The Chair… this is part of a post I shared on Facebook. I did not share the complete story on social media but I will on my blog with my sisters in Christ. On social media we see people in a way in which they want to be seen. In a blog or in a small group,we can be transparent and hopefully share our walk with others. Hebrews 11 of course, is our hall of fame of warriors for Christ, imperfect people made perfect by God. I love to keep my list in my head of my great cloud of witnesses.
Original Facebook post: I was working on blogs this morning and I saw “the chair” across the room. If you have ever been to my house, there is an awkward ladderback rocker with no rocking rungs. It sits too low to the floor without them and I have thought many times about having Bob make new ones. The rungs were broken off years ago and my Dad sanded them down. I still may do it. You see this chair is about love to me and it has traveled with me for 60 years. It made me smile this week.
This week, the chair made me tear up when I was re-arranging furniture (yes, again to my friends. Sidebar: I love to move furniture around and I married a man whose mom left furniture in place for 20 year spans. I wish you could have seen his newlywed face in Race Street Apartments when he came home and ran into the sofa)
In 1962 I was told, there was an ice storm of this magnitude, and the gas lines/power lines were down for days. Mom and Dad decided to move to a motel for a few days in Pine Bluff but they were full. Daddy drove all the way on ice to Little Rock to a shabby motel that had power. It was full of truckers stuck for the same reason. They used up all their gas in the car and barely made it. Cooking canned food on hot plates for several days with other men at the motel was their norm.
Jayme as a toddler seems to have slept poorly without being rocked to sleep. A few nights in, one of the log truck drivers knew my great-grandfather Williams well and went in search of a rocker. He presented this chair to momma and dad for me as a gift. It seems that my great grandfather had given him a job when times were lean and he had never forgotten it. It was a gift of love and what Bob calls “passing it on”. That rocker went back home with them strapped to the top of a Falcon station wagon and it moved to my house in 1982. And here it sits in 2021 making it through another ice storm.
End of original Facebook post
The Rest
I think God gives us mementoes on this Earth to remind us of our spiritual legacy. HE built us to live in community. Our families are chosen for us by God to bring us into the Kingdom with the experiences we need to be used by God for good. All things work for good in the kingdom; they are not necessarily good.
I have shared before how misused this scripture is. I had a student who was sexually assaulted and a fellow Christian pulled this verse out at the wrong time. It took my student a long time to get past the “work for the good part” as it would have any of us. Yes, eventually she will be able to see what God has used for good in her experience but in no way was the event ever good. God doesn’t want anyone to be raped or die for an object lesson for his power. A better response would be Jesus wept. Jesus wept for Lazarus and his sisters and he even knew the outcome. We weren’t meant for this!
This was a beautiful story about the ladder back rocker and the trucker that bought it for my parents. I think I really cling to mementos and good stories from my family for the reason that most of my memories were really bad.
My folks were substance abusers until I was sixteen years old. They were baptized then and became believers until their death ten years later. My Grandmother raised me until third grade and then she passed. So much of my faith was established with her during those formative years. I still look back in awe of a woman who made all my Barbie clothes (and very fancy ones, indeed) in her 70’s. I can still hear her praying for rain, chickens, her prayer list of members from church, and everything else under the SON. It’s funny what you remember and what sticks with you. Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. I think that is what HE gives us….legacies that ground us for this walk toward home. I think I learned to see everything as significant in God’s eyes from my Grandmother.
The transparency of my post goes back to the motel. I am sure my parents were not clean at the time. I am pretty sure I remember my Grandmother referencing the trip with anger that they took me. If they were here today, they would probably confirm my suspicion. And yet, a beautiful story of provision was given to me. A “passing it on” narrative of my great grandfather’ s faith walk showing up in his great granddaughter’s life when she needed it. And still needs it now at age 60 years old…
Go find someone God put in your life today and serve them! Maranatha! Jayme
