When I told my parents in early 2009 I was thinking about quitting my job to go on an 11-month mission trip, I didn’t know how they’d react.
It’d be one thing if I was earning minimum wage at Walmart and had no direction in life, but I was in my fourth year of a well-paying newspaper job, gaining valuable experience in the field I studied at college.
I can’t think of too many parents who would be thrilled with this epiphany, but mine were ecstatic and proud … maybe even a little jealous.
“I wish I was young enough to go with you,” my dad laughed.
Fast-forward to early 2010. My parents were putting the final touches on booking a summer vacation in Montreal, Canada, when God put a different destination on my mom’s heart.
Haiti.
I know what you’re thinking … Haiti is probably not the best place to vacation in the wake of a devastating earthquake, but Mom wasn’t thinking about vacationing anymore. She had something bigger in mind: a one-week mission trip to share God’s love with a broken nation.
Now, let me give you three fun facts about my mom. She really enjoys her vacations. She doesn’t “rough it.” She has never been on a mission trip or ventured outside the U.S., except for Canada (did you catch what I did there? I snuck in a fourth fun fact!)
Now I understand how appealing Montreal must have seemed in light of this epiphany. But Mom knows that when God speaks, we should listen and obey. So she ran it by my dad, he immediately jumped on board, they scrapped their vacation plans for Montreal, and signed up for a trip to Haiti with Adventures in Missions.
One week later, my parents broke the news to me and encouraged me to share it with my teammates’ parents … to maybe organize a Team Olur Parents Trip. A few weeks later, Shannon Morgan’s mom, Debbie, was on board.
Living for God is contagious. I’d like to think I inspired my parents to embark on this trip, but I know that’s not totally true. I’m sure God used me in some way, but if they weren’t dialed-in to God’s Will for their lives, they would be heading to Montreal next week. Since before the earth was created, it was God’s plan for my parents to go on a mission trip to Haiti, June 6-12, 2010.
They had to make some tough sacrifices along the way, but their time has come.
And now it’s my turn to be ecstatic and proud … maybe even a little jealous.
On September 25th, 1971, my mom met my dad (They annually made a point of celebrating it to some extent, which is how I know).
She was booking a band to play at a local school dance, and my dad was the drummer. My mom was completely overwhelmed by the hottness factor of my dad, in his pink shirt and bell-bottoms, but mom never thought dad would notice her. He walked eight miles to her house on Thanksgiving Day that November, and the rest, more or less, is history.
Mama – or Debbie, to everyone else – was absolutely good at everything. She will deny this in her great humility, but the yellowed marriage announcement that sits in their wedding album lists her as head cheerleader, four-year letterman in basketball, high school yearbook editor, superlatives in almost every single “Who’s Who” category as voted by her school, and Miss Parkers Chapel High School, just to name a meager few. Even as a teenager, my mom was very diverse in her gifts, as I have known her to be my whole life. At eighteen, she married dad, both of them fresh out of high school. She graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock after a whirlwind three years, achieving her dream of obtaining a degree in Early Childhood Development to become a kindergarten teacher.
Then, due to a miraculous conversion involving the name of Jesus changing the path of a tornado headed straight for my dad’s car, my parents came to know the Lord. My oldest sister was just a baby, but my father immediately changed career paths, going into the full-time ministry, becoming a pastor only months after becoming a Christian. My mom followed his lead, using her diverse array of gifts to enhance and support his ministry. Over the years, my mom has held countless positions, perpetually unpaid and vastly unrecognized, to help others. She has been a nursery keeper, a sunday school teacher, a youth minister, a piano player, a Bible Study leader, a cook for church dinners, a choir director, a drama instructor, and, during the earlier years of my life, a fill-in pastor on those days when some unforeseen circumstance inhibited dad from coming to church. And these are just church duties, to say nothing of her roles in the community or the eighteen years she took off from her dream of formal teaching to informally teach my sisters, brothers, and myself, at home.
All my life, I’ve watched my mother do things for others. I can honestly say that for much longer than my 24 years, she has lived her life in complete service to my dad and to my brothers and sisters and me. Her commitments to us were evidenced by her increasing confusion on how to live her daily life as each of her five children either moved out of the house, graduated college, or started families of their own. I never saw a commitment more strongly or selflessly than I saw in her last year, resolved to care for daddy, especially as the later stages of cancer rendered him unable to do things for himself.
My leaving for the Race and daddy’s death were nearly simultaneous, a scant nine days between my departure and his passing.
This time in my life was harder than any I’ve ever endured, so I couldn’t imagine how my mom must have felt, who hadn’t been apart from my father since she was 16 years old.
Weeks after my father’s funeral, someone asked my mother, “Debbie, what are you going to do now?”
With endless, intimidating possibilities before her, she stopped to think. Suddenly, she saw a vision of her surrounded by little children, black skin shining in the sun. Cut free to live life for herself, my mom, with all of her amazing gifts and the means to do whatever she herself desired, answered her friend. This answer encapsulated both her heart of love for others, her obedience to a vision God has given her simultaneous to her answer, a thing she had never done in her entire life, nor fully understood my constant desire to do.
