28 February 2018
Today, as I watch the ceremony of the United States Government honoring Reverend Billy Graham at the Capitol, I realize how important he has been in my life.
Growing up outside of my parents, there were a handful of people who were my anchors, my guideposts, and my role models. Among those were my grandmothers – two women, vastly different in temperament but so similar in that they were Southerners, strong, talented, patriotic, and Baptist. They lived their faith each day as Christians, sure in the knowledge that God lives, that Jesus is the Son of God, and gained wisdom and strength to survive some of life’s most challenging experiences with daily study in their well-worn bibles and in prayer.
My maternal grandmother, known to me as Mama Ross, built her life around her church community, a church that most of my mother’s side of the family continue to attend. She sang in the choir, even into her 80s, and was active in her community. My paternal grandmother, known to me as Mama Clay, moved away from her home community at midlife to settle with my grandfather in the Washington, DC area. Her faith was as strong, and her Christian acts of compassion and service frequent; but she did not settle into a church in her new community.
Both of these women loved their children, their sons and daughters in law, grandchildren and great grandchildren. They both were talented in what used to be called ‘the home arts’. They baked amazing cakes and pies, canned the best pickles and jams, sewed like a professional seamstress. Mama Ross crocheted, tatted, quilted, gardened, and expressed her creative side through ceramics as well. After she retired, she took on one big project a year – often crocheting a bedspread or tablecloth to fill her heating oil tank. She also taught ceramics in a room she created by closing in part of her front porch. That ceramics studio was a place her grandchildren had many adventures and learned a little bit about ceramics and painting. I always loved sitting in there in the winter when it was rainy if the kiln was on, it was toasty warm. Life was good, and I was secure. She had huge oak trees in her yard. When I became a mother, to entertain my children, she would pick up some of the biggest acorns I have ever seen before or since and paint faces on them. My young children were delighted. Sweet memories now, all these decades later.
Mama Clay was one of the best cooks I have ever known. She taught me so much about cooking, just by watching her. She put so much love in her cooking that everything she made was delicious. Mama Clay loved to do crossword puzzles. Every afternoon, after she finished cleaning up from the midday meal, she would sit in her chair, turn on her ‘shows’, and work on a puzzle, if she wasn’t doing some hand sewing. There was a part of her, I believe that regretting leaving school to work in ‘the Mill’ as a teenager. Working these puzzles was a way of adding to her vocabulary. She was smart and the kindest person I believe I have ever known. She always looked for the good in a person.
I always loved when I got to stay at with either of my grandmothers. I have fond memories of watching Billy Graham preach with both of them over the years. There were shows they were going to watch whenever they were on – the Lawrence Welch show and Billy Graham whenever he was preaching on television.
What separated Reverend Graham from some of the television evangelists of my childhood is that I have no recollection of him using his time on television to ask people to send him money – something that was a centerpiece of the message of other preachers. Reverend Graham preached about God and delivered a simple message – God Loves You!
Over the course of my lifetime, I have been challenged with settling into a specific religion for the long haul – for reasons that have nothing to do with faith, and everything to do with man’s tinkering with religious tenants. However, I have known from a young age that there is a God. Living my life without having to question God’s existence has given me a solid foundation that has served me well. My life, like everyone’s is full of good times and challenging times, times of great joy and great sorrow. Through them all, I feel God’s love, protection, and healing light.
I have always considered myself Christian. I trip a few years ago to Jordan, where God literally knocked me to my knees at the archeological site where Elijah was taken to heaven near the site Jesus was baptized at the River Jordan really helped me fully appreciate the importance of Jesus as the Son of God. I think that day, with skinned knees I truly became a Christian when God said to me, “Beth get out of your head and into your heart while you walk where Jesus walked.” I have my Muslim hosts to thank for this experience.
Every time I make the long drive home to South Carolina, I drive past the exit sign for the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina. Sometime soon, I think I’ll need to take that exit.
The death of a loved one is a time when our Christian faith gets tested. We are sad because our loved one is ‘gone’. Faith is believing in things we cannot see or touch. This process we refer to as death is the passing of someone from this life to the next is a time when we get to exercise our faith and explore the comfort God brings us when we need it most. 2017 was a year in which my faith got exercised a lot – I was at the bedside of both of my brothers as they took their last breaths in this world and made that transition. In between, in a tragedy still so raw it is hard to discuss, my neighbor, a beloved high school teacher the same age as my children, Laura Wallen and her unborn son were murdered by her boyfriend.
I was reminded what grief feels like; and I have been forced to be out of my head and back in my heart as a result.
I am an imperfect being, but thanks in part to the constant message from Billy Graham that God Loves You (and Me), I know that even when I stumble and err, I am still loved.
Thank you, Reverend Billy Graham, for the life of servant leadership you led, thank you for being constant in your faith and your message, please give my grandmothers a hug from me when you see them in Heaven!
Always,
Beth