Milestones in Grief

I now have survived not having mother at my house on Easter and Mother's day. For a long long time now, I have fixed lunch for my mother and Bob's mother on both days. It was sad to realize things would never be the same again. Tuesday May 13th was our church's annual Daughter's banquet for which I am in charge and have been for 12 years. I can't seem to get out of being in charge. We had about 175 in attendance and the program was good, the food great and the program wonderful. This is the first year since I have been in charge that mother has not been my special guest so that was sad of course. Her strength was beginning to fail last year. She called and told me she didn't feel up to coming but at the last minute changed her mind and wanted to come. I was so glad she came.

The family that did our program was a couple who met while at Texas Tech and were members of Calvary at that time. They married 27 years ago and have 11 children and they all play stringed instruments. 8 of the children and the parents put on a musical program for us. Anyway when they were in college they often ate Sunday lunch with mother and remember her well. They remember her graciousness to them while students away from home. We had an adopt college students program for awhile and the church members would adopt a student for a school year and help them feel welcome at Calvary and provide a home away from home.

I take comfort in knowing mother was proud of my involvement in things at church following in her footsteps. She was involved in teaching a ladies Sunday School class for many years and in a Bible study group that met on Tuesday's for years at her home. This was an outgrowth of ladies at our church who wanted to study the Bible in more depth each week. Out of that Bible study came the establishment of a Bible correspondance prison ministry called Exodus that ministers to men and women in prisons all over the United States.

Our church has been without a Senior pastor for 18 months. Everytime I talked to her on the phone or had lunch with her on Thursdays she asked how the search was going. I happened to be on the pastor search team this time so we talked about what we were doing often. Last Sunday, our church extended a call to Dr. Richard Rush from El Paso to be our next senior pastor and he graciously accepted. Mother would be so proud. I think she would have loved knowing him. She was our church staff's biggest supporter.