I saw my grandson hit a ball and
run to 1st base (because 1st base is as far as you can
run after you hit the ball in T-ball games) and a wave of sadness poured over
me in a way that it hasn’t in a long while.
“How Mama would have loved to have seen her only ‘boy’ smack’ that
ball.”
And the sadness isn’t just missing my
mama…it is what Eli is missing from not having his grandmamma in his life. She
would have been his biggest cheerleader and every child needs a cheerleader in
their life. It was a beauty to watch her
face every time she was around Eli and his sister or even when she was looking
at their pictures and videos. She never
could watch and look at them enough. It
was like she was seeing her legacy…the continuation of her life.
Mama
never was a softie to say the least. She
was raised in an orphanage and only had the housemothers pattern her mothering
style. She was only four when she went
to live in the orphanage and had few memories of her mother being a
mother. It was a different time and her
mother and father lived what we would say was a “hard” life with four children
born in five years…the baby barely out of diapers when my grandfather died of
typhoid.
Mama
never gave herself the luxury of showing her tenderness raising my sister and
me…there were too many lessons to be taught and too many experiences to live
through. When she stood on the sidelines
and watched McKenzie and Bart navigate through the rocky trail of Murray’s
brief life she was reliving losing her first child who she carried full term
and only lived minutes following birth.
Then as we held our breath the nine months before Eli was born healthy,
Mama watched and prayed, and greeted Eli with more joy and wonder than I ever
saw in her eyes when she first saw her grandchildren. This child was a new chance at life
continuing…a boy in the family again…another “Bud” to pass on her love and her legacy.
When thinking about the legacy that
has been passed down I remembered the story of Rahab and the scarlet cord in
Joshua. Rahab believed that God Himself
was on the side of the Israelites…she believed in God more than she believed in
herself and threw out the scarlet cord of faith to save her family.
My grandmother had no choice but to
send her children to live in an orphanage. I imagine that was a wrenching decision for her to make but her love for
her family and the faith that her God would take care of them opened the door
to her decision…she lowered the scarlet cord that would save her family and He
blessed her faithfulness and so the story began.
Rahab throws out the blood-red cord
desperately clutched on one end … a desperate woman who believes in the God she
has yet to meet.
My mother in a sense lost both parents
at an early age…her first child was born and only lived a few minutes…she lost
her husband of 68 years…a 24 year old granddaughter…a 28 year old grandson…her
first great grandchild…her oldest daughter and all of her brothers, but she
kept lowering the scarlet cord of belief to the God she had not yet met face to
face…the cord that would save her family from disaster just as it did in
Rahab’s story. And the Lord kept His promises to her and she continued to do
His will.
That is my mother’s legacy to me…to
McKenzie…to Eli…to his sister Mary Marshall…as we clutch what by now is a
familiar red cord…and the Lord keeps His promises.
Hebrews
12:1 tells us that we may feel we are alone but we aren’t. We are surrounded by
a huge cloud of those who have gone before…run their race of faith and finished
well and now are cheering us on in our race
So today I
imagine my mama and daddy and Robby and Paw Paw and even baby Murray, watching
from heaven as Eli smacks balls and runs to bases and they are cheering him on…for
every child needs cheerleaders…even if they are heavenly…even this child
standing here clutching a red cord.
