Who we each are is a mosaic of many colors and textures gathered through the years. Some memories bring joy when remembered. Others we want to forget. Both, although, shape us into who we are today and the stories that we carry with us along the way. I pieced together this mosaic at a retreat years ago while thinking back on the many pieces of my own life.

My story began in the deep South along the banks of the mighty Mississippi River and  the bayous of Southern Louisiana. This was my playground growing up in the 1950’s  and 60’s. There, moss hung from the oaks like icicles on a Christmas tree. The murky  bayou flowed around cypress knees as we knelt on our own knees to catch crayfish  from it’s muddy waters.

This is where God allowed two lives to intersect in a most powerful and life changing  way…Lillie Mae, a Black maid as was called back then and Linda Katheryne, a newborn placed in her arms at birth in 1955. I am the one in the middle along with two of my sisters.

Lille Mae always loved telling the story to me of when I was born. It went like this.

“Your Mama and daddy came home from the hospital and your Mama said, Lillie Mae, meet Linda Katheryne. She then placed you in my arms and that was it. She let me do whatever I wanted to do to take care of you.”

From birth, Lillie Mae raised me along with my three sisters. She cooked, cleaned, washed, changed our diapers, fed us, consoled us and loved us; and, we loved her until the day she died at the age of 97.

For three generations, she worked for our family. There were two words she never  allowed to be put up for discussion…“work” and “uniform.” Up to the age of 93, she  would wear her uniform and go to work. She would have it no other way. Now “work” was where we put our foot down as she aged. She didn’t like it and that feisty side of  her would come out. Her incredible work ethic was part of the legacy she passed on to me.

Lillie first began working for my grandmother in the late 1940’s. She then came to our  home in the early 1950’s. In later years she helped to raise our own children. God  brought Lillie Mae into our lives when my parents needed help. He brought us into Lillie  Mae’s life when she needed a job. From that day on and over many decades God  weaved our lives together in a most unexpected way.

Lillie Mae is the inspiration for my book. This adjacent photo is from her 90th birthday party in 2011! During the turbulent 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s while raising us, there was “so much I saw, but did not see.” Six days a week she cared for us, and our home. What I didn’t see and too young to know was the heavy yoke of Jim Crow that she and her close knit community carried on their shoulders day after day…the bigotry, marginalization, injustices and inequalities that weighed them down. Her faith kept her strong.

This faith based dual time-line historical fiction takes place in the year 1960 and present day. My desire is to be one more voice to join the chorus of many voices over the decades so that we never forget what Lillie Mae, her community and Blacks all across the South  went through during the decades of Jim Crow. It is written from a rather unique  perspective, through the eyes of this white girl.

My prayer and hope for this book is that it will spur on many to have conversations one  to one. Conversations where we try to actively listen and understand the unique  mosaics of life that we each carry with us. As Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke over fifty  years ago, “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”  Jim Crow mattered. It matters today.  

Please share a piece of your “mosaic” on this safe platform of God’s love, light  and redemptive grace. One to one we can seek to find hope in understanding our  differences.