A Life Untold: A Testimony to Faith, Family, and Fortitude

By Dr. Lamar D. Lee Jr.

The compelling reality of the dwindling horizon line before me only serves to remind me of the blessed road traveled from behind. When I think of those seemingly unrelated, though reoccurring, reminders of God's providential movement in my life, I'm deeply broken by God's long-suffering and His steadfast love toward me. From the worn linoleum floor coverings beneath that dimly-lit kitchen table in the front room to the marvelously clad halls of Pasvar Pavilion at the University of Pittsburgh, I can look back and see the footprints of the Nazarene as He's carried me now for more than seventy-two years.

He has secured me in the midst of life's challenges, cradling me in the stability of a loving, Christ-centered family, establishing me in the communal confines of a time when the whole village was, in fact, raising children, and calling me as a neophyte in ordained ministry while having stabilized my marriage and family to survive its rigors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886168723

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A Life Untold

A Testimony to Faith, Family, and Fortitude

Dr. Lamar D. Lee Jr.

Copyright © 2023 by Dr. Lamar D. Lee Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Epilouge

About the Author

To God’s unspeakable grace, mercy, and loving-kindness toward me in Christ Jesus.

It has taken the urgency of this powerful reminder from Jon, Genea, and Gabby that some things need to be said by you and not about you and that attention to this responsibility as keeper of your records must take precedent. I am inspired by you, my grandchildren, Lamar Iv, Maliyah, Gabrielle, and Maci.

To fifty years of covenant marriage with Vada. Its contents were germinated in the soil of my parents, Lamar and Helen, and my brothers and sisters—Merci, Kevin, Dina, and Phillip. It has now grown into the branch of my own family and reached fruition with my wife, Vada, Genea and Jonathan, Tre and Michelle, and Davie and Jenell.

To my foreparents. I tell my story as their untold stories, though unpublished, live on in these words.

To the overcoming, triumphing love of God that has transformed my perspective on life and people.

I am being given the regeneration of heart not to judge people by their color or gender, but by their God-assigned familyhood in the love of Christ.

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:4–8)

That doesn’t mean I am blind to color or gender, but I am, according to Scripture, to press toward the high calling, to be born from above.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3:6)

So I’m not complaining, nor do I believe I’m casting dispersions, but from my point of view… I’m just sayin’!

Chapter 1

These Are a Few of My Favorites

It has taken the template provided by the autobiographical software that my daughter, Genea, and her husband, Jonathan, gave me two Christmases ago to provide me a focus for the story I wanted to tell about myself. We hear so much today about people from every walk of life and lifestyle telling their own stories. Each generation grows further and further away from the truth in the link between them. Who even remembers the lyrics to that old hymn:

Bless be the tie that binds.

The fellowship of kindred minds;

Is like to that above.

Really? The whole notion of kindred minds—minds that are similar, minds that have a common connection and, better yet, a common conviction! So I write praying for timeless references that will not be immediately dismissed as irrelevant, or whose time stamp has long since expired in this new atmosphere of cancel culture where truth is now the relative notion of who has the biggest platform for stirring the pot.

I have the benefit now of having completed the unpublished draft of my autobiography, so I humbly adapt the words of the apostle Luke as I, too, say, Though many have undertaken to write an account of the things fulfilled to a point in their lifetimes…it is now time for me to take account of my own life (Luke 1:1, 2).

The writing process from the original draft began with a short summary of what was titled My Favorites. As I sat at my desk, it was only appropriate that the background music to my writing would be My Favorite Things. And though Rodgers and Hammerstein are credited with its composition, the work of John Coltrane should be credited with giving it voice. John Coltrane is on my Mount Rushmore of greatest artistic cultural influences. Coltrane’s music was more than art; it became part of the music score for a generation who were able to bridge the gap between singing We Shall Overcome and I’m Black and I’m Proud. Coltrane brought tother the spiritual and the cultural. I recall that we, as James Weldon Johnson so apply described us, full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, and yet, full of the hope that the present has brought us, required a new song. We had spent so much time in the miry clay of post-antebellum freedom seeking that we needed the cosmic liberation that came from the transcendental sounds of Trane’s soprano saxophone. I struggled to abandon my sense of tempo, melody, and harmonics as I listened to Coltrane’s album, Ascension. This deep spiritual probing of my preconceived notions of giving God glory will forever have established the prophetic Coltrane sound. As I look back, the Holy Bible and John Coltrane stitched together most of my favorites in life.

My Favorite Things

One of my favorite things, my favorite time of the day is the morning, the dawning of a new day. First and foremost the morning is the grace of God to see a new day. When you begin the day with a reverencing of the morning, it transforms the day and your life. I became an early riser because of my great-grandmother Anna Magwood, with whom I shared a bedroom. Maggie, as we called her, was our alarm clock; she would intuitively get up each morning before daybreak and start the fire in the old coal-burning cooking stove. I, sensing her movement, would get up, wrap myself in the old quilt from my bed, and come into the kitchen. The drudgery of routine assumed mediocracy and monotony can obstruct our ability to wake up and smell the roses and the coffee each new day brings. However, what I initially thought was routine was all preparation for anticipation for what was to come next. Over seven decades later, on the shore of the Atlantic at Daytona Beach, I realized it was all leading to the sun bursting on the horizon of this new day. Nearly four decades later, the new millennium at Daytona Beach had confirmed that even after—the sunrise on Presque Isle, Sheep Heads Bay, Briginteen, Belmar, Ocean City, Hatteras, and even Jamaica—that morning and sunrise never gets old. The impeccable mural that God paints each sunrise accentuates the enormity of God’s creation and my minuscule place in it.

It was because of my reverencing of the morning that summer and, with it, my fascination with fishing were born. These two are a few more of my favorite things. In each of the aforementioned locations, I usually enjoyed the sunrise because of the tide charts and the probability of catching fish. Fishing remains one of the most relaxing experiences I enjoy. Truth be told, however, fishing is very relaxing, though catching fish is quite the opposite.

When asked to consider my favorite actor/actress and favorite movie, it could only be Denzell Washington and Spike Lee’s epic movie, Malcolm X. Denzell Washington’s accolades and awards speak for themselves. He is for me and other Baby Boomers, the Sidney Portier of our times. Denzell is unashamedly himself with Afro-centric male nuances whose subtleties bodaciously come through each character he plays. The juxtaposition of Denzell’s person with the persona of his characterizations made his depiction of Malcolm X uncanny. Some people as far back as the beginning of my elementary teaching career, over forty years ago, would say they just didn’t get, how I could call Malcolm X a hero. I would tell them this is something that you can’t get. This is something that has to get you!

It took me over sixty years of living to discover that another of my favorite things was the fictional character in the movie Black Panther. Since I didn’t read comic books, I had to wait for the movie. We had come a long, long way from the Black exploitation films of the 1970s and the shaft explosion.

This groundbreaking blockbuster of a hit, Black Panther reminded me of the real Black Panther—the fierce-looking logo for the Black Panther political party that started in California. These young men and women were fierce and in-your-face about social change, police brutality, community care, and self-sufficiency. The results of their protests resulted in strategically planned armed assaults on their headquarters and eventually total annihilation.

Another one of my favorite things was family time during the holidays. The first primary destination for family gatherings was my parents, Helen and Lamar Lee’s home right behind the church in Chartiers City. As they became older and when the preparations became too much for my aging parents my sister Dina, my brother Kevin and I took over the duties and the destinations were spread out.

The most extraordinary twist on the notion of favorite family destinations was Vada and my experience in our son Tre’s and our daughter-in-love’s destination wedding in Jamaica.

My wife, Vada, is truly a world traveler. She has much more to compare with and many more cultures to consider in answering this question, but I can truly say that my favorite country is the United States of America. With the advent of the internet and social media, you don’t have to go there to see what going on there. The world has gotten smaller not because they have decreased its size but because the gaps in culture and social cohesiveness have all but disappeared. The same craziness that’s in America is everywhere and the same craziness that’s everywhere is in America!

Since the last should be first, my favorite book is the Bible. I spent the first forty years of my life trying to answer the question Who am I? and the last thirty-two years of my life having the first question answered by the revelation from the Bible as to Whose I am! Like John Wesley, the spiritual father of the AME Zion Church, I too am "a man of one book." The Holy Bible has become the centerpiece of all of my knowledge and especially all of my revealed wisdom.

With regards to the Bible as the way…to the Way, I am a cessationist, holding to the belief that certain spiritual gifts have ceased with the apostolic age of the church.

I read other books that serve as commentary on the Bible. I even have endured certain writings to dispute certain heretical teachings of this new age of Christianity. But as a Wesleyan reformist, I hold to sola scriptura, by scripture alone. The Bible is the sole infallible source of authority for Christian faith and practice.

That being said my two favorite Bible verses are these:

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith