer to teach me braille welcomed me into the warmth of a new friendship that God would use to both shelter and unleash me in ways that, without exaggeration, saved my life.
I didn't just learn how to line up the heavy paper and punch out the raised dots, and the whole deal of writing backwards and reading forwards, and all the little tricks of braille.
I learned from you what it meant to be brave and confident and joyful.
I learned that you could be very feminine and very outspoken at the same time.
I learned you could ask for things others didn't think you should have.
I learned that being a woman didn't have to stop you from being strong, and that strong is kind and gentle and loud and fierce and tenacious and laughs easily.
I learned that being a woman without sight didn't mean you couldn't waterski or ice skate or perceive when someone in the room was sad.
I learned that following Jesus was a whole-package kind of deal, the good, the bad and the ugly of life, and that, according to you and infused into me, there was no life like it.
Without you I don't know how I would have survived the confusion at home.
Without you I don't know how I would have survived the bullying at school.
Without you I don't think I would have been able to see myself as someone with anything to offer whatsoever.
But you saw me.
How ironic.
You saw me.
Your story isn't easy.
It wasn't easy to lose your sight at age 15 to a random act of teenage rebellion on behalf of the friends in the car that night who decided to play chicken and lost.
It wasn't easy to step into your young adult life and establish your own independence in an era where physical disabilities were equated with lesser intelligence and capability.
It wasn't easy to bring your full self into the dating scene when you could have been so easily viewed as vulnerable.
It wasn't easy to discover the accident had also left you unable to have children of your own, and to pursue with tenacity the process of welcoming your two adopted daughters into your home.
And in the end, it wasn't easy to leave us because your body succumbed to a degenerative disease that left you bedridden in the end.
It wasn't easy.
But you shone!!!
And, by God's good gift, I got caught in your light.
So, Happy International Women's Day, by amazing mentor and friend. I kind of highly doubt there's any such thing in Heaven, actually. I expect that in that place there's no need of such a thing. Equality and respect and celebration of differences and the putting aside of ego and power struggles is just the way it is.
Just the same. Thank you.
Thank you for being a life-giving woman in my life.
I only hope I have been
and can be
a fraction of this for someone else.
Humbly and oh so grateful,
Ruth Anne
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