IN AND OUT OF EVERY STORY,  GOD weaves His love and grace. His nail-pierced hands hold the threads of our lives as He intertwines them into His plan and eternal purpose. He wrote each of our days in His book before one of them came to be (Psa.139:16). So I continue to tell my story and pray God will reveal more of Himself to me as I write and through me to encourage you. I choose to trust Him for that sweet grace.

SO Daddy bought the Variety Store on Main Street and we moved back to Dalmeny while I was still five years old. Its wall-sized front window faced the street, which my little brother broke one day by throwing rocks at it. Upstairs was a big room with a lot of dusty old shelves. My parents cleaned it up, built rooms, and made it our home.

On one side of the store I could help myself to bins of fruit. Candy lined the shelves by the counter in the center of the store, but I preferred the fruit. On the other side of the store were shelves of tools, to which my little brother helped himself and ended up leaving at various places in town. Just one man returned the ones he found. Both Daddy and Mommy worked in the store while Dicky and I were free to come and go. Every night Daddy poured dark green pebbly stuff all over the wooden floors downstairs and then swept it up again, which didn’t make any sense to me. Some nights my brother and I fell asleep upstairs in the living room before they came to put us to bed.

One day as Dicky and I watched people come into the store through the floor register between our bedroom and the front counter downstairs, we decided to see how many people we could hit with our spit. We hit some people and missed others. All was funny until a bald man stood below us. Sure enough! We made a direct hit, but had not anticipated the not-so-funny response when he looked up and saw us. Bad, bad idea!

The building to our right was called Central. They managed the telephone service. A telephone was a big wooden box on the wall of each home with a handle on the right to crank the ringing sound and a bell shaped handle on the left attached by a cord to put to your ear to listen. The box also had a long metal piece that came out of the front to talk into. Every phone in town rang whenever anyone got a call so everyone could listen to anyone’s conversations if they wanted to, which they did. Each person on that “party line” had their own code of short or long rings so you knew if the ring was for you.

Every day at noon, an older boy from Central walked across the small empty lot to the side of our store and pushed a button up high on the outside wall. When he did so, a siren sounded. One day I looked up at that button and decided to push it myself. I could not reach it, but with a little ingenuity, I found my little bother and a long stick. I lifted him up and told him to push the button with the stick, which he did. Of course the siren sounded long and loud. Immediately people ran from every side of town until I could hardly make my way through the crowd. Suddenly Daddy appeared in front of me and asked if I rang the siren. I had to tell him, yes. The only other time besides noon that the siren rang was for a fire so everyone came to see the fire, but of course no fire existed. I still don’t know why my Daddy thought to ask me if I did it.

To our left was a small grocery store and on the other side of that was a dark and very dirty automotive garage. One Sunday afternoon my friend and I saw a ladder going up to the roof of the garage and decided to climb it, even in my pretty white and yellow church dress. It felt wonderful and daring on top of that roof! Then I noticed a shiny place that looked slippery so I scooted my bottom down onto it for a little slide. Suddenly, the “slide” broke beneath me! I scrambled off, but before I could get down the ladder, Mr. dirty garage man raced around the corner to find out who was on his roof! He told my Dad he heard the window break and looked up to see a patch of white and yellow coming through the sky light. Of course I was in big trouble!

Our playmates, Murray and Juliene, lived at the back of the post office across the street. Murray and Dicky played barber one day with an electric shaver. Soon Murray’s thick black hair sported lots of white scalp spots before his Dad found them and just said, “Well son, did you pay your barber?”

Further up Main Street was the school I would soon attend, and down Main Street were the train tracks where kids put nails and other metal things for the train wheels to flatten. Mommy said not to put stuff on the tracks or the train could derail. That was a scary thought!

Because of the effects of polio, I still needed naps until I started school. One day Mommy put me in her bed for a nap. I hated naps and lay there thinking bad thoughts. Suddenly I became aware that those bad thoughts were from the devil. So… I raised my foot and kicked him off the bed! When Mommy came to see why I was giggling, I told her what I did. He did not return to tempt me again that hour.

I got to thinking one night about how lost the devil was, so as I lay in my bed I told him all about Jesus and how he needed to ask Jesus to forgive his sins. When I excitedly told my mother what I had done, she very seriously told me never ever to talk to the devil like that again because he could never be saved.

I do remember he told me in my thoughts that I could sin if I wanted to because all I had to do afterward was ask Jesus to forgive me. Yet, I knew in my heart that was not a good idea. Our enemy respects not age nor innocence and tempts little children as he does adults. Yet, even then the Almighty kept His hand of protection over me and was deeply involved in my life. Even then He was drawing me to Himself and growing in me a spiritual awareness of good and evil, right and wrong.

“Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” Philippians 2:12-13.