06668
December 15, 2006

‘God has been so good to me’

Christmas Joy Offering comes to life for Oklahoma woman

by Alan Krome
PC(USA) Mission Education and Promotion

Joy and David Bean during their "biker days."

LOUISVILLE — Talking with Dolores Bean, the voice you hear does not sound like that of a woman incapacitated by a chronic and progressive neurological disease, a woman whose husband was taken by a brain tumor while yet young and active.

     You hear the voice of a woman who raises it at sunrise every morning when she sings her favorite hymns. “God has been so good to me,” Bean says. “I just have to sing it.”

     You can still hear in her voice the tough-minded single mother who did what she had to do to raise two children and the independent spirit that once got her fired from her waitress job for going to an awards ceremony for her son.

     “I told them in advance and they forgot to change my schedule,” Bean recalls. “I said, ‘Sorry, that’s your problem. I’m a mother first, and my son expects his mother to be there.’”

     Bean met her future husband while filling in for a bartender at the restaurant she managed. She recognized the preacher in him though he was an insurance salesman when they met and helped him discern that the pastorate he had left a few years earlier was his true call.

     In Bean, you hear the spirit of a woman who’s ready to embrace whatever surprises life offers, who decided that though she was raised Roman Catholic could learn to be the wife of a Presbyterian pastor.

     When her husband, David, was serving interim pastorates in the early ’70s, Bean turned a few parishes in rural New Mexico on their ear when she showed up in a mini-skirt and boots.

     Later, with no degree or relevant experience, Bean became the first woman manager of the Cleveland, OK, Chamber of Commerce.

     And when her husband bought a motorcycle, Bean gamely accepted this new way to tour the country on their vacations and fell in love with it as a way to meet people.

     Bean has always been impatient with the obstacles people allow to get in the way of loving others for who they are. “I believe that when Jesus told us to love our fellow man, he meant loving him as he is, not as we would want him to be,” she says.

     For her, love is the most important thing. Long before the term “blended family” existed, that love helped her create one that was stronger than most traditional families, one strong enough to thrive through her husband’s death, her own debilitating disease, and her daughter’s mental illness.

     Bean is not ashamed to accept help from her family — her biological children, those born to her husband and his first wife, or the extended Presbyterian family she adopted when she married him.

     All five of the children she and David raised still live close enough to visit her regularly, and she’s proud of all of them. Give her half a chance and she’ll tell you what each of the grandchildren is up to.

     She’s also happy to accept help that comes from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Board of Pensions and writes a note every year at Christmas expressing her thanks.

     Bean has never assumed that life would be easy, or that difficulties were a form of persecution. She has taken her challenges in stride and her joys with gratitude.

     When muscular dystrophy made it difficult to get in and out of her wheelchair and Medicare would not cover the cost of a chair lift, she called to ask if the Board of Pensions could help. It did.

     In the note she wrote to thank the board and those who support its assistance programs through the Christmas Joy Offering, she said: “Thank you for all the nice things you do for all those who have disabilities and use wheelchairs. I feel so much love from all of you.

     “Each day I thank God and say, “Life is good.’”