secrets
I want to preserve a couple of stories about one woman named Gloria that our guest pastor shared with us this past Sunday at church. He spends a good deal of time talking with and prays with people in hospice care who may not have long to live and it is during those conversations in their final days when people share secrets with him that they have carried for a lifetime. Parts of the story are paraphrased and/or they may be partly fiction based on my recollection. When he arrived that day she was eating a bowl of fresh strawberries as she often did. She enjoyed eating them so much that they were the only things she would request when anyone would offer to bring her anything. The pastor asked her why and she said it was because it reminded her of the farm. And so the story began. “Did you grow up on a farm?” he asked. “No,” she said. “but every Sunday after church my mother and all of us kids would change into our play clothes and drive out to the country to help out a