Rennie and Dan (Junior)

If you know our pretty big family, you may be wondering if that was something that happened because my husband and I wanted our new family to be like the ones we grew up in.  Well, it didn’t really occur to me because I really hoped for better..

I was raised with a sister and a brother, though from my point of view, this fact was rarely an asset in my life. Rennie was born only 13 months after I was, and then after two unsuccessful pregnancies, my mother gave birth to a boy, who was promptly named after my father and encumbered with a “Jr.” suffix. I say “encumbered” because that was the only name we used for him – or some derivation like “Junebug,” “Junie,” or “Junabaker.” Rennie was just Rennie (pronounced “ree’-nee”).

My earliest memories of Rennie are the pictures in our family albums. One Christmas, Rennie and I received twin dolls, and you can see the two of us in the black and white picture side-by-side with our dolls. 

Then the next picture shows me with both of them. I don’t think I was always appropriating Rennie’s stuff, but I’m sure I was a typical two-year-old when she was one, and a typical three-year-old when she was two.

I do remember being left alone in the car with Rennie once, while Mom went shopping at the commissary. I don’t think she was gone too long, but what little child has never “driven” a car when left alone in one. Every knob and dial must be explored! There was no such thing as a child restraint back in the day, so explore we did. One knob I first pushed in, and then pulled completely out, having no idea what it was. Rennie wanted it, so I put it in her hand. She howled and I got in trouble. That’s when I learned about cigarette lighters. (Every car had one.)

Next, I remember when my mom repainted my baby bed blue, to be given to an intruder – some other kid who would be coming to live with us. I was not thrilled about the loss of my bed, but it was not to be helped. When Dan came, his birth was difficult. Grandpa wasn’t happy that so soon after two miscarriages, his daughter had given birth to a baby boy so huge that he messed up her reproductive system. His famous line was, “What are you trying to do? Populate the State of California?” And this baby was really big! I never thought he looked particularly cute and tiny – he was just big and heavy.

From then on, sibling rivalry was the name of the game in our family. I always blamed it on the number “3” because I noticed that it was always two against one. It was only later that I really understood that it was always the two of them against the one of me. Only a few times did either Rennie or Junior take my part. The rest of the time, there was a lot of teasing of Margie going on in that trailer. My sibs told me they were exercising their pinchers so they could be strong enough to pinch me really hard, like little crabs, and they called me names, constantly, mercilessly. My mom and dad laughed when they heard the names, though. I knew I couldn’t hit the siblings, so instead I just whined and tattled on them.

There were two main problems with the relationship between myself and my brother and sister. First, my parents made the mistake of telling them, as they left home, that “Margie is in charge. Do what she says, and she’s going to tell me when we get home if you’ve been good or bad. If she tells me you’ve been bad, you will get spanked.” Not only did that not work, it also made them act up worse than ever. As soon as my parents left, the two of them immediately determined that they would do all they could to be as bad as possible. They told me, “We don’t have to do what YOU say, Margie,” followed by loud raspberries.

Once, when my brother was being particularly nerve wracking, I tried locking him outside – in Arizona, during the summer, during the hot part of the day. That made things a little more peaceful inside … except for all the melodramatic yelling and banging on the door. I unlocked that door when Mom got home and feigned innocence, but since Junior was certain he was going to die from sister brutality, he didn’t let me forget the incident.

The other problem was the fact that some of my teachers had my siblings in their classes and hoped aloud that they were just as smart and sweet as I was. That meant that my siblings always felt like they were being constantly confused with or compared to me. So, early on, they decided that they needed to choose the opposite direction from everything I did, in order to avoid all comparison. That meant that I stopped having any opportunities to sing with my siblings. They said, “No, Margie, that’s what you do, That’s not for me.” Instead, they chose photography or something else totally different.

The closest I ever got to Rennie was when I went to the 10th grade Christmas formal with a shy kid named Perry. My sister told me how important it was for me to kiss him at the end of the evening. She was delighted to instruct me on how to apply make-up and pluck my eyebrows. I was to show Perry to the outside porch door with the excuse of needing to lock it after him. Then I should stand there, looking seductive, and wait for him to kiss me. Since she’d been kissing boys since third grade and was so experienced, I took my lessons, practiced on mirrors, and promised to give it a try…

Perry, if you ever read this, I’m so sorry about that!

Meanwhile, Junior just seemed to be a weenie. The year I began my junior year in high school (11th grade), Junior was starting 7th grade. He needed to ride the bus to school for the first time. I know he was hoping I would save him from the high school bullies who were teasing him, but I halfway thought, well, he teases me all the time, so he’s getting what he deserves. I further rationalized that he really needed to learn to stand up to the bullies by himself. They’ll only tease him worse if Big Sister comes to the rescue. So I held my peace, and Junior cried.

And one day, being very weary of his constant teasing about my being fat, I finally did some quick calculations, estimated the odds, and took a chance. 

“OH YEAH?” I countered. “When you are my age, you will weigh more than I do!” 

“OH YEAH?” 

“YEAH!”

“BET ON IT!”

“YOU’RE ON!” I took out pencil and paper. 

“What’s that?”

“I’m getting this in writing. Here, sign your name.” 

It was a $20.00 bet. I had to wait three and a half years to collect on it, but it gave me pleasure to keep reminding him that on a certain date, we would see if he was fatter than I was.  By that time, he was much taller than I was at his age, and I was not merciful.

When our family moved to California near Grandpa Ware and Grandma Pearl, we were leaving behind a really good high school in Arizona. My grandparents tried to answer our questions before we moved, but every time I asked about whether we’d be going to a good school, I would just hear, “Well, you’ll have to go to Artesia like everybody else, unless you can afford a private school.” Of course, that wasn’t my call to make.

Our parents bought a house in Hawaiian Gardens just off the 605 Freeway. Grandpa Ware said he would paint the rooms whatever color we wanted them. I had to share a room with Rennie and she thought it should be painted black, so she could line her side of the room with her black light posters and they would glow in the dark. I wanted our room to be hot pink, with a thick fuzzy white carpet. Consequently, the room was painted white. We had to be content with shelving and bean bag chairs in our desired colors.

In the mornings, the record player we shared was in dispute, so we hit upon a compromise agreement. I would listen to “Come Together” to learn the words for the Youth Choir musical (see my last post) while Rennie was in the shower, and then she would listen to Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin while I was in the shower.

But I was hardly home anyway, with a schedule that included many and varied extracurricular activities. After school, my mom was working at an insurance company, and I was working at Aunt Jackie’s Hawaiian Shoppe. Rennie and Junior came home from school and didn’t have any big sister to babysit them, so they ended up getting in trouble. Sometimes I did come home, and it was clear that my siblings had been smoking. They didn’t hide it very well – the giveaway was that the smoke got sucked right into the house through the open window.

Rennie and I both signed up for Advanced Drama when we got to the new school, and we ended up in the same class. (The only time ever!) Since there actually was no official “Advanced Drama” class, the teacher just told us to work together to write a play while he taught the rest of the students. We were then to recruit actors to play the roles, and direct the play. That was our only assignment for the semester – and it was a mistake. Rennie and I were not really well suited for a collaborative project. So we fought over the writing of the play until she said, “You just write it, Margie. I’m leaving.” Then she actually played hooky and left me to write it by myself.

Rennie and Junior always refused to go with me to the Youth Group at the Baptist Church or to get involved in any church stuff. On Sundays, they were required to go to the Naval Air Station Chapel at Los Alamitos where our parents went after dad retired, but that was under protest. Mom said they got saved and baptized there, but that apparently happened after I left home, and I don’t think it “worked” very well.

But once, Rennie tried to renew our closeness by inviting me to come along with her to a party at a neighbor’s house. She said she wanted me to meet her friends. I had no idea it was a pot party, but I thought I would try to be friendly anyway. Sitting in a circle, a joint made its way around, but when it was put into my hands, I moved it along to the next participant. Rennie was very much offended that I would refuse her friends’ hospitality, but the friend told her to chill – it was cool if I didn’t want a drag on the joint – that left more for everybody else.

And then there was the incident where, walking home from work one evening, I saw fire trucks at our house. The whole driveway was wet, and the neighbors’ driveways were dry, similar to the fleece of Gideon (Judges 6:36-40). I was thinking there must have been a fire while I was away, so I was terrified. But the firemen were just finishing cleaning up and were getting ready to leave. They had to wash off the blood from the porch where Jerry, Rennie’s latest low-life boyfriend, had slit his wrists to show her how much he loved her after she broke up with him. His reasoning was, if he couldn’t have Rennie, he would just have to commit suicide – right there in front of her.

Dad had to build a room off the back of our house so I didn’t have to share a room with Rennie. The conflicts were too great and too often. But the room Dad built was on the other side of the large picture window at the back of the house. There was still no privacy because if I retreated to my room to escape my brother, he would simply open the drapes and continue ranting and cursing through the glass.

I left for Air Force Basic Military Training in 1974, in October just after my birthday. Like others who have joined the military after growing up in less than perfect circumstances, I was actually glad to get away. For my 18th birthday, Junior got me a really large white stuffed mouse, and I loved it! It was the best thing he’d ever done for me. I named him Barrymore and he had a place of honor in my life. It looked like Junior might actually miss me!

Perhaps a year went by, and then suddenly I got a letter from him! I was excited!

“Dear Margie,” read the letter, “I just wanted to break my silence to tell you why you haven’t heard from me.

“It’s just just that I can’t stand you because you’re such a self-righteous, hypocritical pig! You’ll probably never hear from me again.”

That was news – I thought he was just being irresponsible! It was so edifying I could hardly stand it. But things have never gotten any better, even after all these years… 

There are striking differences between me and my siblings, till it’s hard to truly grasp that they emerged from the same womb I did. I’m on the right, they’re on the left, and our universes keep drifting further in the opposite direction. This is what was set in motion when my siblings decided they had to be and do whatever was the opposite of Margie.

There were a few other encounters with Rennie and Junior over the years, but until this year, 2020, I hadn’t understood how much of an only child I had always been, and how firmly entrenched in anti-Margie sentiment my birth siblings remain. I still pray for them, and hope that they will someday meet someone they will listen to, that the Holy Spirit may still have an opportunity to touch their hearts before it is too late.

But thankfully, though the old adage “blood’s thicker than water,” doesn’t always hold up, Jesus’ promise to replace relatives does. As Believers in Christ, we are never alone.  Besides Jesus Himself, the Friend who sticks closer than a brother (Prov. 18:24), I have been given brothers and sisters in the Lord, who are much closer than my blood kin, and with whom I would unhesitatingly trust my life. You’ll be meeting many of them in future posts.

“So Jesus answered and said, "Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel's, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time –- houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions –- and in the age to come, eternal life.” 

~Mark 10:29-30

Thank you, Jesus, for that promise! I am a member of Your forever family, and I have wonderful real siblings who love me and forgive my failings because they take after their merciful, forgiving Father. May we continue to grow closer to each other and to You.

For it is in Your Name we pray, Amen.

Ahh! Music!

 Last Sunday, a Baptist church in California was fined $10,000 for two separate infractions -- 

1. Singing on Sunday morning -- $5,000.00

2. Singing on Sunday night  -- $5.000.00

Also last Sunday, Eric and I visited my Dad again. While he was busy overseeing the digging of a trench to lay electric lines, I found myself poking around in his home.  There in the corner, in a room just off the living room, was the piano, in need of some tuning.  I know that because I opened it up and tried it out a little.  A few of the notes made me cringe.  

Dad can’t play the piano, but the instrument had belonged to his wife, who passed away in January before the pandemic hit us.  And there, probably right where she had left it, was “The Lord’s Prayer” on a music stand.  It must have been one of her favorites.   In the bathroom, in a little basket, lay the music of “Heaven Came Down and Glory Filled My Soul,” by John W. Peterson.  

Ah … those were the days …

The Early Days and School

They say children in the womb can already hear and appreciate music.  Consequently, our children were submersed in worship music almost from the moment of conception. At our Sunday morning church services, while still in utero, they rocked to the rhythm of the music as my body swayed back and forth, and were very quiet. But they would begin to kick and squirm as soon as we sat down and the pastor began to preach.

And so I know I must have heard my mother sing early on. When my siblings and I were little, we loved to sing with Mom and Dad, standing up in the back seat of our big black Cadillac together (in the days before seat belts) during long trips.  I can still remember “She’ll be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain When She Comes” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” as the Cadillac flew across the desert and the water cooler blew mist on our warm faces.  

Mom would also sing random songs around the house, like “Zippety Doo-Dah” or “Oh What a Beautiful Morning!” … if it was a beautiful morning.  Or she would sing a few bars of “The Railroad Runs Through the Middle of the House,” “A Bushel and a Peck,” or “Baby Face.”  And there were a few other songs that I looked up later on YouTube, and I was shocked to find out she never sang all the verses around us kids. She told me how she and her half-brother and sisters had made up their own parody to “Pretty Baby” since they all slept in the same bed:

When you wake up in the morning and you find your bed is wet,

Blame the baby, blame the baby ...

I can remember a music teacher from some lower grade asking us to introduce ourselves musically and giving us an example with her own name.  As a result, everyone at the beginning of the circle used the exact same tune as the teacher – until she came around to me.  Either I was very creative or I was a show-off, or both. Probably both. With complicated runs and trills, reminiscent of Mabel in Pirates of Penzance (at least in my memory), I introduced myself, and everyone, of course, was taken aback.

We learned some pretty crazy songs in school music classes, and I still remember some of them.  It’s a little amusing to find out that I can still remember an extremely non-PC fun action song and dance called “Jump, Jim Crow” that would leave everybody gasping nowadays!

In an earlier post, I alluded to the solo I was supposed to have in third grade – “Susie Snowflake.”  Even though I didn’t get to sing it because our family moved to the Philippines before Christmas, my grandparents were impressed with my talents.  Grandma Pearl suggested that Mom should take me to Hollywood and get a screen test.  She was thinking I could be another Shirley Temple or something.  But Mom said she wanted me to have a normal childhood, so that was a no-go.

Singing at Church

My first solo happened when I was four.  The director of the Travis AFB Chapel Christmas program was looking for a soloist and my mom volunteered me.  As is typical for church Christmas programs, the kids were shy about singing by themselves in front of everybody, but I really never had a problem with that and my mom knew it.  

The program was about Christmas Around the World, and each grade in the Sunday School had to sing one song to go with the country.  But I got the song from Spain – a Spanish lullaby to the Savior, that I still remember to this day, very nearly 60 years ago.  Mom taught me the two verses and our next door neighbor sewed a small red and white Spanish costume for me to wear for the occasion. I know there was some kind of fancy black veil for my hair.  Too bad nobody had any castanets for me to use.  That would have been perfect!

There is no cradle ready, lullaby

For Mary’s little son, lullaby

But Joseph is a carpenter, and he will make him one.

Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby.

I want to see the baby, lullaby

That Mother Mary keeps, lullaby

I’ll sing a quiet song to him and kiss him while he sleeps.

Lullaby, lullaby, lullaby

Of course, the weekly Sunday School songs taught me basic theology.  It was important that I know that “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know,” and “Be Careful Little Eyes, What You See,”  My mom also had some Tennessee Ernie Ford Hymns in her LP collection, and I played them over and over again, and loved to hear him sing about the Ninety and Nine:

There were ninety-and-nine that safely lay in the shelter of the fold.  

But one was out on the hill far away, far off from the gates of gold. … 

“Lord, Thou hast here Thy ninety-and-nine.  Are they not enough for Thee?”  

But the Shepherd made answer, “This of Mine has wandered away from Me.

“And though the road be rough and steep,

I go to the desert to find My sheep, I go to the desert to find My sheep.” ...

And up from the mountain, thunder-riv’n, and up from the rocky steep,

There arose a glad cry to the gate of Heaven,

“Rejoice!  I have found my sheep!”

This song reassured me that Jesus actually sought me out.  Individually.  Specially.  At personal danger to Himself.

And the other one that I especially remember is a simple prayer that Sunday School teachers had us sing with our eyes closed:

Into my heart, into my heart,

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

Come in today, come in to stay,

Come into my heart, Lord Jesus.

God bless Sunday School teachers!  All children need to hear that Jesus loves them, and that He wants to save them from their sins.  And songs like this speak to children so loud and clear!

Instrumental Music

When I was in sixth grade, I showed an interest in the accordion.  As that was a more practical instrument than a piano for a trailer-dweller, my parents somehow found an accordion for me and an accordion teacher.  I got pretty good at it, to the point where my teacher wanted me to take a paid gig at an Oktoberfest playing various polkas and waltzes. That didn’t work out since I was underage and there would be drinking, but I thought it was neat that my teacher thought I could do it.

The accordion opened up other opportunities for me, though.  When we moved from Iowa to Arizona, my 7th grade teacher, Mr. Loden, was also the director of the Litchfield Elementary School Band.  Because I could read music, he was desperate to recruit me into the band.  He said he’d teach me any instrument I wanted to learn, and he really really wanted a tuba player.  But that was NOT going to happen in our trailer. 

When Mr. Loden mentioned drums, I thought either he hadn’t heard me the first time or he was crazy!  I live in a TRAILER!  But he told me about these rubber practice pads, and how I could use one of them at home, but do most of my practicing at school every day.  So, I started in the Beginners Band, just long enough to learn some techniques and how to read drum music, and then advanced quickly through the Intermediate Band to the Advanced Band.

By the time I made it into high school, when we had auditions for the Agua Fria Union High School concert band in the second semester, I made First Chair (to the chagrin of the drumming upperclassmen), and got the pleasure of running around the back of the stage to play a tympani or a triangle, marimbas or chimes as needed.  That was the life!  Percussion is beautiful!

Choirs and High School Bands

Knowing how to read music also gave me an opportunity to sing, not only in the eighth grade school choir, but also in the Luke AFB Chapel adult choir.  They needed sopranos, and my mom volunteered me.  (Do you see a pattern here?)  I helped out the sopranos, and they appreciated me.  Under the direction of a Baptist lady choral director, we sang joyful cantatas by John W. Peterson, such as “The Sound of Singing,” and choir was a beautiful thing … until we got a new director.

The next one was an Episcopalian, and we had a Lutheran chaplain at the time.  We did a lot of liturgical songs as needed, which was quite different for us.  But for Christmas, the new director decided we needed to perform more serious music.  Peterson was not worthy of his time or ours.  Enter:  “Handel’s Messiah".

This director made it clear that this was an adult choir, and we would be performing adult music, so we needed to have the children leave.  But the sopranos got clingy and wouldn’t have it, so the director gave in and I stayed.  I helped them find their notes, and I learned most of the Christmas and Easter portions of The Messiah, which was the beginning of a great Haley family tradition ...

When we moved to California in the middle of my junior year of high school, I joined the ranks of the high school band at Artesia High School, and when I entered the classroom the first time, the director asked me what instrument I played.  When I said, “Percussion,” he spun around in his director chair.

“You hear that, drummers?  Margie plays percussion!  (Those guys back there just play drums.)”  

That year I was introduced to the drum set and the vibraphones and played songs like "Misty" in the jazz band.  And for a while, I was the lead drummer, in charge of teaching the other snare drummers how the cadences went.  (They weren’t very happy with that.)

One of the trumpet players in the band, Tim, noticed me, and did what all good church members should do and don’t do often enough – he invited me to his church on Wednesday nights!  The draw – the Baptist church’s youth choir was doing a musical!  The condition – one also had to go to the youth group the same night.  The choir did do a wonderful musical called “Come Together” narrated on the demo record by Pat Boone.  We performed at shopping malls and various other places, as well as their rather large church.  The choir liked it so well, they rebelled the next year against doing anything else and tried to petition the director to do the same musical all over again!  (Didn’t work.)

Meanwhile, in homeroom class that year, seated alphabetically, the guy behind me was Tom Brown.  He had two pencils that he used as drumsticks on his desk (the eraser side) – but he wasn’t in the school band.  This was intriguing, so, with very little prompting, Tom was persuaded to tell me all about a most wonderful thing – a band called California Cavalry Youth Band.  This band, which marched in the style of the famous drum and bugle corps, made all of the local high school bands pale in comparison.  For a real drumming experience, this is where I needed to be.

I bit.  I still have my CCYB band jacket.  Actually, it’s my mom’s.  I don’t know what happened to mine, but hers was embroidered with “Marge” and that was close enough.  We went on tour and marched in Calgary, Canada at the Calgary Stampede Parade, taking first place for foreign bands.  We performed competition field shows with precision and esprit de corps.  And I marched either with huge shiny cymbals that made a huge impression when reflecting light into the eyes of judges in the stands, or a small rudimental bass drum, which was played along with several other bass drums of various sizes, to make a tuneful cadence.

Here’s the one video I know of, that shows our band in action.  The dubbed-in background music is not ours, but in the grainy picture (2:55) you can see a short cymbal player, that was me.

Jesus Music

But one of the best things about 1973 and ‘74 to me was “Jesus Music.”  Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa was having Saturday night concerts every week, and I was blessed to go there with a friend named Joe from Anthropology class, and hear groups like Love Song, Country Faith, The Way, and many more.  These were newly-converted ex-hippie guitar-playing Jesus People, who sang new songs straight from their hearts to Jesus.  Jesus Music was more profound to me than the starchy old hymns, the bouncy John W. Peterson, or the somber “Messiah.”  Love Song sang one that went:

“Sing unto the Lord and sing a brand new song.

The one that we’ve been hearing’s been a hit too long.

The lyrics sound confused as if they don’t belong

So sing unto the Lord and sing with feeling.

And sing a song of praise

And sing a song of gladness

Much too long our music

Has been filled with sadness.”

These simple songs, many of them straight from the King James Bible, spoke to my heart and I started collecting LP’s like Maranatha 1, Maranatha 2, Maranatha 3, and Maranatha 4, which were compilations of various artists’ work.  The hits just kept on coming.  These were the beginning of Maranatha! Music.

The Church Under Attack

Jesus invented music.  

The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, is mighty; 

He will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy, with joy; 

He will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.

The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, is mighty; is mighty!

There’s a perfect plan for you – we humans breathe in oxygen to live, and we exhale carbon dioxide to talk and to sing.  There will be singing in Heaven, and the Scriptures command the Church to sing unto the Lord while we are still here on earth.  There is nothing so natural and so sacred as using our exhaust pipes to praise our Lord.  That is why it is only practical to “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”  You have to be alive and breathe air to do that.  Why, there’s an entire songbook in the middle of every Bible, and some New Testaments even also include that songbook.

But sadly, the Church is under attack these days, especially in California now, in the same general vicinity that I first heard that Jesus Music nearly 50 years ago.  The Body of Christ is being ordered not to meet and not to sing because, the reasoning goes, Covid-19 will be spread when Christians sing heartily to the Lord and fling their aerosol around.  The governor even wants all the congregants to wear masks, which restricts their breathing, and some churches are complying with that, as long as they can at least meet.

Not only is a singing ban an infringement on our rights as U.S. citizens (several of them), but it is just plain wrong. If Governor Newsome knows that singing is an integral part of worship to our God, then outlawing singing is nothing short of diabolical.  If he does not know, … no – he does know.  He’s been told by many pastors that they have to obey God rather than man, but he persists.

Some have taken their worship to the beach.  Huntington Beach has been filled with thousands of people on Friday evenings, who are there for one purpose – to meet together with other believers since their own churches haven’t opened.  And the singing is loud and really tremendous.

The bottom line is this:  We were created to worship God.  Singing joyfully to the Lord is not just a good idea because it helps fill in the time in a church service with a little variety – it is that part of the service that ministers to our weary spirits.  Worship lifts us from our misery to focus on the One who can heal us of that misery.  It is when we least want to sing to the Lord that we most need to sing to Him.  If we do not, Jesus said: 

“I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.  

~Luke 19:40

"Lord Jesus, You have breathed Your life into Man, and with that breath, we want to give you all our worship. Let us not bow down to those who have lifted themselves up over Your Church to dominate and subdue it, but rather, give us the courage to stand and sing as You have commanded. All glory and honor belongs to You. Let us enter Your gates with thanksgiving and into Your courts with praise.

"We pray for Your Church in California and in other places in the U.S., where it is now illegal to sing, or even to gather together. We pray for boldness for them, to obey You rather than man. "And we pray for Your Church worldwide, where it has been illegal to gather together for decades. We thank You for the example they have been to us, and we ask that You would continue to give them strength, courage, and endurance to do what is right, until You come again to gather us unto Yourself.

For it is in Your Strong Name that we pray, Amen!"