Title: The Honor Girl, No. 57
First published: February 1984
Description: This is about a young girl who, when her mother died, was sent to live with wealthy relatives from her mother's side of the family. Her father and two brothers remained in the family home in a working-class neighborhood. Her wealthy relatives treated her as their own and she became accustomed to a life of priviledge. These relatives, while they disapproved of her father and rather openly discouraged her from contact with her father and brothers, raised her with Christian values. She, herself, dreaded coming in contact with her family of origin and had formulated a number of assumptions about them -- that they were uneducated; that her father was a drunk and that they did not care enough about her to keep her. One day, however, during her later teenage years, she found it necessary to go to back to her famiy home on an errand. Because she dreaded to have contact with them, she arranged it so they would be absent from the home when she went there. It was then, alone in the empty house of her origin, that she began to see them -- and herself -- in a new light. This moment was the start of her journey of faith and reconciliation.
Subjects: Christian values, reconciliation, coming of age