You know the people who adopt you when you are no longer a JW?
The ones who accept you just because you are you and do not laugh too hard that you were once one of the JW's. Well Bettie was mine. She was the meanest old beeeeaaatch hhhh you ever met. She in her last days would come out of her coma state just to throw you the bird. She died Monday and I will sorely miss her.
But I thought maybe for just one post, you all could get to know one of the big crazy influences on my life. She was an amazing woman who raised 7 children and then took on several of us strays. She Wrote spiritual observations and such and sent them to me each day. I never quite believed it all, but I loved her just the same.
Below her pictures are some writings of hers. Remember this is a woman who hated the witnesses so much that she gave my kids presents, taught them holiday songs, patriotic songs, and any church song she could think of just to get them to grow up normal...as she put it. She once told my son that despite what mom said, when he grows up he can buy his own xmas tree. She actually cried the first time I went and bought one. Once because witnesses knocked at her door she put my name on the church list and I had all of every church at my door to preach. They brought me bread, etc...then one at a time she put all the elders in St James on the prayer list, so they too had a Door to Door experience.....
LMAO
Now, Laugh yours off a little...
by Bettie Carrell/Layman [lastdays]
I grew up with a practical parent, my mother, God love her, who ironed Christmas wrapping paper and reused it, and who washed aluminum foil after she cooked in it, then reused it. She was the original recycle queen, before they had a name for it.
It was the time for fixing things...a curtain rod, the kitchen radio, the screen door, the oven door, the hem in a dress. Things we keep. It was a way of life, and sometimes it made me crazy. All that re-fixing, reheating, renewing, I wanted just once to be wasteful. Waste meant Affluence. Throwing things away meant you knew there'd always be! more.
But then my mother died, and I sat in my kitchen that Sunday afternoon reading her old handmade cookbook in a binder. I was struck with the pain of feeling all alone, learning that sometimes there isn't any more. Sometimes, what we care about most gets all used up and goes away...never to return.
So...while we have it... it's best we love it...and care for it...and fix it when it's broken...and heal it when it's sick. This is true...for marriage... and old cars... and children with bad report cards...and dogs with bad hips... and aging parents and grandparents. We keep them because they are worth it; because we are worth it.
Some things we keep. Like a best friend that moved away...or a classmate we grew up with. There are just some things that make life important, like people we know who are special... and so, we keep them close!
Marantha, Bettie Carrell