Roots That Still Reach Me | A Mother’s Day Tribute to the Women Who Prayed Our Names

As I was considering what to write this week for Mother’s Day, I started thinking about the depth of my own roots in my Christian faith. 

In the corners of my mind, I can remember sitting beside my great-grandmother, Lula, in a little church with red pews and red carpet. It was 1988. I look down and see her little black heels with a strap over the top of her feet and a tiny black button. She’s wearing a blue cotton dress, and her hair is puffy and white as snow. She has thick round glasses, and she didn't mind me sitting beside her and playing with the saggy skin on the top of her hands during prayer. The sound of the organ fills the air, and we begin singing the words to what would become one of my favorite hymns by George Bennard, “The Old Rugged Cross”– I was six years old. 

Her daughter, my grandmother, Odell, is where my faith foundation really begins– and most of my memories. 

My grandmother was the kind of woman that made comfort meals like giant pots of white beans and ham, cornbread, and greens alongside a perfect meringue on top of a beautiful coconut pie. She would show up at the doorstep of those in need– food in hand and grandkids in tow–always offering to pray with her friend before we left. 

Seven-year-old me would listen in as her friends from church would call on the phone.

She would pray for them out loud where anyone within earshot could hear her touching Heaven on their behalf. 

She was a Prayer Warrior, a God-Seeker…and an amazing cook. 

She had a sixth grade education and sounded things out when she spelled, but she was the smartest woman I’ve ever met when it came to understanding God’s word. She often told her grandchildren how the Holy Spirit was her teacher, and He would teach us, too, if we would sit still long enough to listen. 

She filled two entire Bibles with her thoughts and prayers. 

She also wrote frequently on the backs of envelopes and random sheets of paper. 

Her heart was written everywhere around her living room chair–on the end table, in the drawers, and inside the pages of the Bible she stood firm on. 

She wanted to be able to recall all that she prayed for and all that the Holy Spirit spoke to her.

She didn’t take any part of that lightly. God was her foundation, and her roots grew deep in Him.

It was obvious by the fruit she bore that He was the source of her wisdom, strength, and life.

I consider myself extremely blessed to have received one of her Bibles as an heirloom. The picture you see at the top of this blog was taken from a page in her Bible, and each page looks equally as worn and written on. Prayers, notes, & thoughts all scattered like seeds in its pages; they tell the story of her walk with God. 

My name and the names of many others are all written deep within its pages. 

Calls to action–to read and study God’s word. 

Praise and thankfulness to God for answering her prayers also all over the edges. 

It's almost as if she knew the words she penned were meant for more than just herself.

I remember sitting at her feet at eight-years-old after taking a break from shelling peas in her big stainless steel tub, my thumbs were stained a deep purple, and listening intently to her tell me and my cousins about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. She used it as a teaching point to explain the importance of God’s faithfulness throughout her life and our own. She would testify of how God saved and healed her and brought her into the church following a life-altering car accident. She was told she would never have anymore children, but then my mother was born.

Many summer nights were spent at her house.

She would tuck all of the grandchildren into pallets of comfy pillows and blankets on her living room floor.

The lights would go down, and we would snicker and laugh listening to her clock chime on the hour until we couldn’t hold our eyes open any longer. 

I fell asleep many nights to the sound of the hallway fan and her voice praying from her bedside. 

She always began the same way-with the Lord’s prayer.

If I close my eyes and the room is quiet, I can still hear her voice trailing in the distance,

“Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name…” 

After she finished the Lord’s prayer, she would call out the name of every one of her children, their spouses, and their children. 

My cousins and I would all lay and listen quietly for the same thing–our names. 

And every time, without fail, we heard them. 

What I came to realize as an adult is that she never missed a night.
Not one.

And even on the nights I wasn’t there to hear it…
she still called out my name before the Lord.

When the sun was up, so was she. 

She washed her face, brushed her long, dark hair, and rolled it into a bun. 

She would go straight to the kitchen and start cooking. 

A small AM/FM radio played a Christian station and her voice sang out worship to a God that was so personal to her from a place in her heart that no one got to see but Him. 

She would sing a line while pouring flour on the counter and pressing out dumplings–the small kitchen window open, overlooking fresh laundry hung out on the line–her blue curtains blowing in the breeze… 

The Gaithers would come on singing one of her favorite songs, Sweet Beulah Land,

and she never hesitated to sing along–

“I'm kinda homesick for a country

To which I've never been before

No sad goodbyes will there be spoken

And time won't matter anymore”

She passed on to the country she sang about in that song in 2016.

This year marks a decade without her.

I still miss her and have days that my mind starts to direct itself to her driveway. 

Then, I’m brought back to the present moment, and I long for my own homecoming when she and I are reunited again.  

The most important part of her–she already gave to me. 

Her faith. 

Timothy was reminded that sincere faith first lived in his grandmother and mother before it lived in him. I understand that verse differently now than I once did.

2 Timothy 1:5

“I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also.”

The roots of faith she grew and developed in her own life, she passed on.

She gave it to my mother, before me.

She taught my mother how to pray.

There was never a moment in my life that I doubted either of their prayers. 

It was like they both had some kind of straight connection to Heaven, and if I ever really needed something, I knew I could go to Mom and ask her to pray. I still do. 

My mother taught me how to pray, and the foundation of that faith that I now hold so dearly has brought me through some dark, difficult times. 

My mother and I have sat over coffee and talked about how we still feel the power of my grandmother’s prayers at work in our lives, even now. Decades later. 

I named one of my daughters after my grandmother, and I am teaching her that same kind of faith that her great-grandmother stood on so many years before.

The roots that God grew in my grandmother were sturdy and strong. 

When the storms of life came, she was able to withstand them. 

The soil she planted the seeds of our family into was plowed and prepared and prayed over. 

But something else she taught us is that we can’t obtain enough nourishment from her prayers and faith alone. 

We have to grow our own roots and establish our foundation deep in God’s Word. 

We need to know the source of our strength, and that it can only be found in Him.

Her guidance helped prepare our hearts and plant the seeds. 

Others, like my mother, came along and watered them. 

But God established the roots and allowed me to grow in Him. 

I am writing this prior to Mother’s Day as a tribute to all the women who have stood in the gap for their families. 

May we also leave a legacy by continuing to plow the soil and plant the seeds, providing a rich heritage of Faith for the future.