My Mom, by God

Her children stand and bless her.  Proverbs 31:28

 

Her name—Edna Mae—was a fairly common one at the time she came into the world. Today…not so much.  In fact, I can’t remember the last time I recall someone naming a daughter Edna.  As names go, I never really cared for it while she was alive, but since her passing, it’s kind of grown on me.  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 it had to be done. 

Though she loved her southern roots (Port Arthur, Texas), as a young wife, she left her family and friends and followed my father to the bustling metropolis of Yale, South Dakota, population 150.  Its tallest structure was the water tower. Dad was a pastor, you see, and it was his conviction that when ‘God called’, you dropped everything and went.

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.  Unpaid, of course.

And where did this stay-at-home mom perform these duties?  In various matchbox-sized houses, owned by the churches my dad served. The largest one this family of eight ever lived in together had maybe 1500 sq. ft.  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 above ground laundries, master bathrooms, carpeting, frost-free refrigerators and Wal-Marts. 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. 

My mom didn’t have a lot of formal education, but she was full of wisdom.  She described herself growing up as a tomboy, but as a young woman, her womb became the safe and secure incubator for five boys and one girl…all before her 28^th birthday.  In her seventh month of pregnancy with me, she had an emergency appendectomy. At the same time, I was discovering just how much fun kicking could be.  From that moment on, I gave up expecting to be her favorite. 

Growing up in a large family, children look for parental cues that they are different or distinct from the others. One way Mom demonstrated my uniqueness was in the area of my musical development. She started almost every one of her children on a musical instrument, but I was the only one she never allowed to quit.  She taught me my first song, “Whispering Hope”, when I was five.  Though I hated to practice, she could tell that I loved music.  She observed that I seemed to gravitate to the piano to express my soul.  Eventually, she could hardly keep me off of it, and I even came to enjoy practicing. 

She was not a perfect woman, but I cannot recall her using profanity even once during my childhood.  (In retrospect, I wonder where all of those frustrating thoughts got processed.)  Because of this value, 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.  I also noted that though she hated the curse words, she herself could be quick to gossip.  I concluded the tongue can be tough to control…even for big people.

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.  In looking back, I now realize that in many ways, she wasn’t even connected to her own emotional needs, much less having the resources to meet those of a husband and six kids. But she did know me.  In a clan of six, I was still on her radar. 

As I grew up, she sought to round me out and helped me to become more socially involved. Where I would be tempted to withdraw or escape into my music, she pressed me into activities, sports, etc.  I remember her helping me with the transition from Christian elementary school to public junior high. One afternoon, I came home from playing football with some neighborhood kids and was stressed out 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.

Enter non-nurturing Mom.  Instead of asking how I was feeling or comforting me with a plate of cookies, she basically told me to wake up and smell the decaf.  I can’t remember her exact words, but this was the impression they left: “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)  I needed toughening.  I wasn’t yet ready for “the real world.” And you know what?  She helped get me ready. 

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 abandoned. Was I ever misunderstood?—sure.  Did she ever hurt my feelings or wound my spirit?—definitely.  But she also taught me much about Jesus, encouraged me to sing in the church choir, and wrote me handwritten (!) letters when I went off to college.  She even made a lame attempt at sex ed (no, not in college!). When I was 8 or 9, she finally was forced into showing me pictures in a doctor’s book of where babies come from, after I had embarrassed her and her pregnant sister by asking, “Why are you just fat in the stomach?”

When she was 52, she went in for what was thought to be a routine hysterectomy. When she awoke from surgery, she was told she had, maybe, 90 days to live.  The doctors informed her she was battling colon cancer, and after 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 five years later, I still miss her, admire her, and look forward to our reunion. 

To be honest, I went through a season of my life when I tried to attach many of my personal shortcomings or dysfunction to her…to her imperfections. After all, she was my primary childhood caregiver.  My problems must be her fault. But that was before I raised my own kids and then realized that most of us simply do the best we can with what we know.

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.  And not just any mother—specifically Mary.  Accepting His handpicked choice for our mother is the very first step toward learning to trust His judgment.  

So this Mother’s Day, I will be remembering Edna Mae.  She wasn’t the Virgin Mary, but, by God, she was my mom.                                        

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