Two people fell in love and share a legacy of faith
There ain’t nothin’ not affected When two hearts get connected…
Lessons Grandmama taught me
Loved one’s passing prompts reflections on her impact, even when she didn’t know it.
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‘I don’t know why God still has me here.”
I felt sad every time Grandmama said that.
Getting old is hard, but watching someone you love get old is harder. Most of all when that “someone” was Doris Sadler, the woman I called “Grandmama.”
B.T. Irwin with his grandmama, Doris Sadler, a few months before her passing in October 2023.
As a boy, I almost could not believe the stories I heard about her when she was a girl.
Like the one where she didn’t want to go to school, so she crawled under the one-room schoolhouse and made sounds like a mad dog. In a fright, the teacher sent all of the students home.
Or the one where she was barely a teenager when she learned to drive. In her daddy’s highway department dump truck. Standard transmission. Double clutch.
In high school, she captained the girls basketball team. Her classmates voted her “beauty queen.” She was so good at singing and strumming the guitar, her daddy drove her to the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tenn., knocked on the door and tried to get them to let her try out for the Grand Ole Opry.
After Grandmama graduated from Nashville Business College and went to work in the city, she met and married my granddaddy, Frank Sadler. He was a high school dropout who spent his whole career working on the railroad. They bought a fixer-upper in west Nashville, started a family and worked hard to make a life.
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Sometime early in their marriage, Grandmama started going to church again. For several years on her own, she took my mom and my uncle. Granddaddy stayed home. In time, her gentle example won him over. One Sunday morning, he came out of their bedroom wearing a jacket and tie. He was ready. Soon after, he climbed into the baptistry and gave his life to Jesus Christ.
Neither Granddaddy nor Grandmama ever had an “office” at either of the congregations where they were members. But they were there every time the doors of the church building opened.
Doris Marie Sadler and her husband, Franklin, after their wedding in 1949.
Every week for more than 30 years, Granddaddy changed the West Nashville Heights Church of Christ sign on Charlotte Pike. He counted the money from the offering plates. He fixed cars and lawnmowers for church members and neighbors and charged them only for the parts.
Grandmama taught Bible classes for the ladies. She held one-on-one Bible studies. She hosted ministers and missionaries in her home. She visited those who were grieving, shut in and sick. She sent cards to people who needed encouragement.
Grandmama was always doing, always going, for somebody.
That is why I understood her question late in her life: “Why does God still have me here?”
Granddaddy died in 2002. Over the next 20 years, all but one of Grandmama’s siblings died, too. Age took its toll. By her late 80s, chronic pain kept her in one chair in one small room almost all day, every day. She could not get out to go to church or visit family and friends.
I think she felt used up. Worse, I think she felt useless.
Even though Grandmama had to give up many of her lifelong habits, she kept three to the end: Daily Bible study. Daily prayer. And sending notes of encouragement. Her daily journal showed that she did those things even on the day she died, Oct. 7, 2023.
At her funeral, Bryan Hayes, the preacher at Grandmama’s last congregation, the Bethlehem Church of Christ in Murfreesboro, Tenn., shared how she influenced him to become a minister.
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Hayes talked about the notes of encouragement and prayers he received from her. Few people taught him more about the Bible. Every time he visited Grandmama, he felt like he was going to Bible class.
This was a woman who thought her useful life was over!
I take three lessons from this.
“If you’re still here, God is not done with you. Even the little you may be able to do can turn out to be a lot when God gets ahold of it.”
First, our senior members are living libraries of knowledge and wisdom. We forget or ignore them to our own impoverishment.
Second, you never know how “little” things like your own Bible study or prayers could be life-changing and even world-changing beyond your personal space.
Third, if you’re still here, God is not done with you. Even the little you may be able to do can turn out to be a lot when God gets ahold of it. So, cheer up! You’re not done yet. Remember the story of my Grandmama, Doris Sadler, and do what you can. With the “little” you can do, God will do more than you can imagine.
B.T. IRWIN directs and hosts The Christian Chronicle Podcast. He and his family live in Clawson, Mich., and are members of the Rochester Church of Christ in nearby Rochester Hills.
