She loved her children and fully trusted in God, no matter the situation
“Did you get enough to eat,” she would say, after each meal. I just thought she said it. I didn’t know why. With my sister (Peggy) married and making a family of her own. My two older brothers (Jim & Jack) both in the military, that just left mom & me. She didn’t draw much from dad’s pension (He died in 1960 when I was still in school) so mom worked as a lunchroom worker at a local elementary school. Needless to say we didn’t have much, but she keep me clothed & fed. She always made sure I had enough to eat and sometimes she took food off her plate and put it on mine. One time I saw her eating saltine crackers & milk later when she didn’t know I was watching.
And pray… she prayed about everything. Even the weather; she would pray for sunshine to dry the cloths on the line. Then pray for rain for the vegetables in the garden. She never forgot her children, even though they were gone from home and on their own, she always prayed for God to bless them and their families. She never forgot me (Sammy). I was right there by her side as we knelt by her bed; for me to be a good boy and that I might do well in school, and that I wouldn’t fight, would be kind to others. Oh, she didn’t miss anything. I felt I was the ‘apple of her yes’.
After I graduated high school, I wanted to go to college. No one in my family had ever gone to college before. I would be the first. She sat down with pencil and paper and went to figuring. “I don’t see how we can do it, but if God will help us and you really want to go, we’ll see what we can do”, she said. Well, come fall, I started college at ETSU just about 25 miles away from home. I was able to get a job at a funeral home that gave me a place to stay at night just a few miles away from the main campus.
The war in Viet Nam was going on in the early ‘60’s and I got real patriotic, delaying my college until after I served time in the US Air Force. Mom prayed every day for my safety, just like she had done for the other boys. I married and started a family before I left service, and mom would hold those grand babies and pray for them like she had for my sister and the boys.
Mom would sew little dresses for my three daughters and they looked so grand on Easter and their birthdays. I just know she prayed as she sewed. Mom prayed all the time, not just at mealtime or when we went to bed.
The girls grew as did their cousins and the kids all wanted to pray like mamaw showed them. It’s no wonder I grew up praying too.
Mom died in 1999, just 2 days after my birthday and 5 days before Mothers Day. If she’d made it to August 24th of that year she would have been 92. There wasn’t a lot of tears at mom’s funeral. There was no doubt where would spend eternity. Her life was her testimony. She would be in heaven with the God she knew so well, the one she talked to while she worked, and sewed. Mom was a Proverbs 31 kind of lady. She didn’t wear her faith on her sleeve. She lived it in her heart and believed it when she prayed.
The other day as I looked into the sky, I just prayed “Lord, if you’ve a mind to, we need some rain”…, and you know – it did.
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