Mrs. Stahlman’s Calendar

When we first met the Stahlmans, they were already old and retired, he from public school science teaching and she from teaching dietician courses at the local university. Her calendar hung in the bathroom behind the toilet, an inauspicious location for such a noteworthy calendar. The pictures were the typical calendar flowers, but the year was not the current year—not even close. No dated square was empty. In fact, every square was full of entries in Mrs. Stahlman’s thin, spidery hand: every name followed by a two-digit shorthand indicating a year.

The calendar was her birthday and anniversary record for an untold number of different people, compiled over an untold number of years. Well-represented days had little arrows directing the reader to the continuation of the list along the sides and in the margins. As new people became friends, their birthdays and anniversaries were added to her perpetual calendar.

We loved our few years close to the Stahlmans, their help and friendship, but for well over thirty years we’ve been in separate places. Every year, however, on my birthday, my husband’s birthday, and our anniversary we received cards, at first from both, for many years, only from Mrs. This new year will be the first with no Mrs. Stahlman cards.

Every one of those cards was a reminder of something more astounding than that we had found ourselves on one of the most expansive perpetual birthday calendars in history. They also reminded us that the Stahlmans had us on another list of theirs, the Monday prayer list. Every Monday, we received the blessing of their faithfulness to intercede for others.

Not many of us will have a perpetual calendar as simple, as longstanding, as carefully maintained, or as effective as Mrs. Stahlman’s. Even fewer of us will develop or maintain their level of faithful intercession, but if in any of your scheduling endeavors, you decide a perpetual calendar would be helpful, do remember Mrs. Stahlman’s example. It needn’t be a complicated system, but it does need to be something that can be readily accessed, referred to daily, and added to as needed.

The prayer challenge demonstrated by the Stahlmans is worthy of even greater consideration in a new year where fulfilling biblical priorities takes top priority. How faithful could some of us steeped in bustling, self-absorbed habits become at maintaining a prayer cycle that would habitually pray for decades for those well out of our age group, not family members, and who we may never see again in this world?