Janet Benlien Reeves

When my husband and I pastored a small church in Maine years ago, a sweet lady in her 90s was a member of our congregation. May Duplisea had lived in that small papermill town her whole life. She had never married nor had children, and I don’t know what she did for work in the days before her retirement. But she had attended the church we were privileged to pastor for a time from the first Sunday her parents brought her as a baby. May knew more about the Bible than anyone we knew and didn’t hesitate to correct my husband if he got a detail wrong during a Sunday school lesson or sermon. Sometimes he had me run fact checks before he taught or preached just to be sure his work would pass May’s scrutiny. Even in her 90s, May could quote lengthy Bible passages by heart, and sometimes my husband invited her to do so both to keep her sharp and to let her set an example for the younger generations. May’s favorite ministry, however, was her art. During the week, May would trace pictures of ...

As I enter the Autumn of my life—Autumn, not Winter, Autumn—I’m beginning to realize that a lot of the things I once had the potential for, I no longer have the potential for. For instance, a professor of mine once told me I could be our denomination’s first female professor in one of our denomination’s universities’ religion departments. (This was the same professor who gave a whole lecture with my shoe in his pocket when one of my classmates stole it off my foot before class and slipped it to him by sleight of hand. Being one of only two female religion majors had its perils.) That nonsense aside, my professor’s compliment still means something to me, but teaching wasn’t my calling. The potential was there. Now that potential has passed. Our denomination now has several female religion department professors teaching in its universities. This example shows how our lives are built on choices: some that we make for ourselves, some that others make for us, and some that are determine...

For the past two days, I have been doing something new, yet also old. Twenty-four years ago, my husband gave me a beautiful cross-stitch project for my birthday. Our family had just moved to the Netherlands, and we were living in a hotel waiting for the home we planned to rent to become available. The owner of the home liked renting to military families and had a knack for lining up new tenants before the old ones moved out. The home was worth the wait; it remains one of my all-time favorite standouts from our many moves. The long-term hotel we were staying in, however, was not close to town, and our family had only been allowed to bring one car overseas. My husband needed it for work, so our three sons and I were somewhat hotel-bound. Furthermore, we only had the belongings we had carried in our suitcases for entertainment. We made good use of the library on weekends to keep us occupied throughout the week. The cross-stitch project was something I could do whenever the boys were eng...