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.
