To My Mother on Mother's Day 2013

I asked my kids in the car the other day if they wanted to make anything for their grandmothers, Nona and Memaw, for Mother’s Day.  My son responded with, “why would I make something for them, they are not my mom.”  This of course, was a gut reaction to not wanting to have to do more work, he adores his grandmothers.  But his question was valid for a 6 year old.  And of course I responded with the quick & obvious answers of the importance.  But I pondered on this for a while afterwards, the depth of this question to which the answer is legacy.  How do you explain legacy?  Can it simply be explained or is it only learned through experience?

(As I tell this story, I am sensitive to the fact that many around me do not have the richness of family that I am blessed with, and I do not share to hold that up at anyone.  But this is my story, and on this day, I want to honor my mother and those in it.)

I have learned in my own life that I have a rich legacy, one that I am proud of, and it is a priority to me to make sure that my children understand their heritage.  As I answered my son with the obligatory, “we honor all mothers on Mother’s Day,” and the more significant, “buddy, mommy & daddy wouldn’t be such good parents for you if it weren’t for Nona and Memaw”, I thought about what that really meant.

My mom is a rock.  Her strength is astounding.  She was raised in a tough environment, and then also went through tough stuff when my brothers and I were young.  I understood little of this until becoming an adult, but know understand how strong my mother truly is.  I have been very blessed in that I have not endured many really tough challenges in my own life.  Ironically, until now, and my challenge now is not my own but my families, and more my mothers’ than anyone.  And I completely understand that my strength comes from her, and yet as I have to stand on my strength now, I am watching her yet again, be the rock for our family.

Strength is not passed on genetically.  But it is also not something that you know have learned until you have stopped to examine where your strength comes from.  Then as you think about each individual challenge in your life and your responses to them, you think about where you learned, saw, and understood that behavior to model it.  And I know I took those things directly from all I saw and heard from my mother growing up. 

My mother is an amazing role model.  She and my dad have been married for 40 years.  Often when people here this said about a married couple they think things like, “Wow, you’re lucky you’re parents stayed together,” or “That’s really sweet that they’ve been together for so long.”   But what I know about my parents now that I’ve been married myself for 16 years is that they have stayed together out of love, strength, commitment and determination.  And that is to be applauded way beyond something sweet, cute and by no means is it luck. 

They made decisions, at the altar, and often daily, to stick it out, work through the tough stuff and continue to find love.  My mom told me once, reflecting on my own upcoming marriage, that she fell in love with my father, but that to be married was to choose to love him daily.  There were days that she did not feel it, no butterflies in the stomach on those days, sometimes it felt like the opposite.  But by making the choice every day, she could look back on the (then) 20 years and know that their true love and grown into something so much more amazing than anything that she had “felt” in the pit of her stomach in the beginning.  She admonished me to make the choice to love Keith every day, even when I don’t feel like it.  And she was right. 

And what a model, through that example, and through so many other actions of her life, she has been of trusting God and teaching us to do the same.  There were many years of her life where the end did not seem in sight, or the circumstances did not seem to fit into what “should” have been God’s plan.  In fact, we face one of those times as a family again now.  And she is leading the way in saying, “I don’t get it God, but it is in your hands.”   My mom has always been a great writer & speaker, and I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to hear her speak about some of these challenges in her life, and I took a page full of notes, from a talk by my own mother!  She is still teaching me how to look towards Christ. 

And she’s not perfect; I know that, of course, none of us are.  She’d be embarrassed herself if I posted this without pointing that out.  And, don’t you know it, as an adult, I’ve found some of my own challenges are those that make me say, “I’m acting like my mother.”  But this post is not about bringing any of those things into sight.  It’s Mothers Day, and I wrote this as my gift, to honor her. 

I pray one day that my daughter will find herself saying, “I’m acting like my mother,” both in fault and in pride.   I know that I do act like my mother, and I couldn’t be more proud of that fact.  

I love you, Mom, and I am so proud of you.  You have been here for me my whole life, and now I am here for you, even though I still need you, too!  Thank you, with every ounce of my being, for everything you’ve done and will still do for me.

So What Then, Is My Response To The Cross?

I was at a worship event last night for Good Friday.  And there was all the expected commenting on what that Friday 2000 years ago represented.  Artistic photos of the gray-skinned, bruised arm, hanging from the cross, pierced and bloody, yet reaching out, symbolically reaching towards us in love.   Video of the hill, Golgotha, the crosses, intermittent with Jesus’ own words from scripture, “do this in remembrance of me.”   And a reminder from the pastor that “tonight is not about the celebration, but that tonight is about the struggle, the pain, the sacrifice, dwell on that tonight.”

So I dwelled.  Excruciating physical pain, agonizing heartache, blinding emotional pain.  Do we really know what these words mean?  Some of us do.  If you’ve lost someone close to you, if you’ve experienced a terrible tragedy, if you’ve fought a devastating disease, you know that type of pain.  Not on the level of our Lord, but at the depth we are capable to humanly feel the words above. 

So I sat in my pew and thought about it, and then I let that pain in.   I let myself feel the pain of loss, injustice and disease that has wreaked havoc on the lives of those around me and on my own family in the last few years.  And I let myself feel the pain anew that I had been blocking, ignoring, pretending wasn’t there for quite some time now.  I felt it as if every feeling was fresh that day.  Aching pain that crushed my chest to the point of barely breathing, I shook and sobbed, not even aware to be concerned of how I appeared to other worshippers around me.

And even as I drowned in the feelings of pain, I understood within myself, completely, that this was nothing compared to Christ’s pain & suffering, physically, and his anguish in the sacrifice he chose to make for me, for us.

And the worship pastor asked us to consider our response.  “So what then, is our response to the cross? Reflect on that as we sing.” 

My response struck me full in my tear-streaked face.  My heart pounded and I cried as it took my breath literally away.  In that instant, my pain turned to joy, but a joy so forceful and shocking that it felt more intense than the pain.  A joy so full that I cried harder and the weight of the truth of what Jesus did for us was more crushing in my chest than the pain.  I’m having trouble finding words to express the beauty, intensity and fright of this moment.  My chest aches today and my eyes well up just to think of it again.

That truth, many of you already know.  He felt more pain than we can ever imagine even in our deepest moments of ache, because he loves us more than we can ever understand, even at the depths of our ability to love.

  “He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of His wind & mercy.” (How He Loves, David Crowder)

“His love is deep, His love is wide, and it covers us.  His love is fierce, His love is strong, it is furious.  His love is sweet, His love is wild, and it’s waking hearts to life.” (Furious, Jeremy Riddle)

These were some of the lyrics we sang, last night, of many more, all in the theme of love.  But really, do you imagine his love as a hurricane?  Swirling furiously, a love so strong to turn your world upside down, a wild love, a fierce love.  We don’t like to think about love like that.  But oh, how He loves us.  And for a few moments last night, I felt that…I felt love so fierce it crushed me, a love so strong it was painful to bear. 

And what is my response?  Joy, a joy so true that I can’t explain it…a feeling so deep that it is missed in every day happiness.  I threw myself into the depths of pain, and was rewarded a joy so wild that it swirled through me like a hurricane. 

Perhaps joy seems odd here to you.  Perhaps joy should be reserved for Easter Sunday and the celebration.  By my response to the cross is joy, joy that is from the core, the real heart of the matter.  As I dwelt on the struggle and in the pain, my heart and mind attuned to his sacrifice and love for us, the only response my body could bring forth was joy.

Christ did this for every single person in the 2000 years since the night of his death, and he did it for every single person that will be from now until he comes again.  And that makes me a very insignificant pinprick on the timeline of God’s kingdom.  Some may feel small & unimportant at this, but ironically, it brings me great comfort.  I am comforted at the idea that the losses in my life are ultimately not as significant in God’s economy as they are in my life, that things that seem insurmountable to me won’t matter at all on the tapestry being woven of the work of Christ. 

YET, He cares. He loves me and each one of us enough, that though we are just a pinprick, he made the ultimate sacrifice for ME and YOU.   We shouldn’t even matter, we are just a grain of sand in the true work of His kingdom, and yet, he loves us fiercely, like a hurricane.  Each one of us. 

Joy.  That is what I feel as I prepare for tomorrow’s celebration, and I think I will look at it in a fresh way tomorrow morning than perhaps I ever have before. 

He is not here; he is risen, just as he said.  Come and see where he lay.”  Matt 28:6

I will celebrate this miracle that is our grace, our hope and our future.  I will know that our great God lives, is alive and working as much today as he was 2000 years ago.  But my JOY will be great for the truth of his love and his pain.  And I have never been more grateful for the cross.