Life, Dirt, Dust and Jesus Part 3 – Ken Williams

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What I learned from mom and how I apply her lessons.

The saying, “Hurt people, hurt people” is true for my family. We helped and hurt each other. Well intentioned people told me, “Let it go!” I “forgot about it” for years but now ask God for the serenity to accept the things that I could not change. Writing “Life, Dirt, Dust, Jesus Part 1 & Part 2” has comforted me as I recalled the good times with my father. On the other hand, it was humbling and challenging to remember my relationship with my mother. Facing it and seeking to find the good that God made, brings some peace in this mystery of “life, dirt, dust, Jesus”.  
 

Merciful God restored me to sanity and continues to give me the gifts of forgiving those who harm me and the desire for reconciliation with them. He enables me to admit the harm I have done others and guidance hope for reconciliation. Nancy and I cared for my aging parents till God received their breath given them at birth. They are buried in cemetery dirt, have turned back into the dust they came from, and are with Jesus. 
 

A glimpse of Jessie Rebecca Sharr Williams. 
 

My mother was born August 1909, second child and daughter of Frank and Bessie Sharr. They lived in Liberty Missouri, in Nodaway County, situated in the northwestern corner of the state. Mom’s motto “I’ll do it myself!”, reflected the town’s name, Liberty. The family was poor, and she was self-conscious, wearing old, patched clothing to school. She was tough, angry, musical, creative, reclusive, artistic, depressed and poetic. She is a complicated mystery to me to this day. She longed for more education but Frank, her dad, believed that his nine children didn’t need education past the 8th grade. He required his four daughters to work common labor like his five sons. 
 

Francis Marion Sharr was born in Indiana in 1875. He became a laborer for a railroad company in Missouri. Mom remembers her father taking her and a couple siblings for a ride on a handcar at night, attempting to hide his misuse of company equipment. She had fun until they heard a train whistle approaching rapidly behind. Frank pumped the seesaw handle as fast as he could and arrived at a side rail before the train caught them. His recklessness and disregard for his children’s safety contrasts with his effort to live his Primitive Baptist background. Mom had a love/hate relationship with her “hardshell Baptist”, reckless, father. 
 

Bessie Mae Coffee Sharr was born 1885, in NW Missouri. Bessie Mae was 14 when an older neighbor asked her father permission to marry her. Bessie Mae was tough and took off when the man started abusing her. Her father and brother convinced him to free her by agreeing to an annulment to their marriage contract. She married Frank Sharr when she was in her early twenties. Bessie Mae gave birth to their first child, a daughter, Frankie Vivian Sharr, in 1907. She became pregnant with mom, an unwanted pregnancy.  
 

Mom believed her mother took an herb for an unwanted pregnancy, but her conscience convinced her to stop. I’m challenged and confused by this because grandmother Sharr was a loving, gentle soul who loved all eighteen of us grandchildren. The Bessie Mae I knew would not have done this. On the other hand, what caused mom’s spina bifida and dramatic mood swings she was born with? On the one hand I say, “no way!” and on the other I ask, “way?” If my mother had been aborted due to natural causes or by my grandmother’s self-induced effort, I wouldn’t be to ponder this. I’m grateful I’m here and have the option to consider these memories. 
 

Pondering my relationship with my father and mother is one thing, remembering the harm done by life’s circumstances and those done to each other and to me, is another. Their firstborn twin sons, Johnny and Joel, died within a month after birth. They are buried in the dirt of a Belflower California cemetery. They have returned to the dust, and I believe they are with Jesus. I was born a year and a half later. Mom was alternately joyful, or reclusive, or throwing pots and pans and cussing loudly. Dad’s poker face was favorable at the poker table but a loser with mom. He could not connect with her and make her whole, and neither could I. Mom divorced dad by the time I was twelve. Several grieved! 
 

I don’t want to ignore or deny these memories. God’s goodness is greater than the harms done. I know I was hurt, and I have hurt others. My family is complicated, too complex for me to find simple answers. I think of this when praying “…forgive me for hurting others, as I forgive those who have hurt me.”  
 

I was hurt, and I hurt others, until I believed in Christ alone, grace alone, and faith alone. More to come what I learned in my relationship with mom, “Life, Dirt, Dust, Jesus” IV. 
 

Ken and Nancy Williams served for some 25 years in pastoral ministry, and then almost another 20 years serving and mentoring other pastors.  With the heart of a pastor Ken continues to write and blog from upstate New York where he and Nancy live close to their grandchildren.