When we sat in the car that last Easter, our first, really, we read about the ninth hour. The ninth hour in Biblical times was between 12:00 and 3:00 p.m. Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, Lamma Sabacthani? (My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?)" We didn't know how soon, in eight months, I would find my Father again.

On Good Friday in 1951, Mommy walked all the way downtown,. She happened to pass Christ Church. The Reverend Butts was the minister. She just turned her steps toward the church and walked in. She didn't even have a hat on her head, and she didn't even know she was supposed to. All she knew was that she wanted to go in. It was her very first Good Friday service. She was remembering the vision, and sitting in the car the Easter before, in 1950, and praying at Emmanuel, when she first went there, to Mary as well as Jesus, asking her to pray with her as they thought of all the terrible suffering in the world and of her Son and of me.

On Good Friday, April 3, 1953, Mommy sang with the choir in the Presbyterian Church. She was very sad, thinking about the terrible ordeal Jesus went through.

She thought about Him on the Crucifix and how He had prayed that He might not have to go through the terrible pain and how the angel came to Him in the garden at Gethsemane, near the Mount of Olives, the night before, to strengthen Him for His ordeal.

All the while Mommy sang in churches, she thought about the angels circling around, and she remembered how they looked. She would remember them almost as clearly as she did as she saw them when she made the painting in the high school.

One of the students was so interested in the painting, she came up and asked Mommy to let her help tint the folds of the white clothing draped around the angels. Mommy let her help, but she didn't tell her or anyone else in the class about the vision and sometimes she's sorry they didn't know. But it was a high school class, and some of them might have been a little smart about it, so she just used it as a project lesson and let them help.

When Mommy sang, "Lovely appear over the mountain the feet of them that preach good news of peace," she remembered the feet of the angels and how beautiful the angels were in their kindness to her. Mommy was doing just what she wanted to do!

That's what the girl in the art class at the high school said when she saw the other painting Mommy made while she was teaching there. The picture was of me in my ballet costume, holding red roses and dancing. The girl walked up and clapped her hands and said, "She looks as though she's doing just what she wants to do!" She was so full of glee for the child in the painting.

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