Learning from mom, even after she's gone

I think it’s safe to say that we’ve made it through another Christmas, and nearly another year. The holidays tend to open old wounds for those of us who have lost someone we were close to, and this year was no exception for me. For some reason I decided to sit down last night and put a little salt into it.
My step dad has kept my mom’s laptop and has been using it a little bit since she died. He doesn’t do much with it except for get online periodically if he finds something that interests him. That to say, he’s never had any reason to access the documents that my mom had saved so they are still on it. I started going through some of them because I missed her and I thought that reading some of the things she had written might help me reconnect a little bit. Even something as simple as e-mails she had saved with outdated and no longer relevant information in them were meaningful. As long as it was something that she had written, and included some of her most used phrases, it brought back memories.
Mom liked to write. I suppose that is where I got it from. Like me, I think she found it easier to express her self by writing more than speaking. When we write, we can more carefully choose the words that we want to use to better express exactly what we are feeling or thinking. She was also pretty critical of her ability to do it. I firmly believe that what few things that are left on there are only a fraction of what was actually written. I’m sure she deleted more than a few documents. But I thoroughly enjoyed reading what was left. Somehow, it made me feel closer to her than I did when she was alive.
There was one thing that stood out to me though. Mom never made her faith and love for God a secret. Anyone that knew her, or even just met her, knew that she was deeply spiritual and very close to her Lord. She was solid, even as she lay on the hospital bed and drew her last breath, she never faltered; at least not to the point that anyone knew it. In all the documents that were left on her computer, there were none that didn’t mention Him in one way or another.
When she was diagnosed with Lymphoma, she decided to try to keep a journal about what she was going through, mostly the emotional aspect, but also some of the medical things involved. Unfortunately, she didn’t really follow through with it and only managed to write, or keep, 2 of them. They were pretty profound though. One in particular was important to me, and I’ll try and relay it to you here.
She wrote that after having been diagnosed for about six weeks, she had gone to a couple of different churches to be prayed over by the elders. It was not her idea. It wasn’t that she was opposed to being prayed over, it was just that she wasn’t really worried about the diagnosis or the outcome. I was shocked by that, but I’ll get into that later. It went on to say that she was on the way home, riding in the car in silence, and started to wonder if she should be worried, or at least, wondered why she wasn’t. So she did exactly what I would expect my mother to do, she prayed about it. She simply addressed God and asked Him if she should be worried, or concerned about it. She asked if she should expect a miracle, a challenge or a healing. She said that her answer came immediately and was perfectly clear, and clearly His word. He said: “The road you are about to travel will not be easy or fun, but you and I are going to have a blast!”
She got a one line answer from the Lord, and yet there were so many things I learned from that short entry. First: She was diagnosed with Lymphoma, which is one of the most difficult cancers to beat. Not only that, but she was diagnosed with stage four Lymphoma. In fact, her doctor said that it was so bad, that if there were a stage six she would have had that. He gave her three to six months to live. Six weeks later, she wasn’t scared, worried or concerned. Only after six weeks did she decide that maybe she should check in with God to see whether she should be or not.
Second: Jesus was a man, and God is not unapproachable or unavailable. He is personable. His answer to her was conversational. He didn’t quote a bunch of scripture at her, or speak to her using language that you would see in a tax manual. He just spoke to her, like a father speaking to his daughter.
I guess I’m not totally surprised by either one of those points; it just has never been presented in such a clear and simple way before. Mom was so totally surrendered to the will of God, that it didn’t matter what the long term result of the diagnosis was. She wanted whatever God wanted. That philosophy completely removes any need for worry. I worried. It drove me crazy that she wasn’t any more concerned about it than she was. I guess I wanted her to panic. At the time, I didn’t share her faith. I also didn’t believe, despite my years of being taught differently, that God was all that concerned with what happened to us. I thought He was more likely to use us, even to the point of allowing us to die, to accomplish some greater purpose. I didn’t think it mattered how difficult it was for us to go through something as long as His ultimate purpose was served. For Him to plant that thought in her mind, using those words, was important to me. Mom believed that while God may use her illness or tribulations to accomplish some other goal, that whatever she was going through would benefit her, or those she cared about, to such an extent that she believed it would be worth it.
As she lay dying, she asked us not to let her death be a stumbling block to us. She believed in a complete healing through the entire 8 year battle with the cancer. She told me more than once that she believed her healing had been manifested. What she came to realize is that it was manifested, just not here on earth. Her largest concern was that we would question God or our faith in Him based on the fact that she didn’t live. She was right to be concerned. I used that, though not solely, as an excuse to ignore God and even be angry with Him for a long time.
That being said, she did struggle privately. She was still human, and Satan used Fear and Defeat and Despair against her. In one of her other entries she talked about having something just short of an anxiety attack one night. She was crying uncontrollably and shaking. It was late, and Jim was already asleep. She said she considered waking him and asking him to pray, but such was my mom, she decided not to because she didn’t want to scare him. Instead, she prayed, quoted scripture to herself and sang songs. She said within minutes she was calm again.
I never knew anything like that had happened to her until I read that. Personally, the most difficult thing I’ve ever gone through was when my daughter Brynn was born, but I think that I was so tired and so surrounded by people that I wasn’t subjected to anxiety like that. It certainly didn’t last 8 years. The point is that I hope I never go through something like that, but if I do, I want her kind of faith. I want to be able to lay aside the worry and anxiety like she did. I want to be able to rely on someone who knows what the outcome of every situation will be, and know that He will ultimately make everything okay, even if the end game is not what I thought, or hoped, it would be. I want to have the kind of relationship with God that she had, so that when difficulty comes, He will look forward to traveling down that road with me like He did with her. If I am ridiculed for exploring and deepening my faith, and yet can share a relationship with Him like my mother did, it will be worth it. If I have to give up some of the sin that I hold most dear in order to be able to let someone else worry about my problems, that too will be worth it. And, most importantly, if I have to lose my mom to make me come to these conclusions, and to be able to enjoy the benefits that come along with the relationship that I’m talking about, I can begrudgingly accept that as well. I finally realize that my own stubbornness and anger is to blame and not Gods. The fact that I had to lose mom to bring all of this to my attention is my fault. And while I’m certain that God didn’t take her solely to get to me, I know that I was at least one of the reasons. I also believe that if I were the only reason, mom would have changed nothing.