THE BRUISED REED
She was barely
seventeen.
At the age of eight I thought she was ancient.
Her voice was music to my ears.
With her lilting Irish brogue,
she would sprinkle her daily lessons
with wonderful stories from “the auld
sod.”
“Ireland is a little bit of heaven,” she would say.
I could hear the longing in her heart
for hills and vales of crisp emerald
green.
Through Sister Eucharia I learned to love the land of Ireland
with all its
mystery and beauty
as though it were part of the very air I breathed.
Sister Eucharia
was a woman of great faith who believed
all the tenets of her Christian upbringing without question.
She was also a girl who could hit a line drive into the outfield.
Laughing out loud, she would lift her voluminous skirts
and run the bases
at break-neck speed,
sliding into home without breaking a sweat.
I loved her.
She encouraged
the hungry heart of this little girl with the love of God.
She also cultivated in me a love of great books.
I read my way through all of the books
in our small elementary school
library twice.
Afterwards she loaned me books of her own.
What a heroic nature and imagination she had, and how she influenced me
during the three short years that she was my teacher.
She could not have known the troubled life that I had.
My father’s alcoholism was kept well hidden,
and my mother never spoke of
it.
Perhaps Sister recognized some of herself in me.
I just know that we grew very close.
She taught me much about faith and
courage,
but most of all she taught me about Jesus.
Jesus was the
center of Sister’s life.
He was the reason she left the bosom of her family to
enter a convent at the tender age of fourteen.
Jesus was the reason she joyfully left the shores of her homeland
to come
to America.
It was for Him that she worked and slaved f
or a bunch of ungrateful
youngsters
in the south, where the thermometer seldom dipped below 50°
and the humidity was so constant,
that it could register 100% and still
not be raining.
How homesick
Sister must have been. Did she miss her parents?
Did she have a little sister,
that somehow was reflected by her obvious
affection for me?
I never knew.
I only know that she thought the world of me.
She encouraged my mind to be in a constant quest for knowledge,
often suggesting dry research that took me on incredible journeys
into the far reaches of the past.
To this day, I can get lost for hours in the dustiest parts of the
library.
I still find myself drawn to history and anthropology and biographies
of great men and women of long ago.
By the age of ten my heroes were not made up
of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin.
I dreamed the dreams of Patrick, a Roman who spent his young adult life
as a slave to the “barbarian” Irish. He grew to love the Irish people.
After his escape and conversion to Christianity
he returned to that beloved land as a missionary.
He brought an entire nation to Christ.
Sister Eucharia helped me to understand
why most nuns and priests in
America were Irish.
Patrick had passed on his burning desire to the Irish
people,
to preach to the world the redemption of Jesus Christ.
There was an unspoken hunger in my life
that Sister Eucharia seemed to
awaken.
A hunger for truth, courage, and honor.
I had a problem with the truth.
I just couldn’t seem to tell it. And I was a terrible liar.
I told one lie after another, that just seemed to scream,
this story’s
a whopper!!!
One day Sister took me aside, and she asked,
“Why do you tell so many
lies?”
My heart fell within my chest, and I thought I would throw up!
I so wanted Sister to think well of me.
“Little one, you don’t have to earn my love.
I love you because you live
and breathe,
and I think you want to tell the truth.”
I dumbly nodded my head, the tears slipping from my eyes
as the words I might speak caught in my throat within one burning lump.
Sister tilted my face up with her pale hand, so that my eyes met hers.
I felt totally naked, and I wanted to hide within her long black robes.
“What if,” she said, “you lived your life as your own hero?
What if you became a truth-bearer?
What if you lived your life with courage and strength,
even when you are afraid and you feel weak?
You see, even if no one believes you; even if no one is telling the truth,
YOU will know what the truth is.”
I stood there stunned!
How simple it was. Just tell the truth! No matter how terrifying.
Tell the truth!
“Even if the world believes a lie, it is still a lie!” Sister
continued.
“Right is right when nothing is right;
and wrong is wrong, when
everything’s right.”
Sister smiled at me, and she gave me a hug.
Somehow she made me feel as though God was smiling,
and that He was hugging me, too.
She was just a young girl. I didn’t know that.
I thought that she was so old and so wise.
That devout young woman made me hunger for God.
She encouraged me to write, and she taught me a love of history
that has never been quenched.
However, the greatest gift that Sister
Eucharia gave me
was a love of the truth,
and a heart that was hungry
enough to seek it.
My last year with Sister Eucharia was in fifth grade.
She gave me a scripture verse card, for Easter, that year.
I still have
that card.
The scripture reads: “A bruised reed, he will not break….”
Through all the turmoils of my life
-- in sunshine and shadow --
I have pondered about what that scripture could mean for me.
It has stayed with me, because of a young Irish girl with a big heart.
“A bruised reed,
he will not break….”
I am that reed.
A loving God took hold of my life.
He has nurtured this bruised reed, gently holding me straight.
He has given me a
greater strength
than the unbroken reed that stands alone.
© Jaye Lewis, 2003
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