MRS. BRAGG

Elaine V. Yoder

Many of us know how much it hurts to be marginalized in the game of life. I also know how healing it is to be helped back into the game by those who offer breath-catching moments of unmerited favor. I want to tell about someone who brought me one such moment which is among the earliest I remember yet still shapes my life today.

Of course so many people have had similar experiences that in telling this one I risk sharing clichés. Yet in the same way as we all savor each breath of vital oxygen, no matter how often we have breathed it in before, I hope it may be life-giving to tell again my version of the tale of grace.

It was recess time for my fourth-grade class. The classroom door flung open and kids spilled down the large wooden stairs. It seemed everyone wanted to eke every drop from our 15 minutes of free time—everyone except me.

Slowly I followed the crowd down the steps, uneasiness a sticky ball in my stomach. Recess wasn’t my favorite part of school. In fact, I dreaded it.

As I stepped through the big double front doors of the school onto the hard concrete slab that spanned the doorway, Kathy Hillman was already delegating positions. Kathy was the biggest girl in our class, the bossy, self-assigned leader of the girls. I didn’t like her.

Hesitantly I approached the girls forming our game of group jump rope, the kind where two girls twirl the rope while the others take turns jumping. One had to be able to jump high and fast. I felt clumsy and like I couldn’t keep up. It seemed I spent most of my time twirling the rope.

Sure enough, “You have to twirl the rope,” Kathy instructed as I approached the group this time. I guessed it was my reward for coming last. I felt angry as I picked up the rope. Angry and trapped.

Dutifully I twirled the rope with the other unlucky twirler. One by one the girls jumped. Finally one girl tripped and took my twirling partner’s place. Recess was half over. As the game continued, another girl tripped. Finally it was my turn to jump rope.

“You jerked the rope and made her trip,” Kathy accused me. “She can jump again.”

Furiously I threw down the rope down and stomped off. It wasn’t fair. She was mean. I knew she was a sinner, and sinners were bad and deserved punishment.

I ran around the corner of the big brick school house and back to a corner where our building met another brick building. I couldn’t sit because the gravel under my feet would hurt, so I cowered in the corner. Tears burned. It was cool and quiet.

It wasn’t long until I heard the crunching of gravel under heavy footfalls. Oh no, it’s my teacher, Mrs. Bragg. Now I’ll really be in trouble. I pulled a little more tightly against the hard bricks.

“Elaine, what are you doing here?” asked a kind voice. I turned and was immediately wrapped in her bosom. “You are a most sensitive child.”

Did she say sensitive? I couldn’t believe my ears. I melted into the shelter of a big, warm embrace, uncontrollably sobbing. There I stood under her wing. Mrs. Bragg cared about me.

Deep down I felt I didn’t deserve it. My anger had been quick and intense. I knew I should try harder to play well with the girls, but I felt they didn’t like me. Now, in these arms, my Sunday school lessons haunted my petty refusal to negotiate.

Yet here stood Mrs. Bragg, my protector. Gazing beyond my anger, she saw something more true of me than my rage. Mrs. Bragg had eyes to see my tender heart shrinking behind my self-contempt and the callouses hiding wounds. The cool ointment of grace trickled through my veneer of toughness, probing crevices in my heart I hardly believed existed.

The bell marking the end of recess rang. “You need to play, and the others need to let you be a part of the game.” Those were scary words, but they couldn’t take away the warm secure pleasure I felt inside.

Some months ago, as I returned to the community in which I grew up, I met a classmate from those early school years. I asked him who his favorite grade-school teacher was. Unhesitatingly he answered,“Mrs. Bragg.”

As I’ve spent time revisiting meaningful encounters with others in my life, Mrs. Bragg and this incident have come to mind. It has always been there, this memory of a woman who offered comfort and security in a hostile world, but the passing of the years had shrouded it. Now the memory radiates anew.

Mrs. Bragg’s gift shines on the horizon of my memory, not alone but in constellation with others who have joined her message of affirmation and hope. I remember the dean of women at Bible school who spent extra hours exploring my heart’s struggle. And the professor in university who offered double office time to walk with me through a tough moment.

These memories glimmer, like stars, in the skies of my life. They offer small glimpses of a greater reality. The storm of a current relationship may hide the light of such moments of grace. Yet as the clouds ebb, there the stars are, ministers of mercy lining memory, offering testimony to the greater truth a heart longs to know.

I am loved; even when I don’t deserve it, grace is extended. I can cower against the brick wall of my efforts to make the game work. Or I can yield to Mrs. Bragg’s embrace, resting under the wings of forgiveness, finding new freedom to join the game.

— Elaine V. Yoder, Willow Street, Pennsylvania, is a full-time counselor at LIFE Ministries, a counseling ministry serving the conservative Anabaptist community.