The Gift of Literacy
One of the many women I admired when Ray was campus minister in Mississippi was our preacher’s wife, Joyce Chadwell, the one who gave me my tiny tired mouse one Christmas.
I recently told you that if there were a definition for amazing son-in-law in an illustrated dictionary, Ray’s picture would be the illustration. That same dictionary would have Joyce Chadwell’s picture beside great preacher’s wife. Among the many things she taught me were what it means to be a preacher’s wife, how to be a truly dedicated Sunday School teacher, and what a thrifty homemaker does every day.
Before we knew Joyce and David, they were missionaries in Cameroon, West Africa. A drum head they brought back from Cameroon hangs in the room we use for a library.
These beaded coasters hang in there, too.
One of the ways Joyce served Jesus while we were both living in Mississippi was by teaching illiterate women to read. Knowing women in Cameroon who could not read gave Joyce a passion for helping American women learn to read after she came back to the States.
Many American women probably take reading for granted, but that is certainly not true for the many homeschooling mamas whose children don’t learn to read at the exact time those mamas expect them to read. It’s hard to believe the truth that children get ready to read at different times, but it is true. I know a godly, bright, gifted, and talented twenty-something — I’ll call her Jenny — whose mama had to wait until Jenny was about ten. The wait was hard, but the result was magnificent — eventually!
This year I decided to put a small storybook tree in the library.
One of our granddaughters and I looked through our ornaments to find ones that were appropriate. We had to use our imagination. We decided that a wooden snowman was Frosty the Snowman from the Little Golden Book by that title and that a wooden train was The Little Engine That Could.
A few ornaments were obvious. I bought them back in our Mississippi days when we had more ornaments than we did that first year in Lexington, Kentucky, but not really enough to make a tree very pretty. In those years when Joyce was demonstrating thrifty homemaking, I went to a very nice gift shop when they were having a clearance sale. There I found Cinderella, one ugly step-sister, and six mice pulling a pumpkin which were about to become six horses and Cinderella’s carriage. Cinderella and the future carriage and six are hanging on our storybook tree.
Today I am thankful for Mrs. Massey who taught me to read in first grade, for Joyce who taught me that Mrs. Massey’s teaching was a gift not to be taken for granted, for each illiterate mama who has the courage to learn to read, and for each homeschooling mama who keeps on keeping on so that her child can read.
The mind of the prudent acquires knowledge,
And the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.
Proverbs 18:15