I am blessed to have wonderful memories of my grandparents’ house. We celebrated Christmases and birthday parties; I learned to quilt and practiced my baking; and I picked apples and fed them to the horses with my siblings and cousins. My grandpa and grandma have downsized from their farmhouse, but their condo feels in many ways just the same to me—warm and welcoming, beautiful and homey.

I remember running to the window seat at their farmhouse to open it and take out the special toys stored there, just as my four-year-old daughter now runs to the corner cabinet and takes out the toys she has been looking forward to ever since I told her we were going to Grandpa Wayne and Grandma Mary’s house. She plays happily on the floor while I talk with my grandma, Mary Spear, about her life and walk with God.

My grandma was born Mary McCracken into a pastor’s family in Superior, Neb. When she was two years old, her father, Paul D. McCracken, accepted a call to Topeka, Kan. RPC. Grandma has fond memories of her childhood in Topeka: a “wonderful set of parents,” as well as “four brothers all older than me, so nobody wanted to play dolls. We played football and basketball and baseball and all that, which I loved.”

Growing up in a Christian home, Grandma learned the importance of trusting and depending on the Lord for herself when she was around 12 years old. Her neighbor, a member of the Topeka church who greeted Grandma on their way into the church before one Wednesday evening prayer meeting, died before the next morning arrived. Shaken by the reality of death, Grandma wondered if she had asked the Lord to come into her heart in “the right way.” She found comfort in the words of Jesus: “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37).

Around the time she entered high school, Grandma attended a conference where young people were asked to dedicate their lives to serving the Lord. “The only thing that was offered to girls was to be a missionary; so I said yes, I’d like to serve the Lord. I could be a missionary,” she remembers. Soon enough, the Lord called Grandma to a place that felt very foreign to her: her father accepted a call to pastor what is now Broomall RPC in Philadelphia, Pa.

This was a difficult transition for Grandma. Everything about Philadelphia felt different from Topeka. Grandma had begun her junior year, and had to finish a year and a half of high school among classmates who were less than friendly. Grandma had hoped to become a nurse and had been enjoying her physiology class in Topeka, but her new school in Philadelphia did not offer anything of that sort. Instead, she took classes teaching secretarial skills, which she began to use at her new summer job downtown. She learned to trust God in her fear of getting lost in the city as she daily navigated three or four different transportation platforms on her commute. And, Grandma remembers, “God had blessings for me that I didn’t even know about.”

One of those blessings was my grandpa, Wayne Spear. He and my grandma met at White Lake Covenanter Camp the summer that she was turning 17. Grandma was a counselor for the younger girls, and Grandpa, who had just finished his freshman year at Geneva College, was a dishwasher. Throughout Grandma’s senior year of high school, she and Grandpa wrote to each other until she joined him at Geneva.

Grandpa and Grandma dated for several years, and married on July 4, 1958. In 1960, Grandpa graduated from the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary (RPTS), and was ordained and installed as the pastor of Lake Reno RPC in Glenwood, Minn. Grandma’s life of service to the Lord would not be as a missionary after all, but as a pastor’s wife.

In Glenwood, Grandma had three children in four years. Then they moved when Grandpa accepted a call to the RP church in San Diego, Calif. When her kids were small, Grandma took to heart something her father had told her: “There’s nothing kinder than to teach your children to obey.” Looking back on her time as a mother of small children, she remembers the happy things. She learned to enjoy many parts of having little ones—even loved the cloth diapers, cleaned and whitened with a wringer washer.

During their time in San Diego, Grandma had a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. She collapsed from blood loss on their kitchen floor, and Grandpa returned home just in time and drove her to the hospital. The doctor was not sure if Grandma would survive, and the thought of leaving behind three children under the age of five weighed heavily on Grandma as she went into emergency surgery. But during the surgery, the people of God surrounded Grandma and Grandpa. An elder from the church rushed to the hospital to sit with Grandpa while he waited outside the operating room, and the surgeon who operated on Grandma was a member of the church. By God’s grace, Grandma fully recovered and was blessed with two more healthy children.

After three years in San Diego, Grandpa was called to earn his doctorate and become the professor of systematic theology at RPTS. In 1966, the family moved to New Jersey, where Grandpa began to take classes at Princeton Theological Seminary. Issues with accreditation led the family in 1967 to move to Philadelphia for Grandpa to study at Westminster Theological Seminary, and in 1968 to Pittsburgh, Pa., for Grandpa to begin his PhD studies at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and the University of Pittsburgh. These years of study and moving (and adding another baby) were busy and difficult, but Grandma was a support for Grandpa. She learned to understand the way he functioned best, and she was able to encourage him to rest and to spend time outside in God’s creation when he was overwhelmed by academic demands.

Grandpa began teaching at RPTS in 1970, and life began to be more settled. Grandma remembers cheering at her children’s track meets, attending their band performances, and being involved in juniors and youth group. The older children finished high school and moved away to college. But in 1986, with a middle schooler and a high schooler still at home, Grandpa suffered a life-threatening brain aneurysm while on a run. Again, the people of God came to surround the family. Grandma describes a “parade of ministers” who came to the hospital to pray for Grandpa, and a friend who came just to sit with her, just as an elder had done in San Diego two decades before. That’s often the best thing you can do when caring for someone, Grandma says.

Grandma has thought quite a bit about the wedding vow that young couples take: “in sickness and in health.” “You don’t know what that means when you get married,” Grandma says. No one knew if Grandpa would survive, or, if he did, whether he would have brain damage. God graciously preserved Grandpa’s life and abilities following the aneurysm.

Nevertheless, the decades since have included sickness for both Grandma and Grandpa. Most recently, Grandma was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in November 2023. Throughout her tests, treatments, and chemotherapy, Grandma clung tightly to God’s Word in Isaiah 43:1–3:

But now, this is what the Lord says— he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”

Grandma would encourage young married women that if you don’t understand the things your husband is passionate about, “you can learn!” Grandma has learned to share Grandpa’s love for farming and horses, and that has been a beautiful thing in their marriage. She would also counsel couples not to pick at each other, but instead to put yourself into the other person’s shoes. Encouragement and understanding are healthier than constant criticism.

Grandma would also urge young women in the church to be Marys and not only Marthas. The practical work of cleaning, feeding, and other chores needs to be done, but we must remember that it is a wonderful thing to sit and learn at the feet of Jesus.

Finally, Grandma wants to emphasize that she and Grandpa are people blessed by the Lord. By God’s grace, not because of what she and Grandpa have done, all five of their children are believers who are serving the Lord in the places He has set them.

Grandma holds dear the promises of God’s covenant: “I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you” (Gen. 17:7). Grandma knows that the most important thing a person can do is to walk with God: “That’s the only way to truly be happy.”