“Don’t be afraid!” Nehemiah insisted, as he charged them to “remember the Lord who is great and glorious; fight for your friends, your families, and your homes!” (v. 14).
After I married my Irish Cherokee, we counted seventy celebrations and were well on our way to another celebration when the Lord called her home. Someone asked me once why I called her my Irish Cherokee. I explained: “She’s Irish and from Oklahoma (above is a very early OK Camp Meet-ing), and she has enough Cherokee to register as Native American.” When I met her, she lived in the High Street Dorm across from her friend Dean Olt. One of my most cherished pictures shows her sitting on the porch at High Street in a splendid white gown capped with shoe-polish-black hair. She had the deepest blue-black hair I had ever seen and I was impressed. However, she also had a temperament that alerted me to avoid sending her on the warpath.
I met her at the historic basketball game when AC’s Johnny Wilson pushed a top-ranked NC State into three overtimes before losing by one point. She sat behind the bench that night because she tutored Johnny in English and knew both Johnny and brother Ray well. I had stopped to visit the AC/AU campus where I had been a student earlier, and was en route to Michigan to spend fifteen day of furlough time from the Air Force with my parents.
She was a transfer from Tulsa University where he was preparing to follow her father into medicine, but she arrived In Anderson fresh out of Houston, Texas after her father pulled her out of Tulsa University to escape an older, wealthy suitor that would have disrupted her education. She and I got off to a less-than-steller start! But after a few encounters, we found some mutual connections and drifted closer together. Simultaneously, I discovered she was experiencing significant illness that temporarily derailed her education and changed the course of her life from Medicine to Ministry.
Beyond our youthful beginnings, we shared a common faith
that led each of us to the same church college. We were each nurtured by strong
family values. In addition; I found a compelling strength in her sharp intellect
and quick wit that I deeply valued and was attracted to. Her illness proved life threatening; thus disruptive,
forcing her to temporarily put aside her plans to complete her edu-cation.
Nonetheless, she faced it with an admirable faith and fortitude that bonded us
together. In the short time it took us to realize we were both serious about
our relationship, we mutually agreed to commit to each other and sacrifice
together, knowing I was scheduled for overseas duty in the near future. We determined
to marry and make-do together rather than live apart and await my return from
overseas.
We married at the conclusion of a Sunday morning Worship Service at the old Northside Church of God in St Louis, MO. My pastor, Dr. Harold Boyer, preached a sermon on the Church as the Bride of Christ. As his conclusion that day, he called us to the front of the Sanctuary and read our vows. Although we were both away from home, with neither of our families present, we were married and launched by the 350 worshippers present that cold February day of 1947. Following the service, the Associate Pastor, Sister Patton took us to her home and we celebrated our wedding with her daughter in real style.
Both of our families had participated actively in local church life, although we grew up a thousand miles apart. Through it all, the church provided us many opportunities for discovering ourselves, for finding purpose in life, and provided us opportunities to add a church-sponsored college education where we could further enhance our creative skills and cultivate our abilities for meaningful service.
My journey had begun in a small Sunday school my father helped organize as a teenager. It was there he became a teacher and church leader. It was also there that he met the fifteen-year-old girl that later became my mother. That small family of faith nurtured my expanding family and me through my critical childhood years. By the time I laid dad to rest at age eighty-five; he and mother had supported that church for the span of their marriage – 4-1926 12-1990. Mother gave eight more years of exemplary service that prompted Pastor Davis to enroll her as his first recipient of his all-church Honor Roll.
My Irish Cherokee’s journey began when her parents came to Christ through a personal conversion in rural Oklahoma under the ministry of a local pioneer, David Ladd. This launched the young couple into church life for the first time and led to her father doing revival preaching for some three years, before turning back to his Medical practice. One of the more significant twists in her life came years after our marriage, when she received a call to rendezvous with her family at a Tulsa hospital.
Early the following morning, she and her weary siblings quickly discovered their mother, long reverenced as Granny by the family, had left them. Mary Woodard Stiles, the girl who travelled by Covered Wagon from New England to Kansas, had gone home to her eternal reward. She made the cross-country venture protected by her two brothers, Billy and Dutch, after their father died. They later sojourned in Oklahoma Territory where Billy and Dutch prospered as Cattlemen while teen-aged Mary married a widower and Medical Doctor. Now, “Granny,” was gently lifted into the arms of Jesus.
Throughout that day, Hospital Ward Personnel slowly unfolded a jubilant story for the grieving family, detail by detail. Different workers and Staff personnel had overheard their patient praying aloud--not realizing it was her lifelong custom to pray aloud out behind the house at 5:00 a.m. daily. Dutifully, they watched the drama unfold. Shedding compassionate tears, various of the doctors and nurses quietly shared their individual stories.
"Granny," praying aloud in the privacy of her room, had named each one of her large brood for one last petition to “The Father.” She did as she had done for more than half-a-century at home in her private place, talking “to her father” about the peace and spiritual prosperity of her large brood. Soon thereafter, she rested … quietly … peacefully … and silently winged her departure.
The siblings all remembered her 5:00 a.m. daily ritual, begun before some of the younger ones were born. Some knew the story of how older brother “Gib” had been struck by flack on a SE Pacific Bombing Mission during the taking of Rabaul et al. Gilbert (G.S. Jr), a wounded pilot, was lost returning to home base, and they knew the story of how he had heard his mother praying and had guided his craft by the sound of her voice back to a place of safe landing behind enemy lines. They knew the story from the San Antonio Evening Light and they saw him return home and give his Mom his witness to her prayers.
Comforted; they experienced God’s grace-filled days each day thereafter. Their tears were “filled with joy” (Ps. 126:3-5 NIV) as they rested in the assurance that Granny had been preparing for that day for seventy long years!
My circumstances led me later to visit my eighty-seven year-old mother and visit over lunch. We chatted about the little church that nurtured me in my early years. Somewhat incidentally, she mentioned her prayer list. That was the day I discovered she had a prayer list that included more than one hundred fifty personal and congregational concerns.
We married at the conclusion of a Sunday morning Worship Service at the old Northside Church of God in St Louis, MO. My pastor, Dr. Harold Boyer, preached a sermon on the Church as the Bride of Christ. As his conclusion that day, he called us to the front of the Sanctuary and read our vows. Although we were both away from home, with neither of our families present, we were married and launched by the 350 worshippers present that cold February day of 1947. Following the service, the Associate Pastor, Sister Patton took us to her home and we celebrated our wedding with her daughter in real style.
Both of our families had participated actively in local church life, although we grew up a thousand miles apart. Through it all, the church provided us many opportunities for discovering ourselves, for finding purpose in life, and provided us opportunities to add a church-sponsored college education where we could further enhance our creative skills and cultivate our abilities for meaningful service.
My journey had begun in a small Sunday school my father helped organize as a teenager. It was there he became a teacher and church leader. It was also there that he met the fifteen-year-old girl that later became my mother. That small family of faith nurtured my expanding family and me through my critical childhood years. By the time I laid dad to rest at age eighty-five; he and mother had supported that church for the span of their marriage – 4-1926 12-1990. Mother gave eight more years of exemplary service that prompted Pastor Davis to enroll her as his first recipient of his all-church Honor Roll.
My Irish Cherokee’s journey began when her parents came to Christ through a personal conversion in rural Oklahoma under the ministry of a local pioneer, David Ladd. This launched the young couple into church life for the first time and led to her father doing revival preaching for some three years, before turning back to his Medical practice. One of the more significant twists in her life came years after our marriage, when she received a call to rendezvous with her family at a Tulsa hospital.
Early the following morning, she and her weary siblings quickly discovered their mother, long reverenced as Granny by the family, had left them. Mary Woodard Stiles, the girl who travelled by Covered Wagon from New England to Kansas, had gone home to her eternal reward. She made the cross-country venture protected by her two brothers, Billy and Dutch, after their father died. They later sojourned in Oklahoma Territory where Billy and Dutch prospered as Cattlemen while teen-aged Mary married a widower and Medical Doctor. Now, “Granny,” was gently lifted into the arms of Jesus.
Throughout that day, Hospital Ward Personnel slowly unfolded a jubilant story for the grieving family, detail by detail. Different workers and Staff personnel had overheard their patient praying aloud--not realizing it was her lifelong custom to pray aloud out behind the house at 5:00 a.m. daily. Dutifully, they watched the drama unfold. Shedding compassionate tears, various of the doctors and nurses quietly shared their individual stories.
"Granny," praying aloud in the privacy of her room, had named each one of her large brood for one last petition to “The Father.” She did as she had done for more than half-a-century at home in her private place, talking “to her father” about the peace and spiritual prosperity of her large brood. Soon thereafter, she rested … quietly … peacefully … and silently winged her departure.
The siblings all remembered her 5:00 a.m. daily ritual, begun before some of the younger ones were born. Some knew the story of how older brother “Gib” had been struck by flack on a SE Pacific Bombing Mission during the taking of Rabaul et al. Gilbert (G.S. Jr), a wounded pilot, was lost returning to home base, and they knew the story of how he had heard his mother praying and had guided his craft by the sound of her voice back to a place of safe landing behind enemy lines. They knew the story from the San Antonio Evening Light and they saw him return home and give his Mom his witness to her prayers.
Comforted; they experienced God’s grace-filled days each day thereafter. Their tears were “filled with joy” (Ps. 126:3-5 NIV) as they rested in the assurance that Granny had been preparing for that day for seventy long years!
My circumstances led me later to visit my eighty-seven year-old mother and visit over lunch. We chatted about the little church that nurtured me in my early years. Somewhat incidentally, she mentioned her prayer list. That was the day I discovered she had a prayer list that included more than one hundred fifty personal and congregational concerns.
That revelation painted a new portrait of the quiet
little woman I knew only as my “mother.” I saw her as never before revealed, until
that belated moment. The memory of that day sustained me two years later when I
laid her to rest at the age of 90 and it comforts me now that I have
outlived her by another eighteen years .
Such grace-filled memories reaffirm personal core values of faith that she and I began learning in childhood. They affirm the values we claimed as our own. They continued to increase their worth across more than six decades of joint-ministry. Now wrinkled, bent and crowned with silver, I well remember the times our adult children returned home for church events that were longstanding traditions for them.
But, that comes as no surprise.
Such experiences enable families to draw from that same deep well of faith-and-family values that we discovered in our seventy years together. THAT IS AS IT SHOULD BE. Faith is a family affair! Faith fortifies families. Faith sustain a nation when people struggle.
From Warner's World, this is
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
suggesting that an infectious faith keeps hope alive and offers light at the end of life's darkest tunnel. When everything else fails, faith sustains as nothing else can. Faith reaps a harvest of wholesome living that is easier caught than taught. When shared as a family, faith infects as well as sustain.
Such grace-filled memories reaffirm personal core values of faith that she and I began learning in childhood. They affirm the values we claimed as our own. They continued to increase their worth across more than six decades of joint-ministry. Now wrinkled, bent and crowned with silver, I well remember the times our adult children returned home for church events that were longstanding traditions for them.
But, that comes as no surprise.
Such experiences enable families to draw from that same deep well of faith-and-family values that we discovered in our seventy years together. THAT IS AS IT SHOULD BE. Faith is a family affair! Faith fortifies families. Faith sustain a nation when people struggle.
From Warner's World, this is
walkingwithwarner.blogspot.com
suggesting that an infectious faith keeps hope alive and offers light at the end of life's darkest tunnel. When everything else fails, faith sustains as nothing else can. Faith reaps a harvest of wholesome living that is easier caught than taught. When shared as a family, faith infects as well as sustain.
_____
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