It was the summer of 2000, and I was going through the worst time of my life. I was devastated over something that was just breaking my heart and was beyond my control to change. We’ve all been through some hurts and disappointments, but this was more than that. I call it “devastation”, because my world as I knew it had come to an end. I will spare the details for now, except to say that I had suffered such loss that I didn’t want to go on. If you’ve been there, you know what I am trying to say. If you haven’t, no words can describe it to you anyhow.
I was sitting in the swing on my back porch overlooking the woods on a Saturday morning. The birds were singing, but my heart had no song. I had cried all the tears I could cry, and I had begged, pleaded, and literally screamed to no avail. I had been unsuccessful in my attempts to manipulate God, promising that I would “do anything if only…”, and had gone through phases of denial, anger, self-pity, bargaining, and all the other steps of handling grief, and it seemed I was just getting worse. I settled into a deep hopelessness. I was at the proverbial “end of my rope”, and if the rope hadn’t been proverbial I think I would have tied it around my neck.
On that occasion, dark as it was, something special happened to me that morning. It started with what I suppose you could call a prayer, although it was not a religious prayer. It would not make the list of any great prayers that I ever heard. I have prayed fancy prayers before, often in church. I have prayed some prayers that sounded so spiritual they could have elevated me to sainthood! How effective they were is doubtful. But this simple, desperate prayer was nothing that would impress them in church. The prayer was short but not sweet. It went like this: “Okay, God, what in *#%*@># am I supposed to do now?”
In my exhausted and wounded soul I didn’t really expect an answer. But then, very distinctly, there was a still, small voice whispering softly to my angry, bitter, destroyed heart. It said, “You can be thankful.”
“Thankful?” I said aloud, as if to say “You’ve got to be kidding! What kind of cruel joke is this to me? What do I have to be thankful for?”
There was no other reply. I knew that God was not going to argue with me. (Let me stop here to say that I do not hear God talking to me all the time. I am very suspicious of anybody who says that they have two-way conversations with the Lord, as one lady I knew who said God always told her what groceries to buy, and even which brands! I feel the same way about evangelists who advertise “miracles and healings” in their meetings. I don’t believe God does these great things so predictably on cue that you can put it on your schedule!)
So,having heard what I heard, and still feeling very hurt and bitter, I sarcastically began to verbally express “thankfulness”. “Okay, God, there’s a stupid bird in the tree, chirping away. Thank you for the stupid bird!” (Nothing but silence as my sarcasm filled the air.)
“Okay, this is great. Thank you for the stupid tree that the stupid bird is sitting in.” (So far so good, I may have thought. No great miracle here, but I might be feeling about one percent better.) “Okay, thank you that I have eyes to see that stupid bird, and ears to hear its stupid song! Is that better?”
It continued on like that, but each expression of thankfulness increased in sincerity, had a little less sarcasm, and came out a little easier. “Thank you for my hand that I can use to point at that bird. Thank you that I still have five fingers on each hand. Thank you for my mind, so that I can know that it is a bird, and a tree, and a hand, etc.”
It had not taken long. It was still morning. I was still hurting badly, but now I was saying “thank you for the swing, and the porch, and the door, and for my feet, and for the sweet old dog that came to see me. And thank you, Lord, that you haven’t changed, you haven’t been surprised by all of this, you are still in control, and you still love me more than I could imagine, and far more than I could ever deserve. Oh Lord, you really have been good to me in lots of ways, and I just want to thank you!”
It’s hard to imagine how it happened, but this practice of simply saying the words of thanks, even when I didn’t mean them, resulted in a drastic change! The same hands that had been balled up into a fist of defiance were now being lifted up in praise, and the same voice that had uttered complaint and cursing was now extolling the glory and greatness of the Lord!
It was then that I learned that praise and thanksgiving really is not for God, who is secure and doesn’t need it. Praise and giving of thanks is for us! It gives strength in the midst of suffering, puts everything in a positive context, and dramatically transforms our attitude. It did for me that day, during the most awful time of my life.
The bad times indeed are painful, and some of them are horrible. I am not discounting that. I still cried a lot, and sometimes I still do. We should never flippantly tell a person who is hurting to “just cheer up and praise the Lord.” That’s a good way to get your arm broken! But when you really think that you can’t go on any more, please remember that He is there. He knows all about it. And He cares enough to bring you through in one piece, even better than you were.
No matter how bad it may be, you can be thankful for a lot of things. I have it on the highest authority.
She was a “survivor” if I ever met one. In the midst of rearing six children in the family, back in the days when it “just was not done”, her husband had an affair with another woman. The other woman decided that she was going to tell his family, so he went to her place and fatally shot her. Then he came home, wrote a note of apology for what he had done, and on that beautiful Saturday afternoon he used the same gun on himself. One of the six children, a thirteen-year-old daughter, heard a shot, ran out into the groves behind their house, and found her father lying dead.
The news was everywhere by the next morning. As people sometimes do, the neighbors chose to gossip. “Of course,” they “felt sorry” for what this lady was going through, losing her husband so tragically. But the family was now “shamed.”
In the same year, 1929, the stock market crashed, people were out of work, and this “shamed” family lost its prosperous sawmill business. Within a matter of a few months, the lady in my story had gone from being the wife of a successful business man to being a single mother of six, with no income, few possessions, and no friends.
I don’t know how long she stayed in town, but I don’t think it was very long before she took her six children, moved to a larger city, and did sewing for people until she saved up enough to buy a little twenty-foot square wooden building on a busy street. She then contacted a wholesale grocery company and opened up the “Lula Olive Grocery Store” in that little building. Working twelve hours a day, six days a week, without any other employees, she made enough to support the family, bought four other houses on the same street, and found the time to train her children to “live right, work hard, have fun, and be nice to people.” She set the example and made sure that they followed it. All six of them did, for their entire lives. She never re-married.
Thirty years later, she was still running the grocery store. It was 1963 and I was in college studying for the ministry. One Saturday morning I decided to go see her. I drove my 1951 Dodge Coronet (which she had practically given to me) out to her house for a visit. We talked about a lot of things, laughed a lot, and had ham sandwiches together for lunch. I remember that just before I left, she asked me, “What does the Bible say about the possibility of one who has committed suicide going to heaven?”
She didn’t know that I knew why she had asked me that question, but I’m sure that I knew. She had never stopped loving her husband, and she was hoping he had gone to a happy place. My answer seemed to give her comfort. I drove away, glad that I had taken this time to be with her.
She had not been sick that week, but the following Tuesday she walked home from the store, sat in a chair, asked for a glass of water and passed away. Her heart just quit beating. She was seventy-six.
I didn’t cry when she died. I didn’t need to. We had said everything that we needed to say just three days ago.
The thirteen-year-old girl that had found her father dead in the groves was my mother.
Whenever I begin to doubt whether I can make it, whether I can survive the trials of life, whether I can keep on going and loving and giving, I remind myself that Lula Olive’s blood runs through my veins. She was my grandmother. She was a hero to us all, and will never be forgotten as long as I live.
My dad was a good man. He really was. He worked at the steel mills in Birmingham for forty-two years, took good care of his family, and loved me a lot. I loved him and I miss him.
But I want to tell you briefly about three very special men who greatly affected my young life. I never knew the name of the first one. The second one I only knew by his first name. The third one I only knew by his last name. But all three of them touched my life in unusual ways at unusual times, each one five years apart. I am so thankful that they came into me life when they did. Yet, so strangely, my father did not want to know them, see them, or hear about them. He refused to listen to the stories that I am about to tell you.
The first one, whose name I never knew, came into my life and back out in less than a minute. I was a seven year old boy, somewhere in a lake or a huge deep swimming pool. It was the middle of a hot summer. I got in water over my head, and I couldn’t swim. I remember gasping for breath, bouncing my feet on the bottom of the pool or lake, and reaching up, with my hand no longer able to reach the surface. I felt as if everyone was a mile away, and nobody was aware that I was about to drown. Absolute panic began to seize me, and I recall thinking that “right here, right now, I am seven years old and I am going to die!” Just at that moment, at my very last gasp for air, this man came through the water with a “whoosh”, and immediately took me in his incredibly strong arms, carried me safely to shore, and quickly disappeared. I remember that I never had the chance to even thank him before he was gone. God bless that young man who literally saved my life! I never knew his name at all. But I remember that when I got home and told my father, he just didn’t want to hear about it.
The second man was just called “Ernie”. I was twelve years old, and had a job in Constantine’s restaurant in Birmingham. I remember that I wanted to work there because they had great lemon ice-box pie! Other boys had the jobs of waiting on customers in their cars, while I was the “inside man”, preparing the orders for milk shakes and cheeseburgers so the curb-hops could deliver them to the parking lot. Ernie was the cook. What was so special about Ernie the cook? Just that he was the first adult to ever talk to me and treat me like I was an adult! He spoke WITH me, not “at” me, and actually listened to me! With him I felt valued and appreciated. Ernie worked there for many years, with a quiet confidence and maturity that earned him respect from everyone.
He had a great outlook on life. You didn’t to work FOR him, and he didn’t work FOR you. He worked WITH you. After I left that job, I even came back a few times, just to see Ernie. But strangely, when I told my father that Ernie was my friend, he strongly disapproved.
The third man who had such a great effect on my life was “Mister Meredith”. I will never forget the day we met. I was seventeen, had just finished high school and joined the U.S Coast Guard. I was flown to California, and Mister Meredith met us at the entrance to the Coast Guard base. He was six foot three, 230 pounds of muscle and steel. He asked me my name, and I told him, “Lee.” He bellowed, “You mean Lee, SIR, don’t you?” My father had instructed me NOT to call him “sir”, so I said no, I don’t mean “sir”, just “Lee.”
Mister Meredith picked me up and shook me until my teeth rattled and my heels kicked my butt. He asked me if I wanted to live, and I whimpered, “yes, sir!” From that time on through three months of “boot camp”, Mister Meredith taught me strength of character, endurance, and discipline. He was my company commander, and he was the best. I learned so much from him, and he must have forgiven me for that first time we met, because he let me live. And I know that if I saw him today, I would still call him “sir”! The respect I have for him will never go away. Unfortunately, my father felt differently.
Perhaps you are wondering why my dad, a really good man in so many ways, would not even want to hear about these men. And why would he instruct me not to honor them, befriend them, or show them respect? Would you like to guess?
The answer, absurd as it is, is simply this: their skin was black. That was it. For no other reason than their color, Dad rejected these men who had meant so much to me .
Over the years I have learned to appreciate the good that was in my father, while totally repudiating his ridiculous racial prejudice. He went to heaven in 1984, and even before his death many of those attitudes changed.
But can I tell you one more secret? I have dreamed about this, and I have asked God to please let me do one special thing when I get there and see my dad. I want to introduce these three men to him. “Look, Dad, this is the man who saved my life when I was drowning! And this is my friend Ernie!” And my father will give them a big hug and say “Thank You!”
Then I will introduce Mister Meredith, and my dad will look up and say, “Pleased to meet you, sir!”