Finding Us Faithhful

In 1988, Christian vocal artist Steve Green released the song Find Us Faithful and dedicated it to his parents who had spent their entire lives in ministry. Today, over three decades later, the lyrics are frequently quoted or sung at memorial services as a tribute to the legacy left by faithful Christ-followers. We played it at my mom’s memorial service a few weeks ago. 

The song earnestly pleads, 

May all who come behind us find us faithful, 
May the fire of our devotion light their way. 
May the footprints that we leave, 
Lead them to believe, 
And the lives we live inspire them to obey.

It is the song's final verse that profoundly impacts me:

After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone, 
and our children sift thru all we’ve left behind, 
may the clues they discover, 
And the mem’ries they uncover, 
Become the light that leads them, 
To the road we each must find. *

Leona and I recently experienced the “perfect storm” of moving—three significant relocations within six weeks. In January, we moved across the Puget Sound back to Edmonds, Washington, to be closer to our networks of family, friends, and associations. We sorted, purged, and packed for three solid weeks to prepare for the move. We were barely settled when we got a call from my sister in Montana that our mom had experienced a traumatic health incident from which she would not likely recover. We boarded an Amtrak train that afternoon for the overnight trip to Whitefish, and arrived at mom’s hospital bedside the next morning. Three days later, she passed away. And while we were planning on moving mom soon from her independent living apartment to assisted living in the same building, now we had to clear out her apartment and dismantle her life completely

I had dreaded the idea of moving our mom to another wing of her building. She was quite protective of her “things,” and I knew it would be a battle to separate her from any of her possessions. Now she was not there to give her approval or disapproval. So it fell upon us to do the sorting, trying to discern whether items should go in the trash, be recycled, donated to the thrift store, sold, or distributed to the others in the family.

As I combed through a lifetime of accumulated possessions, some things didn’t fit into any of those categories. I found file folders and boxes filled with Bible study and sermon notes, article clippings, and menus and recipes from a lifetime of preparing meals for our family of seven. There were poems she wrote out, quotes from books she read, photos of family and ancestors, and thousands of cards and letters. Woven throughout nearly everything she stored were lessons of her faith and convictions that she desperately wanted for her family to hear and understand.

In the midst of cleaning, I had to prepare a message for her graveside services. The theme of the song, Find Us Faithful, wove throughout my remarks. Mom had lived a life of faith in her Lord. She wanted her family to know him, and many of the things she left behind clearly pointed the way. 
 
A few days after the service in Montana, we flew to Colorado for Move #3. My mother-in-law needed help relocating to an assisted living residence. It’s another story for another time, but these moving experiences reminded me to examine my own life and my accumulation of possessions. I hope when my children sift through all I’ve left behind, they will, as the song says, discover clues and memories that  “lead them to the road we each must find.”

And, to believe.