Believe in God.
Madge Thornton
When Madge Thornton invites you into her Bickford Cottage apartment, her words of welcome are "Come on in to the house of the Lord."
That's because throughout her years of learning and living, it's all been done "through the life of Jesus," she said.
"I don't know how to explain it to people because it has to be a part of you," Thornton said. "It's a part of me."
She said she's trying to write about her life held together by her belief in God and Jesus.
Thanks to a gift from her mother, she's lived her life by Psalm 27.
Her mother gave her the psalm to read every day. Thornton remembers her mother saying that they were not "forsaking her" - referring to a line in the psalm about being forsaken by your father and mother, but being taken care of by the Lord. She is able to recite it from memory.
"We were created by God, so you have to believe in God," she said. "This is what has happened to our country. We don't believe in God enough. We get away from God and everything falls to pieces."
She knows people can't make others listen to God, but encourages others to think about what he has done.
"God made us and gave us the freedom to think," she said. "And we don't think the right things all the time."
Thornton said she became a teacher partially because of what she realized while growing up with 12 brothers and sisters.
"I had the mind to teach," she said. "We taught each other. That's what we did. We taught all our life."
When she taught in the classroom, her favorite years were those teaching second grade.
"By the time they're in second grade, they know how to write, they know words," she said. "They're so loving. You can just encourage them with what they know. It's so marvelous."
— Rachel Gallegos
