A Mother’s Lesson

(Originally published on October 6, 2023)

I’m pretty sure that most people wouldn’t think of my mother as being very smart. At least not in the traditional sense. After all, she never graduated from the eighth grade. She married very young, at fifteen, partially to escape an alcoholic stepfather. She and my father crossed state lines, accompanied by her mother, to a state that only required the consent of one parent for the marriage of a minor. She was fifteen, he was twenty, and so their marriage began.

You might expect a Cinderella type story at this point. Something like, after a difficult start, they conquered the world and had great success. Nothing like that. They simply hung in there. For thirty-five years. Moving from place to place with five children. Even being so young, they understood and took their marriage vows seriously. Simple people living a simple life.

After thirty-five years together, my father passed away suddenly. She came home after working the night shift and found that he’d had heart failure. The first responders couldn’t help but were called anyway. Hope against hope. “He’s gone” were the first words she said to me when I arrived. This woman, who had lived more than twice as long with her husband than she had before she was married, was alone.

Maybe her life had been more difficult than most. No, probably not. More likely, her life is simply representative of our human experience in a fallen world. We have joy and pain. While the measure of each seems out of balance at times, we can’t escape the ups and downs in life. No matter how difficult the downs may be. We believers know that a day will come when “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev 21:4).

My mother had been bruised and battered by life. It made her strong and wise. She was young to be widowed. In her early fifties with much of life ahead. But difficulty was not behind her. She would come to believe that God could use her in the midst of additional difficulty.

It wasn’t long after my father passed away that my mother met a man named Roy. Perhaps, feeling alone, she rushed into this new relationship. Who am I to say? It’s cliché but, as Emily Dickinson wrote, “the heart wants what the heart wants.” Naturally, it may just have been, and I think is often the case with adult children, that I wasn’t ready for her to move on. Still, there was Roy. He and my mother became serious quickly and were soon engaged.

Like all of us, Roy had his quirks. Frankly, I didn’t really like him much, but I believed, for my mother’s sake at least, I’d learn to accept Him. Quirks and all. If she was happy. I was happy. That was all that mattered, wasn’t it? Roy, like my mother, was widowed. He had a daughter but, for whatever reason, they were estranged. Essentially, when Roy met my mother, he was alone.

It wasn’t long after their engagement that Roy’s diagnosis came: He had cancer. It was in an advanced stage and nothing could be done. So, my mother, having lost her husband of thirty-five years, would suffer the loss of another man she had come to love. She sat next to his hospital bed. Holding his hand and just talking with him in his last days.

What was her response to all of this? There was no “why me?” No complaining about the injustice of it all. Instead, she found a purpose in it. In the midst of the difficulty, she found solace. She put it to me this way, “God put me in Roy’s life so he wouldn’t die alone.” In all she’d been through, my mother gave me a pure example that showing compassion is a high calling.

As believers, we need to be compassionate to others no matter the situation. We must be compassionate in all circumstances. Paul tells us to “clothe yourselves with compassion” because we are God’s chosen people (see Col 3:12). And the underlying Greek language implies that this compassion comes from deep down. It is simply gut wrenching.

Unfortunately, compassion may not be our first response. Maybe that’s why Paul instructs us to “clothe” ourselves with it. We have to put it on. With intention. Replacing our selfishness with selflessness! Certainly, compassion comes more easily for some than for others. But we are all called to compassion.

There is good news though. The Holy Spirit enables us to do what doesn’t always come naturally. He molds us and changes us so that what isn’t easy for us can become our first response. Caring for others. Having compassion on them. Seeking their good.

No, my mother wasn’t smart in the traditional sense. She wasn’t “book smart.” But, in her wisdom, she taught me a lesson about being compassionate in the midst of her own pain. When we look around us, we can easily find those who need compassion. In our church. In our neighborhood. In our world. It isn’t always easy, but, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can be the compassionate people God calls us to be.