My mom was born in 1934 and grew up when segregation was still a thing. She often told me when I was younger about how terrible it was. Just because she was raised in it didn’t mean that she accepted it as normal.

But, being in the South (aka Bible Belt), being the daughter of a farmer..marrying the son of a farmer...values were very conservative and we were raised in a conservative church.

I always questioned the theology (if you can actually call it theology) of what we were being taught. I never truly accepted it. It was too rigid, too judgmental and left too many people on the fringes, although I couldn’t articulate it at that time.

My sister was the first break free and find the Presbyterian Church. I followed not long after.

The ability to question my faith and to realize that followers of Christ didn’t have to live and breathe hell, fire and brimstone was completely refreshing.

I often wondered what it was about me and my sister that made us “rebel” so much against the only thing we knew growing up? I always knew that the denomination I was raised in was completely wrong (for me).

Well, folks, my mom is the reason. I think she believes but I also thing she questions the tenets of her faith. I think if she had not been entrenched in it for so long, she would make a great Presbyterian.
Anyway...she is progressive in other ways as well.

She GETS Black Lives Matter. She really gets it. She understands the issues that Black people face in our country.
She told me today “All my friends are racists. They just don’t understand”

So, all this is to say, THANK YOU to my spitfire mother. If she had been born just a generation later, I suspect she would be in the midst of the protests.

A lot of people don’t want to be like their mom, but I DO and I’m actually very PROUD that I’m so much like her!