Shoeless!

"Tillie! Come here!'

Snicker. snicker.

And so it would begin. The daily struggle to fight an eight year old's mischievousness to get ready for school.

After high school, Auntie Trinie's initial goal was to earn her teaching degree. She would have been the first on my mom's side of the family to go on to higher education. At the time she lived with my grandmother and her mother out in the country in Brownsville, Texas, had no car, and had to walk at least four miles to get to the community college located close to the bridge to Mexico. That was hurdle enough. Unfortunately, she also had to deal with my mother.

Apparently, my mother's young self had an incorrigible impish streak. Invariably, when Auntie looked for her "good" shoes to start on her trek to higher education, it was to find that my mother had hidden them. Again.

The result was not pretty.

I did not know Auntie in her pre-Christian days but apparently, from what I have been told, she could lay the anger on thick. But that didn't deter my mother. Auntie's anger notwithstanding, the scene was repeated daily.

Then came the day when a missionary to the Mexican people in south Texas led Auntie to the Lord.

The very next day the missing shoes business began. Again.

But this time, with a twist.

Auntie looked for her shoes. Of course, they were not where she had set them out the night before. But today, instead of yelling at Tillie (short for Matilde--don't let on to my mom that I told you her first name, she absolutely hated it), Auntie turned to her little torturer and said, "Let's play a game … Whoever finds my shoes first wins!"

Mom's interest was piqued--and, naturally competitive, she raced to find the shoes.

"Congratulations!" Auntie beamed at her. "You beat me hands down!"

And the daily row became … the daily game.

Grandma and her mother, Mamá Nina, looked at each other in astonishment. Auntie's anger was legendary. Where had it gone? What had changed her?

And that is how the family of Maria Janine Schoellig Villarreal de Muse and later de Tutor came to know the Lord.

It's not so much what we say as what we do.

Lord, help me to live in such a way that people are drawn to you.

"Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men," 2 Corinthians 3:2.