A HOARDING HEART?

 My wife, Barbara, and I watch Hoarders on TV. Her interest in the show caused me to joke that she may have hoarding tendencies. But she’s a collector, not a hoarder — at least for now! 

My late wife, Carol, who died in January 2019, grew up in Pennsylvania. Her father and mother divorced when she was two, and Carol lived with her mom who moved often and owned little. An elementary school teacher, Carol kept our house organized, but she collected things, especially items reminding her of her maternal grandparents. 

Our home was neat but filled with stuff and doodads. Carol’s bears went into a closed-off bedroom after our beagle began tearing out their eyes. I called Carol’s home office her hoarder’s room. It contained boxes of clippings, letters, books, etc. She sent letters she called “envelope hugs” and needed things to fill those, she said. I made a photo of her office and joked about sending it “Dr. Phil” to see if he’d feature her on his show.

Hoarding, a progressive disorder, involves difficulty in parting with possessions because of a perceived need to save them, sources say. It’s described as “excessive accumulation of items, regardless of actual value.”

Historically thought of as a variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), evidence suggests that hoarding might be more closely associated with symptoms of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), sources say. Some people are naturally neat, but many with ADHD are messy most of the time.

Does hoarding disorder run in families? 

“Yes, hoarding disorder is more common among people who have a family member who has hoarding disorder,” according to the internet. “The cause of hoarding disorder remains unknown. Genetics is likely only one part of why hoarding disorder affects a particular individual; environment plays a role as well.”

Barbara helped get my Taylors house ready to sell. I gave away stuff in order to move to her house after we married. I took too many things with me, especially books and papers. 

Most of us aren’t material hoarders but are burdened with mental/spiritual baggage. I have a hoarding disorder of the heart and seem to need to constantly regroup, trying to get into a better place to “do the Lord’s will.” Things that may be unimportant, in eternity, are on my to-do list — often listed above spiritual matters.

Jesus said, “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work” (John 9:4).

James wrote, “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin” James 4:17).

Jim, a hoarder we watched on TV, said, “I intend to do it, therefore I have done it.”

Because Jim intended to get rid of items, he counted it as done. He played mind-games, but the garbage meant for disposal remained, and more stuff soon lay on top of that. In time, his house looked and smelled like a rat-infested garbage dump. We intend to do things, but often that’s as far as things go. 

We may have perfectionist attitudes about “the Lord’s work” so we put if off, hoping we can do it perfectly — someday. We want to get other tasks out of the way before we tackle God’s work. Fearing failure, we sometimes postpone holy opportunities. 

“Spiritual procrastination is a feeling of desperately wanting to do God’s instruction or assignment, but not getting started,” someone said.

Someone suggested this prayer for procrastinators: “Lord, I know that I can accomplish this task, but I know it will go so much better with you lifting me up and guiding me through it. I know I can do all things through you, so I come to you to help me through this desire to keep putting things off. I ask for strength and guidance."

Hoarding disorder is marked by three major characteristics: difficulty letting go of material possessions; excessive or compulsive acquisition of new items; and disorganization and an inability to prevent clutter.

Are we mental-and-spiritual hoarders? Do we need to get rid of some mind-and-heart clutter?      

Jesus said, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33).          

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

     Please read this to learn about religious freedom.  

Maybe you’ve wondered about the United States’ founding fathers: 

Were they Christians?  

“On the surface, most Founders appear to have been orthodox (or ‘right-believing’) Christians. Most were baptized, listed on church rolls, married to practicing Christians, and frequent or at least sporadic attenders of services of Christian worship,” according to sources.

What were their values? 

“Our founding Fathers enshrined freedom, limited government, and individual responsibility in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,” sources say.

What is a “constitution”?

A constitution is “the basic principles and laws of a nation, state, or social group that determine the powers and duties of the government and guarantee certain rights to the people in it.” Our Constitution established a “federal, representative, democratic republic.”Three parts:

The U.S. Constitution has three parts: the Preamble, seven articles, and amendments. The Preamble, or introduction introduces the main purpose of the U.S. Constitution, and why it was needed.How was the U.S. born?

In 1776, in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain. General George Washington led the new “United States” and won the Revolutionary War. He became the first president.

What are America’s core beliefs?

America was founded on the idea that all people are created equal and have rights, such as liberty, free speech, freedom of religion, due process of law, and freedom of assembly.

“The American political culture centers on a set of core ideals — liberty, equality, and self-government — that serve as the people’s common bond,” sources say.

Amendments? 

Amendments are sometimes made to the U.S. Constitution. As of July 2021, we have 27 amendments that protect the rights of Americans.The first ten amendments are called the Bill of Rights.

Here is the first amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. It forbids Congress from promoting one religion over others and restricting an individual’s religious practices. 

The Establishment Clause:    

The “Establishment Clause” part of the first amendment prohibits the government from “establishing” a religion. That means it is illegal for the government to promote theocracy or promote a specific religion by using government taxes.

(A theocracy is a system of government in which priests rule in the name of God or a god.) 

The Establishment Clause of the first amendment keeps us from having an official government-sponsored religion in the U.S. Our government may not give financial support to any religion or promote a religion.

The Free Exercise Clause:

The “Free Exercise Clause” part of the first amendment protects citizens’ right to practice their religion as they please, so long as the practice does not run afoul of a “public morals” or a “compelling” governmental interest.

This clause prohibits government interference with religious belief and, within limits, religious practice.

“In many states, however, the level of protection for free-exercise claims is uncertain,” sources say.    

Chief Justice Morrison Waite (1816-1888) said, “Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may [interfere] with practices.” Waite went on to state that to permit someone to use religious belief as an excuse to ignore legal requirements would “in effect … permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”

WHY ATTEND CHURCH?

A man sent a letter to a newspaper, complaining that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday.

 

“I’ve gone for 30 years now,” he wrote, “and in that time I’ve heard something like 3,000 sermons. For the life of me, I can’t remember a single one of them, so, I think I'm wasting my time, and pastors are wasting theirs by giving sermons.”

 

That caused controversy, and the editor printed pro-and-con letters until someone wrote this:

 

“I've been married for 30 years. In that time my wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. But, for the life of me, I cannot recall the entire menu for a single one of those meals.

 

“But I do know this…They all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife had not given me these meals, I would be physically dead today. Likewise, if I had not gone to church for nourishment, I would be spiritually dead today!”

 

I worked four years as a part-time religion reporter for The Pilot, a newspaper in Southern Pines, NC, where my late wife, Carol, and I lived for about 28 years. While on that job, I visited some houses of worship.

 

In one church I visited, a pastor preached on Sunday morning and served communion. After the pastor said the last amen, an elderly man standing near me smiled at a lady and said, “Right on time – 12 o’clock.”

 

The Rev. Bailey Smith, former Southern Baptist Convention president, said, “Many churches are just country clubs with steeples on top.”

 

Select a church that preaches the Gospel and commit to that church if you feel you fit there. A person can live a Christian life in isolation, but that’s not normal. “You can cross the ocean in a rowboat, but it’s a lot easier to cross on a big ship with a bunch of people,” someone said.

 

Someone else said, “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your brothers and sisters.”

 

“Any idea of enjoying salvation or being a Christian in isolation is foreign to New Testament writings,” someone stated.

 

St. Paul pictures the church as a body (I Corinthians 12). There is a universal Church made up of all believers, but we’re asked to belong to a local church and build up (edify) one another in that group. We are urged to confess our sins and pray for each other when we meet.

At church meetings, we should hear the Word of God preached, experience the friendship of Christians, and foster some accountability to brothers and sisters.

 

Believers should speak the truth in love and exhort each other to uphold Scriptural standards. Peer influence in church should be positive and seasoned with grace, someone said.

 

Church can be a gathering of thousands or a few people helping each other grow in Christ. Jesus says, “For where two or three gather together in my name, there am I in their midst” (Matthew 18:20).

 

We should not forsake assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encourage one another; “and all the more, as you see the day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25).

 

Someone said the Bible records no examples of anyone who was right with God but also stood alone and did not spend time with other believers.

 

When I wrote years ago on this subject, the late Father Tom Parsons, a former helicopter pilot in Vietnam but then pastor of Christ Church Anglican, Southern Pines, NC, wrote, “Steve, I believe the problem you discuss is due to an incomplete understanding of what the Church is. Paul, for one, believed it to be the Body of Christ on earth, and the Church, East and West, confessed this for over fifteen hundred years. … Only God knows what He will do in His prevenient grace, but Scripture, two thousand years of tradition, and our God-given reason should lead us to the covenanted way of salvation in Christ through the authority and office of His Church. To go it alone is a risky business!”

Steven Riley Sturm: A Good Friend Passes On

A good buddy left this old world. Barbara and I attended a memorial service at Hampton Park Baptist Church, Greenville, SC, on Wed., June 9, 2021, for the Rev. Steven Riley Sturm (pictured here), a friend of mine since at least 1969.  

Steve, born in 1943, “passed from life to Life” on June 5. A quote from Steve’s obituary reads, “The only thing he wanted said about him was that he was ‘rotten to the core.’ A sinner saved by grace [in his late teen years] in the back of Riley’s Paint Store in Shinnston, West Virginia, who continued to be overwhelmed by the love and mercy of God for nearly sixty years following.”  

Steve and Sherry were married for 58 years. Sherry’s maiden name was Riley, the same as Steve’s middle name, and she was his high school sweetheart. He called her his “front street girl” because she lived in town on the second floor of her late father’s funeral home and he lived on a dairy farm. Sherry’s father died when she was young. Her widowed mother taught music in the local high school Steve and Sherry attended. Sherry has an older brother and sister. Steve’s two brothers have passed on.

Steve served in the Army under two Presidents in White House Communications before becoming a “Bible major” at Bob Jones University, Greenville, SC, and working part-time as a wallpaper hanger.

Here’s how we met: Carol, my late wife, and I were dating and working as first-year public school teachers for Greenville County, SC. Carol met Sherry — both worked as elementary school teachers —  and introduced me to her and Steve and their little daughter, Kelly. Carol and I often broke up, and she’d go to the Sturm’s house to talk about our troubles. One time, Steve, in his West Virginia farm-boy way, said to Carol, “Why don’t y’all just get married and annihilate each other.”    

The Sturms attended our wedding the next year (August 1970) at Bethany Baptist Church, Travelers Rest, SC, after I’d completed Army basic training.

We visited the Sturms when Steve pastored Shinns Run Baptist Church, Shinnston, West Virginia. Carol and Sherry often corresponded. Years later the Sturms moved back to Greenville, SC, and stayed in our home for several weeks (until their house was ready). They have four children: Kelly, John Michael, Steven, and Karla. 

In Greenville, Sherry worked as a teacher; Steve worked at delivering parts for a company and served as one of the leaders at Hampton Park Baptist Church. In 1988, my family located in NC as I followed the “textile trail” by working in carpet manufacturing. 

Once, Sherry came with their youngest, Karla, to stay overnight with us in Southern Pines, NC, That night, Carol, groaned with nausea. “You better get her to the hospital,” Sherry told me, as she recognized gall bladder trouble. She visited Carol in the hospital after surgery.   

Steve and Sherry visited us several times in NC. John Fawcett wrote this song, published in 1782, “Blest be the tie that binds, our hearts in Christian love; the fellowship of kindred minds is like to that above.”

Before Carol and I moved back to Greenville County, SC, on Jan. 10, 2018, Steve visited Steven, his son, in Raleigh. After their visit, Steven drove Steve to our house, and Steve drove my extra car to Greenville. Steve and his daughter, Karla (a nurse), painted about half the interior of the Taylors, SC, house we purchased. Steve hooked up our washer.

He and Sherry, who have four grandchildren, visited us as Carol suffered from pulmonary hypertension. They served their church by visiting the elderly, and Steve played his guitar at prayer meetings. They spoke at Carol’s funeral (Jan. 15, 2019) and visited me at my home after Carol passed. Steve would bring his guitar when he came by himself to my Taylors home, and we’d play together, sing hymns, and talk about the Lord.

One day, I called Steve, and he told me about his sudden cancer diagnosis. “I’m at the front of the line for the Glory Train,” he said. About two weeks later, he called and asked to borrow the music stand we’d shared when we sang together at my house before COVID-19 stopped our visits. He wanted to sing as long as he could and thought the stand might help. Barbara (my wife as of June 14, 2020) and I took the stand to his house and sat with Steve and Sherry on their patio for Barbara’s first and our last precious visit with him. In the printed program for Steve’s memorial service, his children wrote, “Dad continued to lead us in worship over the five weeks of his illness … All the hymns about Grace have brought us comfort.”   

Steve’s obituary said about him: “Mountaineer, and recipient of the West Virginia Golden Horseshoe award. Dairy farmer who hated getting up early. Loved and was loved by many good ‘hound dogs.’ Veteran of the US Army. Graduated with honors from Bob Jones University, undergraduate and Master’s Degree. Hunter, fisherman, photographer, map collector, expert wallpaper hanger. Musician and vocalist until his final breath. Dedicated scholar. Avid reader. Voracious Learner. Great pontificator. Lifelong student and teacher of the Scriptures. ‘Pastor Sturm.’ Counselor, encourager, and friend to many.”

LAY ASIDE HATRED AND SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS

  Pastor Raymond D. Burrows hosted a recent Tuesday 10 a.m. Bible study at Faith Temple Church, Taylors, SC, on a rain-soaked day.

He said that if all the rain in a cloud fell at one time, the landscape below that cloud would be devastated.  

“But God sends down the rain in drops,” Pastor said.
  “Have you heard of a Judas tree?” Ms. Linda Trammell asked. “It’s supposed to be the tree that Judas hung himself on.”

The Judas tree (“cercis siliquastrum”) blooms with purple flowers. Its common name comes from a legend that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from this type tree after he betrayed Jesus. 

Pastor read 1 Peter 1:25: “But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.” 

The Apostle Peter addressed his letter to “the strangers scattered” in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia (all three locations are in Turkey), Asia, and and Bithynia (northwest of Asia Minor).  

Pastor noted that books of the Bible were written without chapter or verse references.  

Chapter divisions of the Bible were developed around 1227 by Stephen Langton, an Archbishop of Canterbury. The Hebrew Old Testament was divided into verses by a Jewish rabbi named Nathan in 1448. Robert Estienne, also known as Stephanus, was the first to divide the New Testament into numbered verses, in 1555. 

Pastor read 1 Peter 2:1-2: “Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings.” 

“He’s talking about Christ-followers,” Pastor said. “‘Malice’ means ‘hatred of any description.’”  

He referred to the word “guile” in that verse. “Guile” means “craft; cunning; deceit; usually in a bad sense.” 

Jesus saw Nathanael and said, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile” (John 1:47). 

“God, by inspiration, would never instruct us on doing something that’s impossible,” Pastor said, indicating that, with God’s help, we can purge malice (hatred) and guile (deceit) from our hearts. 

Pastor recalled that when he lived in Joanna, SC, a man told him, “I’m never going to church because there are too many hypocrites there.”  

“As far as I know, he never did go,” Pastor said.

Pastor told of a woman who always said nice things about people. A friend asked if she could say anything nice about a man they knew who was a scoundrel. The lady replied, “Well, he’s got a nice whistle.” 

Pastor said he admires the scholarship and brilliance of the Rev. Pat Hayes, who sometimes preaches at Faith Temple Church.  

“His family was educated,” Pastor said. “He went to a Roman Catholic school. My dad was a farmer … Be glad about the person God made you [to be].” 

He read 1 Peter 2:3: “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby.” 

“Explore the Scriptures,” Pastor said. “Growth is produced by Scripture. Take on the person of Christ. St. Paul chastised the Corinthians because they had not been growing.”  

We need interactions with God through the Word and through prayer, Pastor said.   

“The other day, I fired up my chainsaw and was thinking as I was out there, cutting, ‘Lord, I love you,’” he said. 

He addressed attendees: “You are among God’s finest people. And the Lord put me here with you. The Lord is gracious, my friends.” 

He read 1 Peter 2:6: “ … Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.” 

“Christ is the foundational stone,” Pastor said. “The bricks became part of the structure. The strength of one brick is tied to the other bricks. …They are resting on that foundational stone.”  

Pastor told of a man who came to Faith Temple and asked, “Am I welcome here?” The fellow told Pastor Burrows that he had visited a church where a church leader took him aside and said, “Your kind is not welcome here.” Pastor said he assured the man he was welcome at Faith Temple.  

He referred to the Pharisee and the publican. 

Jesus told this parable (Luke 18:9-14) to some folk who boasted about their own goodness and despised others:  

A Pharisee (a strict keeper of Jewish laws) and a publican (a despised tax collector) prayed in the temple. The Pharisee thanked God that he was not a sinner, especially like the tax collector he saw standing there. He said he never cheated, did not commit adultery, and he fasted twice a week and gave God a tenth of all he possessed.

The corrupt tax collector stood at a distance and was ashamed to lift his eyes toward heaven. In sorrow, he beat on his chest and prayed, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”   

Jesus said, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified [forgiven] rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”

SLAVERY HURT BLACKS and POOR WHITES

  Discrimination against black people because of the color of their skin is wrong. Slavery hurt Americans from Africa, and that damage is still far-reaching.

 

“A poor black family is much more likely than a poor white one to live in a neighborhood where many other families are poor, too, creating what sociologists call the ‘double burden’ of poverty,” writer Emily Badger says.

America slavery also hurt “poor whites.”

 

“The institution of slavery deprived the majority of poor whites of wealth, culture, and political power,” William M. Brewer said.

 

“Slavery imposed upon this class nearly three hundred years of ignorance, inertia, and peculiar prejudice.”

 

Ms. Keri Leigh Merritt, a historian and writer in Atlanta, GA., is the author of "Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South." Writing about years leading to America’s Civil War, Merritt says, “The enslavement of millions of Africans warped the South’s economy, politics, and culture — including in ways that often hurt poor white Southerners. Poor whites were seen as a threat to the ruling planter class in the South.”

 

Merritt estimates poor whites made up about one-third of the white population in the cotton South states. She says they lived hard material lives, “enduring cyclical poverty, hunger, and want, primarily because they were surplus workers competing in a labor market with brutalized, unpaid enslaved people.”

 

After the forced migration of around 800,000 enslaved laborers from the Upper South to the Deep South in the 1830s and 1840s, job opportunities for poor whites were scarce, Merritt says.

 

“By the 1850s, poor white men had either dropped out of the workforce altogether, cobbling together a meager existence by hunting, fishing, and trading with the enslaved in the underground economy, or by trying to work in non-agricultural jobs,” she says. “These ‘mechanics,’ as they called themselves, began forming labor unions, or ‘associations,’ and by the late 1850s many of them were openly threatening to withdraw their support for slavery if something was not done to protect their jobs and their wages.”

 

Merritt argues that the push from poor and working-class whites essentially created a 3-front battle for slave owners, who had to defend slavery against Northern abolitionists, the enslaved themselves, and lower-class Southern whites.

 

“Slaveholders had little chance but to secede to preserve slavery,” Merritt says.

 

She adds that no system of universal or public education existed in the Deep South prior to the Civil War because slave-owners did not want poor whites teaching blacks how to read in the growing underground economy the two groups operated.

 

“Poor whites’ illiteracy also meant that they remained ignorant about nearly everything going on at the national level,” Merritt says.

 

This fact, along with their often being left out of politics, meant that poor whites were completely distrustful of government in general and were politically apathetic, Merritt says, adding, “It was an incredibly unequal society at every level, and whether through incentives or threats or outright terrorism, slaveholders controlled every aspect of politics and suffrage.”

 

Many 1850s church leaders justified slavery.

 

In an article called “Why Non-Slaveholding Southerners Fought,” Gordon Rhea writes that some church leaders argued that because Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, and Job owned slaves, slavery was OK.

 

“While slavery was not expressly sanctioned in the New Testament, Southern clergymen argued that the absence of condemnation signified approval,” Rhea says. “They cited Paul’s return of a runaway slave to his master as Biblical authority for the Fugitive Slave Act, which required the return of runaway slaves.”

 

Some leaders promoted “race superiority” appeals.

 

Rhea writes that in the fall of 1860, John Townsend, owner of a cotton plantation on Edisto Island, authored a pamphlet saying that if Lincoln were elected President, the abolition of slavery would be inevitable and that people who did not own slaves would also be in danger.

 

“It will be to the non-slaveholder, equally with the largest slaveholder, the obliteration of caste and the deprivation of important privileges,” Townsend wrote. “The color of the white man is now, in the South, a title of nobility … . The poorest non-slaveholder may rejoice with the richest of his brethren of the white race, in the distinction of his color. He may be poor, it is true; but there is no point upon which he is so justly proud and sensitive as his privilege of caste; and there is nothing which he would resent with more fierce indignation than the attempt of the Abolitionist to emancipate the slaves and elevate the Negroes to an equality with himself and his family.”

 

Slavery hurt black people (and poor white people) and warred against these words written by Clare Herbert Woolston: “Red and yellow, black and white; they are precious in His Sight.”

LIKE SHIPS PASSING IN A CORONAVIRUS NIGHT?

 

Pictured are Mrs. Frances Hawkins Crain and Mr. Fred E. Crain, my aunt and uncle.

 

Janelle, my daughter, spends much time at home, virtual-teaching by computer to second-graders. She gets out of her house during some afternoons in order to visit a few shops. Cabin-fever probably forces her to mask-up and venture forth. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives.

Barbara and I saw Janelle during her Christmas two-week break. We met outside for lunch at Greer’s Panera Bread. The wind was cold and strong, and after eating our meals at two different outside tables (so we could social-distance), we retreated to our cars and parked behind Panera. I backed into a space; we left a parking space between us; and Janelle drove straight into the space on the other side of the empty parking space between us. We sat with car windows rolled down and talked — I from my window and she from hers, parked as if our cars were meeting in opposite directions. The expression “like ships passing in the night” came to mind.

Internet sources define “ships that pass in the night” to mean “two or more people who encounter one another in a transitory, incidental manner and whose relationship is without lasting significance.”

“Ships that pass in the night” originates from the poem “The Theologian’s Tale” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The poem reads, “Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, / Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; / So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, / Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.”

“Ships that pass in the night” is a metaphor referring to “people who meet, share a few words, and separate to continue their way and never see each other again.”

Of course, I plan to see Janelle again, and our relationship is not “without lasting significance,” but the present pandemic seems to have put us into “ships that pass in the night” situations. I phone Janelle about every other day in an effort to maintain our relationship.

On a recent Sunday, George Hembree, a Vietnam veteran and member of Faith Temple Church, brought his daughter, Angela, to Faith Temple. After church, she approached me about the name “Frances Crain” printed in the church bulletin. Frances’ name is listed there in the prayer concerns. Ms. Angela is a nursing supervisor at Spring Park, a Travelers Rest, SC, nursing home where my Aunt Frances, age 93, lives.

“She’s a sweet person,” Angela said about Aunt Frances.

“We recently visited her,” I said.

Barbara and I had not seen Aunt Frances since March 2020; we made an appointment to meet with her at 3:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021. Wearing masks that day, we found the facility’s front door locked. A supervisor sent us to the outside entrance of the memory-care wing.

An aide seated us in the lobby. Two folding tables had been placed side-to-side to maintain a 6-foot space between Aunt Frances and us. An attendant escorted in my tiny aunt, who used a walker and wore a mask.

“Hi, Aunt Frances,” I said. “Do you recognize me.”

“Well, I’m not sure … ,” she said, as she took a seat opposite us.

I lowered my mask to let her see my whole face.

“Oh, it’s Steve,” she said.

I re-positioned my mask.

“How’s Carol?” She asked.

“She’s fine,” I said. Carol passed on in Jan. 2019, and I believe she is in heaven and is fine. Aunt soon asked again about Carol. I figured I better tell her that Carol died, because Aunt might wonder about why I was sitting there with Barbara (my wife since June 2020). I told her that Carol passed.

“Well, did I know about it?” she asked.

I told her she had known and introduced Barbara, whom she met in early 2020. We chatted for a while.

“Has Fred passed on?” Aunt Frances asked.

I explained that Fred, her late husband, died in Feb. 2018. She asked if she lived at Spring Park and, if so, how long had she lived there. She and Uncle Fred lived at Spring Park for a while before he passed.

“You mean I’ve lived here all by myself? she said. “I mean … with no relatives here?”

I told her that she was cared for and loved. I prayed for her before and Barbara and I left.

I often think of this verse, in regard to older people:

After Jesus was resurrected, he showed himself to several disciples at the Sea of Tiberias. He asked Peter about his love for him, then Jesus said to him: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not” (John 21:18).

Whether we’re trying to maintain relationships during the coronavirus pandemic or dealing with other challenges, we can always cast our care upon him (Jesus), for he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7).