Mrs. Musselman

My earliest memories of Mildred Musselman are probably having her visit our home on the first Sunday evening of every month. She’d receive preferential seating for our Bible study in the livingroom, partially because she was always the first to arrive, but moreso because even when she was “young” in her seventies and eighties, everybody treated her like a queen, or at least like a cherished matriarch.

I had to do an interview project for school, I’m guessing somewhere around fifth grade. I chose to interview Mildred and took intricate notes (a skill learned from my father’s modeling) as she recounted the history of Coopersburg. She spoke as though she could picture it all vividly in her mind happening just yesterday. Trolley lines and swimming pools and horse stables and the old church and more, including the bank where she worked for fifty years of her life, which still stands right next to her house that she purchased for a few thousand dollars. (I asked her recently if she thought she got her money's worth. "Oh, I think so.") And the bank of course, brings up the story that mesmerizes me even to this day: the time she was robbed by the infamous and notorious bandits who were making headlines across the country at the time.

In high school, my friend Dan began dabbling in photography. He took some black and white photos of her for his art class. Not the typical model, but the photos looked so professional at the time, like something I’d see hanging in the Philadelphia Art Museum. It had a pretentious title that made it seem all the more professional, but now seems like a typical high school art student cliché. But the photo seemed to capture her character quite well; you could sense a depth of history and a quiet hope in her warm wrinkles. He gave me a print for Christmas and I took it to college with me for my freshman dorm room.

She quietly rooted me on through high school, college, marriage, adulthood. Each time I’d come home on break, I’d walk over to her pew. I’d bend over and awkwardly hug her sweet little hunchback, afraid of breaking her, and she’d hold on a little too long. She’d grab my hand and squeeze as much as her arthritic hands could, telling me how good it was to see me, ask me how I was doing, and remind me she had been praying. I’d ask her how she was, and she’d say, “Oh, I’m OK.”

No one seemed more pleased about our plans for France than she did. I’d ask, “What do you think?” and she’d say something simple like, “I think it sounds very good…” Those simple words held more encouragement than most others.

And she was praying. In every conversation, she’d say sweetly and humbly, “I’m praying,” in such a way that you knew she was, making you feel almost as if that was the only thing she was doing, and I’ve come to believe it probably was.

The last time I saw her, Erica and I stopped by for a brief visit with the new addition to our family. I asked her how many grandkids and great grandkids she had by now. She said as though she was blushing, “Oh, I don’t know.” She was never married, no biological children, but she had quite a family. I considered myself one of her grandchildren, my new son one of her great grandchildren, and I don't think she minded the attention. She seemed quite pleased to meet the little guy as he busily tried out each one of her livingroom chairs like Goldilocks, and told us it meant a lot to her that we would stop by.

That was shortly after I had preached my first sermon at Calvary. She wasn’t able to be there, as she hadn’t been getting out of the house anymore. But, she told me she heard I do quite a good job behind the pulpit, and she was anxious to listen to the CD. I told her to let me know what she thought, because she had listened to quite a few sermons in her day. (My estimate is at the very least five thousand, and that's not counting the ones she would listen to twice in one morning when she would attend both services over the past several years.)

I broke down crying as I thanked her for praying, realizing it was a big part of the reason I am where I am today, feeling so completely humbled and privileged to have people like her praying for me continually for the past 23 years. "You're welcome," she said. Overwhelmed with being just a few days into fatherhood and recognizing in those days a bit of what a future of ministry may hold, I managed to say between tears, “Keep it up. We need it.” Oh, how desperately we need it.

Her last words to me were, “I’ll keep praying as long as I can.”

She prayed for three more weeks after that night.