Recently I posted a new profile picture that clearly illustrated that I am aging. While my body doesn’t look a whole lot different than it did 10 years ago, it’s easy to see the toll of years in the deepening creases around my eyes and loosening of skin. Collagen ain’t what it used to be!

It would be easy to despair in light of the fact that the days that are in front of me are fewer than the days that are behind. While it is tempting to give in to such thoughts, I have chosen to consider how I might embrace however many years I have left with great joy and anticipation. The heaviness of our present societal angst must not overwhelm the possibility of the good that is still to be done.

One reason I am thinking about my own mortality is that my amazing, full-of-life, proud-to-be-a-Texan mother passed away on the night before Thanksgiving (2022). She had just turned 85 seven weeks earlier and seemed to be in excellent health. Her passing was instant – sudden cardiac arrest – and, even this morning, I found myself choking up while thinking “I just wish I could’ve told Mother one last goodbye.” I don’t think there’s anything that was left unsaid, or anything that needed saying that we hadn’t told each other a thousand times, but she was gone in that instant and so we long for the “day of days” when we will be reunited with her and other loved ones.

In mid-May, I and my dad, Talmadge, and my brother, Jeffrey, and his wife, Julie, were joined by my dad’s sister, Karen, on a pilgrimage to Hamlin, Texas, to say a final earthly goodbye to Mother, Anne Genell Crawford Johnson. If you’ve never had the pleasure of traveling the wide open spaces of West Texas, you’re missing out, at least on being able to see for miles in any direction. This photo is right across the gravel road from the Hamlin Memorial Cemetery.

About three weeks before Mother passed she said to my dad, just out of the blue, “Talmadge, since we’ve decided to be cremated, I know what I want you to do with my ashes when the time comes. I want you to scatter them around my mother’s grave in Hamlin.”

When I tell you that my mother hated funerals, it is no exaggeration. It was hard for her to go funerals because of the one she went to for her mother in 1950. Genell was 14 and her sister, Faye, was only three when their mother died of cancer at the age of 36. Margaret Faye Sheid Crawford was a sweet and loving wife and mother and fought for two years until cancer took her. It became clear over time that my mother never really got over losing her mother.

Although my Grandad Crawford married again within a year – and he had a good life for 46 years with Helen – he never completely got over losing Margaret Faye. And how do you ever get over losing your first love and the mother of your children? John Thomas (aka J.T. or Uncle Jake) Crawford was a strong, tall Texan with a strong, deep voice and a tender heart. Jeffrey and I didn’t get to spend near enough time with him, but he made a huge impression on us.

Grandad J.T. Crawford kneels at the graveside of his first wife, Margaret Faye Sheid Crawford, in the spring of 1996. This was almost 46 years after her death.

The Hamlin Memorial Cemetery is exceptionally well-cared for. Hamlin is a small town which still operates grain elevators near a railroad track. It was almost 100 degrees on the day of our visit, cooled only slightly by the 30 mph winds that were sweeping across the flat lands surrounding us.

Daddy Talmadge, Jeffrey, and I stand at the foot of the grave where her mother was buried 71 years ago, next to the same tree where Grandad Crawford knelt 26 years earlier.

As Jeffrey started to sprinkle the ashes from the container, I said, “Be careful! Mother’s gonna get blown all over the place.” We all sort of winced and laughed at once.

Jeffrey reminded me that those winds might just carry Mother to many of the places where she lived during her school years, I think eight or nine towns across Texas, before graduating from Sherman High School and then heading off to Bethany Nazarene College (now Southern Nazarene University). Mother loved to travel. Her passport had over 50 countries represented in it, and she loved the hills and trees of Mississippi and Tennessee. She treasured certain things about her many years in Oklahoma, but her heart always belonged deep in the heart of Texas.

Those wide open spaces and the time that passed in between her years in Hamlin intersected for me in a meaningful way. The day before we went to the cemetery, we met up with Col. Thomas J. (Jerry) Curtis and his wife, Terri (Stringer). Terri was my mom’s first cousin but they were more like sisters. Terri’s mom, Eileen Sheid Stringer, was Mother Faye’s sister, and her dad, who I only ever knew as Uncle Nig, was the song leader at the Hamlin Baptist Church where John Osteen was the pastor. Nig and Eileen served with the Osteens years later in Galena Park, Texas, as well.

Hamlin Church of the Nazarene
Hamlin Baptist Church

I took pictures of the Baptist and Nazarene churches there in Hamlin after we left the cemetery. I wanted to have a visual image of the places where my grandad’s life in ministry had crossed paths with John Osteen – and yes, I’m talking about THE John Osteen who ended up founding Lakewood Church, now led by his son, Joel. J. T. Crawford, my mom’s dad, and John Osteen were fast friends for several years, particularly during their time in Hamlin. The Baptist church was quite a bit larger than the Nazarene church, but John saw something in J.T.’s life that resonated. He even considered an invitation from a Nazarene general superintendent to join the denomination.

History tells the story of how Osteen later left the Baptist church to go with a more charismatic movement that ultimately resulted in the founding of Lakewood in a low-income area of Houston, preaching a message of God’s desire to help people live a fuller life through the power of the gospel of Christ.

Grandad Crawford never led a church larger that a couple hundred people. He and Memaw ended up pastoring churches not only in Texas, but also Nevada, Mississippi, and Washington, before retiring in Richland where they cared for Memaw’s special needs sister for many years. So, while not as many people know about the Crawford family, I like to think that Grandad’s genuine spirit maybe played a role in how the Osteens’ ministry to millions came to fruition.

Much is made, maybe particularly in religious circles, about the megachurch movement and Joel Osteen’s approach to ministry. The so-called “prosperity gospel” is capable of being abused, but I’ve always kind of admired the Osteens. The idea that God loves us and wants to see good things occur in our lives is not antithetical to the Word we argue over so often. Believing for a better day is always more inviting than hoping the world comes crashing down around my feet.

I can tell you, with no degree of shame whatsoever, that one of the presets on my wife’s car is the Joel Osteen channel. When life threw her a huge curve several years ago, threatening her health and career, Joel’s messages of hope were life-giving.

While riding through those wide open spaces in West Texas, my mind went to what it must have been like for my mother, at age 14, to lose her mother to cancer. I remembered my mother’s own battle with breast cancer in 1984, including a radical double mastectomy from which her body and mind never fully recovered. I thought about how my mother had her own strong opinions about certain things but how, over time, she began to open her heart to loving people, even people with whom she often disagreed.

Thankfully, my mother lived another 71 years after her mom died. Her 85 years on this earth were filled with so many wonderful experiences and she didn’t have to suffer a long, debilitating illness that preceded when death came to call. I intend to honor her memory, and that of her parents and extended family, by sharing the good news that comes from knowing and serving a good and loving God.

My mother knew what it meant to open her arms wide and love God and love people. I think those wide open spaces of West Texas and the process of time helped her do that. I think her example is still helping me.