Today we will gather with some friends and family in Collierville, Tennessee to honor the life of my mother-in-law, Beunah Magnolia Witty Colley. Born at home, to farming parents, Maggie grew up with seven siblings in Cannon County, Tennessee, Maggie was a twin. Beulah Mazola (Mazie) and Maggie looked just alike and were named by the old maid of the community who named pretty much all the babies in the community. Don’t you think she had a flair for it?
It was about forty-six years ago that I first visited in the home of Gary and Maggie Colley. I had just begun to date their son Glenn while I was attending Freed Hardeman College. In typical clumsy fashion, I was carrying a stack of plates after dinner to help with the dishes, when that stack became imbalanced and several of the plates crashed to the floor. The words that followed are forever seared in my mind. I said “Oh no!. I am so, so sorry. I cannot believe I did that! I will replace them!”
“Oh no!” she said. “They are irreplaceable.” Thus began a relationship of irreplaceable things for me: lifetime commitments, guidance that I often needed, and learning from a superb keeper at home (and so much more).
She was right. Those pink depression glass plates could not be bought at Dillards. She said that with a twinkle in her eye and we laughed and that statement “They are irreplaceable” went down into oft-repeated infamy in their home and ours. To this day, when something is irreparably broken, we comment with fondness, “It’s okay, It’s irreplaceable.” And I began my own collection of pink depression glass, in her honor. I still love it!
Maggie is the one in her dad’s arms. =)
It was forty years later that my sweet granddaughter Maggie would be born and bear her name. Sweet little Maggie has a lot of irreplaceable characteristics that remind me of the great-grandmother we honor today. She laughs often, loves to cook, loves God supremely and has an insatiable appetite for learning new things. These are traits that were obvious every precious time I was able to be with “Honey”, as her grandchildren affectionately came to call her. (What else would they call her? When they went to visit, they thought that was simply her name, because that’s what Gary called her almost every time he addressed her.) It was a sweet, sweet name!
We are thankful that all of the funeral services were completely planned out by PawPaw and Honey long before they left this life. Maggie did not know when she picked out the song “Lily of the Valley” that it would be led today by Caleb Colley and that, in just a few days, Caleb and his sweet wife, Rebekah, will be giving birth to Lily Annette Colley. It’s pretty wonderful that this baby will be named Lily, because of the influence of the divine Lily of the Valley and her middle name will be “Annette”, which is my own middle name! I am going to love praising Him through the words of this hymn today, and I cannot wait to praise Him when I have this sweet namesake in my arms! Providence is perfect.
Most of all, I am thankful that we—all of my little family who will be gathered in that place to memorialize today—have found a friend in Jesus. He is everything to me! On days like today, we are grateful beyond what we can say that He has influenced our lives and family in eternal proportions and in depths of ways we can’t even express. He IS the fairest of ten thousand to our souls!
Today, I have just a small moment and a smaller mind to write, but His amazing providence is sustaining. For the past several days, I’ve been living in a senior facility as we transition Glenn’s parents from Memphis, Tennessee to Huntsville, Alabama. There have been some days in which we seemed to hit a brick wall at every turn as we have diligently worked to find a situation to meet all the needs of these loved ones. In the end, the answer came through a sweet 97-year-old sister who lives down the hall from “us” in this temporary place. She remembered another couple in God’s family who were almost in the exact circumstances as were my husband’s parents. She called to refer me to their daughter, the caretaker who knew all the details about this place. Amazingly, this daughter is a sweet friend whom I have not seen in a long time, but she was my suite-mate at FHU many years ago. So very helpful, she gave me details and info that put me in the right place at just the right time. The family that was on the waiting list for the one available room in this beautiful and seemingly perfectly tailored-to-our-needs place had just decided to remove their names for a while from that list and one (only one) room became temporarily available. Another sister came to stay with my favorite mother-in-law and father-in-law while I went to look at this place. And yet another sister invited me into her apartment at the facility (an apartment that happened to be identical to the one in which the Colleys are going to be living and is also the next door down.) Then our Father brought my husband safely home from his gospel meeting in Oklahome so that he could finalize the details about this move for them.