By Steven Norris
Standing beside Mamaw’s graveside was a surreal experience. I had visited that cemetery regularly and seen the place where she would be laid to rest for 19 years leading up to that day. Papaw had “preceded her in death,” the obituary read. I have no memory of that day, for Papaw died when I was only a few weeks old.
Glennie Mae Taylor, however, played a defining role in the person I would later become. Every summer of my childhood contained a few weeks spent on the Taylor family farmland. A teacher by vocation, Mamaw retired by the time I came around. Therefore, my memories are filled with the way she woke up early and made us breakfast — scrambled eggs, bacon, scratch-made buttermilk biscuits, and homemade pear preserves made from the fresh pears we helped pick in the orchard out back.
I remember walking with Mamaw out in the yard and picking up pecans, hoping they would magically turn into a pie later that evening. I remember walking up and down the orchard rows and the taste of ice cream mingled with peach juice running down my chin.
I remember Mamaw reading to us from a collection of Bible story books and the closet in her living room from which special toys emerged when the grandkids visited. I remember her sitting on the screened-in back porch in her olive-green rocking chair. I remember the art that hung all over the house — much of it painted by Mamaw or Papaw — and the handmade afghans that we would pull from the back of the couch and snuggle in during the winter months.
I remember Mamaw’s pump-organ in the front room — the one Papaw had refurbished for her to be able to practice at home — and the piano in the back of the laundry room. I remember taking my place on the front pew of Wesley Chapel United Methodist Church and watching Mamaw accompany the congregation in song.
By all earthly accounts, Mamaw’s life was not all that exceptional. To be honest, it was rather simple and ordinary. When Pastor John stood before the congregation and reflected back on her almost-ninety years, however, he told story after story of lives she had touched with that simplicity. He said, “I went to Miss Glennie’s house to try to be a blessing to her in her final weeks. However, I think I took with a me a greater blessing than any I could have left behind.”
A pastor recently reminded me: “At the end of it all, Jesus will not say ‘well done good and successful servant,’ or ‘well done good and influential servant,’ or ‘well done good and high-capacity servant,’ but ‘well done good and faithful servant.’ Success is being faithful to what God has called us to do.”
In the end, simple faith is the goal. Doing that which God has called us to do — no more, no less — is the quintessential definition of faithfulness and God’s definition of success. May we never get so busy doing that we forget who we are becoming in the process.