Thankful for the women in my life! ...and my first public performance

This Thanksgiving, I am especially grateful for the many amazing women who have influenced my life, both past and present.  If you know me or follow my blogs, then you know I have no memory of my beautiful and talented mother.  In some ways though, I feel I got to know her through her wonderful friends.  All my life, and even still to this day, I love when people talk about her.  Knowing they were close to her makes me feel close to her.  

I recently saw two of my mother’s close friends who are still living!  Seated to the left in this picture is Toni Suiter, mother of WRAL’s Tom Suiter.  At age 95, Toni is still as radiant as ever!  Seated to the right is Janice Gravely, now 97!  Janice is the most amazing woman I have ever known!  She does not even dye her hair!!!  Janice was being inducted into the Twin Counties Hall of Fame which was the reason for my visit to my home town of Rocky Mount, NC.  

​Janice’s service and accomplishments create a list a mile long.  Many know her as the lady that crash landed a plane after her husband died at the helm and lived to write a book about it, Won't Somebody Help Me!    

​But this is the Janice I know....

​Everyone who knows Janice, knows that first and foremost, she passionately loves Jesus.  But when I was growing up in her home, she did not preach to me with her words; she lived her faith with her actions.  After my mother died, Janice, already busy with four children of her own, hosted my widowed father and his four kids every single Sunday afternoon, sometimes through dinner!  This went on for many years!  ​When I was older and eager to grow in my own relationship with the Lord, Janice  spent many hours helping me grow in my faith through Bible study & prayer.

​It was also in her home that I grew to love music. I loved to listen to her late husband, Edmund, play jazz tunes on their Steinway piano, the first Steinway I ever played! All of her children played different musical instruments. Janice would host community talent shows and musicales in her home. I think my first public performance was at one of those talent shows when my sister and I played the fun duet, Heart and Soul!

I could write my own book about the many ways Janice and so many other women have patiently and kindly poured into my life both physically and spiritually!  I am blessed with mothers too numerous to count!