The gift of enough

Before my Great Aunt Esther died, she lived in downtown Minneapolis in poverty. Oddly, this is not embarrassing to my proper, upper-middle-class, Christian family. Esther simply continued to live as she had when her husband, my grandmother's brother Ludwig, was alive. When we describe someone as living in poverty, we usually add an adjective-grinding, devastating, dreadful, something like that. Of Aunt Esther and Uncle Lud, and at the risk of sounding cloying, I'm tempted to add "blessed."

Esther and Lud were committed to God as I have never seen in anyone else. They were Christian missionaries in Africa for decades. Whatever else you might think about that old-style missionary work, many babies with mahogany-dark skin were baptized with the names Ludwig and Esther during those decades.

I knew my great aunt and uncle as a kind, elderly couple eclipsed by the energy and drama of my extended family when we gathered for occasional Sunday dinners, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I remember Esther's remarkably soft skin when she would take my hand and say, "Now let's talk to Jesus," and I remember their gentle but determined rejection of all offers of a ride home after dinner. They preferred to take the bus so that they could visit and pray with all the people-"girls and boys," "God's children"-who rode those buses.