Free The Blessed by Ann H. Gabhart

find the warmest spot on the porch to sit in the sun until their feet thawed out, while her mother told them stories about doing the same spring dance back in Virginia with her mother. At last, with their feet pink again and Junie’s eyes heavy with sleep, Lacey and her mother would go inside and bake a cake yellow as that dandelion bloom.
    After her mother died, Lacey tried to keep the spring dance going for Junie. The first year they just sat down on the rocks in the creek and cried. They tried to make the cake, but it came out of the oven so tough it bounced when they threw it out to the chickens. The second year the Widow Jackson whipped them for getting their skirts wet, but they made mud cakes with dandelion flower icing and both took a bite. The third year Junie was gone to live with their aunt in Virginia, and Lacey stood in the creek and let the water run over her feet until she thought her toes might fall off. She was too sad to do any splashing, but she didn’t forget the dance. The next year she was taking care of Miss Mona, and when spring came, her feet felt like dancing again. While there wasn’t any creek close by, Miss Mona said it was likely a spring dance could happen anywhere bare feet could touch the ground. Just so long as it was out of sight of Preacher Palmer and the church deacons. And then Miss Mona sat at the kitchen table and stirred up a yellow cake almost as good as the one Lacey’s mama made.
    While Miss Mona was mixing up the cake, Lacey told her some of the stories her mother used to tell about doing the spring dance back in Virginia. Since Lacey couldn’t remember every word, she added a little here and there, but she told Miss Mona some of it was made up. So it wasn’t like she was telling lies or anything. Just stories.
    “Nothing wrong with telling stories,” Miss Mona assured her. “The good Lord himself told stories to help people know how to live. They’re called parables.”
    “Did he make them up?” Lacey asked.
    “I don’t know. Could be they were stories about real people, but he told them like stories. You remember the one about the prodigal son and how he wanted to eat the pig feed. Or how about that story you read me just the other day about that king who had trouble getting people to come to the wedding banquet for his son? That’s a fine story.”
    “But Jesus was teaching things with his stories. My stories are oft as not just silliness,” Lacey said. She licked the batter off the spoon Miss Mona handed her.
    “Not silliness. Your stories connect you with your mother and with Junie and your aunt in Virginia and with me. And someday when you have children of your own, you’ll be telling them stories that will connect them back to all of us too. No, not silliness at all.”
    Lacey knew about the parables. She’d heard Preacher Palmer expound on this or that one in sermons, and she’d read a lot of them to Miss Mona from her Bible. But try as she might, she couldn’t bring to mind any Scripture stories that might be about doing a spring dance. She told Miss Mona as much.
    “What about the parable of the sower?” Miss Mona said with a smile as she handed Lacey the cake pan to put in the oven. “You have to sow seeds in the spring.”
    After Lacey put the pan in the oven and stoked the fire to keep the stove warm enough to bake the cake, Miss Mona helped her find the sowing seed parable in the Bible. When Lacey finished reading, Miss Mona sat silent a few minutes the way she always did. She never spoke up on the meaning of the Bible words until she’d given them proper consideration.
    At last she said, “And I’ll pray for you, Lacey, that the seed of the gospel will always find good soil within your heart. That the nourishing rain will fall on your head and the tares won’t grow around you. I don’t worry about the seed falling on rocky ground. Your heart is too soft to ever be that hard.”
    Lacey didn’t like thinking about that parable now. Not