Memories of Mom 

Her children stand and bless her. Proverbs 31:28 

As I was driving to work today I passed by several flags displayed throughout my neighborhood. What’s the deal?—I thought. July 4th is three weeks away, and we just celebrated Memorial Day. Then it occurred to me—it’s flag day—June 14th, and immediately a smile came to my face. It was also my late mother’s birthday, and the running joke in our house was how the whole country honored her birthday by flying their flags. In the decades since she left this earth, I have come to understand how worthy of honor she really was, whether anyone else in the country knew it or not.

Her name betrayed the period of time and culture she came from…Edna Mae. As names go, I never really cared for it while she was alive, but since her passing, it has taken on a sweetness like few others. Born in 1925, she crammed a lot of life into her 53 years. Married at 18, a mother at 19, a grandmother at 46, her life seems to have been characterized by how much she did simply because she had to do it.

Though she loved her southern roots, she left her family and friends at age 20 and followed my dad to the bustling metropolis of Yale, South Dakota, population 150. Its tallest structure was the water tower. One of my earliest memories of my mom’s life was the piles of laundry that stalked her day after day. Since she lived in the day prior to wrinkle-free anything, every shirt, pair of pants, heck—every handkerchief(!) that my dad needed in his profession had to be washed in a washtub, rung out and hung out to dry, then starched and pressed for every day of the week. Add to that the clothing needs of six kids and her own clothes, and you have just written a full-time job description right there.

And where did this stay-at-home mom perform these duties? In various matchbox-sized parsonages, the largest one totaling 1500 sq. ft. (It was only after most of her children had “left the nest” that she and Dad were rewarded with a much larger, modern home. Go figure that one.) The first of these homes did not have indoor plumbing. For the first 17 years of mom’s married life, air circulation was created by the cross breeze of open windows, or perhaps a ceiling fan; air-conditioning was inconceivable, as were dishwashers, garbage disposals, washers and driers, much less first floor laundries, master bathrooms, carpeting, frost-free refrigerators, and Wal-Marts. (You’re thinking, “What was this, the Cro-Magnon period?”) For the rest of her life you can add to that list things like online banking, cell phones, computers, or a myriad of other conveniences the modern-day mother has available to her.

She didn’t have a lot of formal education, but was she full of wisdom. She was a tomboy as a child, but as a young woman her womb became the safe and tender incubator for five boys and one girl, all before her 28th birthday. In her seventh month of pregnancy with me, she required an emergency appendectomy. From that moment on, I gave up expecting to be her favorite. But she did know me. In a clan of six, I was still on her radar. She started every one of her children on a musical instrument. I was the only one she never allowed to quit. She taught me my first song, “Whispering Hope”, when I was five. She observed that though, like my siblings, I hated to practice, I seemed to gravitate to the piano to express my soul.

She was not a perfect woman, but I never heard profanity fall from her lips even once. (In retrospect, I wonder where all of those frustrating thoughts got processed.) Regardless, any slips of the tongue on my part were rewarded with a mouth washing—with soap. That practice did little to cleanse the heart, but it did raise a value and leave an impression.

One thing I have come to believe is that mothers are handpicked for us. In many ways, my mom could have been more nurturing, more emotionally connected. But she sought to toughen me up and round me out. She helped me to become more socially involved, pressed me into activities, sports, etc. which not only helped me to break free from the typical artist stereotype, but also brought me a lot of fun and a sense of accomplishment.

I remember her helping me transition from Christian elementary school to public junior high. When I came home from a football game with neighborhood kids at age 12, I was stressing over all the profanity I had heard. I went straight to my room and burst into tears. “I’m not going to school with those sinners,” I said. She would have none of it, and basically told me to wake up and smell the decaf. I can’t remember her exact words, but they went something like this: “This is the real world, son, and you better get used to it. No one ever died from hearing curse words, so learn to deal with it.” While she would never win any touchy-feely awards, it was, “like a word fitly spoken, an apple of gold.” (Proverbs 25:11) And you know what? She was right. I’m still alive.

As a child, I never went without a meal, lacked for clothing, attended church with unpolished shoes (or missed church for that matter, unless sick at home with a fever), felt unsafe or uncared for. Was I ever misunderstood?—sure. Did she ever hurt my feelings or wound my spirit?—of course. But she also taught me much about Jesus, encouraged me to sing in the church choir, even made a lame attempt at sex ed. I remember distinctly her showing me pictures in a doctor’s book of where babies come from, after I embarrassed her and her very pregnant sister by asking, “Why are you just fat in the stomach?”

After the discovery of colon cancer at age 52 and months of failed chemo treatments, she began preparing to die. In anticipation of her death, she wrote her own funeral service, beginning with “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and ending with “How Great Thou Art.” Thirty three years later, I still miss her, admire her, and look forward to our reunion. 

Today I look back with gratitude for God’s personal selection of my mother. What about you? Good or bad, treasure or trial, they are the vessel our Creator God used to start us on the journey of a life with Him. To the degree that they reflected His image and kindness to us, we can count ourselves extremely blessed. And at whatever level they failed to demonstrate that and took from us more than they gave, perhaps God even used that to draw us more desperately to Him. The fact is that when He chose to reveal Himself to us in history, He selected the safety and security of a mother’s womb for His very own Son. Accepting His handpicked choice for our mother is the very first step toward learning to trust His judgment. When it comes to mothers, I have come to the conclusion that Father knows best.