What does it mean to live twice? How did it change my life? When I stood up to the bishop in my Mennonite Church and told him that he wasn’t practicing what he preached. Even though no one else in my family had ever gone. When I discovered you have to go to college in order to be a teacher I decided to go, even though my parents weren’t enthusiastic about the idea. When I read books, like Little Women, I identified with the gutsiest character, Jo. When I played softball on the playground, I swung for the fences. I decided to live twice, once for myself and once for the little sister who lived only 39 days. I learned a lesson that night that I would have to learn again when my father died at age 55 and when several close friends died in sudden, untimely ways.įrom then on, life became even more precious. Then she would throw back her head and wail.
My baby is dead.” That was all she could say, over and over again. She ran to Daddy and, still screaming, started pounding him on his chest. The terrible sound grew louder as Mother came toward the barn. The DeLaval milkers sounded almost like heartbeats-lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub-as they extracted warm milk from each udder.Īnd then we heard it: a horrible, penetrating, animal-like scream, piercing that night and my life to this day. 20, 1954, my younger brother Henry and I were playing in a little stack of hay in our barn, making tunnels out of bales and talking about what we hoped for in our Christmas stockings. I first stared death in the face at the age of six. We can’t become truly gutsy, courageous, until we accept the reality of death and consciously seek to live deeply and fully in its presence. Behind all our fears, often hidden even to ourselves, lies one big fear.
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