God's Little Firecracker

 7-6-26. Sounds like a good passkey number for me to use, a date easy to remember, so significant in my life. I spoke it frequently for several years when I used the drive-thru at the drugstore, picking up medicines for a special lady I called my aunt, Lorraine Freese. "Birthdate," the clerk would say, and I'd respond quickly, without having to ask her, simply because I had said it so often. The only thing is that twenty-six isn't today, July 6, 2026. It's July 6, 1926 I'm referring to. 

She would be a hundred years old today, and she was sure looking forward to it. A hundred and five was her goal. She made it to ninety-five. She died alone, in a covid restricted facility where I could only visit and let her know I cared by knocking on the outside window of her room. So today I celebrate her century birthday alone, without her. How sad for such an energetic little lady who liked to call herself a firecracker.

She might have been two days late from being born on Independence Day, but she was certainly a firecracker of an independent sort. Her first five years were spent in an orphanage. She was taken in by her aunt's family (my grandmother's), and lived there until she graduated from high school and went out on her own. After a few years of trying to find herself, she joined the army. The Salvation Army.

She was assigned to a mission in western North Carolina and there she found herself and the purpose for which she was born. Because there was already a soldier stationed there named Lorraine, she went by the name Jean. Through years of hard study and commitment, she became known as Captain Jean and then Major Jean, but I knew her as Lorraine. She was full of energy and had no issue about being a woman on horseback going into the backwoods of the Appalachians to knock on doors and tell people about the love of Jesus. When she started driving a scrapped World War II jeep, she learned, in a hard-earned sort of way, to back into people's driveways to make a quick getaway. 

That's her, on the left, with Sib, her friend of many years, standing beside the mission's sign. If you have any inclination of celebrating the true meaning of the Declaration of Independence, might I make a suggestion? Send a check to support this mission that is hanging on through tough times and dwindling interest in mission work. This little firecracker named Major Jean would so appreciate it. Drop a card in the mail to the Shelton Laurel Mountain Mission, 35 Mountain Mission Road, Clyde, NC 28721. The firecracker in heaven would certainly be thrilled. So would the mission, because she was too precious to them, and to the Lord, to be through with her impact on the world. 

One day, years ago, she called me and asked me to write her story. We sat together, talking, her revealing to me a life that was so dedicated and inspiring that I couldn't say no. 

The title of the book, Called to the Mountains, was a no-brainer selection, because time after time she told me she was called by God to go to the mountains to spread the word of God to the people there. I guess a fairly accurate title could have been, God's Little Firecracker, because of her energy and her drive...and the fact she stood barely five feet tall, if that. 

Learn from Lorraine. Go. Do. We all should be firecrackers in our chosen plight in life. 

Catch of the day,

Gretchen