Browsing Tag

Lee Holder

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Covenant Consciousness…and my Dad

Posted on October 30, 2025

This month, while thinking about the covenant life that we live in Christ and about ensuring that our children know that covenant, I received this recording from my dear friend, Berta Kennedy. She was present at a college reunion at the Jacksonville church of Christ; a sweet time when those students who had strengthened their faith, in college years, through being part of the Jacksonville Christian Student Center, came back to enjoy worship and fellowship together. 

One of the speakers at this event was Dalton Gilreath. He always does a fantastic job presenting the Word of God. I have loved him for a long time. You’ll love this if you can take time to listen. But if you only get to hear four minutes of what he had to say, listen to the recording beginning at minute 41:00. He talks there about a committed man in a time of mental and physical crisis. That man was my dad, Lee Holder. Next month, I will have been missing Dad for eight years. As the time of his death becomes more distant, the time of reunion with him and my mother draws closer; and that’s a wonderful reality. Here’s the link (minute 41): https://www.jvillecoc.com/class/09-07-2025-dalton-gilreath-keeping-the-past-present-jcsc-reunion-lesson-1/

My covenant with God (my promise) is faith and obedience as long as I live in this testing ground. His promise, if I do, is salvation and heaven.  

I hope that, if I ever lose my faculties, even temporarily, as was the case with Dad, in this instance when he was almost the age of 90, that my auto-pilot will be similar to his. I’m thankful that he lived in the covenant relationship with God and that all of his children and grandchildren are covenant-keepers.

I remember that awful night as if it was last night. I got the call that my dad had been transported to the hospital and I got in the car and rushed to that emergency room where a kind doctor told me that he very well might pass at some point in that long night. You can read about that here: https://thecolleyhouse.org/?s=right+turn

But it was another long night six happy years later before we sang “Be with Me Lord” around his bed, as he left us. All of the great  grandchildren he knew were born in those sweet six years. His oldest grandson was married during those years and he traveled to Tennessee for that wedding. So many things changed during those happy years. But some things stayed just the same. He sat right there on that same pew for about a thousand more times during those years (though I think that awful night was the only one in which he ever took his shoes off). He walked under the giant oaks that he had planted, as saplings, on that church property about a thousand more times to enter the building. He passed out Halloween candy to the church children who came trick-or-treating six more times and he gave about 200 more Christmas gifts. He played with squirrels on his patio, one of which would come and eat bread from his hand. He adopted a stray dog and he piddled in the shop. He celebrated, at a giant picnic at Germania Springs, his ninetieth birthday. And then, finally, on a snowy day in early December of 2017,  his body did lie exactly where it had lain on that awful night. But this time, he wasn’t rescued to have six more sweet years of favorite things. He was rescued to have an eternity of things so wonderful…things that are immeasurably MORE than we can ask or imagine. 

I’ve followed him to a lot of places. If I can follow him just once more, that’s all I ever want! 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

The “I love you”s matter…a lot, really.

Posted on December 26, 2022

 

We didn’t get to be together for Thanksgiving. The Colley crew had the flu. We didn’t get to have our Christmas Eve breakfast at Celine’s house because Christmas landing on Sunday messes up all those preachers’ schedules.  I’m pretty determined to get this mammoth mess cleaned up, so we can make another one here as we ring in the new year with my father’s chaotic family of–(wow!)–29, now! There will be bazillions of presents under the tree that’s been a stand-very-tall-great-water-drinker for a whole month now, thanks to Ezra (this year’s tree-picker.)  There will be lots of football foods (although it will be a lackluster year in that “arena” for sure…) and there will be the fireworks at night–the ones on which my dad always spent way too much money!) I’m hoping the great blessing of a brand new baby over in Mississippi in the Nicholas family will pick another day to arrive, so that more of that part of the crew can come here, but we will be blessed and ecstatic even if he picks that very day! And, yes. This party will also be on the wrong day, after all those preachers (and the rest of us) get finished with the most important first things of every week.

SO, here’s hoping this tradition can avoid cancellation this year! In honor of its founder, here’s a reprint of what was happening in a hospital room just five years ago during the holidays. It seems like yesterday and it seems like an eternity ago. I’m glad this pain for Dad has been over for five years now and that there’s much faith that he is whole and happy and now with the most influential person in my life.  She’s been there for 30 years now and how I have missed her! There’s been some ( a lot) of a different kind of pain since that December five years ago that I’m happy he did not have to know. But God is sovereign and God is good and God knows all things. There’s great comfort in the fact that He knows our hearts, intents, and he has fashioned our eternities. He knows the end of every trial we face before we even feel the pain. He has got my life span’s little speck of eternity in the palm of his hand and He is cognizant of and cares about every need that looms large (to me) in my little speck. I constantly remind myself that this crisis or that huge wound is just a wrinkle in the little speck.

I praise Him for family that means so very much in times of rejoicing and in hours of trial. I praise Him for Jesus who advocates for me before His throne at all times.

 

Five years ago:

 

Tonight in this hospital room, this daughter experienced a few very sweet moments. I will treasure them in memory whether my dad and I have lots of future sweet moments in time or not. As today has gone by, my Father who has said precious little, and only in in breathy, labored tones for several days, has become more and more alert. Mind you, what you might think is pretty much asleep all day was still more alert to those who have been keeping this vigil. 

Every time I see his eyes open, I try to go to his side and grab his hand. Tonight he grabbed right back. He even gave me his signature quick nod of recognition. 

Then I always think of everything I can talk about in his one ear that now has a hearing aid. (The other hearing aid was crushed on the floor of the ambulance—and that was another story as Sami chased the driver down and out of the building to try and find the missing hearing aid.) I talked about football. I talked about getting better. I talked about what I was eating and about breathing treatments. And then I told him I loved him. He slowly forced out the “I” and then put his very sore tongue to the roof of his very blistered mouth to make that “L” sound. 

I said “Are you trying to say “I love you?” 

“Yeah” he said. 

That’s all I needed to hear to be okay through this long night. Such a great little present for a this weary pilgrim. But that was not all. I asked him if he wanted me to read the Bible. This time I got a clear “Uh-huh.” 

Before the hospitalization, we’d been reading in Acts and we were ready for chapter seven, so I read the story of Joseph to Him as told by the first martyr, Stephen. I think I was reading so that all the staff out at the nurses station could probably hear. When I got to the resolution part about Jacob going down to Egypt, Dad just drifted back off to sleep.  

I’ll take it. A few minutes of communication is a great source of comfort in this very well-lit, bustling, but yet, very lonely room. It is the best one of today. There are a few lessons in every gift. Here are tonight’s five lessons. 

  1. “Yeah” is easier to say than “I love you.”  That’s true in just about every relationship. Short answer quizzes in families and friendships are just easier.  Sometimes in all kinds of life problems, we have to help each other say those three words. It’s always better, if someone’s having trouble saying them, to assume he means them till you know differently.

  2. You never know the value of healthy communication until you have to do without it. So don’t let days go by—days when you could be talking and sharing with the ones you love. Don’t let those days escape while you pout or exchange the silent treatment or engage in hurtful communication. Especially, don’t do this in your marriage. You will experience deep regret.

  3. Only the people you’ve really loved with agape can appreciate fully the three words when you say them. See, Daddy did not love me just enough to share some material blessing with me (although he certainly worked hard to do that). He did not just love me enough to put up with my inadequacies (although he surely was in the next room during the messy, late- night-studying, bathroom-hogging teen years). He did not just love me enough to build things in the wood shop for Christmas (although there was the doll bed and the cabinet for my tea set during the sixties and the wooden purse, stilts and shuffle board game of the seventies and the marble mazes and rocking horses and graduation banks for grandchildren of the eighties). He, along with my mother, who was also sharing and making and building, loved me enough to give their lives for me, if needed. They loved me enough to pray about inadequacies and to correct them. They loved me enough to build more than toys and purses. They loved me enough to build character. That’s the most enduring home-made gift.

  4. There’s something very ironic about the goal. Heaven is THE goal. Ironically, God has placed in us a very strong desire to keep our loved ones here with us rather than to be completely willing to have them go and be with the Lord. I cannot fully explain that fierce desire to preserve and protect feeble life. But I know it is right to have it. It is right to protect and preserve life, because that defense is innately built into the moral compass of people of conscience. One has to be trained to devalue life. It is not the natural affection of Romans 1: 31 and 2 Timothy 3:3. So I grab that hand and it’s the best when he grabs it right back.

  5. There’s great comfort—always, in all ways— in the Word. There’s an amazing example, for instance, of the application of Romans 8:28 in that ancient account of Joseph in Egypt. We get to look at how a faithful person perseveres when there are family members who are spiteful or friends who falsely accuse or forget about the good things we do for them. We get to see, up-close and personally, how the  faithful react to both poverty and riches. Sometimes, when we are weary, there’s so much comfort that we can go right off to a deep and peaceful sleep while reading the Word. I think I can maybe even do that tonight…right here in this chair. 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

They Did Not Know…But God Did. (2-22-22)

Posted on February 22, 2022

It is 2-22-22. This fun date/number sequence has not happened in a hundred years. On that day, a woman in what is now Fort McClellan, Alabama, a sharecropper’s wife, was beginning to suspect that she was going to soon bear her 10th child. She would have been sad to know that this little boy would grow up to travel around the world in a military endeavor designed to stop a holocaust. She would have been happy to know that all her boys and girls would put on Christ in baptism. She would have been so glad to know that all 14 of her direct adult descendants through this unborn boy would be in the greatest kingdom in 2022,  and that 7 little children a hundred years later would be on the trajectory of heaven. I’m thankful that, through his new mercies on each of the 36,500 mornings between the two 2-22-22 dates, this grandmother’s  arms were around me many times. I’m glad the generations often touch to the third and fourth in a line. On that 2-22-22 date, there was another woman who was yet seven years away from bearing her only girl child to survive childbirth. This little girl was not born into a Christian home. But someone came to that household and shared the gospel. From that simple sharing, and in that 100 year lapse, came ( to my best count) nine elders and 13 ministers/preachers of the gospel. In the raising of the little boy born in ‘22 and in the sharing of the gospel in the little girl’s house, nobody thought they were doing profound things. While, relatively speaking, human beings don’t do profound things, still, when we humbly strive to do His will in our homes and in sharing the good news, God provides (there’s providence) an increase that’s just beyond our small scope of expectation or even our mental acumen.  One of those women was so busy picking the cotton, making the biscuits and gravy, trying to feed a family of twelve, hand-washing their overalls and building the fires to keep that house warm, that she didn’t think a lot about the scores of souls, like me, who would be influenced by her choices. The other, on 2-22-22 was desperately trying to put her life back together, with three small children, after an unfaithful husband had walked away multiple times. I’m glad she persevered, listened to the glad tidings and, eventually married my grandfather.  She surely did not have any idea about the 9 elders and 13 ministers. She didn’t even know the little boy at Fort McClellan who would marry the little girl she would bear in her second marriage. She didn’t know that, while she was sometimes wondering about the source of her next meal, God knew that two of her sons, who wore patched coveralls and often ate just cornbread and milk, would grow up to desire and share in their pulpits the sincere milk of the Word. She did not know those two little boys would baptize hundreds. But God knew. God knows about you, too. He can take the toughest, darkest times of your life and make something good for His kingdom. It could be, that on the next 2-22-22, your posterity may have brought many souls to glory. Right now, you are just busy feeding, nurturing and loving on your children and sharing the good news as you walk through simple doors He opens. You could be struggling through unfaithfulness in your marriage, persecution, poverty or betrayal . But your influence may be profoundly outdoing the mundane choices for good that you are making. He can make so much glory when his people just do the next right thing.

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Three Doors…Oh, for a Morning Like This Again!

Posted on October 3, 2021

I have some difficult things to do today. Really hard things. As I’m getting ready to go and do them, I’ve come across my notes from another weekday morning five years ago. I pray that I will see open doors today–  doors d. This was worth remembering….

SISTER TO SISTER: THREE DOORS

Posted on October 3, 2016

14481964_10153793830326384_7614171791050123724_oThese days, my siblings and I are spending more time than ever at my Dad’s house in Jacksonville, Alabama. I love being there, though the stretches away from hearth and home and husband make me wish I could be in two places at once. And there’s Waffle House. I love the way the servers (Dad calls them “nurses”….He has always called waitresses “nurses”.) are so very attentive to him. They start cooking his meal and setting his steaming coffee on the table when they see our car drive up. They open every little plastic container of creamer or jelly for him when they bring them to the table, knowing that his arthritic hands have difficulty pulling the tiny tabs to open them. Like I said, there’s lots to love about that kind of service. And the food is good…once…or twice…or even three times a week. But that many times a day is a bit much for my palate, not to mention my calorie count. 

Still, it’s not really about me at this stage. It’s about taking him where he would go all by himself, if he could, since we are really trying hard to get him not to be going places all by himself. It’s about a lot more than food these days. Sitting by the window in Waffle House watching the JSU world revolve outside the window with my sweet 94-year-old father is capital fun for me. We watch kids walking dogs and policemen pulling over cars and reflections of what all’s happening at the Grub Mart in the back glass. I show him pictures of his great grandchildren on my phone and he marvels at all the game scores, driving distances and names of famous athletes that I can call to his memory by a simple search on such a small device. The man who waited for the automobile to become a common mode of transportation marvels as I explain to him what exactly is a podcast and how women can interact during a podcast discussion—women from all over the world. 

So last Wednesday morning as he laboriously climbed the stairs at the entrance of Waffle House, I noticed a middle-aged lady holding the door open for my father. I smiled at her and thanked her for waiting patiently as he approached the door. She looked at my dad and said “Well, today I’ve already eaten, so I won’t get to eat my breakfast with you. But I hope you have a good one!”

I said, “:”Sounds like you’ve met Dad before…”

She responded “Sure did. I ate breakfast with him the other day and I told him ‘Your money’s no good with me!”

I thanked her for being so kind—to share a meal with him and then buy his breakfast. As he ambled on in, she said “Well, I enjoyed it. But really, on that day, I just thought about “what would Jesus do?…What would he want me to do?…and I decided He’s want me to do something good for a sweet elderly man.”

At that moment, I knew that there was more than one open door at the Waffle House. so I took the conversation to the next level: “That’s just so kind of you. I love my Jesus and I love to study the Bible. In fact…” At that point I went on to tell her about Digging Deep, and our study this year about types and shadows. I told her that I would love for her to join us and that my favorite thing to do is to study the Bible with people. I asked her if she would think about joining our group and even studying with me personally. “I’m all about Bible Study…”

“I sure will!” she said. “Stuff like this doesn’t happen by accident,” she went on, as I gave her my card with contact information. “I’ll be looking you up!”

Two doors were open. She thought she’d hold open a glass door for my father to walk through. She really was holding a golden door of opportunity open for me. I’m glad I could walk through it. I’m glad I had my wallet with that card to hand her. I’m thankful for His Providence at this moment and so many others. 

I’m not sure I believe that nothing happens by accident. But I do believe He is constantly orchestrating events to work for the good of His people (Romans 8:28). I hope she’ll pursue her opportunity now. I hope she’ll knock, so her door, too, can be opened (Matthew 7:7).

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: Last Trip to the Little Farm

Posted on October 18, 2019

Fruit keeps on growing…

Today marks the last visit to my dad’s little farm. After next Tuesday, the farm will no longer be “ours”. My good husband, who has gone there so many times in my behalf, is doing it one last time today. It simply had to be done on this day and, since I get to fly to Texas today to speak to sweet sisters, my constant rescuer is on the road to Jacksonville.  I’ve made Glenn a list of things to not leave behind. I’ve specified certain things and their locations….things that just have my father’s fingerprints all over them…things that are worth very little to anyone else, but serve as memory handles of happy days spent in a sweet family circle that can never be quite as complete again.

I’ve told him how to transplant a little cane of my dad’s massive muscadine arbor. You bend the fruit-bearing cane over and bury it. Then you go back one last time and unearth it once the tiny new roots have begun to take hold in the soil. You cut it, take it home with you, and plant it in a protective tube, water it frequently, give it lots of light and wait.

Fruit can grow long after the original planter–in this case, my dad–is gone. It can be transplanted to distant places and it can reproduce itself exponentially. It takes some digging. It takes some burying. It takes some unearthing. It takes some travel. It takes some water and light. It takes protection and vigilance. But it produces something that will always taste like the first fruits.

It occurs to me that this is exactly how it is with the fruit of the Spirit. With all of these ingredients at play, His Will in me can just keep on living in others in which I may plant the seed. The vine (John 15:5), long after I am gone, will just keep right on bearing fruit that bears strong testimony to the holiness and saving power of the Original Planter (John 15:26), who is also a dear Father: THE Father.

So dig in the Word (John 17:17). Experience the burial… in the saving act of baptism (Romans 6:1-4). Unearth the growth–the root system– that prepares you to bear fruit in new places and situations (Matthew 13:18-23). Go with the gospel (Mark 16:15,16). Plant it over and over in hearts. Be generous with the water of life (John 4:14) and the light of the world (John 8:12). Be protective of young and tender plants (I Corinthians 8:13). Be vigilant about the harvest that’s plentiful, remembering that laborers are few (Luke 10:2). And enjoy the big arbor…the power that continues from the Original Planter and His first fruit (I Corinthians 10:23)!

 

 

 

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

“Have you ever heard of Green Berry Holder?”

Posted on December 13, 2018

We’ve worshipped together for 15-plus years now. The Mark Holder family has been dear to the Colley family for all of those years. Mark is the deacon in our congregation who keeps our tract ministry going. I love his wife Susan and they have three faithful Christian children now (all of which were very small children when we first moved to work with the West Huntsville church). Mark has a voice that’s James Taylor-esque and it’s every bit as smooth and rich. He and his sweet daughter, Emma, performed together at our West Huntsville holiday party again this year. It’s a highlight for us every time I get to hear them. 

I’d often go to the mailbox when little Katie Holder (she’s in the middle of the photo), Mark and Susan’s oldest, was growing up and find letters written in pencil to our daughter, Hannah, who was about seven years older than Katie…sweet notes forging a friendship that was encouraging to Hannah, giving her a bit of a mentor responsibility to Katie (who is now in grad school, by the way). Katie attended the guest table at Hannah’s wedding. Emma Holder, the youngest daughter of Mark and Susan, is now a college student and, just this week, met me at the church building to give a sewing lesson to a couple of girls in the youth group, so they could complete their Lads to Leaders Keepers projects. Emma is beautiful, talented, and, best of all, faithful to our Lord. Ethan Holder, the youngest of their three children, is active in a busy youth group, loves baseball, and has a dry sense of humor. We love the Holders.

So you can understand, since my maiden name is Holder, how that, fifteen years ago, when we moved to West Huntsville, I quickly tried to determine if there was a relationship between my family and Mark’s. Sadly, our ancestors seemed to be from different areas of the country, and Mark had no knowledge of any links to connect our families. Still though, the Holders, were among our biggest spiritual encouragers. Watching the girls grow from smocked bishop dresses to formals at the senior banquets, watching them graduate from kindergarten and then, seemingly the next week, from high school and, one of them, even from college, has been a surreal witnessing of the quick and sweet evaporation of childhood. 

And then, one Wednesday night, this year, Mark came up to me and said “Now, have you ever heard of Green Berry Holder?”

Well, “Green Berry” is not just a name you’d find multiple times in a genealogy search. It’s not like Mike, Jeff, or James on a document or a tombstone, of course. He had my attention as I replied, “Yes. Green Berry Holder is my great-great grandfather, and there can’t be but one Green Berry Holder…”

“And he is MY great-great grandfather, too,” Mark said. 

And so we are cousins. Our common ancestor is only four generations back. Green Berry Holder was married to Mary Rhodes and they were the parents of twelve children, one of which was Jabus, my great-grandfather, and one of which was Josiah, Mark’s great-grandfather. Records indicate that Josiah was the firstborn and just a year or so older than Jabus.  The brothers  and the rest of the family had some hard times while their father, Green Berry, served in the Alabama Infantry during the Civil War. It was after he fought in several battles that he was wounded near Atlanta in the Battle of Peach Tree Creek and returned home.

It was wonderful fun for me to find out that Mark’s great-grandfather grew up with mine during those days prior to and during the war between the states. It’s fun to think about how many colloquialisms we might share in our speech or what similar genetic traits might still influence our kids due to our common ancestors, Green Berry and Mary. It’s fun to talk about the stories of individuals on the family tree and to think about how my grandfather, who often held me on his knee when I was a very young child, had likely known Mark’s grandfather and maybe had mourned his recent passing, even though Mark’s grandfather was living in Tennessee at the time of his passing.

Most of all, I’m extremely blessed to think about how it is that each Sunday, Mark and I sit in the same room and sing praises to our Father, even though our branches of the family tree came about knowing His truth in very different ways. My grandfather, John Franklin Holder, learned the truth and became a faithful man of God. I am not sure when or where he learned the gospel, but I know he was a member of the Lord’s church by the time the family lived in the  sweet old Peaceburg community in the early part of the last century. One of my siblings has the original bell that rang when it was time for the services in that little building. Mark, on the other hand, is a first-generation member of the church of Christ. He first attended with a classmate in college and searched on his own, finding the way to lead his family to heaven. 

As much fun as it has been to discover an earthly kinship, the truth about family is not lost on me. What I love most about the Mark Holder family did not deepen or change or evolve when I learned that we descended from the same great-great grandfather. It’s the heavenly Father who gives us the characteristics that make us close. It’s not the facts that you find on ancestry.com that provide your truest kinship. It’s the spiritual ancestry…the fact that we are spiritual children of Abraham (Galatians 3:7).  That kinship makes us most similar in priorities, goals and matters of the heart. It’s not what you find on a tombstone somewhere; it’s the connection to our final and real resting place around the throne. It’s not what you find of good or bad  (and we have found both) in the lives of the people on the tree. It’s the good (the complete and perfect good) we both have found in that man on Calvary’s tree that gives us the precious family that means the most in this life. 

I’m eternally grateful for the man on my family tree who first contacted the blood of Jesus. I’m thankful for the one who first invited Mark Holder to study the scriptures. Most of all, I am thankful for the family tree…the one at Calvary…that makes us blood kin in the primary and eternal sense of the word “family.”

As I studied Green Berry Holder, I found that the words below are inscribed on his old tombstone in Jacksonville, Alabama:

I have fought a good fight

I have finished my course

I have kept the faith

I hope to go and see that stone in the very near future. May Mark and I be able to confidently say these same words on another glad day that’s also inevitably in the very near future!