Mary K’s Lawn

“We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

(1 Thessalonians 1:3)

It started just a month or so after our church was born…  Someone realized that MaryK couldn't keep up with mowing her grass. As a three-day-a-week dialysis patient, she simply doesn't have the strength. So prompted by love, several of our folks started taking care of it. It was sweaty work; at least one lawnmower wouldn't start and ended in tears, and another burned itself out — it was labor, trouble. Often MaryK wasn’t even there, as she was so often in the hospital. At one point, due to scheduling conflicts and broken mowers, the grass got a little long. For whatever reason, a couple of neighbors were giving her a hard time, complaining that they wanted a “nice” neighborhood.

One of the college students who acted as a shuttle driver to help get MaryK back and forth from dialysis is a black man named Delbert. He likes MaryK a lot, and has often helped her with simple household chores when she returns weary from the hospital. One day, while taking in her mail, Delbert found a piece of paper in the mailbox.  He looked at it and sort of crumpled it up. MaryK challenged him, but he said it was nothing and wouldn't give it to her. Eventually, he relented and gave her the note. I hesitate to repeat what it said, because it’s ugly and contains a word I don’t like at all.

The note said this: “Your grass is a mess and we want to keep this a nice neighborhood. Why don’t you get one of your niggers to cut it for you?” It both sickens and infuriates me that this kind of ignorance and insensitivity still exists, no matter how much we try to ignore it ourselves. I’m sorry Delbert had to read that note. But I’m forever amazed and changed by what he did with it.

None of us knew about the note. Two of our guys, Dex and Jasen, had actually agreed to meet there two days hence to get the lawn taken care of, but when arrived the grass had already been cut. Standing there talking, wondering what had happened, they were greeted by MaryK – she’d only recently returned from dialysis and had been sleeping.

And this is the story: Delbert had picked MaryK up, taken her to the hospital, then returned to her house and mowed her lawn. He then went back, picked MaryK up and brought her home. And when she thanked him for mowing her lawn, he asked her to forgive him. Because he’d been angry, and because he feared that he had sown seeds of anger in the spite he felt for her neighbors as he mowed MaryK’s lawn.

Here is a man who has truly done a labor of love, humbly asking us to pray for him because he’s ashamed of his anger. Can any of us really imagine the soul weariness of this dear young man? Generations of hatred that he didn't deserve, yet he rose up above that only to get down on his knees and serve a white woman from a mostly white church. That is a labor of love.

MaryK’s called me, her pastor, to tell me the story, and I called Delbert a hero, and Mary K told him. That weekend, our church went on our first pilgrimage, to Mary K’s home church New Song Vineyard.  They blessed us, commissioned us, and in a small way, we were an encouragement to them. A few days later, Delbert wrote MaryK an email, reproduced unedited and in full here:

Dear Miss Mary,

I hope this finds you well.  How was the weekend visit to your Ohio church family?  I hope and pray it was a blessing for everyone involved.  I prayed God’s blessings over all in transit and all who were awaiting you.  I wanted to share something with you.  My Nana gave us all a health scare and I rushed my Mom to the hospital to be at her side.  As you know, I shared my experience about your lawn and your Christian family.

But I didn't know my Mom passed it on to my Nana.  Well she did.  Nana was in ICU and we could only be at her side 2 at a time.  When Nana knew I was next on the list with my uncle she asked if she could see me alone.  I went in and she took my hand and told me the story I had heard so often about her marching with Dr. King in Selma.  She still had the scar to prove it.  She told me how over the years especially as she became a mother and a great grandmother, how discouraged she had become at times seeing King’s dream never coming true.  Miss Mary, she squeezed my hand as she told me that my actions followed by the prayers of you and your white Christian friends restored her faith and that she was so proud of me – me still in all my shame.  She told me the dream was still alive and that I should claim that title hero your pastor gave to me.

She made me promise then and there to claim it and I did.  She said she knew the dream would never die as long as folks like you and me continued on in love in the midst of hatred.  She told me her faith in the dream so long fading was totally renewed and she herself called me and you folks her hero.  Miss Mary, my Nana went home to the Lord 3 hours after that.  And I know she died with hope and peace.  And I had to thank you and your friends and family for giving her that.  I’ll write again soon.

Love,

Delbert

This is what love does! With an unselfish, sweating, wearying sacrifice, Delbert sowed seeds not of anger but of love. More than forty years after his Nana’s brave labor for justice, as her own faith had begun to fade, God rose up for her a son who would inspire her once again and renew her hope. As often as we remember, as long as we tell the story of our church, Delbert’s name will be honored. He has inspired us to “Go and Be.”  He didn't judge his neighbors; he didn't invite them to church where they could “get better.”  He loved.  And that made all the difference.