It's About Love - the Homegoing, with Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon

It’s About Love

The Widows Walk with Willie Mae Gordon – Part 2

[00:00:00]

Welcome back to part two of the Widow's Walk. This is Reverend Michele Owes. I am with Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon and together we are Teachers of Good Things. In our first session together, we talked about the importance of pre planning and Sister Gordon shared how important it was to know what our loved one wants when they go home to be with the Lord and that way there's no squabbling. There's no second guessing. We know because it's already planned and all we need to do is follow the script. Today, we will talk about the importance of love.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Mm-Hmm.

Rev. Michele Owes: I happened to attend Brother Gordon's homegoing service and it was really beautiful. I also had an opportunity to attend what we called the Family and Friends night, which was the evening before. And individuals [00:01:00] who were in attendance were able to make comments about their experiences with brother Gordon and how much we loved him. But one of the things that I don't think we often consider is the fullness of the families that our loved ones leave behind. Each person means something to the person who's gone home to be with the Lord and those individuals loved the person who is gone.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Mm-Hmm.

Rev. Michele Owes: When you have a homegoing service or have what some call a visitation, depends on where your training is and what your denomination is, but the damage done when we leave somebody out, whether purposely or not, that damage can be lasting. Can you talk a little bit about that with us?

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Surely, I can, and I am glad to be back with you again. I was part of a blended family. Well, my husband and I were, we were [00:02:00] blended. Okay. Each of us already had a child that came into the marriage, and then of course we had additional children. Which meant there was still somebody else to have to get that child here, since I did not bore the child.

I just think it was so important to kind of get the lineage or the generations so people would know. There was the first Mrs. Gordon, and they had a child together. They were important to him. The wife was at some point, but the daughter continues to be important. Then I came along, and I already had my [00:03:00] son, so they had to blend. We went on and had two more children together. So out of the four, we have had to learn how to blend, and with the blending comes their other families also.

Rev. Michele Owes: Amen.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: And that has been very important that we not make a difference when it comes to excluding people. Just because I might have birthed three of the four. I don't feel any different with the fourth one that I did not birth.

They are all my children. They were all his children and the same with the grands and the great grands. That's just our thing, each person is ours. Even my grands, they're all blended. But we don’t call them stepchildren. See, in the sight of God, they're our children.

[00:04:00] They're our grandchildren. Others can keep saying step all you want to, that's just not something that we chose to do. They're ours. The love when people are not excluded, it was overwhelming. When I say I saw people speak and say things, my husband and I made an impact in their lives.

I did somewhere along the line, thank you Reverend Owes, but it was people from all walks of life. That is because the love was shown abroad. It came from within and then it spread out. That's what we shared with our children and our grandchildren. Everybody has a role to play. Everybody is important.

Regardless of what they may or may not do, they're still ours. And it's [00:05:00] our job to still love them, to teach them and to show them. And I think that is what was just so overwhelming that I saw all this togetherness in that place that Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

Rev. Michele Owes: Amen.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Because love was in action and others wonder whether you can, or how can you do that?

Well, if you know God, you can do it because without God, it's just not going to happen. That's where we have all the friction, but my husband and I made the decision to put God at the center of our lives. And that's what we lived. He lived by and that's what I live by. L O V E was shown, and it was real.

It was real and it was felt and experienced by all I would say.

Rev. Michele Owes: Amen. Sister Gordon had the courage to, or enough love [00:06:00] to introduce the first Mrs. Gordon and the daughter from that union. Which was so beautiful. She wanted them to stand up. She wanted people to see them. Then she introduced her child from her first marriage. Then she introduced the children that they had together. All the grandchildren stood up and the great grands, and she told them all how much her husband loved them and how much he cared for them. They all felt a part of this, of this celebration. It was so heartwarming, and it was genuine. Nobody could question your heart because you were clear. No, I want you to know exactly how this beautiful family is.

[00:07:00] Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes. All right. Yes. Yes. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Wow.

Rev. Michele Owes: It was not about if they had or hadn't done the things that they needed to do. You told them they were important. You made a public announcement that they were important and that he loved them. Nobody was left with a question. One of the reasons that I asked to discuss this with our audience is because based on our understanding of people, we can systematically leave people out at such an important moment. Some of the scarring that takes place can be lifelong. It may not have even been our real intent. We may have been thinking something like, we just want everything to be peaceful. We don't want anybody to cause any trouble, or whatever we were going for. The real answer is love never fails for anybody who is going [00:08:00] through this process.

I want to share a scripture with you from Luke 7:47. It says, “Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”

Should we feel there are people in our family who are just always causing commotion, ask yourself, how much have I forgiven them? Or am I still holding things to their charge? Is my love for them greater than my lack of forgiveness for them? Can I get past what was the past and can I lovingly bring them into the future of this moment and let them know how important they are, despite all [00:09:00] the things that have taken place in the past.

Scripturally, this is Jesus who was talking, the letters are in red, it says, “Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”

If we feel that family members didn't love us enough, or didn't stay involved enough, or just seems to be separating themselves from us, how much have we forgiven?

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Hmm. My Lord, my Lord.

Rev. Michele Owes: How much have we forgiven? I wanted us to go through these practical things that we need to think about when we're planning the home going service and determining who is going to have an opportunity to do what. The grandchildren did something the granddaughters did a dance on one night, the grandsons were the pallbearers the daughters beautifully sang together in the choir during the service and on Wednesday night, and it was just a beautiful [00:10:00] display of family. They were not concerned about how we were put together as a family. Sometimes people are trying to protect a secret or trying to protect something that they don't want other people to know. But, but its God's family.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes.

Rev. Michele Owes: His arms are outstretched to receive anybody. And surely when He brings one of our loved ones home to be with Him, we've got to be able to forget the past and open our arms and receive them.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Hmm.

Rev. Michele Owes: I wanted you all to know I happened to witness this. It was one of the most beautiful things that I'd ever seen. Like you, I inherited a daughter. I call myself her bonus Mom.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes.

Rev. Michele Owes: She is my daughter.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes.

[00:11:00] Rev. Michele Owes: I love the fact that I got her without any, you know, nine months of my belly poking out. She’s mine.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Absolutely!

Rev. Michele Owes: And no labor. And I didn't have to do that. There was a lot of work that was done by somebody else. Her mom, she has a great mom. The point is love.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes, yes, it is Lord.

Rev. Michele Owes: It is enough to have to deal with the loss of someone. Then to have to question whether you love them enough. The people that are yet alive can answer and let you know how much they love you.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes.

Rev. Michele Owes: Set your heart at ease. For those who feel like, well, I'm not going to the homegoing service. I'm not going to show up because they didn't include me, or they didn't really love me, or involve me, or because, because.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Hmm.

Rev. Michele Owes: Let all of those thing go and be present because you're part of the family and you don't know what God wants to do.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Oh

[00:12:00] Rev. Michele Owes: Go.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes. Oh my God.

Rev. Michele Owes: Be present.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes. Oh, my goodness. It's amazing, and to that point, I had some nephews and great nephews that had never gone to a service, and they came to their Uncle Terry's service. He had a way, my sister says he could talk their language, the young people’s language, you know. He never would beat them up with words.

He just gave them some good instructions and said, okay, do it if you want to. Don’t if you don't. I saw people there and I said, good God, nobody, but my husband could bring all these people here. I hadn't seen them and here they are. [00:13:00] They came and were so glad. I was too, that they took the time to come out.

And I will share this, Brother Gordon, in October, told his daughter, Kabrina, I want to have a This Is Your Life birthday celebration. I want to know what people have to say about me before I leave.

Rev. Michele Owes: Amen.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: I don't know if he knew he was leaving in March or not. I don't know. But after he got confined to that wheelchair in September, and he was no longer able to get up on his own, without assistance from me, that was his request. She got on it. She delivered it. I am so thankful and blessed for November 7th to have his birthday on November the 10th, a big celebration [00:14:00] to hear and see what people had to say about him.

Rev. Michele Owes: Oh wonderful.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: He left here on a very good note, very good note. He just didn't make it back to church the one last time as he wanted to while he was alive.

But he did make it back.

Rev. Michele Owes: Yeah. He was always with us. He was always with us.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes, yes, yes.

Rev. Michele Owes: Amen. My husband passed away during the pandemic. There was no gathering at funeral homes. As a matter of fact, the funeral homes weren't allowed to have more than one or two people in them at a given time. One of the ways that we were able to include our family is to have each of them, or each of our children did their own video.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Oh wow.

Rev. Michele Owes: We made it part of the home going service so that everybody could see what each of the children felt and had to say about their dad. We built a website and anybody who knew him was able to put comments up about him. There was so much that we read and learned that we didn't know [00:15:00] so many people that he helped and ministered to. It helped us to learn these things. During the pandemic, we couldn’t gather, but, but we were able to use technology to glorify God in order to learn how his servants served the world.

I'm so excited that brother Gordon had an opportunity to have his

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes,

Rev. Michele Owes: We were excited to participate in the beautiful homegoing celebrations that you all planned.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes, yes. Amen and amen.

Rev. Michele Owes: Well, this brings us to our time. I want to thank you for being with us today. I think this is going to be a beautiful insert if you will, and it will help our, our new widows understand what we need to do in order to [00:16:00] make this very difficult process move smoothly.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes,

Rev. Michele Owes: Love is the answer. It is about love.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Yes, yes, yes. Yes,

Rev. Michele Owes: Thank you, Mrs. Gordon. We will be in touch with you very soon. All right. Those of us who are listening to the podcast, thank you for being with us. We appreciate you allowing us to share a portion of your day and to speak into your life. We pray that God ministered to you in some real way that will be tangible in days to come. If you are not a widow, but you know, someone who is, please share our podcast with them so that they might be able to learn and grow thereby. All right, well that's it for us today. Thank you. God bless you. Bye.

Mrs. Willie Mae Gordon: Lord, yes. Okay. Bye.