Slice of Family Life

Reflections of our Heavenly Father

An Essay about my Mother

There isn’t one defining moment in my life that points at the time when I first saw reflections of our Heavenly Father in my mother.  She gave her life to Christ before I was born, and it has just always been a way of life.   Always more by action than by word, Mom taught us right from wrong.   As children, we attended church regularly, though it couldn’t have been easy getting five little children under the age of seven dressed and ready for a service.   I was the youngest, and Mom had to take us to church by herself because until I was six years old, Dad didn’t go to church with us.   Difficult as it may have been, she did manage to get us there, and she made sure we behaved, as well!

Life wasn’t always easy for my mother.   She and her eight brothers and sisters were raised in a home with an alcoholic father, and Mom left there when was just fourteen years old.   But when she told stories of her childhood to my brothers and sisters and me, she only emphasized the good times and the funny memories of growing up.  She never dwelled on her very humble beginnings, and to this day, I’ve never heard her say a negative or resentful word about her father, though I do know that life was very harsh for her poor share-cropping family.  

She always takes care of her family, in prayer and in deed, and she never expects one thing in return.   Once, when I asked her to pray for me about a problem I was having, she was like a mama bear over her cub.   She meant business as she prayed about my problem, and she began to poke on my arm, poking harder the longer she prayed until finally, it began to hurt a little.   I must have moved enough to make her realize what she was doing.   When she did, she began to laugh.  She can get tickled and laugh harder than anyone I know.  And she can get down on her knees and pray the powerful prayer of one who knows who she is in Christ.   My brothers and sisters, and all her family, can rest in the assurance that there is a real prayer warrior calling our names out to God.  

The reflections of Christ have always been present, qualities that are just quietly, patently Mom.   When my dad’s mother was visiting from another state, and had a heart attack, my mother took care of her until she was able to go back home.  When her own mother became too frail and sick to live on her own, Mom brought her into her home and took care of her until she left this earth.   (As it would happen, Mom was on a short vacation, and “Mama Franks,” as we called her, was with an aunt when she passed away.)   I do not know of one complaint my mother had while taking care of my grandmother.   It couldn’t have been easy, as I was living there, too.   My marriage had crumbled, I had a small child in tow, and was trying to get through college, and she babysat for me a lot, too.  She may have had a complaint or two about me and my habit of taking things for granted, though!   But she was very good-hearted, patient and kind in the midst of this season of her life. 

When I was a young adult, there was a time Mom would drive me crazy with her standard answer to all my problems, “I’ll pray about it.”  And pray she did.   I learned, through her, that there is a real power to prayer, and that God does indeed answer prayer.   Now in her seventies, my gentle-spirited, but fierce prayer warrior mom meets a few friends for prayer meeting before making a weekly trek to a nursing home just to “help out.”   She cleans up around the church between the paid cleaners’ regular visits.   She spends much time in prayer and Bible study.  The thing is, if I didn’t just happen to see her do these things, I wouldn’t know it, because she never mentions it.   She just does it.   Ask her about it, and at times, she’ll almost seem embarrassed to have been “caught” doing these things.   

Looking into my mother’s eyes, I dont just see reflections, I see Christ as a testimony of the life she lives, every day.   When the time comes, and she's in the loving arms of God in Heaven, the mantle will be passed on to us, her children.  I pray that we will be the beacon that she has been for us for our own children.

I love you.