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Mildred: God's Faithful Servant
By Barbara Radisavljevic of Barb's People Builders
If someone had introduced you to Mildred at a social event, you’d probably never know she was one of God’s special servants. She wasn’t famous outside her circle of church, friends and family. Her appearance was not spectacular. But to those who knew her well, she was a heroine. It’s just that most of her accomplishments were invisible to the eye. They were victories of the spirit over the flesh. I met Mildred when I worked at a Christian bookstore in Los Angeles. She had retired, but she’d come to supplement her social security income by working as our store’s bookkeeper part-time. Somehow, in the midst of our workdays and on our lunch hours, most of the women on the staff and some of the men, found that Mildred was someone they could talk to. She not only listened, but she also kept them in her prayers. She also wrote. Those of us privileged enough to spend a lot of time with her were often treated to her devotional writings – things God spoke to her heart during the night and prayers she had spoken to Him. Sometimes they were her prayers for us. Sometimes she had answers to share that encouraged us. Mildred was the one senior citizen in our little store. The manager and I were the next oldest, in our thirties. Most staff were thirty or below, and many were college students. We all came to Mildred when we had problems. She never gossiped or revealed our secret struggles. She was not judgmental even when we were wrong. Instead of preaching to us, as she often had a right to do, she would share her life with us. It was a confusing time of life for me. I was battling God over an issue in my marriage. I poured the selfish contents of my heart out to Mildred, and I was very surprised by her answer, which was in the form of a story – her story. This is a summary of the story she told. When she was 15, she had a special friend. Her friend, whom I will call Susan, had a brother, whom I will call Tom. Tom was much older than Mildred, and was of German descent. He exemplified the stereotype many people have of German men as being emotionally inexpressive and not very affectionate or quick to compliment. My memory is fuzzy here, but somehow Mildred agreed to marry Tom when she was 16, something she felt somewhat pressured into by Susan and their other friends, thinking that no one really took it seriously. Except that Tom did. He loved Mildred. She, though, did not love him in the way that he loved her. She actually thought of him more as a friend that she cared about, but not someone she was “in love” with. By this time they were engaged. Susan told Mildred that Tom would be crushed if she broke the engagement. She had given her word to marry him. And to Mildred, marriage meant a lifetime commitment. Mildred explained to me that she was a very sensual person. She liked color and emotion, and the idea of “being in love.” She was affectionate, but her husband was not. She wanted a soul mate, and her husband was not that, either. Tom was a good husband and provider and father. He was faithful and caring. He just wasn’t able to meet the emotional needs Mildred had. She respected him and loved him as a Christian brother and did her best to meet his needs. Perhaps he never knew he did not meet hers. They had married when Mildred was 16 and when I met Mildred she was 68 and they were still married. Now comes the part that convicted me. At some point during Mildred’s marriage, she met someone else – someone who seemed to have all the qualities Mildred had hoped to have in a husband. I don’t recall how they met, but their friendship developed somehow, and they discovered they were in love and that they were soul mates. And Mildred told me she then knew that they would have to stop seeing each other. They broke off their relationship with the agreement that they would meet just once a year to touch bases and see what had happened in each of their lives, and they stuck to that. To many of you born since 1950, that might not seem very heroic. Perhaps you would rather Mildred had divorced Tom, married her soul mate and lived happily ever after. Mildred, knew, however, that had she done that, she could not have lived happily ever after. Her closest relationship was with her Lord, and she had vowed before him to stay with Tom until death parted them – to love, honor and obey him. Breaking her vows would have broken her fellowship with the one she loved most, and keeping her vows was part of the love she expressed to God. Jesus had said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Sometimes keeping wedding vows is a hard thing. Today many people enter into marriage with the idea that if things don’t go the way you planned, divorce is easy. Some Christians also think that way. Today it’s considered foolish to live sacrificially for someone else when you might be happier doing your own thing. The minute what appears to be a serious problem in a marriage appears, the first impulse seems to be to flee rather than do the hard work of trying to solve the problem. That’s the easy way out, and not God’s way. Mildred was a heroine to me because she did not just talk about loving and obeying God, she did it, leaving me an example to follow. I knew that until the day she died, she would pray for me. The last time I saw Mildred was beside her bed in the hospital after her heart attack. She let me know then that she would be going Home soon to join Jesus, whom she loved more than anyone. Within two weeks she did just that. She had left, but her Jesus hadn’t. I knew if he had given Mildred the grace she needed to be a loving wife He could do the same for me. Now I realize how foolish I was back then. Had I left my husband, I would have missed a relationship that has grown richer through the years. Now I can honestly say that I love my husband with all my heart and I hope we will be able to grow old together. Mildred had faithfully fulfilled her God-given charge that “older women be …reverent in behavior…teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and submissive to their husbands, that the Word of God may not be discredited.” (Titus 2: 3-5) |
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Thank you for sharing this Heartwarming story. I'm sure that many people will benefit from your words of advise.
Best of luck.
Frederick
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