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Even if there isn’t a chocolate pie involved!
Dateline: Thursday, May 8, 2025
Today, forty-four years ago, Donya and I received a dispatch from Heaven. It read, “We interrupt the mess you are about to make of things to bring you this bundle of joy.”
So, while we were not yet 20 years old, we added parenthood to the litany of things we were unprepared to handle. A couple of days before Mother’s Day, 1981, Donya held her first daughter, Ashley Denise, in her arms. And it was on.
Some may think I write too many sonnets and poems or sing her praises too loudly and incessantly. That is only because they don’t know what I know about her. They don’t know that she became a teen wife and then a teen mom, and between the two, a cancer survivor. They don’t know that endometriosis almost claimed her first daughter before she could be born. They don’t know that when she was six months pregnant, the surgeon removed one ovary, which had swollen to the size of a grapefruit, and one-third of the other. They don’t know that her knucklehead husband left a good-paying job mid-pregnancy to pursue his preaching dream. They don’t know that, two years later, with a toddler in tow, living in a tiny dormitory on the campus of Baptist Bible College, making a cinder-block hovel a home while her husband carried a full load of college courses and worked a 40-hour job, which meant he was mostly gone from before 7AM until after midnight every weekday, she carried her second daughter to term. They don’t know the horror of learning that your daughter has a “birth defect” and may never walk. They don’t know how she handled her husband’s frustration when he was forced by circumstance to leave that college un-degreed so his daughter could undergo a frightening, risky surgery back home. They don’t know about her having to move with her little family into her parents’ home, and then into a government-subsidized apartment complex with the down-and-outers. They don’t know she had to pick up stakes and follow that preacher dream to California, 1,600 miles from her parents. They don’t know how she juggled bills that amounted to more than her husband made. They don’t know how she worked with California Crippled Children’s Foundation to get her daughter access to the world’s best orthopedic and neurological care at Stanford University. They don’t know how she handled the crash-and-burn of her husband’s ministry in 1997, or how she rose to the occasion to enter the workforce and beat back the hounds of Hell baying at her family’s door.
They don’t know the Hell I put her through or the disasters she loved me through.
They don’t know. So, I tell them. Over and over. Ad nauseum. I tell them.
It is easy to look at her now, 63 and the possessor of age-defying beauty, living her comfortable life, doting on her grandsons, reveling in the lives of her daughters and their families, hosting family gatherings in her fine house with a backyard haven and the swimming pool she always wanted, and think she’s got it made, if you don’t know what made her.
I could not author a poem beautiful enough or sing a song with adequate notes to do her justice. But understand this: while I have access to words, I will never stop trying.
Written February 14, 2023
FOR DONYA
Your beauty is the brilliance of first light
And the mystery of the deepest night
A dozen roses would never do
10,000 roses couldn’t equal youYour beauty is the crest of the highest peek
The words stuck in my throat when I try to speak
All the words in every tongue
Every love song ever sung
Every church bell ever rung
Every lily in every meadow
Is content to live in the shadow
Of the beauty God put on ya
My dearest Love,
My priceless Donya
Like a lily among the thorns is my darling among the maidens.
—Song of Solomon 2:2
A wife of noble character, who can find?
She is far more precious than rubies.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he lacks nothing of value.She brings him good and not harm
all the days of her life.She selects wool and flax
and works with eager hands.She is like the merchant ships,
bringing her food from afar.
She rises while it is still night
to provide food for her household
and portions for her maidservants.She appraises a field and buys it;
from her earnings she plants a vineyard.She girds herselfc with strength
and shows that her arms are strong.She sees that her gain is good,
and her lamp is not extinguished at night.She stretches out her hands to the distaff
and grasps the spindle with her fingers.She opens her arms to the poor
and reaches out her hands to the needy.When it snows, she has no fear for her household,
for they are all clothed in scarlet.She makes coverings for her bed;
her clothing is fine linen and purple.Her husband is known at the city gates,
where he sits among the elders of the land.She makes linen garments and sells them;
she delivers sashes to the merchants.Strength and honor are her clothing,
and she can laugh at the days to come.She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and faithful instruction is on her tongue.She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.Her children rise up and call her blessed;
her husband praises her as well:“Many daughters have done noble things,
but you surpass them all!”Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting,
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.Give her the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her at the gates.
—Proverbs 31:10–31
Rise up, children! Arise, shine! Your mother has lightened your load and lit the way.
Also, she made a chocolate pie.
