Dear Friends,
Someone recently mentioned a story I may have told you before about a little boy who, as he was growing up, came to hate his mother's hands. They were coarse and rough and gnarled. He thought they were such ugly hands, and he was embarrassed to have his friends or anyone else see them.
One day he asked his mother how she had gotten such ugly hands. He had asked before, and she'd never told him, but she thought now that perhaps he was old enough to know. So she told him about a fire in their home when he was just a baby, and he was trapped in his crib with flames all around. No one else could reach him, several had tried, but somehow his mother got to him, and carried him to safety. But in the process, her hands were badly burned.
