Annie Ruth Jacobsen “Mama” | September 13, 1918 - January 11, 2012
A few months ago I sat in my Theology of Ministry class in Nashville, Tennessee discussing ministry to ill and the grieving and the power of presence and making people feel significant. My professor went on and on about a group of old ladies who sewed teddy bears for sick and dying children in hospitals in Knoxville. I smiled sitting in my chair knowing what none of the others (including my professor) knew. That was my Mama.
Several years ago, the 4 foot 11 lady throwing up deuces in the picture above started a ministry with two other ladies in our church sewing bears for the scared children in Tallahassee’s hospitals. Later, they would also commit themselves to sewing blankets for patients at Florida’s ill-equipped and poorly ran VA hospitals. Over the years, word caught on about this work and was covered by a magazine within our faith tradition. So even though my grandmother never delivered bears in Knoxville, Tennessee, her legacy and mission of compassion did. And it inspired and it comforted others.
All in all, Mama and her two friends put out over 21,000 hand sewn teddy bears for children to hug and hold. And that’s only a fraction of her life of ministry.
Not a single person in our standing-room only church auditorium had not been touched by her self-less life. She was a servant. And the thing was, she’s never set foot outside of the Mason-Dixon line. She never went on a mission trip to Uganda or India. She did what she could, where she could. And it turns out that’s quite a lot…even when she was ninety-three.
In her last years she sent over a hundred “thinking of you” cards each month and spent most of her day making people much younger but worse off than her feel special and significant and loved. Which was her purpose. She believed and told us often, that everyone deserved to be loved, no matter what. That is who Mama was and is.
Our pastor reminded of us of the words of the prophet,
“Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord. Look at the rock from which you were hewn, and the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many.”
This is the stone I was cut from and the legacy I am to live. I am so richly blessed and incredibly thankful to have grown up and spent twenty-two years no more than ten minutes away from my grandmother. She is a special lady and I look forward to singing doxology next to her once again.
