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"You are not Barbara Johnson! I have all her tapes and you don't sound anything like her!" the woman on the phone argued. She'd just gotten a call from someone identifying herself as Barbara Johnson. But why would Barbara, the woman whose books and ministry had been such a comfort, be calling her?

Hmmmm, the real Barbara Johnson thought, with a flash of mischief. I could keep egging her on. Instead, she threw out a dare.

"Go ahead, ask me the name of Barbara Johnson's very first book," the author said, knowing that the 20-year-old title was less known than her others.

"What is it?" the woman challenged.

Barbara said triumphantly, "Where Does a Mother Go to Resign?!"

After a few minutes, the woman is satisfied that she's talking to the real Barbara Johnson, and they enjoy a laugh together.

The phone is often busy at the Johnsons' house. Every December (her birthday month), Barbara gives a present to herself by taking two weeks to call people involved in her Spatula ministry whose loved ones have died. In 1998, her list had 320 names. Barbara, who says her age is "somewhere between estrogen and death," offers a word of encouragement before Christmas, a long-distance verbal hug to someone she may never meet.

"It's a boomerang effect," explains the best-selling author of 11 books (and co-author of three more), founder of Spatula Ministries (a support network for those with family members in the homosexual lifestyle), and popular speaker at Women of Faith conferences. "After New Year's, my mailbox fills up with thank-yous from across the country. My few minutes of saying 'someone cares' bounces back joy to me."

Thirty-three years ago, Barbara felt anything but joyful. Her husband Bill lay on the side of the road after a terrible car accident, with severe brain damage and virtually blind. (Barbara and her two youngest sons, following in another car a few minutes behind, were the first to find him.) The doctors were blunt: Bill was non-functioning, a vegetable. They suggested putting him in a veterans' hospital for the rest of his life—which the doctors expected to be only five more years.

The words of Psalm 27:1 ran through Barbara's mind: "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?"

She told the doctors she wouldn't do it.

Over two years, a loving family's prayers and laughter, a psychotherapist's intensive memory sessions, and Bill's sheer determination culminated in an undeniable miracle from God. Eventually Bill went back to work as a mechanical engineer, with no debilitating effects of the head trauma.

A deposit in heaven
In March 1968, Barbara and Bill's second oldest son, Steve, joined the Marines and headed to Vietnam. At the end of July, Steve's entire company of 65 men were killed.

But not before Steve had read a loving letter from his mother that had arrived that morning. Barbara assured him that "he was safe with Jesus" no matter what happened. The letter came back with Steve's body—a message written to comfort a soldier in combat comforted the family, too.

As Barbara said good-bye to Steve, she felt that with "one deposit in heaven," life had to get better.

Then Tim, the Johnsons' oldest son, completed his training at the Los Angeles Police Academy in 1973, but decided to spend the summer working in Alaska with two friends before beginning his career in law enforcement.

A couple of weeks into the adventure, the trio hadn't found steady work, and they were ready to turn around. Stopping at a gas station in Anchorage, the Californians, crammed in a blue Volkswagen, met a caring Christian who ran the station. Ted McReynolds sensed their spiritual neediness and invited them to a home-cooked meal.

A one-time dinner invitation turned into a five-week stay. Tim and his friends, Ron and Al, couldn't resist the enthusiastic faith of the McReynolds family. They became involved in church. Tim and Ron recommitted their lives to Christ; Al gave his life to Christ for the first time.

The letters Tim wrote home reflected his transformed life. Barbara couldn't wait to see the glow on his face.

After two months, Tim and Ron decided to pack it up. Tim phoned Barbara on August 1 from the Yukon Territory to say how real God was in his life; he had so much to tell her when he got home.

They never made it. Five hours after Tim's phone call, a drunken driver veered into their lane, killing both of them instantly. In the same morgue where she identified Steve exactly five years before (a morgue that handled bodies of people who died outside the United States), Barbara cried for her first-born son.

The grieving mother angrily asked God why. But at the funeral, Tim's evangelistic zeal emerged in stories of those he had touched. His commitment had made a difference.

With two sons gone, what more could happen?

Another blow to the heart
The day before Father's Day in 1975, Barbara was heading to the airport to pick up her sister Janet and brother-in-law Mel for a family get-together. Halfway out the door, she heard the phone rang. A friend of Barbara and Bill's 20-year-old son Larry wanted to borrow a book.

Barbara scanned the bookcase in Larry's room, then opened a drawer in Larry's desk. The book lay on a stack of magazines. Barbara caught a glimpse of some pictures and magazine covers, nearly getting sick on the spot. Larry's drawer was full of homosexual-related material.

Within 24 hours, Barbara's life took a dramatic detour into a lifestyle she knew nothing about. And would not accept. Her attempts—and Bill's—to "fix" Larry drove him away from his family.

Even more than the tragic deaths of her other two sons, this nearly sent Barbara over the edge—literally—as she thought about driving off a California overpass. Instead, she placed Larry in God's hands, relinquishing her hold.

Scraping together a ministry
As Barbara had opportunity to speak at churches about being a Christian mother with a homosexual son, countless people disclosed the same heartache with sons and daughters. Sensing the need, Barbara and Bill began Spatula Ministries in 1978—"for parents who had hit the ceiling when they heard the word homosexual and needed to be scraped off with love." From childhood, Barbara had always dreamed of being a missionary. This was certainly an unusual mission field to pioneer.

Things began to snowball when Barbara wrote her first book in 1979, Where Does a Mother Go to Resign? (Bethany House), followed by Stick a Geranium in Your Hat and Be Happy! (Word). Dubbed "the Geranium Lady" from the moment the book hit the stores, Barbara's post office box seemed to bloom overnight. With letters came a geranium knickknack here, a geranium whatsit there. At last count, Barbara's geranium-adorned hat collection alone numbered 29.

"Probably my favorite gift is a group photo of 20 to 30 Spatula ladies, all holding the Geranium book and wearing geranium hats," Barbara says.

Two million copies later, Barbara's homespun humor and God-centered hope captured in the Geranium book still speak to broken lives. And it has energized her to keep pecking away at the typewriter.

Pages fly out, get filed in a bath tub, eventually shaped into books grabbed up—corny title and all—by readers. Barbara insists publishers keep the cost affordable; after all, her fans are "Wal-Mart shoppers." Every one of her books has made the Christian bestseller list.

Splash attack
At the Women of Faith (WOF) conferences (where Barbara is a keynote speaker with Sheila Walsh, Patsy Clairmont, Lucy Swindoll, Marilyn Meberg, Thelma Wells, and others), her table is unmistakable. Piled with books ("Ten dollars each. Three for $25!" Barbara and her helpers call out), your eye falls on mounds of blue glass stones that shimmer in the light. These "splashes of joy" (200 pounds of them at each conference) are Barbara's gift to anyone walking by—a take-home reminder to look for joyful moments every day.

Not everyone grabs one; some have to be coaxed to pocket the sparkly oval. A book table assistant remembers one conference where a crowd of women snaked their way past the booth. Only one woman reached out for a "splash."

After hearing Barbara tell how God desires to mend broken lives, the conferee returned to the booth. This was the first time she had been out of the house since losing her baby months before. Clutching her tiny blue trinket of joy, the young mother had renewed hope that God did care.

Tears flow freely around Barbara. She affectionately refers to hurting women as "the ladies who lean"—they lean across the table to whisper in her ear or press a note in her hand. At least a dozen women will repeat the same phrase—"You and your book saved my life." Their stories tear at Barbara's heart. The saddest, perhaps, are those who are weighed down with secrets they feel they can't share—with family, friends, or even their pastors.

During one WOF event, after Barbara spoke, a woman divulged for the first time to her sister that her son was gay. As the auditorium emptied, the sisters sat alone, holding each other, crying.

"There's so much pain in the world," Barbara sighs.

No stone to throw
When Barbara tells son Larry's story before an audience, she lets him add the postscript (via tape). After 11 years of estrangement, he showed up on Mother's Day to give her a present: he had left the homosexual lifestyle and was clean before God. Later he passed on this advice during a Focus on the Family broadcast:

"If we as Christians can be kind and loving and put away a condemning spirit, then surely the light of Christ will be able to shine in our disbelieving world, and restoration and revival will take root in the lives of those we touch."

Since their reconciliation, Larry has used his computer skills to help Barbara research her books. They are on the phone weekly (if not more often), exchanging information. Being computer-illiterate herself, Barbara's grateful for his expertise.

Though not affiliated with any group working specifically with homosexuals, Barbara has helped plan—and even officiated—at funerals of men who died from AIDS. She knows Jesus loved the untouchables; as a believer, why should she be any different?

"When I die, I'd like my tombstone to read, GOD AND BARBARA JOHNSON LOVED HOMOSEXUALS," she said at a conference, after hearing about the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student. "You can accept someone without approving of their behavior. If we had to approve everyone's behavior, we wouldn't love anybody. We're all sinners. I carry a fist-sized gray stone hand-painted by my daughter-in-love, Shannon (wife of her youngest son Barney), that reads, 'Barbara's First Stone' based on Jesus' reference in John 8:7: '"If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone … "' I think about that quite a bit."

Always room for joy
It's November 1998 and Barbara's promoting her latest book from Zondervan—Boomerang Joy—on "The 700 Club." She thinks her red pants suit clashes with the orange guest chair (actually, it brightens the set). At the signal, Barbara runs through "her credentials" (the family experiences that have shaped her life) in about four minutes, barely taking a breath. She emphasizes how scattering joy into people's lives is something everyone can do.

At 6 a.m. in Nevada, Barbara's granddaughters, Kandee, 20, and Tiffany, 18, and their mother Shannon, watch the live broadcast and cheer Barbara on. Later Kandee admits her grandma is so fun! Whenever she's in a store where Barbara's books are sold, Kandee wants to shout, "That's my grandma!"

Barbara's joy is infectious. It caught Art Linkletter's attention, leading to an invitation to appear with him four times in 1999. With another year of 25 WOF stops, Barbara and Bill will be racking up the frequent flyer miles.

In arenas across the country, the two will arrive at their booth early and, with their helpers, unpack the books. Barbara will make sure everything's arranged just so; Bill will sit with his label gun adding price stickers.

There'll be new books this year, like He's Gonna Toot and I'm Gonna Scoot(Word) offering advice on "thinking about the sweet by-and-by while we're stuck in the nasty now-and-now" with artwork by Sam Butcher of Precious Moments fame.

When the crowd starts forming, Bill will hawk some books, buy a bag of hot popcorn, maybe wander a nearby mall when he needs a break.

Barbara will be here, there, everywhere, posing for photos, talking, and laughing. Most of all, she'll be available for those who, like herself, have paid their dues in life's heartbreak club, offering them a smile and a lot of joy.

A Christian Reader original article.

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