Better Than Perfume

Yesterday morning I was still in bed when the phone rang, “Daphne!”

Just the sound of her voice… and immediately I felt that everything would be alright. She’s always affected me that way.

The first time I met her I was a struggling new missionary in language school and wondering  (if I had only dared admit it) if I had just made the most colossal mistake of my life. I don’t remember the meeting now, only that Daphne slipped in in her Daphne way and as I listened to her I felt like fresh breeze had just broken into a stale and stuffy room.

She was so “real!”

A few years later when we both ended up in Aomori I often went out of my way to benefit from this “realness” – her great honesty and common sense.

I often tell people that when I was a young woman I “collected mothers” meaning, I suppose, that I sought out women my mother’s age to support me in the way my mother would have done if only she had been on the same continent (or in my case, island) instead of on the other side of the world.

There were a number of these women in my life, but no one quite like Daphne!

She’s in Australia now and probably approaching 90. (Her younger sister is over 85.) But I’m so glad she’s still in my life. Comforting. Encouraging. And still full of that “realness” – that honesty that first attracted me to her.

Perfume and incense bring joy to your heart.

And a friend is sweeter when (s)he gives you honest advice.  

  -Proverbs 27:9

For we are the aroma of Christ to God

…we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as (wo)men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.

-  2 Corinthians 2:15-17)