I first wrote this article in 2016. Since that time I know many who have lost loved ones. This is the first Christmas season without their loved one for some. If you are one of those missing a loved one, this is for you.

Christmas is supposed to be a time of great joy and happiness. This year is different for many. You probably know some for whom it is different but do not realize it, or maybe it just slips past you in all the hustle and bustle of the year. It is quite possible that you are one of those for whom Christmas is different.by

Lucille Shazier was born when William Howard Taft was President of the United States. The Wright brothers had made the famous first flight less than a decade before she was born. The Panama Canal had not been completed and it would be another year after her birth before World War I started. She would be three years old before General John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing would pursue Pancho Villa into Mexico after Villa had raided American border towns in New Mexico.

Lucille Shazier celebrated her 106th Thanksgiving with her family last Thursday. She sat out on her front porch with me recently and told me about her long and blessed life.

She was born on February 13, 1913. Her mother died when she was two years old and she came to live with her aunt in Cordele. When I asked her about her earliest recollections, she went back to childhood memories to talk about the day she met Jesus.

She explained that when she was growing up, children did not hang around with grownups. They had to be outside playing or doing chores or doing something where they were not in the way when grownups were together talking.

Her place was outside under the porch of her house. She made little dolls out of grass in the yard and combed the roots for the dolls hair. Then she made little doll houses with sticks and little mounds of dirt to decorate the doll house’s front yard.

On this particular day a lady came to visit and she went outside to play with her handmade dolls. She said that her aunt called her to come in to do something for her. She vividly described the porch and going in the door on the way to the room where her mother and lady were talking. She said that he heard them talking about Jesus and she stopped in the middle of the room right where she was and just hugged him because he was so real with her right then. A few years later she marched down to Gum Creek with a group from Greater Morris Tabernacle Baptist Church to be baptized.

Her father was a farmer in Ocilla, Georgia and she remembered taking the Shoo Fly train from Cordele to Fitzgerald. Her father would come from Ocilla to Fitzgerald in his mule-drawn wagon to pick her up and take her to the farm. She had to tell me about a special answered prayer on that farm. She was still a young girl and could not work as fast as everyone else. He father had her out with him harvesting cotton and was telling her that she had to work faster to keep up.

She told me how she prayed, “Dear Jesus, you know I’m working as fast as I can. Please help me.” She looked out ahead of her and there was a long blank spot on the row ahead of her. She ran on up past the empty spot in the row and caught up with everyone else. Skeptics may say what they want, but there is no denying that the memory of an answered prayer was branded in a little girl’s mind that is as fresh a century later as it was the day it happened.

Lucille recollected evenings sitting on the porch listening to the radio with friends and when all the roads were dirt roads. She also remembered the first time she got to vote. She said that until that time “they didn’t let colored people vote.” A friend of hers came and told her that she could vote now. And she’s been voting ever since.

She was born before ground was broken to build the Lincoln Memorial. She was 50 years old when, Martin Luther King stood at the steps of that memorial to boldly proclaim his dream that one day “my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

There is not room to write about everything she told me. Before leaving her front porch that day I asked her what she was thankful for this in this 106th Thanksgiving she would celebrate. She quickly listed that she has the Lord, a place to live, that she can dress herself, she has food to eat, clothes to wear, a church, and a big family. Although she only had two children, she has adopted a large family of what she calls children in the Lord.

I pray that if I am still in this world at the age of 106 that I will be as sharp and have such a positive mindset about the most important things in life. I want to thank Cordele City Commissioner and member of Greater Morris Tabernacle Baptist Church, Vesta Beal Shepard, for introducing me to Lucille Shazier. My life is richer for the opportunity.

This article was printed in the Cordele Dispatch on November 30, 2019.

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