mother

I was silently broken-hearted when I went to get a sandwich at the campus deli. “Life is just a damned vail of tears!” I told the Lord. I ordered my sandwich at the counter, let the words of my own heart sink in, and by the time I left with the sandwich, I remembered a scripture: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” (2 Cor. 4:7)

How very odd. The God of the universe in our hearts surrounded by our fallen flesh! I remembered a lesson from another time: God is no less God in us for all our infirmities and frailness. Why does He allow disaster in our lives when we know Him already and have turned from evil that His life and goodness may take root in our hearts?

I used to imagine that one day I would have a heart so pure as to make evil obsolete as the means of my transformation. I never thought about evil touching those I care for, though. All about me are those who still need to come to the end of themselves and it kills my soul to watch. “Why this death?” I asked Him.

I called a friend this evening. We both know several people who should be at the end of their ropes but apparently are not. They have created miserable circumstances for themselves and it is difficult not to fear for their safety. My friend asked me, “Why?” I told him I had considered it and realized that some people need destruction — that it is actually the mercy of God in many cases. It is the only way some people will ever call out to God — when they realize that they aren’t powerful enough to ignore the principles of the universe. Consequences, though, are like a double-edged sword. Not only does it cut through the heart of the rebellious ones — it cuts through the heart of the faithful ones who still trust in their own abilities — abilities to fix things, to convince others to “fly right”, and to demand from God the change needed. We, also, come to the end of ourselves and cry out for deliverance.

Prayer takes many forms in my life. Sometimes I pray on beads — because I need them? No. But it’s like in the movies where a woman goes into labor and the doctor or midwife tells someone, “Boil water!” It keeps them out of the way while the drama unfolds. Other times, I don’t care about beads, candles, or anything. I just need to talk to God. Then there are those times that leave me weeping convulsively on the floor. I doubt that any of these methods is better or worse than another. Those are more for us than for God who looks at the heart. But, as humans, we have to do something with ourselves.

I drove home in the evening dusk. I asked Him, “God, how can I really know you? I need to hear you. What does it take to be open to hear Your voice?” I thought about how Jesus experienced the full onslaught of fallen judgment against His divinity. He has already walked this way. Now the spirit of Christ has been released and made available to those who choose Him. Divinity is still walking around in human skin. He knows what it is to be single and lonely, what it is to be married and miserable. He understands the way of a parent with a child and a child with a parent; He knows what it is to be master and slave. He still subjects Himself to the elements of the world until the entirety of the cosmos is subsumed in His kingdom at last. Just as He overcame the world the first time, He still overcomes it today — in our lives.

I remember the quiet moments I used to have with my mother. When I was a little girl we used to sing together. I listened to her talk about the things she valued and believed in — about what was good and just and noble. It affected my outlook profoundly. Even when she said nothing, it didn’t matter. I knew what she thought and what she felt. All it took was a look from her and I knew what she thought about something.

God is like that. That’s what it takes to know Him. Conversations, quiet times, a look, a glance. I spent a lot of my early spiritual life trying to consciously think on Him every spare moment for fear I might lose contact or miss something spiritual. Suddenly today I remembered my mother — a mere human being. It sure wasn’t that hard to know what my mother thought, and I didn’t think on her every minute of the day. Half the time I didn’t think of her at all, but I knew she was there if I needed her. Sometimes she sat me down for a “talking to” and I didn’t want to listen, but I learned to sit still.

It’s the same with God. It doesn’t take staring at Him across the table all day long to know Him. He is fully “family” to those who believe. He is our Father. It only takes a few words here and there and a little conversation each day to know Him. I saw that it’s the same for me when I involve Him in my concerns just like I used to talk to my mother about what I loved, what I hated and what made me sad.

Of course He knows… My mother always did and she was a finite woman. How much more the God of the universe who travels around in our flesh?

Just as important, I see that the “vail of tears” is like an ocean that we travel through, always there no matter how righteous or wicked we are. Sometimes we find elements of beauty in spite of it, but the tears are always there, in our hearts if not our eyes. They may be recently past or shortly up ahead, but they are always waiting. In the end, it doesn’t matter what we feel, for it makes God in us no less God at all. But the one who lets the two-edged sword of anguish cut through the flesh to reveal Christ within is the one who overcomes the world in this lifetime.

I really didn’t know whether to post these thoughts here, but I didn’t have time to do it justice otherwise. I’m off to do other things for a while after this.

In tracing back the lineage of the ancient church in Britain, I find that it was more Orthodox than Catholic in the beginning. There is now a British Orthodox Church that is under the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It was founded in a bid to bring the Isles back to its first church.

I did further investigation and I find a more rigid structure in the present Coptic Orthodox Church than I think ever existed in ancient Britain. I suspect that the strict structure never got a foothold there, that the Coptic Orthodox Church has undergone some shifts since the original carriers of the Gospel made it to the British Isles and that what we are seeing of today’s Coptic Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church are results of serious changes very close to (but not identical to) the root of the Church. It is nearly impossible to distinguish that there ever might have been a time when geographical divisions with bishops did not exist, but the earliest records indicate this new kind of governmental division to be a serious change. The Lord sets the solitary in families, not in geographical divisions and not in institutions.

My suspicions are that to place oneself under the Coptic Orthodox Church might be to go back to the historical roots on the one hand but to negate them on the other (historical changes in the mother church and the lack of direct influence of the mother church on the British church in the beginning). There is great reason to suspect that the entire idea of what is “the Church” had shifted very early in Church history, judging by The Didache’s account of how to recognize an apostle-prophet. That in itself throws great suspicion on the idea of dioceses and parishes with a top-down structure. It simply does not exist in The Didache. Others might argue that it is a matter of the Church coming into maturity after The Didache was written, but I think that Church history shows that the Church did not mature — if anything, it was fairly well dumbed down in many ways by overbearing structure. We’ve seen the evidence of that in our own day.

All said, I think that God has had people in all places at all times. Many practices developed in the various strains of church through the centuries that are worth recognizing. It may sound a little odd, but sometimes I think that when the Lord said, “I was in prison and you visited me,” it applied to crossing the lines of religion and helping our fellow believers in captivity. But that is my fleeting thought.

In centuries past, people could not just cross the lines and fellowship with one another. We have technology and access to information to thank for some of the barriers breaking down. God deals with individuals in various ways and in His own good time. In bygone days, people did not seem to realize that they could not beat new opinions into people and so they unwittingly oppressed one another in the name of God. One’s conviction is like one’s own blood. It is a holy thing and we should never attack that which is sacred by earthly means. Those who love the truth will find God, and they do not have to have perfect understanding in all matters of the faith to be known of Him. Was it not while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us?

We held the funeral yesterday for my mother. How appropriate that she would pass before Easter and be buried right after. I can’t help thinking of the death and resurrection of Christ in all this. Just before her passing, we could only give her communion with a few little crumbs mixed with whatever the man put in that straw. She was all smiles. And then I remembered later that I had been reading to her out of the Gospel of John, “Whoever eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

The following is a reprint of something I posted on a forum for those who have kept up with this real life history as it has been unfolding. Sorry if it rambles, but I was just trying to get it all out.

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The funeral was wonderful. There were so many people there who knew the family at different points in our lives, but they had never met one another. And the neat thing is that people who listened to the stories my brother and I told of our mother found their information verified by those who had also known my mother, both in the far distant past and in more recent days. I feel I am beginning to understand my mother a bit better now.

She was a very private lady who endured a lot of suffering, yet she made so many rich. She was so funny….she was a strict tither. My brother David said that he figured out her tithe to be something like $18.36 and suggested she might round it up to $20. She said no — to send exactly $18.36. She tithed even when she didn’t have anything hardly to tithe. In fact, she told David to send her tiny tithe back to her little church, and then she said, “And you had better do it!” On top of that, she wrote all her private notes in coded shorthand, as I said earlier. She even kept her checkbook in shorthand. So she told my brother to balance her checkbook and he said, “I can’t! It’s all in shorthand. What’s this number here?” She told him it was an eight and then said, “Oh, no…I think it’s a zero.” I’m telling you, they broke the mold when they made her.

Between all the stories about her, it came out just how many people she tried to help. Her church friends had to noise everything around the apartment complexes and storefront where my mother socialized just to reach everyone who knew her. (Some don’t read the obits.) One little lady came to the funeral in a walker — the first time she’d been out of the house in six weeks. She said my mother had been taking care of her before she came to be with us at Christmas. She had teased her about being pregnant because her tummy was distended and now she felt so bad…but I reassured her that it was all okay.

Someone told the story of how my mother had taken in another woman whom she referred to as “Madame X” for many years — always requesting prayer for her at church. “Madame X” is a mentally-off woman who my mother let live with her the last months she was in San Antonio. There were many people who called my mother up at all hours of the day and night. One of her church lady friends asked her how she was going to get any sleep and my mother told her, “The Lord will provide rest.” I can’t say that in all of this heroic effort on my mother’s part that we were any too thrilled. We worried about her all the time, but she insisted that she was ministering to these people. A lot of them wouldn’t or couldn’t help themselves — maybe they were so emotionally messed up that they were unable to make rational decisions. But here is where I learned something.

If my mother had had children at home, her endeavors would have been irresponsible. However, it was her choice as a widow, to live like this. She confided in a friend how lonely she was, yet this was her choice. But it was something else I remembered talking to God about that helped me make sense of all this. My mother had a way of never doing responsible things in a timely manner. I think one reason was that she was in “escape” mode a lot of the time. Sometimes when there is so much suffering in your life, it’s just easier to escape by helping others while neglecting your family. I think a lot of people do that.

I won’t even go into all the examples of her lack of common sense in caring for her own. But I will drive at a principle I never saw so clearly before. In my own life, I had learned the hard way that the Lord would not allow me to be slack about responsibility. Yet, no matter how oblivious my mother was to the nuts and bolts of living, He always seemed to take care of her. She would say, “I’m trusting God,” much the way someone might close their eyes to walk across the street in the middle of oncoming traffic. Yet, God would let her get away with this stuff. I asked Him why that was after I noticed the pattern.

I realize now that God doesn’t require the same from all of us. I don’t know why He doesn’t, but He doesn’t. You would think that if you bashed someone across the head with a two-by-four, they’d see the light, but some people never do. I came to realize that, for whatever reason, my mother was just wired differently than other people. I gave up (and so did the rest of the family) on getting her to get out of bed before noon, be packed on moving day, show up for appointments within an hour of the time she should be there. (When I was in high school, she regularly made me wait for two hours before she picked me up even though she didn’t work outside the home.) It was incredibly exasperating, but I couldn’t spend the rest of my life exasperated.

My mother gave God that part that she knew how to do and it didn’t matter if it made any sense to anyone else. She was utterly sincere in all that she did. What, to others, seemed like a waste of time helping people who whiney-babied their way through life was her way of wasting herself on God. I never saw that before, because I have always been results oriented. I don’t like to waste my time with an idiot when, for one-tenth of the time, I can help five others who will see a real change in their lives. But you know what? Even idiots need someone to love them. Jesus loved a lot of hurting idiots when He walked the earth. (Some people really don’t SEE their problem even though it’s clear to others.)

He also loved people who wasted their lives on God — like the woman with the alabaster box. (What a good way to waste your life!) My mother was a process person — I mean she loved the process for itself. (Yes, you could say she was co-dependent, too.) But who knows but what some of these people who wanted nothing more than a sounding board found themselves loved in a way that nobody but Jesus could have endured? Some of them may have gone away unchanged, but God may yet use the time they spent with my mother to speak to their hearts. I know there were a few who actually learned a lot about God from her and began to have a relationship with Him. This has had the effect of making me value the process a lot more and to stop seeing lack of results as an utter failure on my part.

Now you will love this, but just before the funeral I was asked to select three songs to be played from a CD. I chose “Abide With Me,” “Ave Maria,” and “The Lord’s Prayer.” I don’t know why I chose “Ave Maria” — I mean I love it and almost didn’t have the guts to choose it, given my mother’s feelings about Catholic prayer. But I said what the heck….she would have expected her “loose cannon” daughter to slip something in. The more I thought on it, the more I saw the trail of all the saints who have preceded us and wasted their lives on Christ in their own various and sundry ways. Mary was the first to say “yes” when she took on herself the glory and the stigma of becoming the Mother of Our Lord. The fruit of her womb was blessed far above that of any woman who preceded or succeeded her as a mother. Every saint who has ever loved God has gone through a series of costly “yesses”. My mother did and she certainly endured incredible heartbreak, disappointment, anger, bitterness, betrayal, and rejection. And the dear lady who came in her walker is a beautiful Catholic who lost her primary caregiver — her own son — about a year ago. I realized later that the song was probably for her. My mother walked her path with her when she lost her son. My mother walked with a lot of people just the way that Jesus does.

I also saw something else. Many of us have come out of the churches and gone through a number of phases doing it. I actually feel that many of us have gone so far trying to find freedom and authenticity that we have crossed into a sort of nebulous existence trying to figure out what we are supposed to be doing. A few years ago I was poisoned by my church experience — I had “escaped Babylon”. And yet, some time later, I saw that Babylon was in me. I wandered “outside the camp” to be with Jesus… and yet, my mother went to the same church (I/C) that I did and experienced Jesus. I saw that following the Lord “outside the camp,” “escaping Babylon,” etc. is all a matter of heart. God allows the rise and fall of I/Cs just like He allows the rise and fall of Dairy Queens. They are just STUFF in our lives that He uses. My mother simply followed Jesus outside the camp but inside the I/C.

My mother did some unconventional things in her little I/C (and she was lucky not to be given the left foot of fellowship). She actually opposed some of the things they tried to do and did it in such a way that she changed THEM. Wow. Like my brother said — even when she told people off, she often did it in such a nice way that they liked her. (Yours truly does not possess these skills.) But the fact is, she was “outside the camp” with Jesus even though she was inside the I/C. Even though she did some churchy things and followed the forms of church, her life was driven by the Light — not by the I/C. I/C was just the setting where the action took place.

One other thing I must note. My brother just came to my apartment and mentioned getting something my mother wrote published. I didn’t realize it until after she died — but she wrote many, many letters to her great-grandson, Tripp. She wrote him every single week. His mother saved every one of those letters from her grandma. In every letter my mother would write something about how big he was getting and tell how far along she was knitting a blanket for him. She would say how much she loved him and how much she prayed for him. She told him how much God loves him and what a fine young man she is praying that God will make him. Several women have read these letters and wept because they are so lovely and beautiful.

I never thought my mother would have a book out before me. I thought of “The Shack” for a moment. Someone told me it took my mother a year to write all those. I said, no — it took her about 75-77 years to write it all. It is packed so full of love, hope, and joy, that no novice could ever have sat down and written it off the top of her head. I told David that I get to write the forward….Gosh, some see it purely as a sentimental Oprah-Winfrey thing and others are going to see the depths. I have a feeling no two people will come away with the same impression…maybe it’s one of those things that you read in your 20’s and think you “see” and then you read it in your 50’s and realize you had no idea how many levels it had.

At the funeral, one of my cousins remarked about a word someone used — “legacy”. She felt that my mother had carried the legacy of our grandmother, another incredible woman that we didn’t appreciate as her up-close family. I thought about my mother and how different we are. Also about my necklace on order with a thumbprint from her. Her hands were always so warm and healing when she prayed. It occurred to me that she had handed me a baton as her mother handed her. She is an example to us all to serve wherever we are, not to be frustrated with the process, and never to think that our part is not very important even if all we do is pray in our “closet”. My mother was part and parcel to numerous miracles and conversions as well as the boring process of day-to-day putting up with people. She was also instrumental in holding others up so they wouldn’t fall. I feel as if God has given me a small peek behind the veil and I really, really, really see now why we should never be discouraged in this walk again.

Thank you all for sharing this amazing journey with me.

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” (Psa. 116:15)

Thanks again for all your prayers. My mother, Betty, died peacefully today at 1:12 p.m. The family kept a constant bedside vigil for about two and a half days and were gathered at her side when she drifted away silently. She was a brave soldier until the end and her faith never wavered. She was, quite frankly, the most stalwart human being we have ever known.

People have had the kindest things to say about her:

“…I type this through tears. My contact with your mother was brief but she was a true gentlewoman and a reminder of what our legacy should be …”

“So sorry to learn about Betty. I’ve only known her via our email correspondence but nevertheless could feel her warmth, strength and loving personality.”

“My magical mother died ten years ago, and I too was blessed to have such a mother.”

“I was honored to have some communication with your mother a few times this fall and winter. She definitely loved the Lord and had a passion for Him. I’m sure she will be missed. ”

And, lastly, I received this (isn’t it so true?):

“As someone who had been through the experience said to me: ‘Now no one remembers your childhood except you.’ I suppose it is the final stage of growing up — but, like many of the other stages — one better appreciated afterwards than at the time.”

So many people offered to help in many, many ways. I cannot express enough gratitude to those, online and offline, believers and unbelievers — my goodness, the list could go on and on. And my mother’s friends who tried to call her to no avail when I informed them that she couldn’t respond! They told me the most amazing things — that they felt like sisters with her and could I please keep them informed? She did so much for so many. She argued with her pastor at church that people ought to give from their hearts instead of making pledges. She tolerated those she should have dumped because she refused to give up on anyone.

She had a neighbor who informed me that, “Betty is my dearest friend in the whole world!” Everybody loved my mother — the office manager in her apartment complex and the lady who worked in the storage facility next door. Lastly, my mother had taken in a woman who had no place to go, to the worry of everyone. Well, at least she cared even if it did seem a bit misguided to some of us at times.

I read to my mother out of the Gospel of John where I had been studying recently. We read about the Bread of Life and how we shall never hunger or thirst again if we partake of it. We read that whoever drinks His blood and eats His flesh will be raised up at the last. We read about Jesus being one with the Father and us being one with the both of them.

My mother was unable to talk all of yesterday until the hospice nurse came in the evening. The nurse asked her if she wanted more pain medication and my mother suddenly came around and said, “Don’t worry about it.” The nurse was shocked. Anyone else would have been screaming for medication. (She gave her more medication anyway.) Kind of unusual last words, huh? But so like her.

When my mother was at the end, we were gathered round, but we were missing my brother David. He came in at the last and, it was as if she was waiting for him. He held her hand, then she squeezed it and left so slowly and quietly. It was like the movie, Fried Green Tomatoes, where Idgie is telling Ruth a favorite tall tale about these ducks that flew away with a pond that froze after they landed on it. When she checks on Ruth after telling her tale, she realizes Ruth has passed away. Sipsey, the colored help, stops the clock and drapes the family photographs with black cloth. She comforts Idgie and tells her: “Miss Ruth was a lady…and a lady always knows when it’s time to leave.” That was my mother — a real lady.

BREAKING NEWS

A few readers may have kept up for a time with the update page on my mother. (Which I haven’t updated in a while.) She is now at the point where it appears she may fail at any time. I visited her last night, read her scriptures, prayed with her and chatted about various things I’ve been reading. It strikes me as interesting that I picked up where I left off reading with her last time in the Gospel of John. Timely that we ran across this:

Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:54)

I shared two scriptures with my mother and the sentence that linked them in my mind the other day. From the OT:

O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. (Psa. 34:8)

From the NT:

…he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. (Heb. 2:9b)

JESUS CHRIST TASTED DEATH FOR EVERY MAN THAT WE MIGHT TASTE GOD!!!

Remember that one the next time you partake of the Body and Blood of Christ.

It has been a good time of closure for me (God knew I needed this) and my mother seems much at peace. God has certainly blessed us with excellent hospice nurses and she has not been in too much pain. Please continue to pray for her that God will either raise her up again or let her pass peacefully.