We are watching my granddaughter Nia Grace. Like every family watches with anticipation to see who their little ones are and will become. Nia joined us here on Earth in spite of some pretty long odds. She has been in many ways a healthy, delightful, and typical baby/ toddler. And then every once in a while she throws us a curve.  On her  3rd birthday  she received a Radio Flyer wagon. It was her favorite present. When they got it home, and stories were read and jams put on she declared that she would sleep in her wagon.  She has a beautiful bed, but has sometimes forsaken it to sleep curled up in her rocking chair - because it rocks. Her parents indulged the wagon sleep. She has not slept in her bed since then, and it has been several months. When she stretches out, she is already longer than the wagon. You just have to wonder where she goes in her dreams, that a bed with wheels is so superior. So Cute.

Nia was invited to a birthday party for another three year old. It was billed as a Princess and Knight party.  Mind you, Nia is a girly girl in many ways. She LOVES the pink tut and sparkle tights. Jewelry, and headbands and butterfly wings. She has cars and trucks, but they don't get used as much as her toy kitchen.  Her parents have so far kept her Disney free, but princess is a concept she knows and likes. But she immediately told her mom that she wanted to go as a Knight to the party.  Her rationale was "Knights get to fight dragons"  Her mother found her a knight costume, mit sword. Then through further consultation, she decided that she would be a girl Knight, or maybe a princess who fights dragons, which would allow you to have a tutu, sparkle tights, and a sword. She doesn't think binary, She doesn't think she has to choose. She doesn't want to be a boy, she just wants to fight dragons. And no one is going to contradict her thinking.  And by the time she runs into someone who tries, she will be solid enough to laugh, and proceed. She is already pretty solid. We are as pleased as punch. She is my hope of the future.
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Bernice and Orville were very happy and in time brought forth the boom-requisite three kids. Boy, girl, boy.  My parents started every day together, early, in the kitchen praying for us by name. I remember it as the edge of my dreamworld.  Their hopes, dreams and prayers for us were that we would know Jesus and serve Him.

Here we are on Easter Sunday 1964. Note my brother's Bible and my purse. We are both sporting "perfect attendance pins"  given out by the Sunday school. I cannot read the number on my brother's pin, but I guarantee you it is a number within a year of his age. We did not miss church, and when on vacation we went to Sunday School and brought a note from that teacher.
 I always knew what my mother hoped for me - Pastor's wife.  She hoped to send me off to the Wesleyan Methodist School, Marion College in Marion Indiana. I remember her comparing and contrasting for me the lives of missionaries and pastors. And while she would have surrendered me to the mission field if that was God's will, she trained me for the parsonage. Potlucks, music, Sunday School teacher.  She had me by her side in Women's Missionary Society meetings when they met in our living room. I was still in grade school, but she had me practice taking minutes. I was teaching Sunday School as soon as I was in high school. When the Men's Quartet from Marion College came round doing recruitment she talked to me about the relative merits of the young men - she was partial to curly haired tenors. I am quite sure, that thinking it or no, she was offering me up to God as the sacrifice for her disappointment she had given her own mother.
The kindest thing my older brother ever did for me was to be way too smart to go to Marion. Off to Purdue and the sciences for him, and my chance to look asunder as well. My mother didn't know it but I was apostate at the time and had no intention of getting any where near a pastor, parsonage or church if they could be avoided. I was planning a career in law or politics. I ran as far and as fast as I could. I married a rather wild young man right out of the Navy. I made sure he was not a believer of any sort before I took up with him. I went to St John's and studied the classics. I thought I was safe from my destiny.  My mother was seriously disappointed in me. Then through odd circumstances I ran smack dab into the Living Christ. How He got me is a whole nother story, but got I was. 


And I kept trying to go to law school. And I was thwarted twice. But I ended up taking my two daughters to church, and my mother was appeased.


Then I started preaching, at first, mostly against my will. I fought. But I eventually surrendered to a call to the ministry of my own. I went off to Seminary. My mother could not have been more surprised. My Grandpa Hubbell was 90, but was pleased as punch. Named for me some female preachers that he had always admired. Willed to me his pulpit Bible over all his children and grandchildren. 


My mother died only a few years after her aged father. She did not live to see me called pastor. But she did hear me preach once. She was encouraging. She said she hoped I would still sing some times, but that I should not let them know I could sing before they heard me preach. 


I have pastor'd four churches, and preached in many dozens of them and in several countries. I have occasionally called down fire. I have kicked the Devil's butt. With others, we built a church from scratch.


My marriage lasted 30 years, but it's foundation was never really all that solid. But it made two beautiful daughters for whom I tried not to have agendas. 


Then I found love again. Christ-centered love. A foundation of ministry at the core. And I have been very happy.  But after seven years as pastor of Freedom Friends Church, I needed a break. I was given permission by God and community to step back.  And lo and behold, my beloved stepped forward. And she is the pastor now. And I know she will be an excellent one, because she is called, and equipped and readyand way less rebellious than I.


And... I am the pastor's wife. I surrender.

And somewhere out there in the universe I can hear my mother chuckling. And I can hear her say "Orville, I told you so." 


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subtitle: NEVER discount the prayers of a mother! - PART ONE

That's my mom.  On the the left.  Walking away. I think this picture is from the summer 1950. My mom is about 23 and seven years from becoming my mom. I have no idea who took this picture. I do not know the young man on the right, but I have a pretty good idea. (doesn't look like he's doing too well does it?)  He is a fellow student at CEI - that is the Chicago Evangelistic Institute.  It was the premier training school for ministers in the Holiness tradition. My mom was sent their by her parents.  Here they are - about ten years later.
  Formidable people. Gentle but strong. Grandpa Hubbell was a WWI vet and a preacher when he wasn't delivering the mail. Took the churches that could not afford a full time pastor. Preached revivals. Grandma, a preacher's daughter, supported him. People of one Story and one Book - The Book.  People with only one plan.  Serve, and raise children to Serve. If they had any doubts no one knew it. My mother was their second daughter, and the most promising in some ways. She was bright, did well in school. She could sing like a bird and played piano and any other instrument she set her hands to. She had an early and sincere desire to serve the Lord. She was modest but not shy. So they sacrificed to send her upstate to study at CEI. With one real purpose.  Become equipped to teach, and sing and pray at the highest level and find herself the best young preacher and marry him.

She studied. She excelled. She went on a mission to the third world country called Appalachia (which terrified her mother).  She had piano recitals. And she dated (such as was allowed) every handsome young preacher they had - and rejected them all. And then refused to come back down to Southern Illinois. She got a job in the secretarial pool of a large hospital. She got an apartment.  She learned to take dictation in shorthand. She could type 100 words minute without error.  Trolling that pool was a handsome young shark of an x-ray tech. A roller-skate dance champion. A mostly heathen. My dad. And she went out on a date with him, and he was smart enough to go to church with her, and she saw through him, and married him anyway. And her parents were appalled, and confused and disappointed in the extreme.

But mom and dad were happy. Real happy.

To be continued.

And you are my dear Evangelical Friends...
And my Alma Mater, GFU

You mailed me a beautiful, expensive, multi-page, card stock brochure for your Selah Women's seminar this week. I can see how hard you are trying to appeal to a broad spectrum of women - I am a fan of ecumenism. I see you talk about women in ministry - women like me.  Thank you. I see you are trying to nurture and edify women. Important work.

But when you try and do that, and you include language  that talks about "Real women in pain" and links "domestic abuse, eating disorders and same sex attractions"  you fail at your goals.

Yes, I am attracted to Alivia, but its more than an attraction, it is Love.
It is not "painful," it is delightful.
I am not stuck, I am free.
Our love is not abusive.
Our love is not an addiction.
Our Love is not a disorder.
Our relationship is dedicated to Christ and the building of his kingdom, just like yours.

So with my warm regards, I send my regrets.
 
Sincerely,

 Psp

http://www.georgefox.edu/selah/breakout-sessions.html


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