I’ve been thinking about Rachel this morning. She was a remarkable woman who counted among her fond memories from her childhood riding with her twin sister, Frances, in a convertible with Eleanor Roosevelt when the first lady visited Wisconsin.

Rachel was born in 1924 and she died in 2009 at the age of 85. In between she and her husband raised three sons and a daughter. She was married on Thanksgiving Day, 1945, and after the wedding she and her husband went back to the apartment they would share in Indiana and she opened the cupboard to figure out what she could make for dinner. There was a can of tomato soup and a can of mushroom soup, so she put the two together and that’s what there was. But it was enough. After all, when she was growing up in West Virginia, there were hobos who would come to the back door of her family’s house looking for a meal and her father, a preacher, never refused.

When she first met her mother-in-law-to-be, she was informed, in no uncertain terms: I don’t see how anyone can be a Christian and a Democrat. Out of respect, she held her tongue. That time. Then spent the rest of her life proving otherwise.

She enjoyed four decades of marriage and, as a minister’s wife, served congregations from Pennsylvania to Ohio to Minnesota. In the early years of her marriage she was a social worker for child welfare services in Ohio. Later, in the 1960s, she went back to college and finished her bachelor’s degree. She earned a master’s degree and went to work as a school teacher to help support her family.

She taught mathematics and computer science, English and social studies. In 1984, a couple years after her husband died, she took a teaching assignment as a missionary for her church and found herself in the Cayman Islands. Perhaps that was cosmic compensation for the winters in Duluth. She never managed to put away much money in any accounts in the Caymans, but she did learn to swim—and to snorkel, marveling at the wonders of the tropical fish in the coves around Grand Cayman.

In June 1989 she had planned on taking a new teaching assignment in China and but after the massacre at Tienanmen Square her children said maybe now wasn’t the time to go. So, she decided that at age 65 perhaps it was time to retire after all. She began a new chapter of her life out West, living with her children in California and Washington over the years, and welcoming more grandchildren and then great-grandchildren to the family. They all called her Oma.

Rachel attributed her long life to “taking vitamins, being flexible, and not holding grudges.” Her belief in prayer was unshakable.

I’ve been thinking about Rachel and where she fits into the 47 percent. You know, those who don’t pay any income tax, as one broad brush paints it. Because, in her later years, Rachel didn’t earn enough money to pay any income tax. But she’d taken a fair bit of responsibility for her own life and for her children’s lives and for the children she taught and the congregations she cared for over many decades and she’d made the world a better place.

I’m particularly biased in that respect—about how much better—because, you see, she was mother to my wife. She also helped care for our son after he was born.

Her practical approach toward life also included these practices: Forgive others, use new technologies, tell stories, keep up with world news, and read the comics.

Sometimes, of course, with the last two, it’s hard to tell them apart. But we try.