Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Alice Mae Cowart was seven years old when her mother died.

She remembers asking “Where’s Mama?” and “When’s she comin’ home?”

But she doesn’t remember when she stopped asking those questions.

“Because my grandmother stood in for Mama,” Cowart said. “My grandmother stood in my mama’s shoes and I thank God for her.”

Cowart said there is and will always be a void in her life left by the loss of her mother but that hole was filled with the love and caring of her grandmother.

“What a blessing my grandmother was,” Cowart said. “She set a path for me to follow.”

Cowart has been blessed with eight children of her own, 15 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. She is mother to them all.

“And what a blessing they are. All of them. Every one of them,” Cowart said. “Now, I didn’t plan on having eight children, seven girls and one boy.  but I wouldn’t take anything for any one of them.”

However, Cowart, laughingly, admitted that she did pray for a boy.

“Every mother needs a son,” she said, with a smile. “And I did pray for him.  I didn’t have to pray for the girls; they just came as blessings.”

Cowart didn’t plan on naming all her children with the beginning letter, “L.”

Linda, Lillie, Laura … that’s when she gave thought to the letter “L.”

Love begins with the letter “L” and love begins at home, Cowart said.

So, Lessie, Leon, Lavonne, Lisa and Lorraine brought more love into the Cowart home.

“The ‘L’ stood for Love for each other,” Cowart said. “If you have that kind of love you can make it through whatever life brings your way.”

Life was not always a smooth path but Cowart drew her strength from the Bible, especially the wisdom found in Proverbs.

“I studied Proverbs and the one verse that helps put everything in the right place is ‘Honor your father and mother.’ And that doesn’t just mean your own father and mother. It means all of those old enough to be your father and mother. If you honor them all, then everything will go the godly way. What’s wrong in the world today is we have left God out of the picture. We have not honored Him. We have not honored our fathers and mothers, all.”

The Bible gave Alice Mae Cowart direction in life and assurance of God’s will for her. God also gave her the love of praise music and has been so influential in her life.

“Oh, I grew up singing,” Cowart said. “We didn’t have even a radio; we just sang. My grandpa sang the old-style music, the kind of music that has a message and means something. Most of the time we just sang acapella, that’s without instruments. Sometimes, somebody would play the guitar but most of the time it was just our voices.”

Cowart said all of her children sing and her grandchildren, too.

“We’ll all be around the house and the next thing, we’re singing,” she said. “And we do, I guess you could say, concerts and we sing that old music. A lot of people will come so I guess that old kind of music still fills the hearts of people.”

Cowart’s life has been full and good but there have been trying times and God has seen her through it all.

“God gave me a good father for my children and they have stood beside me when I was going through some problems with my health. I had a place to go. My daughter had a room for me at her house,” Cowart said and added laughing, “I had some good food, too.

“And, I am blessed now to be able to care for my daughter that has to be on dialysis, three times a week.  That’s the way the Lord works, He provides. The Bible says there is a time to go and time to come. That means, a time to go help others and a time to let help come to you.”

Looking back on her life, Cowart said every day has been a blessing.

“Yes, I have been blessed,” she said. “Looking back on my life, I can’t say I’ve had a hard time. A blessed time is what I have had. Oh, I worked in the fields. We picked up pecans and raised chickens and hogs. I worked hard but I didn’t mind working. Work is good for you. I did everything with the help of the Lord. And, when times were good and when times were not so good, we’d strike out on a song. Oh, how I love singing.”

Cowart said there are so many songs that fill her heart with hope, praise and joy but “My Day of Joy is Coming” is, perhaps, her favorite.

Cowart is looking forward to Mother’s Day 2021 because it, too, will be a day of joy and blessings.

“To have all my children with me is the best Mother’s Day gift I could have,” she said. “And, we’ll strike out on songs and it will be a day of blessed joy.”