Intentional Fruitfulness

On Losing a Mother at Christmas

She was a 17-year-old high school senior, in the bloom of young womanhood, when a 22-year old army sergeant named Bobby showed up at the little church in Richland, Washington that Sunday morning. He was gregarious and loud. She was quiet and shy. He had seen the world and fought in a war. She had never yet left home.

He banged on the piano and belted out songs in his tenor voice at the top of his lungs. Evelyn sang a quiet alto.

And she was smitten with him almost from the start.

The young sergeant was befriended by Evelyn’s older brother, and by her parents, but there was no romancing between Evelyn and Bobby just yet.

When Bobby had finished his enlistment, he returned to Abilene Christian College in order to finish his education on the G.I. bill. Young Evelyn graduated and, along with some friends, made her way to Abilene Christian too.

Over the next couple of years at college, Evelyn and Bobby ran with the same group of friends. They dated casually, but Evelyn was never quite sure how serious Bobby was about it all, until the weekend he took her home to Carlsbad, New Mexico to meet his parents. There she received her first inkling that Bobby’s intentions might not be all that casual.

No sooner had she arrived at Bobby’s home for that visit, than she was promptly adopted into the family by Bobby’s parents and they loved her for the rest of their days. Bobby’s parents, who had lost an infant daughter to pneumonia 25 years prior, had seemingly just been waiting all those intervening years to have a daughter to love. And by golly, their daughters-in-law were going to get the full load of love for a daughter that they had kept bottled up all that time.

Evelyn and Bobby had two sons, fostered another, and invested in the lives of countless children everywhere. When Bobby died in 2002, adults came out of the woodwork to tell us how much Bobby had affected their childhood lives for the better. Right on cue, no sooner had Evelyn died this week, than more people emerged, some complete strangers, to tell us stories about the life-altering effect that Evelyn had had on their lives as children.

And all of this, I think, gets to the crux of Evelyn and Bobby. They lived and pursued lives of intentional fruitfulness. Evelyn and Bobby produced their own children, to be sure, but they also poured themselves into the lives of other children. Nowhere was this more evident than in the church.

Bobby and Evelyn simply loved the church of Jesus Christ. They planted the church, nurtured the church, and served the church. And for most of their lives, the children of their church attracted their special attention. From Evelyn’s innovative Sunday school classes for babies, to “Brother Bob’s Big Buddy Bible Class for Boys”, they invested in children. And outside these more public investments in children, without fanfare they quietly took little boys who couldn’t afford them to get haircuts, tutored them in math, attended their concerts and ball games. They were even known, in extreme situations, to rescue children from pathological environments.

Perhaps, for more than anything else, I am grateful to my parents for using their lives so well. They did not squander themselves in self-absorption or pleasure seeking. They put skin on their faith by enlisting themselves in active service to higher things. The highest things, truth be told.

If Evelyn’s humble generosity of spirit was exhibited by her abiding devotion to children, then perhaps even the timing of her passing this week is fraught with meaning. She left us right in the thick of that season when we celebrate the arrival of another child. It was to that child, the one in the manger, that Evelyn really devoted her life. He was the child to whom she longed to go. All of Evelyn’s and Bobby’s devotion to children was truly an outgrowth of their devotion to the one child born in a stable.

So I do rejoice for Evelyn today, even as I mourn, knowing that my own grief is only temporary. Because the meaning of the Christ child she loved so much is at least this: death is not permanent. All who share Evelyn’s devotion to Jesus will see her again one day. That is why, with heart overflowing, I can sincerely say, along with the angels, glory to God in the highest.