This will be the second Mother’s Day since my Mom died. This is a piece that I wrote right after her death. It is a story of incredible grace and redemption. I pray that it will encourage some of you.
Blessings, Dave
There is the sadness of loss that is tempered with the joy of seeing her relationship with the Lord Jesus in her final months. The last year of my Mom’s life caused me to think of Al Michael’s famous question from the 1980 Olympics. “Do you believe in miracles?”
I do believe in miracles. I have seen one.
I loved my Mom but our relationship was challenging. She was raised in a family where love was not expressed. She could be very negative and her comments had stung me over the years. I knew that she loved me fiercely but I will admit that I grieved for a more gracious expression of her love. My Mom could be really difficult.
As her health declined I prayed that her relationship with God would be clear to her and to her family. The summer before she died I journeyed to Ohio to visit her. A group of Christian friends in Texas told me they would pray that I could discuss salvation with my Mom. I thanked them for their concern but in my heart I felt they were naive. They did not know my Mom.
Fast forward a few days as I am sitting with my Mom. The conversation is mundane. Out of nowhere she dropped this bombshell.
“How can you be sure that you are going to heaven?”
You could have knocked me over with a feather and I immediately thought of those saints in Texas praying for exactly this moment. And I felt a bit of shame because I was the naive one who doubted the power of prayer. I shared the gospel with my Mom. She assured me that she had trusted Christ as her Savior. The next question was nearly as surprising.
“What if you trusted Christ but haven’t lived it?”
Wow. What do you say to that? I chose to tell her the truth. That she was a child of God but she had forfeited a lot of joy by not walking more faithfully with Him. She had likely missed chances to serve and probably many blessings the Lord had desired her to experience. Still, there was a nagging question in my mind that I lacked the courage to address. I knew there were people who had hurt my Mom deeply and she showed no signs of forgiveness. I was fairly certain she would take that bitter anger to her grave.
But Mom took those comments about living for Jesus to heart. She chose to try to live for Him with the rest of her days. She told my niece that she had prayed more in the last year than she had in her whole life. She regularly asked me to pray for her and told me she was praying for me and especially for Joni as my bride battled breast cancer.
My Mom began to regularly tell me she loved me. That was something you didn’t say in her family. You were just supposed to know it. A few weeks before she died she told me that she was sorry if she had hurt me with her words or actions. That was the first time I had heard those words from my Mom in 53 years. It was a powerful moment of grace and reconciliation between us. When I saw her last week she kissed me and said, “you don’t know how much you mean to me.” But she was wrong. I finally did.
But the real miracle happened in her last days. My niece asked Mom about a woman she had felt so much bitterness and hatred toward. When I was told about her response the words sent chills through me.
“Oh honey. That was in the past. I have forgiven her.”
What irony that I have been writing about forgiveness for so long and my Mom gave me a miracle of forgiveness as her final gift. Forgiveness can happen. It is never too late. For those who think they cannot forgive I will tell you that with God it is possible. I have witnessed a miracle to start the New Year. I am saddened that my Mom is gone but I am rejoicing in her victory. She was able to lay her burdens at the foot of the Cross and pass unencumbered into the presence of the Lord. I praise God that I have not lost my Mom. Nope. Now I know exactly where she is.
eb
Wow!
Cheryl
I have issues with forgiveness also.
All my best to Kathleen!
Kathleen
Forgiveness is something I had struggled with for a long time with people in my life, my mother in particular. She was a difficult woman who didn’t allow herself happiness and made sure those around her didn’t, either. She suffered through cancer for 13 years before she died. It wasn’t until the last few months of her life that I saw a difference from her seething frustration and anger. It was a visit to Zion, Illinois, where she was receiving chemotherapy, a last ditch effort to stop the liver cancer from ending her life.
She seemed glad to see me when I arrived. We talked like two old friends, peer to peer; an unheard of occurrence prior to this visit. I saw in her a love, patience and respect I’d NEVER seen before. It was almost surreal. As I readied myself to go, I said “I love you” as I always did in ending phone conversations and visits. To my surprise, she responded with “I love you, too.” The first (and only) time in 23 years she ever told me she loved me. Wow! I cried the 6 hour drive back to Toledo from the emotional response I felt.
It was then that I knew I had to (and wanted to) forgive her. All the beatings, belittling remarks, harsh remarks, attempts to just plain make myself (and my other sisters) feel small and insignificant and unwanted–I gave it to God. I decided that I didn’t know what it was like raising a family of 7 children, and living the life she did. I also realized by not forgiving her, I was putting myself above God.
He loved her (and I) enough to die on the cross for ALL our sin before we were born. Before we accepted Him. He loved us that much. He took a chance on our response to His mercy and grace, and died a horrible, shameful death. He went to hell so we didn’t have to go there. He took all the ugly, mean and hurtful things we did to others as well as Himself and nailed it to the cross. He gave up His very being in Heaven to come to earth and do this.
How did I find that I was too hurt, too wounded or unloved to forgive my mother? Or yet, myself in those moments when I went over my sins in shame and guilt? Was I, Kathy, so much different than God that I couldn’t forgive? Of course not! What felt like a righteous lack of forgiveness really represented a prideful feeling that I had been too wounded, or had committed such an awful act that the make of the universe, the Lord of all, could forgive, but I could not?! When I began to see it as the prideful act it was, I could forgive much easier. I realized the humility in the act of forgiveness and acceptance of God’s great mercy and grace that I was keeping myself from experiencing.
Now that my father is dying, I again find myself facing the forgiveness question. Fortunately, I have grown in my relationship with Jesus. I love my father and forgive him for his absences when mother was beating us, for not protecting us, for not being the father I thought he should be. I love him, and want him to be in heaven when, by the grace and mercy of God, I shall arrive there someday.
Sherri
I stumbled upon a website with the article about your mother. It was almost as if you had taken my own experience and written about it, except that it was my father who was the difficult one. He was a very angry man who also found it difficult to express love or kind words. When faced with a terminal illness, he finally accepted the Lord and told me he was sorry for his difficulty in expressing love. I’ll never forget it, and I thank God.