Legacy

I don’t know when, exactly, my Mamaw was saved.  By the time I was born she was 41 and never missed a Sunday at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. Her husband only attended with her on the rarest of occasions (the odd Easter would find him haunting the door with the other men, looking vaguely uncomfortable in a suit and tie) but that I know of, he never spoke against her faithful attendance at Sunday School, then the preaching, and the pastor greeting afterward, and maybe even a potluck. She may have felt lonely those years when she sat in the pew alone, but by the time I was old enough to wear white patent leather shoes, I was right there with her most weeks.

My mother — her daughter-in-law — came from time to time. But usually, it was the two of us pulling up outside the church in her long, black Chrysler New Yorker. Like nearly all churches back then, children were a welcome part of the congregation. I have beautiful memories of leafing through the hymn book before I could read and puzzling over the music notes, and of inventing my own form of origami to transform the wrappers from the Strident gum Mamaw slipped me during particularly long sermons. The preaching bordered on violence many weeks, as my Mamaw preferred the Word of God presented without the rough edges of “thou shalt not” sanded down. By the time we stood to sing “Just As I Am,” over the altar call, our ears were ringing with the caution that should we not repent, we were destined for an eternity wrapped in the agonies of hell rather than seated at the foot of our Savior.

And we believed it. Oh, we believed it.

 

It was my Mamaw who taught me the words to the Lord’s Prayer, my Mamaw who took me to my first VBS, my Mamaw who sat beside me at a Homecoming Revival at a small country church in Kentucky where I finally understood the pull towards the altar and the need to cry right there, kneeling on the worn brown indoor/outdoor carpet at the base of a cross that had been hewn from a tree felled by lightning. It would be many more years before I drank more than spiritual milk, but she was there that day, and I do believe it was one of the best days of both of our lives.

 

When God called us to Nepal, she rejoiced. This wasn’t just the reluctant submission of a family member bowing to the inevitable will of God. This was a celebration, a release of joy. My Mamaw saw us going as an even deeper answer to her constant prayer for her family’s salvation. She was sometimes heavy-handed in her desire to see her children and grandchildren saved. She was far from perfect. But in sending my family to Nepal, she felt an extension of God’s grace, a “well done,” this side of heaven from the Jesus she had purposed to serve all her days.

 

When I returned and was greeted by her passing, it felt, quite literally, like the end of the world. The Lord began my rebuilding from scratch, from nothing, without even the backbone of my faith to whisper in my ear, urging me on. Later, when my footing was back under me and I could make it through church without feeling angry, crushed, betrayed or some combination of the three, He gave me back a small piece of my Mamaw.

One of her Bibles.

 

In these pages, I can catch glimpses into her heart. I can read snippets of her life, I can hear the words that spoke to her. Holding the same book in my hands that once rested in hers somehow brings her voice back, and renews my faith that God’s plans for me are, indeed, good.

I can keep walking forward. I can keep trusting God. I can keep believing that serving Him is worth the cost, that swimming upstream is not in vain, that in the end, He wins. My Mamaw was a simple woman, with a simple faith. But the legacy of that faith buoys me, even now, through evidence as small as a few notes in her own hand on the pages of the book she treasured.

She would like that.