A Little Jewel

On Christmas Day, 1914, a little girl was born to a family that already had two half-grown daughters and a son. She was born at their home on the plains of West Texas, and once the neighbors in that farming community heard the news, some came on that Christmas morning to bring food and offer congratulations. One lady leaned over to see the tiny little girl and exclaimed, “Why, she’s just a little jewel!” So they named my mother “Jewell.”

Those who know me well, realize that I always have fond stories to tell about my Dad, but few hear the stories about my mother. I loved her just as much as I loved my father, but she was a quieter presence in our home, and fewer people in the community knew her very well. But Mother was a wonderful mom, so I want to pay tribute to her this Mother’s Day weekend.

When I remember my mom, one of my first thoughts is that she was so involved in the lives of her two daughters. She rarely missed PTA meetings, she served as Room Mother, Girl Scout leader, FHA sponsor, Band Booster, Sunday School teacher, and carpooler. I can’t recall a missed band concert, basketball game, school play, or anything else in which we were involved.

Mother wasn’t a shopaholic, but she knew how to find bargains and look for good value, and she taught me to do the same. I learned how to shop wisely, make careful choices, and think carefully about what was a good value.

She was not just a good cook and housekeeper, she was a good homemaker, which is not always the same thing. She was a full-time homemaker and kept our house clean and beautiful. Mother cooked three nutritious and delicious meals everyday, and each summer found her helping Daddy with the garden, canning and freezing vegetables for the winter. She was a creative and skilled seamstress who not only kept us in well-made clothes, but she also made curtains, bedspreads, and all kinds of things for our home. She loved beautiful things and had a good eye for color and fashion. Although we were not wealthy, Mother knew how to keep us, and our home, looking fashionable and colorful.

Even though my mother was shy, she knew how to be hospitable. We often entertained people in our home for meals, and she frequently took food she had prepared to others who needed it. Mother had a great sense of “family”, and loved having our relatives over. Any given Sunday, it was not uncommon to come home from church to enjoy dinner with aunts and uncles—I can still taste that delicious roast and gravy in my mind! Holidays were almost always spent with family. There was nothing more important to my mom than being with those she loved, and she enjoyed not only her own family but my dad’s family as well. There were all a constant part of our lives.

Not many people saw my mother’s sense of humor. But she loved a good laugh, and at home with the family she had a very silly streak. We had some good times, and she made it possible for me to learn how to enjoy laughter and not take myself so seriously.

My mom was a good neighbor. We were surrounded by families from the community, people who played a significant part in our lives. Mother visited with most of them on a regular basis, shared vegetables from the garden, and occasionally walked next door to borrow a cup of sugar. She and Daddy sat out on the lawn on summer evenings just passing time with the neighbors, and laughed and wept together over all that happened in their daily lives.

One last thing that I remember about my mother was how she really listened to me. In high school, I would have said that was not so ~ but in retrospect, I know it was. If there was something I really longed for, something I truly hoped to get for Christmas, more often than not it was under the tree Christmas morning. If there was something I was distressed over at school, she paid attention, and tried to help me find a solution. If I had a favorite color, it was not unusual to find that she had purchased fabric in that color to make me a new dress.

My mother lived a long and happy life: content with the simple things, not expecting that the world owed her more than she had already been given. She was humble and grateful, generous and thoughtful. She didn’t do everything perfectly, but she taught me all the most important things I needed to learn. She left this earth for something better sixteen years ago, but on this Mother’s Day, I miss her still. 

True Cliches

“Don’t fight it; just accept it.”

Those words were quoted ad nauseum by Marian Stewart in my Freshman Algebra class in high school. Algebra was like a foreign language to me, and my logical mind needed to understand it, not just do it! Many of us who struggled in her class questioned things like, “What IS X? What does it mean? Why do you call it X and Y?” And often, when there was no logical answer that would satisfy us, she just looked at us with her usual patience and sense of humor, shrugged, and said, “Don’t fight it; just accept it.”

Later, the Serenity Prayer expressed some of the same truths that Mrs. Stewart understood. Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

Still later, my son-in-law often theorized, “It is what it is.”  

An even earlier wise person, King Solomon, wrote in Ecclesiastes: “I have always tried my best to let wisdom guide my thoughts and actions. I said to myself, ‘I am determined to be wise.’ But it didn’t work. Wisdom is always distant and difficult to find. I searched everywhere, determined to find wisdom and to understand the reason for things.” (New Living Translation, Ecclesiastes 7:23-25)

All the wise people I have quoted were striving to understand life, to get a grasp of what they needed to know. Yet each of them understood that we have our limitations. There are some things we will never understand. Some things are beyond our ability to fix. We can change some things to make our world better, but much of it is beyond our ability to control, and most of us hate being out of control and not fully understanding where we are headed.

There is probably more anger and frustration generated from our helplessness than almost anything else. We want to know! Most of us want to direct the course of our lives and navigate our way to a safe harbor where everything is peaceful, plentiful, and comfortable, where we know exactly what is coming and we have no surprises in store. When we learn that we aren’t the ones at the helm, we generally are angry and fearful, grasping for whatever particles of our lives that we can manage to control. We have little patience with issues that don’t have a concrete answer or solution. I quote the proverbial “we”, but really it is the literary “I” that is under discussion, for these are all things that bring me anxiety.

The quotes I mentioned at the beginning are probably best summed up with the Serenity Prayer. The balance I need (and probably you do, too) comes when I can look at my circumstances, discern the areas where I can improve or make things better, and then pray for the courage and discipline to make those changes. But beyond that, I hope and pray God gives me the discernment to “pick my battles”. I want to be wise enough to see what is beyond my ability to change, and to follow Mrs. Stewart’s advice: “Don’t fight it; just accept it.”

Copyright 2012

Tree Memories

The Spring days are growing warmer, school children are wrapping up the final events of the academic year, and my thoughts are turning toward summer. I decided to reprint a blog I posted quite some time ago on my previous website. If you were a tomboy as I was, you might have enjoyed tree-climbing, and this topic might resonate with you.

As a child I never consciously thought much about trees. Not being a budding arborist (okay, it was a lousy pun!), I grew up taking our few trees for granted in spite of the fact that I lived in a flat, practically tree-less part of the state of Texas.

However, I do find it interesting that so many of my childhood memories revolve around trees. Until I was about five, we had a row of two or three large elm trees west of our house. My swings and sand pile were under those trees so I spent most of my time playing underneath them in a shaded world of make-believe. My older sister and her friend Vondell climbed our trees, mostly I think to get away from me. At least, they did until they came eyeball to eyeball with a praying mantis, and I think that brought their tree-climbing practices to a screeching halt. But I was too little for tree-climbing, and I don’t remember experiencing that particular adventure until after our elms were taken down.

By that time, the Stapletons had purchased the house across the street from mine and they not only had a playmate my age, but they had TREES! There were three satisfactory elm trees in a row lining their driveway. The one nearest to the garage was just exactly the right size and shape for climbing, and it wasn’t long before Jeanne and I were retreating up into its leafy hideaway. There, we sometimes escaped from her younger sister, just as my sister and her friends had hidden from me. But we usually included the little one ~ Jeanne’s mom made us.

It was a retreat where we found respite from the summer heat, where we dreamed dreams about what we wanted to be when we grew up (I’m still searching that one out!). We made plans, shared whispered secrets, and observed the neighborhood from our safe perch. Occasionally we discovered we were sharing our tree house with insects and critters, and we had our share of skinned knees from climbing up and down on the rough bark. But it was mostly a comfortable place to while away the summer hours.

One memorable summer, we decided to host a talent show (comprised of the much-sought-after talents of Jeanne, Joanne, and Judy). We had visions of selling tickets to our entire neighborhood and making a “bunch” of money. Billing ourselves as “The Three J’s” (a cleverly unique name that should have rivaled the Supremes) we prepared for opening night. Carefully, we hand-printed tickets and programs. Each of the three of us practiced the acts we would perform to dazzle our audience. We contracted with Jeanne’s mom to provide refreshments. On the night of the big performance, we placed a row of folding chairs just west of the big tree. Pushed up against the tree, facing the chairs, we positioned a long wooden table that was to be our stage.

The plan was that we would climb up the tree on the opposite side, and when it was our turn to perform, we would come out of the tree onto the stage and wow any talent scouts that might be lurking on the lawn. (We figured after this debut, we would definitely be asked to appear on the Ed Sullivan show!)

As I recall, the audience consisted of the Stapletons, my parents, both our grandmothers, and one gullible neighbor who couldn’t find a good excuse not to come. We Three J’s performed our little hearts out, amid thundering applause. It was a heady experience.

What good times we had! Television sets and Nintendo games were no comparison with our active imaginations.

There was another significant tree in our neighborhood. It grew across the street from the Methodist Parsonage, right next to the road. The Y of the tree was low enough to the ground that we kids could easily reach it. There was a hollowed out place that was a perfect spot for leaving messages or hiding things. Some super sleuths from Petersburg Elementary spent their summers stealthily passing secret messages to one another through the hidden hollow in that tree.

I can also remember picking up pecans under my Uncle Clyde’s towering pecan trees down the street. My Grandmother, Blanche Martin, also had a large pecan tree in her yard on Main Street. I remember having picnics in her yard underneath the shade of that tree, which my dad told me was the first pecan tree planted in Petersburg (he had planted it himself as a boy.)

Now that I have moved back to Petersburg some fifty years since the Three Js had their opening night, I am once again enthralled with my trees. I have two large pecan trees that my Dad nurtured for many years. And I love to hear the West Texas wind sighing through the pine tree in my front yard. Okay, so we don’t have many trees around here. But ah, the joy of the ones we do have!

So what are YOUR memories of trees?

copyright 2007, Judy Martin Bowyer

No More Piggybacks

Remember as a kid when you played with your friends and gave each other piggyback rides? Of course, it always helped to play with a friend who was bigger than you so they would be the ones doing the carrying!

I was reminded of this recently as I read about King Hezekiah and his gratitude for what the Lord was doing for him. In Isaiah 38:19, it reads, “Each generation can make known your faithfulness to the next.” When I read that, I wrote the following in my journal: “I desperately want to pass along a legacy of faith to future generations. My children have to develop their own walk of faith and not piggyback on mine. While I want them to know what the Lord has done for me and see His hand in all our lives up to this point, they have to write their own faith narrative. God was working in our family for an unknown number of generations, building a history of belief in all of us, and I marvel at how blessed I am to now have my own legacy of faith.”

It’s true; I have a substantial amount of genealogical information about my family, and as far back as we know, we are a people of faith.  But my children can’t inherit their faith in the same way they claim the family’s brown eyes or short stature. They have to find their own way. 

The bottom line is this: I can accept Isaiah’s charge to make sure my children know about God’s faithfulness in my life. I can do my part to tell them the stories of ways He has guided me, answered my prayers, provided for me. And I can pass along the tales I heard my parents and grandparents tell about God’s faithfulness, passing the baton to the next generation.

Copyright © 2012

Holding Hands

Who can ever understand the way our minds hold onto seemingly small things and turn them into long-term memories? I recently recalled an incident when I was probably three or four, but the image is still vivid today.

My family had driven to church, and I was walking through the doors of the church beside my daddy, holding his large hand with my tiny one. Maybe he stopped to open the church door ~ I don’t know why we unclasped hands. But I was still beside him, so I felt secure in his presence, even though I wasn’t physically connected to him. We continued down the hall, and from my vantage point, the view consisted mostly of other people’s knees! I was just following the flow of traffic, walking beside my daddy. I didn’t have to know where I was going because Daddy knew the way, and I was with him.

As the flow of people increased, so did my anxiety, so I reached up and grabbed Daddy’s hand for security. I was happy in my own little world until I happened to look up into Daddy’s face, and it was the face of another man from our church! I let go of his hand and panicked, looking everywhere for the face that was most familiar to me, the one I knew I trusted. This man wasn’t unsafe or bad ~ he just wasn’t my daddy!

Fortunately, Daddy was nearby, and I ran over and grabbed his hand and continued down the hall, heart pounding, feeling safe once more.

So I ask you: why would my four-year-old brain remember that small incident that probably only lasted for five minutes of my life? Perhaps it lodged in my mind because it illustrates some key principles.

We all need security; everyone is grasping for something to hold onto that makes them feel safe and connected. And there are lots of choices: people, money, possessions, jobs and careers, our children, our church, an educational degree, investments . . . the list goes on to include things that many find comforting. What gives you that sense of security you long for?

Challenge question: ask yourself if the thing or person you cling to for security has the ability to keep you safe.

The little girl I described had grabbed onto something nearby that she thought was safe. But she didn’t look above her normal eye level to confirm the source of her security. Once she looked into the eyes of her protector, she saw a stranger ~ not the daddy who loved her.

Make sure you hold hands with the One who can keep you safe . . . who knows and loves you . . . who knows the Way even when you don’t. If you can’t find Him, ask me and I’ll take you to Him.