Holding to the High Ideal

My mother, a college educated performing artist, had vicarious ambitions for me. Her own dreams had been dashed when, with her new city-born husband, was forced back to the farm from which she had fled years before. Her father died, leaving her widowed mother to manage land and animals alone, which she could not do. From that time on, my mother's
only "performance" was for the funerals of the dying.
Mother had me performing on stage as a singer from the time I was three years old. To this day I am as at home in front of a crowd of people as I am in my own living room, hosting a few. My mother fled from Christ (or perhaps from the legalism of her father's mission church) as a young woman, then married my Irish, fun-loving, dancing, but spiritually lost father. My grandfather and grandmother must have been disappointed in my mother's choice of a charming, but lost husband. Years later, when I was nineteen, it had to have been my grandmother's prayers that opened my heart to Jesus, five years after her death. It wasn't that hard to influence my beloved boyfriend Ted to receive Christ and serve him. (Never underestimate the influence of a determined woman!) Once more my mother was disappointed for she could not see how her ambitions for my musical success could ever be realized if we went into Christian work. ...and Dad? He was worried, wondering how we could financially exist on a preacher's salary. Well, it wasn't easy!
I have not yet met my Kentucky-born grandfather who was known to all as "Colonel Blair", a man greatly respected for his integrity as a Christian man. Widowed himself by the death of his wife in childbirth, he migrated to Kansas with the son she left him, broke the ground on 160 acres of hard Kansas gumbo-land, taught school and established a Methodist mission. My grandfather was a pioneer. (Never try to make a "pioneer" out of a "settler". A settler won't budge!) I am a pioneer. So was Ted. After launching individuals and groups in scripture and being reasonably sure they are recycling what they have learned, both of us are wired to note the new people God brings into our lives and we start over. We had discovered early on that every human being is born cursed by a God-shaped vacuum that only God Himself can fill. Satan comes down the birth canal with each person, whispering: "If there is a God, He doesn't love YOU!" We concluded: "Every follower of Christ has a clearly defined job description: Influence all He brings your way by His unconditional love, showing them that Satan is a liar!"
When in their 70's, Ted and I moved my parents from their Kansas farm to Palo Alto, California, where we were blessed to be in ministry with Ray and Elaine Stedman. My mother was giddy, for at last she was freed from the hard, never-ending dirty work of the farm she had hated all her life. Both of my parents came to know Christ because of the powerful Christ-love displayed to them through the extraordinary believers in Peninsula Bible Church. ...and because of Jesus Who lived and lives in our home.
In Heaven, along with my grandparents, husband Ted, son Doug (Boy! It's been brutally hard to let them both go within a year of each other!) and countless others, perhaps they are waiting for the rest in our family at the Heavenly Gate. ...but it's apparently not time for me to "leave the farm". My "crowds" now number six or maybe ten at a time, but this I have learned: A musician, teacher or conveyor of Truth must not be preoccupied by the size, approval or disapproval of the audience but must seek the approval of only One: Our Master.
HYMN OF THE WEEK
All the way my Savior leads me; what have I to ask beside?
Can I doubt His tender mercy, Who through life has been my Guide?
Heavenly peace, divinest comfort, here by faith in Him to dwell!
For I know, whate'er befall me, JESUS DOETH ALL THINGS WELL.