ETHEL NUNALLY

The Lord and I were thinking about pride this morning, and Ethel Nunally's name came up.  When I was in third grade, she was our neighbor when our family moved into 805 Poplar in Jonesboro.  And when I left home after college, she still lived next-door.  Mrs. Nunally's house was long and narrow and had been made into two apartments.  She lived in the back.

When I think of Ethel Nunally, I think of a retired widow lady who was tall and slim with pretty white hair that she pulled back into a bun.  Everyday she wore a dress and orthopedic high heels that tied...and she moved at a fast pace wherever she went.  Her long body would lean forward with urgency.  Our kitchen sink looked out onto the side of her house where her concrete stoop had three steps down to the ground.  Many times I can remember standing at the sink and watching her screen door fly open and those orthopedic shoes hit the stairs to go out back to hang out clothes, or walk down the street.  When her husband was living, they ran a small neighborhood grocery and their kids would deliver the orders.  Mrs. Nunally's habit of answering the phone was instinctive from all those years in the store.  If you called over there, instead of saying "hello", she would slowly say "alll...righttt..."  (as if to say, "I have my pencil ready, what can we get you?").  I guess that was the only slow characteristic she had.

The other thing that stands out in my mind about Ethel Nunally was that we got along very well all the years we lived side-by-side.  We borrowed from each other and took her places and visited across the driveway.  But I can remember always just "knowing" that Mrs. Nunally thought our family was going to hell.  (Well of course at that time we WERE, but who knew back then?)  And as I look back, I coped with her assumption by somehow diminishing her in my mind... "Well, bless her heart, she goes to a church where they think everyone's goin' to hell but them.  We love her anyway."  

In other words, I put her down to lift myself up.  That tendency toward feeling superior does come so easily.  I had to ask the Lord to please expunge that from my record.  I don't think He likes it when we exalt anyone but Him.

"For thus says the high and exalted One who lives forever, whose name is Holy.  I dwell on a high and holy place, and also with the contrite and lowly of spirit in order to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite."  Isaiah 57:15