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Do you remember the high school practice of picking a body part to hate? For a little while, number one on the bad list was my lips. Everyone said I had big lips, so my nickname became "Melipsa." (If any of you are still doing this, may I suggest a life. My to-do list is so long now that I couldn't possibly fit "worry about my fat arms" anywhere on it!)

At one point I hated my hands. My first two fingers curved towards my pinky and my knuckles seemed huge- sort of like the beginning stages of arthritis. Looking at my hands now, it is hardly noticeable. But when I was thirteen, the curve seemed so pronounced that I began to wonder why I had been cursed with such ugly hands.

Then in ninth grade, something happened that changed my attitude towards my thin nails and unattractive fingers.

We were at a football game in Mississippi about two hours away from home. A state trooper showed up at the game looking for my dad with a message to deliver. His mother, my grandmother, had just passed away from a long ordeal with cancer. (This was small town America before the days of cell phones.) The rest of the game was surreal, as were the next few days when we packed up to drive the 7 hours for her funeral.

I'm not sure how long after Grandma's death it occurred to me-my hands looked just like her hands- only a younger version. The curve of her fingers was much more pronounced because she really had arthritis- but the nails, the shape, the knuckles were all from her. I suddenly felt more connected to her-- not in a new-age, reincarnational sort of way. But it was a physical reminder of everything that I had inherited from her: a love for family, a cheerful spirit, an easy-going nature, and to my dad's chagrin, a high tolerance for a messy house!

I have also inherited a path of Christian service from her. While my grandparents weren't weekly church-goers when my dad was growing up, Grandma still always told my Dad "Max, you're going to be a preacher someday." And he was. And now my husband is too.

So my ugly hands had suddenly become a sweet symbol--a living reminder of a wonderful woman who helped hand down my disposition and the direction of my life. I would never look at my hands the same way again. I marked them off my "hated list" and put them on my "have-to-have" one instead.

"'Christ in You...'" from Dale Krebbs

The Saints Who Slept