Safe In His Hands

Today my sister Kathy went home to be with Jesus.  She would just laugh if she knew I was writing about her on a blog about Reluctant Heroes.  A couple years ago on Mother's day I was speaking at church.  I used the opportunity to honor Kathy.  Now with her passing I really can't think of a better way to honor her memory than by talking about her 'Mothering' though she never had children of her own.  

Kathy was the 6th of 11 children.  She was one tough cookie as I remember her growing up.  She wore mens Levi jeans and flannel shirts.  She wore that outfit way before it was cool to wear flannel shirts.  She smoked camel unfiltered cigarettes, and she also suffered abuse.  She was a survivor. 

When I found Jesus and came home with Mike to visit my family she was the worst to tease us. It was impossible to even be offended by the teasing because she was just so funny. Kathy had a way of winning you over.  One of the many trips home, late one night, she started asking lots of questions.  Does Jesus love people who do this?  What about people who do that?  And what makes you think God is good?  Question after question late into the night. Eventually that night she surrendered to Jesus love.  Her whole heart belonged to Jesus and oh my how he loved her and changed her. 

She eventually came to Pa. and lived with us on and off for years. She went to our inner city church where we reached out in the poorer neighborhoods.  She was so struck by the kids who just hung out in the streets with no where to go and no one to love them.  She knew she had to do something about it.  She started something called ‘Saturday Sunday School’.  Part of her shtick was Smiley the clown and Frowny the clown. 

She was Frowny, the bad cop clown, she played the part perfectly.  Hundreds of kids came to Saturday Sunday School.  She loved those kids and led so many of them to Jesus. Here she is as Frowny. She's the one with the blue wig.                                                                                                She did arts and crafts, gave them way too much candy, had them overnight for sleepovers, went to their school activities.  She was a Mother to hundreds of kids.  I am so proud to be her sister.  Somehow Kathy saw the value in children, and she invested most of her life in loving the least of these. 

These last years Kathy battled kidney cancer and spent her last years on kidney dialysis. Most days, when I would call she was still counting blessings and always thankful for even the smallest expressions of love.  No one could make you laugh like Kathy, from telling Cinderella backwards, to just finding the joy in the everyday bits of life, it was never dull when she was around.

I learned a lot from my big sister, but the greatest thing I learned was how to say yes to Jesus....no matter what.  We held in common a love for Catherine Booth and her work with and for children.  This quote from Catherine sums up how Kathy lived her life, the good, the bad, and the ugly bits of life.

"Whatever the particular call is, the particular sacrifice God asks you to make, the particular cross he wishes you to embrace, whatever the particular path He wants you to tread, will you rise up, and say in your heart, "Yes, Lord, I accept it; I submit, I yield, I pledge myself to walk in that path, and to follow that Voice, and to trust Thee with the consequences." Oh! but you say, "I don't know what He will want next." No, we none of us know that, but we know we shall be safe in His hands." ~Catherine Booth

I am so very glad to know that Kathy is now safe in His hands.  I pledge myself to walk that path, she left big foot prints to follow. 

He is awesome!

"He is awesome! He is perfectly made."  

Those were the words my sister said from her wheel chair.  My sweet, strong, weak, crusty and kind older sister Kathy is in the last stages of renal failure.  I am home to be with her and my other older siblings, 65, 79, and 82 as we move her from assisted living to skilled care.  

These are the rhythms and times of life, never easy, often trying and always holy.  

We had just finished Kathy's doctors appointment and she wanted to be wheeled outside to wait for transportation.  We set together, I held her hand, because words don't work like they used to.  Touch communicates what words fail to say.  She started pointing way out in the distance, she saw a child.  Whenever she sees a child her face lights up and her words come back.  She waved, kept saying "Hi, Hi".  As the Mom and child walked passed us Kathy's head dropped.  She suddenly looked up at me and in all clarity said "He is awesome! He is perfectly made."

Her words took my breath away and released a flood of healing tears. This 72 year old woman who had never been married, or had children of her own has worked most of her life with hundreds of children in churches, inner cities, teaching them, loving them, investing her life in what she knew were the treasures of this world.  Even in her limited mental state her mind, soul, and spirit can see what is most valuable in the world and call it out.  Kathy knew what Psalm 139:12,13 had formed in her over her life.

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
    you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
    Body and soul, I am marvelously made!

Children taught me today, a little boy walking past, and the child that is still inside my sister.  If you were around she would tell you, "You are awesome, you are perfectly and marvelously made."