Church Girl Musings - Part 4 - Open Hands

 

This is the fourth in a short series of blog posts about being raised a church girl and those who influenced me along the way. The “Church Girl” theme of a recent women’s conference at my church acknowledged the stereotype that labels a church girl with a long list of unrealistic expectations. And it clarified the real definition that a church girl is imperfect and accepted and called whatever God calls her.

One of the women that influenced this church girl was Ibby. Her name was Isabel but everyone called her Ibby.  I watched her closely for the ten years I finished growing up attending the same church where she worshipped.

We got a phone call one Sunday morning when I was 13. I could tell from my mom’s reaction that it was terrible news.  “Oh my – that’s heart breaking – we’ll be praying.”  It was Ibby’s husband, Bill.  He was a brakeman for the Illinois Central Railroad and his train had a collision early that morning.

My family had known Ibby for about five years, but that day she took on a new role for me.  She was one of the first women I witnessed experiencing the transition of widowhood. That bridge between unbearable sorrow to complete sufficiency of a partnership with God.

A few months after her husband’s death, we gave her a ride home from church one night. As we turned on to her street, she cried out with a wail that pierced the quietness of the night.  She had suddenly remembered that he wouldn’t be there when she got home. The depth of her grief that night hit me with such force that my memory of it remains visceral almost fifty years later.

Throughout my teenage years I saw Ibby immerse herself in productive busyness.  She began to augment her income by flipping houses.  In the 70’s that term had not been coined yet, but it’s exactly what she did.  Rather than flipping in a few days or weeks, her strategy was to buy a house and move into it and re-do it while living there over a period of months or a couple years.  My parents and I often visited her to see the before and after of her latest investment.  She had an eye for decorating and a vision for how a house could look with a little paint and updated decor. She took creative pleasure in her handiwork and was always in the middle of a project, stripping an old piece of furniture or sewing a new window treatment.

On Friday nights she often hosted our church youth group at her house.  This was long after her own children were grown and long before her grandchildren were in the youth group.  She reached out to a group of kids who would otherwise be driving the main drag from one side of town to the other. She offered her home and food and company and the gift of a safe place to hang out. She was spunky. She held strong opinions on issues of the day and used her living room platform to give us advice about living right.  She was a woman of prayer and many times prayed a powerful prayer over us before we left her house. She had time for us. She MADE time for us.

Ibby taught me that staying busy and serving others are good ways to survive life’s grief. And she showed me David’s position of open palms of surrender to Him.

My eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you. [Ps 88:9, NIV]

A few weeks before Ibby died, I got to attend her 100^th birthday party,  the only 100^th celebration I’ve ever attended! By then she was not so busy and was letting others serve her. But her hands were still spread open to Him. I know that was her real secret. Thank you, Ibby, from one spunky church girl to another.

I hope my memories have jogged yours. If you are a church girl, who helped make you one? Think beyond the ‘praying grandmother’ and those whose job was to mold you. What about those with a more distant or brief encounter? Who influenced you? Who are you influencing now?

Musings of a Church Girl – Part 3 - Disappointments

 

This is the third in a short series of blog posts about being raised a church girl and those who influenced me along the way. The “Church Girl” theme of a recent women’s conference at my church acknowledged the stereotype that labels a church girl with a long list of unrealistic expectations. And it clarified the real definition that a church girl is imperfect and accepted and called whatever God calls her.

One of the women that influenced this church girl was Mary. She was a member of the small church my family were a part of. She and my mom became good friends, so we spent a lot of time with her. She probably never knew about the big life lesson I learned from watching her just live her life.

Mary taught me that life doesn’t hold back on disappointments just because you are a church girl. Overhearing conversations between Mary and my mom, I gathered that life was hard for her. She had been through a divorce. She worried about a son in the military. She had bills to pay. Her car broke down. She hadn’t had a vacation in a long time. Her pain wasn’t like people who have the heart wrenching loss of a child or a debilitating health problem. It was a duller ache, the one that comes from a string of disappointments.

I’m sure there were disappointments in my parents’ lives too, but the norm at our house was to keep the problems behind closed doors. It’s probably healthier to let your kids see that everything isn’t perfect all the time. But if you didn’t get that from your parents, maybe you saw that from your Mary. What I saw in my Mary was a contrast. She had worries that left lines in her brow. And she had joy that smacked with the rhythm of the chewing gum in her mouth. She had the joy of the Lord at the same time she felt sadness over life’s disappointments.  Life disappoints church girls too.

Thank you, Mary, from one church girl to another. It turns out that life isn’t ever perfect for church girls. I’ve had some disappointments, but like Mary and Nehemiah “the joy of the Lord is my strength.” [Neh 8:10, CSB] And it turns out that kind of strength is a long distance strength.

I hope my memories have jogged yours. If you are a church girl, who helped make you one? Think beyond the ‘praying grandmother’ and those whose job was to mold you. What about those with a more distant or brief encounter? Who influenced you? Who are you influencing now?

Musings of a Church Girl – (Part 2 - First Sunday School Teacher)

 

This is the second in a short series of blog posts about being raised a church girl and those who influenced me along the way. The “Church Girl” theme of a recent women’s conference at my church acknowledged the stereotype that labels a church girl with a long list of unrealistic expectations. And it clarified the real definition that a church girl is imperfect and accepted and called whatever God calls her.

I don’t know this church girl’s name. I can’t even picture what her face looked like. I was a toddler. And she was my teacher in my very first Sunday School class.

What I do remember are the little wooden chairs we sat in, nailed together from old lumber and painted mint green. I remember the sandbox. Not outside on a playground, but in our classroom on a table at just the right height for us to stand at and drag little trucks through the sand.

Most of all I can see the teacher’s form sitting beside the famous flannelgraph board. Flannelgraph was top1960’s technology for Sunday School.  No big screens or flashing lights there. The board was covered in baby blue flannel. Paper cutouts with stripes of yellow sticky on the back would adhere to the flannel. My teacher placed the visuals to build up the scenery of the story while she began to tell it with drama befitting the two and three year old’s sitting around her.  Then she brought the characters to life as she placed them on the flannelgraph. The character I can see in my mind right now is Joseph, sporting his coat of many colors.

Dozens of Bible characters joined Joseph in my mind as my collection of Bible stories grew. They became my heroes and sheroes. Because I was a church girl.

The Sunday School teacher in that class is my shero now. She must have had a million other things to think about that week. Her job. Her family. Her insecurities. Her dreams. Her calling to teach the toddler class. The calling that Christ Himself gave when He said, “Let the little children come to me, because the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” [Luke 18:16, CSB]

Thank you, faceless Sunday School teacher, from one church girl to another.

I hope my memories have jogged yours. If you are a church girl, who helped make you one? Think beyond the ‘praying grandmother’ and those whose job was to mold you. What about those with a more distant or brief encounter. Who influenced you? Who are you influencing now?

Musings of a Church Girl (Part 1 - Sister Willie Johnson)

 

Church Girl. That was the theme of a recent women’s conference at my church. The theme acknowledged the stereotype that labels a church girl with a long list of unrealistic expectations. And it clarified the real definition that a church girl is imperfect and accepted and called whatever God calls her.

The “church girl” theme has stirred my thinking about my own life as a church girl. Being a church girl doesn’t mean you were raised in a church, but I was. For my parents, church was more than Sunday mornings. Church was our whole life. Our church family became our extended family. If it takes a village, my village was the church. And there were a lot of other church girls in my village who influenced me.

One of my first such influencers was a traveling evangelist named Sister Willie Johnson. I was about five years old when she held a revival at a church in a neighboring town. I remember many evenings after my dad got home from work, my family ate a hurried supper and drove 25 miles to hear her speak at a church in Bay City, Texas.

Sister Willie Johnson was different than other ministers I had seen in my long five years of sitting and sleeping on church pews. She was the first female preacher I had encountered. Sister Johnson broke the stereotype that had already formed in my experience that women were Sunday School teachers and men were preachers. Her words may have been the same as the men, but her delivery was different. She was strong, soft, fierce and gentle all at the same time. She had gravitas. She wore a white dress with a dark cape that dramatically swirled around as she walked from one side of the platform to the other. I did not fall asleep on the pew during any of her sermons. I was captivated!

Sister Johnson also gave me my first experience with a leadership figure who had darker skin than me. She was bi-racial and I realize now that in the mid-1960’s her ministering in mostly white churches must have been a pretty big deal.

What I remember most about her is her singing. She sang before and after her sermon, accompanied by her traveling companion and organist, Charlene Day. Sister Johnson played the tambourine and sang with as much flair as she preached. The song that went on repeat in my mind this week as I thought about her is “We’ve Come This Far by Faith” by Albert A. Goodson.

We’ve come this far by faith,

Leaning on the Lord.

Trusting in his holy word.

He’s never failed us yet.

Oh, Oh, Oh – can’t turn around,

We’ve come this far by faith.

If you know that song, you just sang those Oh Oh Oh’s with your own visceral memory of what you’ve come through in your life. If you haven’t heard it, enjoy this rendition performed by the IGM virtual choir during the 2020 pandemic.  https://youtu.be/ifj0KIhZAdg

I have since learned about some of the things Sister Johnson had come through by the time I sat under her voice. Her story is told in the book “Through the Waters” by author Lori Wagner. Now I better understand how far she had come trusting in the Lord and leaning on His word. audible.com/pd/Through-the-Waters-The-Life-and-Ministry-of-Evangelist-Willie-Johnson-Audiobook/B07SBG7LJB

At five years old I hadn’t lived long enough to have “come this far by faith.” I had a stable childhood in a loving home. Life hadn’t thrown any curve balls my way yet. But I sang with Sister Johnson in the collective church voice because I was a church girl. And later, I would have my own voice of experience about how far I had come. By faith. Leaning on the Lord. Trusting in His holy word. And with a memory verse planted deep enough to take root that “we walk by faith and not sight.” [2 Corinthians 5:7]

I haven’t always been able to see where I was going, but I’ve always been able to walk there by faith. Thank you, Sister Willie Johnson, from one church girl to another.

In the next few blog posts, I will share stories of a few other church girls who influenced me, hoping that my memories will jog yours. Think beyond the ‘praying grandmother’ and those whose job was to mold you. What about those with a more distant or brief encounter. Who influenced you? Who are you influencing?