In the Places Where She Lives

In the Places where She Lives

We are in a time of “contact tracing,” trying to slow the spread of the covid virus. It started me thinking of “influence tracing” and the width, breath, depth, and height of a parent's influence across a life time.

In some ways it was easy to trace my father's influence because growing up in a service station, I had more time with him than most children would have with their fathers. I easily attribute to his influence integrity, generosity, and reality.

Integrity because he would rather take the loss than for a customer be dissatisfied. He said what he would do and he did what he said. Simple, clean, and unwavering.

His generosity was on display with how he employed his alcoholic brother, his aging father and mother, and mother's mother to provide a way for them to provide for themselves and their families. Dad bought grandmother a modest house, and later his brother a new Buick. More than that, he was kind to the widows who found their way to the station. He offered an opinion and a person they could trust. He and Mom”s goal was for us to go off to college with cars we had worked to pay for. However, due to a series of unfortunate events, my car had been in four accidents(none my fault) so that when I started preaching at Howard Payne and coming in late on Sunday evening, they decided I needed a safer car. So they bought me one.

Reality because Dad saw folks for what they were. He never much talked about the “church folks” who were in and out of the station, but he noted (perhaps for us guys) they weren't always the “Christians” one would see on Sunday. I remember he remarked only once our pastor cheated at “42,” and always seemed to be focused on money. He noted when a neighborhood pastor would push past the limits a member set on his business account for filling up the church buses. Both of those were indicators of character issues.

There was also the pride in a job well done. This may have been one of the most difficult traits to work with as a pastor. Growing up I saw the muddy, filthy car roll into the wash bay, and then the car we cleaned up and vacuumed. It was clear when the job was done. Ministry—not so much.

Finding mother in my life, was a little more challenging. One of the revelations I received in my years working in the prison was the affection offenders had for their mothers. Huge, hulking African American offenders would come to tears thinking about their mothers. So many of the offenders grew up in single parent families and most often that was the mother.

Mom's “influence” was more subtle, more behind the scenes. She was passionate about her husband being the hero in our family story. She was the mediator between us and Dad when we were teens and could not always see the big picture. She was the faith anchor which made sure we were always at church when we should be. I do not remember a time when I was not attending our neighborhood church and because Dad worked on Sunday, it fell to her. I have often thought of my mom when Paul wrote to Timothy about his sincere faith which “first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice”(II Timothy 1:5) She was the quiet powerhouse of faith in our family. As we turned into teens, Mom and Dad announced they had renegotiated Dad's lease and he would be closing on Sunday so he could be in church with us. Dad lost some business from the church folks down the street because it was no longer convenient to drop off their company cars for him to clean up while they were in church. God provided.

I am not one of those sentimental folks who says things to make people feel better,(this happens a lot around funerals and death) but what I have learned is Mom lives on in the influence she shared with me about kindness, love for God, love and care for others. In fact, I feel a camaradeship with Timothy whose faith was a deep gift from his mother and grandmother.

You might have met Mom over the last ten years and seen her dressed in coordinated colors,(always bright), matching jewelry, ear rings, and make up, and never know what experiences had shaped her and forged the settled faith on which her life rest. Born during the depression, father dying when she was 7-8 from a ruptured appendix leaving her mother, two older brothers without any source of income. An older sister had married and moved away. Mom told me on one occasion she grew up believing she was like everyone else which meant they were poor. Until one day she went to school and several girls had their heads together and they pointed to her and said, “She's poor.” Mom never knew. She thought she was like everyone else. In her teenaged years, a sister of mother's who married a man with money took Mom and another cousin into her home and exposed them to the nicer things in life. They paid for her to go to business school in Lubbock and then she met Dad, a wounded soldier coming home from the war. Three children later, settled in Odessa, they worked to provide a living for those they loved. Dad opened a Gulf Service Station and 22 years later closed it and was shortly thereafter diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. Together they battled it, through radiation, surgeries, chemo, with Dad dying on November 4, 1982. I was concerned about how Mom would do, but after a time, she came out of the shock of loosing Dad and set about to care for her mother for the years that remained in Grandmother's life. Grandmother died at the age of 97.

I never really knew how much it meant to Mom that I had ventured into the ministry(called of God to care for souls) until as she got older, moved to San Angelo, she took delight in introducing me to her friends. The introduction went something like this, “This is Mike, my son who is the preacher.” As she got older, moved to the Nursing home, it was “This is my preacher boy Mike.” Said with affection and pride, I believe it went to the real heart of her faith.

So Mom lives on by influence in the conversations I have with couples, with veterans, and with individuals who struggle from past and present trauma.

The truth is, what truly endures in this life and the next are the people we invest in pointing them to the Kingdom, helping them move toward the Kingdom, and making the Kingdom real in each day we live. When all the stuff of this world is carried to the junk yards of life, what remains and what lasts are those who have found Christ and lived for Him. Thanks Mom for showing me that.

Wash your hands, wear your masks in respect for others, mind the gap, and be kind.