“Apples of Gold”

From The Desk Of Rev. Joan Krempel

David the King had made his share of mistakes, but he knew how to repent and walk away from them. God called him the apple of His eye. It gives me hope.

In the Holy Script there are a variety of apples, and apple trees. This is a story about a tree of golden apples that was planted in my spiritual garden. This is a personal story but you may see yourself reflected in it's ever-present but ever-changing mirror. It will arouse your remembrance and help you find your own apples of gold...

I was born a coalminer's daughter. I came into this world in 1932 in the little coal camp of Amigo, West Virginia, the youngest of four and the only daughter. Soon after I was born my mother became ill so the family moved in with my paternal grandparents.

When I was 15 months old my mother died of sugar diabetes. My father had silicosis, a miner's occupational disease better known as black lung, and 11 months to the day after my mother's death, he too passed away.

The whole country was in a depression and it would be difficult for any one family to take on four children (one had died at six months of age). My father, knowing he was dying, had written letters to my mother's relatives, asking each to take one of us to raise as their own. I was placed in the care of a maternal aunt and uncle who had taken care of me during my father's illness, and so I became their little girl and they loved me and cared for me as parents do. When I was seven years old, she too, became ill and it was necessary for me to stay with my maternal grandmother until she improved.

By the time she was well and ready to take me back, I had settled in my new home. At that time a discussion between the various relatives resulted in the decision that I had had enough trauma in my young life and it would not be fair to bring more upheaval by moving me again. Since I was happy and liked it at Granny's, it would be best to leave me where I was. I did not know about this discussion until I was grown and had children of my own. It was just as well, for I was not aware of, nor would I fully understand such things at that tender age.

My grandmother was a widow who still caring for her three youngest who were teenagers. We lived in the small clean town of Athens, West Virginia where there were always students from the State Teachers College looking for rooms. Granny usually boarded about three in a season and occasionally one in the summer.

In addition, my grandmother was an excellent seamstress and the townspeople kept her busy. She had an old treadle Singer sewing machine and I have seen her sew all day to make a dress for a quarter. Many of the townspeople had big gardens, fields, barnyard critters or cattle and so a lot of feed was sold in that little town. 

The feed came in cotton sacks that doubled as sewing fabric, plaids, stripes, dots or floral, whatever your pleasure. An adult usually needed four sacks for a dress, a child could get a dress out of one or two, depending on the size of the child. These were called feed sack dresses and everyone wore them. Granny always added hand made tatting or ribbons to mine. I heard the grownups talk about hard times but I didn't know anything about it.

We had fields that Granny plowed and sowed with corn and green beans, and a very large  kitchen garden that fed us for the summer and yielded a good supply for winter. Seven apple trees, two peach trees, two cherry trees, and a long grape arbor filled the back yard. We butchered two hogs every year, kept chickens for eggs and the stock-pot, and my great-grandmother’s cow supplied fresh milk, cream and butter. So we were never hungry and in fact, when ladies didn't have a quarter to pay for the conversion of a feed sack to a dress, they paid for it with a roast from butchered beef cattle, or extra butter, or whatever they had. In those days, bartering was a way of life, the great depression effecting every household.

Those were the dark days when unemployment swept the country like a plague. Leaving their families behind, honest men walked from town to town looking for work, going the distance required to find a new beginning.  It was a safe era, one did not have to be afraid to leave their doors open or unlocked at night. We were not afraid of strangers and we didn't know any. My grandmother always said, "A stranger in need needs a friend".

When a stranger knocked on our door, asking for a sandwich or a glass of milk my grandmother would ask, "When did you eat last?" They would answer if they could remember and she would say,  "Go around to the back door and into the kitchen. Stop by the pump and wash up first." It was a well pump at the corner of the house that was used before the town reservoir was created and we no longer used it except for washing my bare feet and hands before going into the house or for watering Granny's roses.

She always had a pot of vegetable soup or pinto beans cooking on that big cast-iron  stove, even in summer, and these weary travelers got a plate or bowl of whatever was cooking.  Then she would give them a paper bag and tell them to go out into the back yard and pick up some apples to take with them so they wouldn't get hungry on the road. 

Proverbs 25:11 says "A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of  silver". My grandmother was full of apples and she spit them out as gold and never knew it.

Sometimes a word fitly spoken is not necessarily a word spoken but can also be an encouraging smile, a sympathetic touch or an act of kindness. She always told me to be kind to strangers, for I might be entertaining an angel unawares. I didn't know that was written in the Bible so imagine my surprise when I ran across it years later. I had practiced it from the age of seven because that was the way I had been taught. I didn't know it was God's idea first, and not Granny's.

I remember so many things, all precious and private, .and it never occurred to me that I might one day write them down to share with others.

But as one grows older, more and more aware and appreciative of the divine hand that guides, these treasured memories become as apples of gold.  So many things to keep, so many to share, so many apples...

My golden apples are not from the wealth of Egypt but from my Father's storehouse of   spiritual treasures. You cannot buy my apples for they are stored in the heart, but they can be shared with those who have understanding.

One day my grandmother decided she needed a footstool. Her legs were so tired at the end of the day and it would be nice to prop them up. Of course, one did not just go out and buy a footstool during a depression when one was feeding a houseful. If one was enterprising enough, she went out to the woodshed and built one. So off we marched to the woodshed where I sat on a wooden platform and watched.

She selected scraps of old square stake material, some pieces of scrap flooring, and thin three-inch wide boards. I watched her saw them to size, nail them together, paint the legs and then take the rough homemade footstool into the house where she made a cushion topping with batting and a piece of scrap upholstery material. It gave me an idea.

I was eight at this time, and wanted to be eighteen. I shared my grandmother’s room and was fascinated by the way she stood before her dresser mirror to comb her gray hair. (She always combed mine into pigtails or finger curls by the kitchen sink.) She was a woman

that took care with her appearance, and even if she was going to the field to plow, her hair was neatly combed and clean clothes were covered with a full sized apron..

I didn't have a dresser, and I decided if Granny could make a footstool, I could make a dressing table for me. So, off to the woodshed I ran while Granny worked on her stool. I selected the pieces of wood I needed and began to saw and hammer.

I soon felt a presence behind me. I turned around to see Granny watching me, wondering if I was wasting her nails. I explained my plan and she said, "Well, be careful and don't hurt your self". She left and I proceeded to put together what I thought was an O.K. table. It was short, just right if I was sitting down, but too short if I was standing up. I would have to make a stool as well. 

A few hours later I carried the table into the house and into the bedroom. Then I ran back to the woodshed to get the stool. I carried it into the bedroom to set it in front of my new dressing table but the table was gone. I began to cry, my heart broken that Granny had removed it because it wasn't good enough to bring into the house. She was in the next room still sewing and didn't know I was hurting.

She called for me and, wiping my eyes, I went to see what she wanted.

There in the middle of the floor stood my table. Granny was at the sewing machine, making a skirt for it, and a square cloth to cover the top.

She didn't skip a stitch as she offered, "Bring your little stool in here and I'll cushion it for you."

She finished it in no time and helped me carry them into the bedroom where we set them up right beside her dresser.  I had no mirror for the wall but she gave me a hand mirror and I thought I was the berries. She had given me apples of gold in pictures of silver…

Always one to encourage talent or skills of any kind, she never withheld the necessities just for the sake of being frugal. Aware of the hard times, nothing was ever wasted, but a mind was a precious thing, too precious to block with a lot of objections. In this world, one had to learn to be enterprising, and do with what they had, and every budding of skill that surfaced was watered and fertilized and encouraged to bloom.

Granny didn't believe in praising children ...said it would give one the big head and a big head just gets in the way. When someone wanted to praise me she would stop them cold "Don't praise that child, you'll ruin her."  I realize now that her praise was in her encouragement and help, and in those famous sayings she didn't know were gold.

When I was a child, everyone wore a rose to church on Mother's Day. If your mother was living you wore a red rose, and if she wasn't you wore a white one. That June we were dressing for Sunday School and  I noticed that Granny didn't have a rose. Her mother was still living just down the alley on another street.  The thought of her going to church without a corsage was more than my young heart could bear. I ran down the alley, to the big fields across the road that belonged to my great-grandmother and began picking the spring flowers.

There were a lot of pretty colors to choose from, reds, blues, yellows, and violets... I picked what I thought was a nice-sized bouquet and ran back to the house. I tied them together with one of my hair ribbons and presented it to my grandmother. She commented on their loveliness, selected one of her best hat pins and pinned it to her dress. She wore that pitiful field grown wildflower corsage to church as proudly as anyone there with roses. Once again she had given me apples of  gold in pictures of silver.

Then came the day she sat down with me on the living sofa and said, "I have something to tell you and I want you to listen to me and then think about it.”  My thoughts began racing. She held in her hand an open letter and I could tell it had something to do with that letter. She began with a simple statement, "You have another grandmother.”  I just looked at her.  "She would like you to come for a visit.  She is your daddy's mother and she hasn't seen you since you were a baby. I agree that it is time you two meet and get acquainted. Your brothers will be there and I know you would like to see them."  To a nine-year-old this was news but it was not of earthquake proportions. It was something I would simply explore.

I don't remember who took me up to the hollow at Bud, but I remember we had to stone-step across the wide rushing creek at the ball diamond, climb up a high sloping incline to cross the railroad tracks and into a generally hidden opening to the wooded hollow.

We then had to walk up the single path about three-quarters of a mile to another creek, not as deep and not as wide and with more rocks to step on, just below the house where my widowed  grandmother lived. It seemed so far removed from the rest of the world with only the sounds of the forest and it's creatures and the constant tinkling of water flowing over rocks. My brothers were there to meet me as I crossed the second creek.

My grandmother came out of the house. She was a tiny woman, with one leg shorter than the other, the permanent effect of polio she suffered as a child. She had a winning smile and a warm pair of arms and I liked her immediately. I was going to be there for two weeks and this looked like fun.

That night, as I crawled into the big brass bed that had belonged to my parents, she very gently cautioned me, "Now, if you wake up in the night and see a big black bear standing here, don't be afraid. I leave the front door open for cool air and sometimes he comes in to just nosey around but he won't hurt you." I begged her to leave the light on but there was no electricity. There were only oil lamps and it was too dangerous to leave one burning while everyone was asleep. There was enough moonlight to see by and there was nothing to be afraid of.

Three nights later I finally surrendered my fear and surrendered to sleep without struggling.

Now I had two Grannies. One I lived with, and one I visited.  I would learn to love both more than I can ever tell you. The one I lived with taught me so many things and I have passed these on to my own children, who, one at a time, have surprised themselves by "sounding just like Mom".

So the apples of gold continue to drift down through the generations, to my grandchildren, and  if the Lord tarries, beyond them. The one I visited told me wonderful stories about our Savior and their relationship, and how he talked with her in the night visions. I didn't understand this at the time, but in later years, when He began ministering to me in the night visions, I understood fully. I have tried explaining it to my own grandchildren, but they do not yet understand.

Later that same year, December 7, 1941, we went to church as usual. During services the  pastor was given an announcement he then shared with the congregation. Japanese planes had bombed Pearl Harbor. We rushed home to turn on the radio. All day we listened to each "latest report". I was only nine years old but this news tore into my spirit like shock waves as I absorbed this dramatic and frightening event.

I refused to go to school the next morning. I wanted to stay home and listen to the President's speech.  It was Monday, a school day, but there wouldn't be anyone there, at least if they cared enough to stay home and listen they wouldn't be there.

My grandmother, realizing this was history in the making, and too beside herself to argue, relented and allowed me to stay home. They ran the speech every half hour and by the end of the day, I had memorized President Roosevelt's radio speech to the nation, declaring war on the empire of Japan. For years I could recite it word for word, but time takes care of such things and today, I cannot recall a single entire sentence other than "It is a day that will live in infamy."  I joined with others, and everyone in that little town, as well as across the nation, moved into high gear for the days ahead.

We children did our part, combing the dumps for old tires or inner tubes that could be recycled for the war effort, looking for any scrap metal or cans and having paper drives to collect bundles tied neatly by housewives. Every red wagon in town was busy. At birthday parties, there were no presents. Every guest brought a 10-cent savings stamp. When you had enough stamps to fill your book you started another book and when you had three books you traded them in for a  $25.00 war bond. 

Pennies were saved to buy savings stamps and savings stamps were collected to convert into war bonds.  We worked hard. We had men in our families involved in combat and we would do our best to help them.

My oldest brother joined the Navy and served in the South Pacific. My uncle was a medic in the Army overseas and later, another brother suffered three separate wounds in the European theatre. My grandmother's youngest son also joined the Navy in time and although she never let it show, I know my grandmother spent many sleepless nights.

Many prayers were said and eventually all but one of the men in our family came home. Our hearts were heavy for those whose sons and fathers didn't return, but we never questioned the One who holds such decisions in His hand. Granny said not to...

Those years taught me about apples. We had bumper crops and they were plentiful for sharing. It had been my job to select the apples we stored for the winter and I was admonished,  "Not one bruised apple goes into the barrel." A bruise is the beginning of  rot and rot is contagious. Bruised apples were peeled, cut up and made into applesauce.

I learned that if the apple was clean when it went into the barrel, it would stay clean all winter, firm and juicy, and sweet. And, if there was nothing there to infect it, it would remain as good as the day I selected it. Granny said that was the way God sees us...as apples without bruises or rot, and if we let nothing infect us, we'll keep for a lifetime...

When I was twelve, just a year before the war was over, my grandmother remarried and we moved to Princeton, six miles away. Still on a small farm, just outside the city limits, but close enough to walk to town, to school or anywhere I wanted to go.

My brother bought me a bike and this became the vehicle of my social life - picnics in the country, group biking on Sunday afternoons, visiting friends or running errands.

As children do, I suffered many disappointments and shed many tears over things that I didn't know were lessons, and some of these sank so deep they are still embedded in my soul.

Today I still have my 1945 WWII ration coupon books. They are stamped, "Property of the United States Government." They will have to come and get them, I will not turn them in.

From the early days of boarding students I learned to set a proper table and from the family Sunday dinners when everyone came, I learned social graces and entertaining.

These teachings were important for I grew up to become a hostess of many socials at the church or dinner parties in my home. My whole adult life has been one of entertaining.

It is a fact that the entire decade of the 80's was filled with one social after another. When an evangelist or apostle came to town, they wound up at our table with local pastors and their wives for an evening of fellowship. Our home was always open to these missionaries of God. We once hosted five missionaries from Scotland for three days and felt blessed to have them.

I learned to make do when times were tough and consider the blessings, and to recreate or make over what was still good.

I learned that it was a sin to waste food. I learned to be kind to strangers and to have compassion for the less fortunate. I learned that I enjoy making people happy and I became a giver. I still do... I still am...

I have learned that when one receives apples of gold in pictures of silver, they are responsible to pass them on to others.

Through the years I have been an Intercessor, an international evangelist, and a teacher. But what I really am is a daughter of the Most High, joint heir with Jesus Christ, and full of apples...

In June 1991 I received a call from West Virginia that my grandmother was in the hospital and was praying to go home to Heaven. She had asked everyone in the family to pray in agreement with her but they wouldn't. I left immediately. Meanwhile, my aunt told my grandmother that I was on my way. "Good", she said, "She'll pray with me". 

At 101 years of age, she did not have all of her faculties, sometimes she knew who you were and sometimes she didn't. Most of the time she didn't, but for some reason she  seemed to always recognize me or my name. I strongly believe it was spirit witnessing to spirit, the spirit in her recognizing the spirit in me. One cannot always explain spiritual things adequately, but I believe this is the way it was with us. We had shared many long talks through the years about things spiritual and I believe it became the foundation she remembered and leaned on when she could no longer remember faces.

I walked into her hospital room and toward her bed. She looked up at me with a big smile but there was no "Hello", or "Good to see you."  She had one thing on her mind and she would not let it go.

Her words rushed up at me as she grabbed the railing of her bed,  "Joan, will you pray with me?"

Returning the smile I assured her,  "Of course I'll pray with you."

I took the anointing oil out of my purse, and began to pray as I anointed her eyes, ears, head, lips, hands and feet. I was anointing her for her burial and she knew it. The nurse told me that she had been quietly praying, "Please, Father, I am so tired, please let me come home." According to the nurse, she had prayed that prayer continually for two days.

The following morning I arrived at the hospital at 10 a.m. My uncle was with her but accepted the chance for a break when I arrived, having been there since 7 a.m., and he left. I pulled the chair up to the side of her bed and began to minister to her.  I quoted precious promises and comforting scriptures and soothed her with the Word of Life. At every pause, she would say, "Don't stop, keep going." I continued to minister as I began to notice a slight change in her countenance. Her cheeks developed a very faint color, her eyes became clear and bright, sparkling with remembrance, and she was drinking, drinking, drinking... consuming sweet waters and apples of gold...

Finally, she said, "You promised to pray with me." There it was again. She had not forgotten.

I began to pray, not touching the thing she wanted. She stopped me, raised a finger and said, "You didn't tell Him what I want."                                                                    

" Granny, you pray for what you want and I'll agree with you."

"No, I've been telling Him what I want but He doesn't seem to be listening. YOU tell Him."

"What do you want?"

"You know what I want."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

I looked at this frail 101-year-old beloved grandmother and knew that she was indeed tired. She was asking me to pray for her release to go home. I felt her weariness and her anticipation and knew it was right. It would be the last thing she would ask of me, and although it was a doozy I didn't blame her a bit.

I closed my eyes and began to pray.  My hand on her arm, I asked our Father to lovingly cradle her into Heaven where she would be young again, and vibrant and full of life. I told Him how much I loved her, how much she had done and been to me, but that I was releasing her now into His strong hands to be taken home. I reminded Him that this was her wish but I was in full agreement with her.

We had had two wonderful hours together by lunchtime when my aunt came to feed her. We visited until Granny went to sleep then I left. She was tired and needed some rest. Others would be coming soon. No need to stay and interfere with their visits.

My aunt and I arrived at the hospital the next afternoon just minutes too late. We were stopped at the door to her room. The family was waiting in a private lounge. I told the nurse I wanted to go into the room and see her. It was okay, she said, I could go, she had just wanted to warn me. My aunt did not want to join me. She couldn't... she just couldn't...

I stepped into the room and closed the door. The presence of Holiness met me there. I walked over to her bed and looked at her, whispered a brief, "Thank you, Father", and kissed her forehead. Tears began to well up, not because she was gone, but because of the heaviness of the presence of His Holiness that permeated the room.  I could sense two presences standing near the bed, hers and His and I knew that she was full of joy. I could feel it. It was like fresh snow, the glorious cry of a newborn, the joy of laughter...It was rapture in waiting, to say goodbye one last time to anyone who came...

Most of her friends had predeceased her so it was decided not to have a funeral, just a graveside service. Still, there were about 60 or so people there. I was honored to speak at that service a tribute of apples for the lady of apples...

A year later, I was blessed again when I returned to the same Baptist Church I had attended as a child in Athens, West Virginia. Exactly 50 years to the month after moving away, I now stood in it's pulpit, the first and only woman to stand there in over 200 years of it's history.

My grandfather and my great-grandfather had stood in that pulpit, now it was my turn. What an honor. I looked out over that congregation at faces from the past, old neighbors, friends I had gone to grade school with, distant relatives and those who had known and loved my family for years. A few were strangers., but they wouldn't be after today! I had been warned ahead of time that I would have to end the service by 12 o'clock because at 12 o'clock  they would get up and walk out, that they were funny that way.

I started out by challenging that statement. I told them I had been pre-warned but "You wouldn't do that, would you?"  They chuckled, laughed, nodded "Yes" and I knew then that my aunt, whom I was visiting and whom God had used to arrange this special day, had been right to warn me.

I turned the service over to the pastor at ll:55. As the last verse was being sung, and the Deacon gave the benediction, the pastor and I made our way to the front door. The people waited in line for their hug, and to assure me, "Please come back", and "You're welcome here anytime."

Precious people, saying precious things to me... apples of gold in pictures of silver...

I come from a long line of preachers. My maternal grandfather was a Baptist pastor and an evangelist and I have inherited his books. They are priceless to me, one being a first edition of Maria Woodworth Etter's "Signs and Wonders", published in June 1916. He had no doubt studied it carefully for he had written notes in the margins. It gave me pause to marvel at his apparent hunger and thirst for more of God. 

My great-grandfather and his two brothers were circuit riders, Methodist I believe, and so it seems the mantle was handed down to each generation. As far as I know, I am the first and only woman in my family to receive it.

I have in my possession the old footstool Granny built in the woodshed. It still bears the original paint on the legs and that same old cushion topping and cover.

Of course the padding has shrunk down to nothing, but I wouldn't dream of taking the old cover off and re-doing it. I simply made a new skirted topping for it, slipcover style that can be taken off and laundered and slipped back on, and topped it off with a matching embroidered pillow. It is white, and sits in front of my chair in the living room. When people ask about it, I turn it upside down, show them the wood, and tell them the story.

Only when someone asks do I confess that the old woodshed was also the house of correction. You see, memories of deserved spankings are paled by the memories of long-lasting and more important things.

Hanging on a living room wall is a 20 x 20 enlarged portrait of Granny in her bonnet and apron, walking  from her garden at the age of  95. It is the only picture in existence of her with her "work clothes" on.  It was a candid shot, taken without her immediate permission or knowledge, showing it to her only after some time had passed.

Portraits of her matronly grace and fine features do not tell a story. But the picture on the wall is a testimony of her faith, her endurance and that indomitable inner strength that kept her going, even if she did need a stick to walk with. Many of us will never see the age of 95, let alone 101, but if and when we do, we will no doubt have our own stick to walk to the garden with.

I recall the summer when Granny was about 84, my husband and I took her to North Carolina to see my newborn grandson, her newborn great-great grandson. On the way back to West Virginia she wanted to stop and visit her mother's baby sister. Well, Aunt Darcy was about 96 at that time and when we pulled up in front of her house, she was sitting on the front porch with a dishpan in her lap. Yep - you guessed it - she was peeling apples.

The old photo albums were brought out and my husband and I left these two very excited ladies to the privacy of memories and much giggling. What a treat that was, what a blessing from the Father, what a joy in their hearts that was there for all who could, to see. Aunt Darcy left our world at the age of 106, predeceasing Granny only by a few years. I can still see her sitting on that porch, those 96-year-old hands, slowly peeling apples for applesauce she would store for the winter.

There are very few cut and dried answers and there is certainly no bypass around life's growing pains. We are born, we learn, we fall down and get up again. We continue to grow, and when we are asked by Heaven to do so, we endure even the most difficult tests. Somewhere along the way, everyone makes a choice... give up and give in (as some do), or accept the challenges offered and do your best with what you have. True character is revealed by the crisis, character is changed or strengthened through the crisis. Trying to short-cut it or go around it merely reveals the need for character growth.

It requires stretching out daily with one hand on the plow and the other in the hand of the Savior. There are two observations I totally agree with: (1) youth is wasted on the young, and (2) wisdom only comes to those who court her.

I have also learned, though not easily, that opportunity is available to everyone if we are watchmen at it's door, awake when it opens, and are willing to give to others God's apples of gold in pictures of silver...

Joan Krempel
June 22, 2002
 

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