My Mom is the main reason for my present relationship with the Lord. Not only because of what she taught me in our home all day long, every day of my growing up years but because she took us kids to church every Sunday morning and Sunday night, Sunday School, youth group, summer camp, vacation Bible School, everything without exception and without fail. She was also a daily model of how to live a Christian life. Mom also constantly pushed us in school and whatever else we were involved in. Her motto was “be the best you could be, and then a little bit more.” She volunteered me to make a speech in 4-H, she constantly volunteered me to play my clarinet in church, she pushed me to run for Student Body President in my Junior year in High School, she was at all my wrestling matches, track meets, and basketball games yelling and cheering. One of my greatest strengths in school and 50 years of ministry was my love of reading and reading speed and comprehension. In the early years of my life in grade school, when we were constantly moving, following my Dad when he was in the Navy, I would read for hours every day. Mom would take me to the library, and we would check out a box full of books, and I would devour them. George MacDonald, a Scottish writer during the mid-1800s, wrote over 50 Christian novels, and I read them all before I started High School. From him, I moved on to reading CS Lewis novels and Tolkien stories. Then I began reading Zane Grey novels, over 50 of which I read before switching to that great American Theologian Louis L’Amour.

I didn’t choose my mother; God did, and He is the one who worked in her life to make her who she was. I often thank the Lord for His sovereign work and choices in the history of my life, which made me who I am today. I don’t ever want to take His gifts to me for granted or to think for a minute that I am responsible for who I am and what I have done in my life. Thank You, Lord, for my Mom.

Pictures of my Mom when I was ten, a couple of days before she died, and at her burial.