The list would be long. Mom gave birth to me, the fifth of seven children, on March 28, 1940. The boy born on March 25 of the previous year had not lived, so they referred to me as the fourth child. I owe her my life.

Did she take some teasing or even ridicule because of the rapid-fire way she was bringing children into the world? All 7 of us were born in a 9-year-span.

Lois Jane Kilgore was 17 when she agreed to marry Carl J. McKeever, a 21-year-old she had been seeing for three years. She was a farmer’s daughter with a 9th grade education; he came from a long line of coal miners and dropped out of school in the 7th grade to go to work. He was the oldest of 12, she was the middle child of 9.

They surprised the preacher and got him out of bed that Saturday night, March 3, 1934, and asked him to perform the ceremony. There was no premarital counsel, no fancy surroundings, and for a time, no honorarium for the preacher. The next Monday, the coal miners went out on strike. An inauspicious beginning for marriage.

Lois had no idea what she had gotten herself into. Nothing from her sheltered, happy upbringing in the church-going farm family had prepared her for married life with that Irishman with the temper, a love for the sauce, and an unruly mob of siblings of all ages.

In time, Carl got his life straightened out, their marriage stabilized, and life was good. But for a couple or three decades, Lois paid a severe price for her determination to save her marriage and raise her brood of young’uns well.

As he aged, Carl became a wonderful patriarch in this family, revered and loved. He filled a room when he entered. He loved to talk, to tell a story, to read and learn and tell you what he had learned, and to work on problem-solving for the miners union of which he in time became a 70+ year member.

I grew up thinking he was the dominant force in my upbringing.

It took my wife to make me see otherwise.

I’m 95 percent about Lois McKeever. I owe her far more than I can ever know or say or repay. Here’s what I mean.

1. I’m a Christian because of my mother.

Mom was a church-goer all her life. When 18-year-old Carl and his younger brother Marion, called Gip, found Lois and her sisters, it was at church where the youth were having a Saturday night singing.

As a preschooler, some of my earliest memories are getting our baths on Saturday night so we could walk to church the next morning. On Sundays, Lois would mobilize the older kids to help the younger ones, and we made it for both Sunday School and church. To do that, we walked a mile across fields and through woods.

In my 8th year, our family relocated to a coal-mining town outside Beckley, West Virginia, and moved into the saddest of company housing. Even though mom was a lifelong Baptist and the only church in Affinity was Methodist, that first Sunday morning she had all six of us there.

Where was Dad? Good question. He never went. Sometimes he worked, sometimes he was on a weekend bender with his buddies, and at other times, he was just gone, doing whatever adults do on Sundays when they’re not in church.

For four years, we worshiped and participated in the life of that little church. Mom joined a quartet that sang in church. I learned to love everything about the church, from the pastor to the hymns to the fellowship.

At age 11–by now, we were living back in Alabama and attending the Baptist church–the Lord saved me.

Thanks to mom for having me in church.

2. I’m a preacher because of my mother.

This flows from the first, obviously. If she had not taken us to church regularly as children, I may well have never heard the gospel and been saved, and of course, never have become a preacher.

I was 21, a rising senior in college, and active in a wonderful Baptist church in Birmingham near the campus. Our church experienced a two-week-long revival that resulted in hundreds of new people coming to Christ. On Tuesday of the second week, while I sang in the choir (“Jesus Paid It All”), God invade my consciousness to inform me I was hereby called into the ministry. Not “to preach,” nothing that specific or limited. Just “the ministry.”

Everything in my life flows from those two events, salvation at age 11 and the ministry 10 years later.

My brother Ronnie, five years my senior, was married with three children when the Lord called him into the ministry. As a traveling salesman, he pastored at night and on weekends for years before settling down to pastor one church–Woodland Baptist Church (later Woodland West) in the western section of Birmingham.

Carl McKeever was pleased with our calls and careers; but Lois McKeever was the reason.

Every time Ron or Joe have led anyone to the Lord over these 50+ years (for each of us), I can imagine the Lord tells Gabriel or some angel, “Put another one down for Lois.

3. My mother showed us how to live the Christian life.

Mom read her Bible through the week and encouraged us in it. As an elementary schooler, I can recall coming downstairs on Saturday mornings reporting to her how many verses I had read that morning. Whether I was learning anything is beside the point.

There were times during those West Virginia years that I would walk home from school, perhaps half a mile from the top of that mountain, and have lunch with her. We would share soup and sandwiches and listen to her favorite radio preachers. That I was the only one of her six to do this I find puzzling even now.

Mom got zero spiritual encouragement from Dad in those early two decades of married life. She did it on her own. It must have been hard and often lonely and frequently discouraging.

Lois is the personification of perseverance. “Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).

If I may be permitted to say this, the Lord owes her big time. We praise Him that He keeps His promises.

Ron told some of his members once, in paying tribute to mom, that she had never smoked, never took a drink, and never uttered a profane word in her entire life. Someone going out the door joked that she did not know what she missed.

She knew. She saw enough of all three in Carl to know she had missed nothing.

As a teen, I can recall the surprise I would feel when someone at church called on “Sister Lois” to lead in prayer. She was never very vocal about her faith, and to have her lead in public prayer like this was like a present to her children. Mom always began with “Dear Jesus,” then spoke to the Lord easily as good friends do.

4. My mother started me drawing.

In 1945, when I was 5 and Carolyn was 3, Mom grew tired of us being underfoot while she was doing her housework and sat us down at the table. She gave us pencil and paper and said, “Now draw.” And we did.

I discovered I loved to draw and kept at it. The next year in the first grade at Nauvoo (AL) Elementary, other children would gather around and watch me draw.

Mom couldn’t draw a lick, as far as I know. But I owe the fact that I have been doing cartoons for over 40 years for Christian publications to her.

To give my beloved dad his due, let me point out that when I was 8 years old, he walked me to the next town of Sophia, WV, and helped me pick out a Bible. I was the only one of his six offspring to receive this kind of attention.

About the same time, Dad would suggest I take my pencil and paper and sketch him as he relaxed after supper in front of the radio. He would drift off to sleep and awaken after a bit, ask to see what I’d drawn, and make suggestions on how to improve it, then close his eyes again. He had some drawing talent I could tell, so maybe I inherited something from him. He did have the most beautiful handwriting I had ever seen, from his school years when they actually taught penmanship in elementary classes.

5. My mother was the humorist in the family.

It took my wife to make me see this. We all had thought of Dad as the source of the love for learning, the delight in hearing and telling stories, and the sense of humor. Our family loved to laugh.

One day Margaret pointed out to me that Dad never once told a joke, but Mom often did. In fact, in my teens, Mom had sold more than one joke to magazines. I recall the pride with which she saw her name underneath the story.

That was a stunner, that the sense of humor had her DNA instead of Dad’s.

All my siblings love a good story and most can tell a story with the best. I’m the only one who does banquets and tells funny stories before audiences. (Rarely are mine “jokes” as such, but they tend to be funny occurences from my half-century in the ministry.)

We owe that to Mom.

We owe her so much, beginning with life itself.

Happy Mother’s Day, Lois Jane Kilgore McKeever. Happy Mother’s Day, beloved lady. You have quite a reward awaiting you just beyond that golden shore where the Father will be calling you any day now.

Well done, good and faithful servant.

“Many daughters have done excellently, but thou excellest them all.

Beauty is deceitful and popularity is vain. But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. Give her of the fruit of her own hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates. (Proverbs 31)