Older Women Who Mentored Me

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A sweet surprise arrived in my inbox yesterday morning. When Ray and I visited Oxford, Mississippi, in January, we stopped by the church where Ray served as a minister and visited with the church secretary. She and I have exchanged a few emails since then. The one she sent me yesterday brought tears of joy to my eyes and heart and soul. It was this picture she found in a photo album in the church library. I had no idea that the photo existed!

I want to introduce you to the ladies who are in the picture with me, because you are looking at four of the most devout Christian women I have known. I sat at the feet of these women and soaked in lessons on how to follow God, how to love my husband, how to love my children, how to serve Jesus. I plan to frame this old fuzzy photo and put it in my office. I hurriedly showed it to Ray, and before the day was done I had shared it with and told stories to each of our children. Wow! God certainly sent me a blessing yesterday morning!

First, I should explain the occasion. Our church ladies were having a shower for a member who had experienced a house fire. As this photo reveals, the ladies of our church really knew how to throw a party. I remember the time that a couple learned that they were very unexpectedly going to have a baby. We turned the fellowship hall into a circus tent for their shower, complete with a large multi-striped parachute attached to the ceiling.

We obviously had a hillbilly theme for this shower. The refreshment table looked really cute with the delicacies served in iron skillets and such. I don’t know who came up with the theme, but it was probably Joyce Chadwell, who is standing at the left edge and slightly out of the photo and who was our ringleader for fun times. Joyce was our minister’s wife. We talked on the phone every day, Monday through Friday. Those conversations coupled with her example taught this very young campus minister’s wife how to be a minister’s wife.

Joyce’s mother was taking care of her own mother and her husband’s mother during our years together in Oxford. I have often remembered a lesson Joyce’s mother shared with Joyce, a lesson I have repeated to many who were struggling with encouraging their elderly parents to do something that would really be helpful but that the parent definitely did not want to do.

I hope I don’t sound disrespectful by sharing this lesson. Sometimes a little humor goes a long way when times are tough. Here is Joyce’s mother’s wisdom. She said:

The only difference between taking care of elderly parents and your young children is that with young children, you can say: “Get in the car! We’re going!”

Tommie Waters is next to Joyce. She lovingly taught very young children, including ours, in Bible classes. See that smile on her face? That is how I remember Tommie. If she wasn’t smiling, she was laughing. She was an excellent seamstress, kept a beautifully decorated home, and was a welcoming hostess. Often, when I have felt stressed while getting ready for company, I have remembered Tommie sharing with me that she got stressed before having company, too. Tommie’s husband was a professor at Ole Miss. Over the years, I have many times enjoyed telling people that I once knew a man whose name was — I am not kidding — I. Wade Waters.

Precious and tiny Adene Blaylock is standing in the middle. I am short, so you can imagine how short she was! Adene was from a family of 15 children that included five—count ’em, five!—sets of twins! Adene was one of those twins. Adene was an integral part of the ladies’ quilting ministry that made quilts for families in need. She also ran our needy closet, which meant that she kept good used clothing organized in a dedicated closet in our church building. Tiny Adene personally delivered clothing and those handmade quilts to homes that some of the rest of us might have been a bit leery of visiting. It’s too bad that the camera caught Adene in between smiles because her smiles and laughs were very special, too. Here’s a post I wrote about Adene and her husband last year.

That silly lady with the washboard is yours truly. I wish I could remember what we were singing with such gusto, but that was at least 35 years ago.

On my left is precious Cora Beal Shields. I have written about Cora Beal over and over again, most recently after we visited with this now-97-year-old friend while we were in Oxford in January. I think that this post may be the first one I wrote about Cora Beal back in 2014. She has always exuded joy, kindness, hospitality, faith . . . I could go on and on. I still remember the day we drove to Doug and Cora Beal’s house in 1983 to drop off John and Bethany so we could go to the hospital for the birth of Mary Evelyn.

God was very kind to send these godly women into my life when I was in my 20s. I look back in awe when I think of what He was doing in me through their lives. They weren’t older women teaching a class for younger women. Our lives together were our classroom. They were the teachers and I was the learner—very much like the lives you live with your children every day. Your lives together is your classroom, too.

I am so very grateful.

Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior,
not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine,
teaching what is good, 
so that they may encourage the young women
to love their husbands, to love their children, 
to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind,
being subject to their own husbands,
so that the word of God will not be dishonored.
Titus 2:3-5

 

 

 

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