FRONT-PORCH GOSPEL: This life story begins in 1973 (kind of) part 53

The Bowens held the service for Buella Mae two days later at the graveside at an old cemetery out on the Whitesville Road, only a mile or two from their place. Preacher Harvey quoted the twenty-third psalm eloquently and talked about heaven “until you felt as if you were standing right there before the sea of glass,” Mama said. While the preacher always had a strong, raspy voice, he knew how to lower it at such a time as that. He always taught me that a preacher should “temper his voice” during a funeral, and he lived what he preached, both then and, really, in everything he did.

“During one song, I got to crying,” Mama said. “I remember what it was, I don’t think I could ever forget. It was an old, old song about Beulah Land. I hadn’t thought about the connection of the friend I never got to meet, Buella Mae, and this song until that moment. ‘Is not this the land of Beulah?’ That’s the name of it. It describes heaven so pretty, and says that it’s a place ‘where the flowers bloom forever.’

“Miss Corrina,” she continued after a pause, “it hit me right then about Buella Mae and her flowers, how much she loved them; and I could not help but see her walking over by the river in heaven in a dress white as snow – Ma put the most beautiful white dress with laces on her to bury her – just tending to those flowers.”

I didn’t know if Mama would get through that part of the story, but she did.

“I decided right then that if the Lord would give me a daughter I wanted to name her Beulah. I didn’t know then that it is spelled differently in the Bible, but when Zeke and I had our first daughter a few years later, I spelled it the way Ma and Pa had done. B-u-e-l-l-a. It was unique, and I think of heaven every time I hear the name. Maybe the reason I’ve been able to hold up as well as I have with being so sick over the last year is thinking about Buella Mae, with her up in heaven tending her flowers, and knowing that the good Lord will help us all get there if we’ll give Him our best.

“When the Princes started singing the song, it just hit me hard, you know how that happens, and I started sobbing. I kept it as soft as I could. The singing was so beautiful and loud enough that I think it drowned out most of my crying. The Prince family from the LaGrange church and some of their kinfolks from over in Napoleon, Alabama did the singing, and they sang all the songs so beautifully. I was standing toward the back of the crowd – it was a big crowd, too, everybody was so affected – and, all of a sudden, I felt something beside me; and when I looked, Zion had walked back into the crowd and found me. I guess he saw me crying. He took my hand without saying a word, and he held it the rest of the service.

“Sweetie,” Mama added with a smile, “I don’t think he ever let go of my hand after that. A year later we married. I was barely sixteen, and he was seventeen, just a boy himself.”

Mama reached over and put her hand on Corrina's.

“Corrina,” she said, flashing that soft smile of hers that always lit up the room, “Zion and I hadn’t even kissed until we got married. He was a gentleman, a gentleman’s gentleman, and if he hadn’t already won my heart at the house that first night, he won it during the singing of ‘Beulah Land.’”

I turned to Cheyenne and filled in something that Mama would not have known. I didn’t know until years later that a writer named Squire Parsons wrote a famous song about Beulah Land a century after the one Mama talked about. It is called “Sweet Beulah Land.” It has become one of the greatest of the gospel songs since the early 70s, right up there with the Gaithers’ “Because He Lives.” I first heard it three or four years after it came out. We had come home to see Grandma Belle and Preacher Harvey, and my grandfather wanted me to go with him one morning to a funeral of one of his school friends. A big gentleman stood up for the first song and sang that song in the richest baritone I think I had ever heard. I fell in love with it when I first heard it and have held it close to me ever since.

“When was that one written?” Cheyenne asked, as if he knew there might be something special about the timing of it.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, “that is the part that struck. When I checked the date, it was written jus’ about the time Mama would’ve been tellin’ that story to Corrina and me.”

“Nineteen-seventy-three,” Cheyenne said, matter-of-factly.

“That’s right,” I said, “1973.”

With that, I sang the song, driving down the highway. I don’t even think Cheyenne minded, not then:  I’m kind of homesick for a country, to which I’ve never been before. No sad goodbyes will there be spoken, for time won’t matter anymore.

Then I shared the lovely chorus. I don’t think Cheyenne could see slight tears on my face, but I couldn’t help but be a little emotional thinking of our sweet Aunt Buella Mae as I sang: Beulah Land, I'm longing for you, and some day on thee I'll stand. There my home shall be eternal. Beulah Land, sweet Beulah Land.

I don’t know if I hit all the words right, but I got most of them out and hummed the rest. Near the end, Cheyenne kind of chuckled and shook his head, and said,

“1973: Quite a year, Popman.”

I let the humming of the tires against the highway and of Sweet Beulah Land supply the answer.

Coach Steven Bowen, a long-time Red Oak teacher and coach, now enjoys his time as a writer and preacher of the gospel. And, after a ten-year hiatus, he’s also returned to work with students at Ferris High School as well.

In addition to his evangelistic travels, he works and writes for the Church of Christ of Red Oak at Uhl Road and Ovilla. Their worship times are 10 a.m. Sundays and 7:30 pm. Wednesdays. Email coachbowen1984@gmail.com or call or text (972) 824-5197.