Under the Tulip Tree

by Michelle Shocklee

“I don’t like remembering the bad times, but the Lord has a way of using them to get you to where he wants you to go.”

Maybe confidence in oneself had nothing to do with what other folks thought or did. Maybe it was deep down inside you, just waiting to be let loose like a spring of water gushing to the surface.

Wasn’t that what life was about? To know and be known. To offer encouragement to others and share the burdens we all face. No matter the color of one’s skin, weren’t we all supposed to care about each other?

What we believe and what we think are not static. Experiences and people leave a mark on us and change us.

In 1935, well into the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Federal Writers’ Project as part of the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program that put out-of-work writers, librarians, teachers, and others to work.