Feeling Thankful

            While growing up in the 50s and 60s, my family often watched television in the evenings.  A favorite program was “The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show,” a variety program featuring the singer who ended each program with a hymn.  We had at least one of his albums and played it on our console record player.  On the morning my father died just before 6 am in 1995, a song from that album, “When They Ring Those Golden Bells,” softy rang out in my mind over and over even though I had not heard the album played for many years.  That day, these lyrics for me verified my father’s place at last secured with God after a long battle with cancer:

Don't you hear the bells now ringing
Don't you hear the angels singing
'Tis the glory hallelujah Jubilee
In that far off sweet forever
Just beyond the shining river
When they ring the golden bells for you and me

            There was a time in my early years that our whole family attended the Presbyterian church in the heart of our neighborhood.  However, Dad became an infrequent attender after I was about 12 or 13.  It was my mother who remained very active in the church, setting an example to me to be involved.  I went to Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, youth group and even summer camp.  I not only participated in these activities, but drawing close to God as I did so meant something to me.  I suspect part of my earnestness was because of my mother’s mental health problems.  Lacking the normal stability from her, perhaps I sought it elsewhere.

            I considered writing about various characteristics I share with my mother or father, but a recent reminder of the Tennessee Ernie hymn that lingered in my mind at my father’s death, brought me to a very different perspective.  In August, my husband went to New Mexico to be with his mother, the last of our parents living, in her final days.  She still had her old records and a player, and after she lapsed into more sleep, my husband played some of her records as he sat with her.  Curiously, one of them was a Tennessee Ernie Ford album, bringing me back to the day my father died.  

            Although my father stopped going to church or even talking about his faith at all, he exhibited the love of Christ in many ways, even in the hard places of life.  He stayed with my mother when others might have left and was always sad when somehow we finally got her into the hospital for treatment because he knew how she hated to be there.  On his job at a steel company, once he hired a black teen with a baby on the way who lacked experience or any degree, but scored the highest on some test given to applicants.  We got to know Mike who went on to earn his degree and considered my father his mentor and friend.   My Dad was a loving father and grandfather, even attending one of our son’s baseball games after getting a chemotherapy treatment.

            Together, my parents nurtured me to become a person of faith, directly and indirectly, and over the many years of my adult life, I have sought out ways to build on that foundation.  By the grace of God, I believe I have become a stronger and more spirit-filled Christian, and I remain so thankful for what my parents gave me.