Because of her extended illness, she had time to prepare us all. I am constantly amazed at the Spirit’s quiet and steady work in my life, my six-year old faith -- that my mother went to heaven to be with her Lord Jesus and that I would join her someday -- has only grown and never wavered, even through all the typical teenage and young adult years.

My mother left me the gift of hope for my future, a future that she would never see. From the hospital, she instructed my grandmother and father to buy a Madame Alexander bride doll – and bring it to her so that she could make sure it was just right. That carefully wrapped, blonde, blue-eyed doll has been with me my whole life, serving as a symbol for me of my mother’s absolute trust that God had a wonderful future planned for me. (Granted, that it was a "1950’s-style" future of a life like hers, but it said "love", not limits for me.) While she had been the vessel of God’s love for me during my early years, she also trusted that others would enfold us in love. I never fully appreciated the pain and depth of this trust in God until the year that I was 35 and my first-born, Ben, happened to be six years old – the same ages as my mother and me when she died. All that year, I couldn’t help but wonder whether I would have been granted the same measure of strength, trust and courage that my mother had, if I were facing a terminal illness and had to entrust Ben and Becca to others.

What my mother or I couldn’t have foreseen is how God would make use of that quiet faith that lived in me all through high school and college. I had met Paul in church youth group --Paul and I dated a bit at his mother’s urging, but mostly we became good friends, able to share all, even stories of dating others. We went off to different colleges - I discovered a campus ministry in Madison which became my universe of friends and involvement in addition to the intellectual challenges of journalism school and eventually law school. Paul found the party life on his campus. When we’d visit each other occasionally, there was great Sunday morning awkwardness about worship – was I just the compliant "good girl" still stuck in high school patterns without thinking? I knew otherwise, but had to use the disciple’s invitation: "Come and see." We were falling in love, but I was clearly troubled that I could fall so deeply for a person to whom faith did not seem important. I recall asking God why I couldn’t seem to break off this relationship because of these concerns. I didn’t realize at the time that the Spirit had been at work in Paul for a long time (going back to junior high days, when a pastor encouraged him to consider the ministry) – but, like Jonah, Paul had resisted the call. Because of our relationship, Paul moved to Madison, became active in the campus ministry community, and we were joyfully married there just before my last year of law school. Years later, after teaching in the public schools and working as a lay youth director for a church in Appleton, Paul would finally find his true calling as an ordained minister. Even this delayed timing seemed a part of God’s plan, since my success as a lawyer by that time enabled us to live on one salary for those four years of seminary as Paul commuted to Dubuque, IA. He could graduate debt-free and thus be freer to serve a smaller rural parish like the one we have now been part of for thirteen years.

I was blessed in my professional life to join the legal staff of Aid Association for Lutherans right out of law school. Not only did AAL offer a diverse and challenging law practice, but the mission and spirit of the organization encouraged us all to bring our faith to work. For 20 years, I worked in varying legal and executive roles at AAL constantly growing and learning. Yet Paul’s journey helped give me the courage 3 years ago to walk away from a senior executive position in a Fortune 500 company like AAL to join a long-time volunteer colleague in his fund-raising and planning consulting practice for non-profit organizations. For a person who had always been the primary "breadwinner", the drop in compensation, benefits and prestige caused occasional panicky bouts of doubt. But at each turn, God encourages me (through a client’s word of appreciation or through the quiet satisfaction of a difficult job done well through teamwork with my colleague Kurt) that this was a faithful response to a new calling. All I have to recall is how I’ve been held in the palm of God’s hand through my entire life, and any doubts tend to ebb.

Grace and peace to all of you sisters in Christ – Nancy Heykes.