She,
like me, was more gray than the black and white of follower or sinner. Life and legacy is much more messy than that. If earthly
mentors are people who follow, sin, conquer, overcome and then struggle again
to overcome , then my mom was all of that.
Her past was full of rebellion, poverty, hardship and mischief. Her conversion was sudden and emotional and
life changing. Her strongholds, like
mine, disappeared and reappeared with each new year. She loved her children and grandchildren
sacrificially, even permissively. I can
hardly remember her without an apron strapped around her waist as
she cooked and cleaned and kept her family's bellies filled with good food. . And
somehow we always had hearts anchored in
the assurance of her secure love. She
cared for grandchildren and rocked babies at all hours of day or night, when
many would have said she was getting too
old for that. She did not see herself as a mentor and would have been horrified
at the thought, but like all of us, it happened while she lived her life and we
watched.
I learned to work
and to sacrifice for family by watching her can vegetables, fruits and meat for
days on end and into many evenings when her feet were tired from bearing her
weight. She helped in the hayfield in
the day and then somehow, (was it supernatural?), she prepared us a meal to eat
when we came in hot, and sweaty and tired. Her meals always included potatoes because
that was the steadfast food when the
depression challenged her resources many years ago . So I gathered that she, like everyone, was shaped by her
past. I learned to screen my words,
though never enough, from listening to
her say things that seemed too frank and raw, because she felt that family
didn't mince words. I learned to gossip
too. I heard her phone conversations
with her sisters, listened as her friends gathered at the B&C lunch counter
to have coffee and share the small town news.
And I grew up not sure how to talk to family or friends without
including the same, for I thought that was what friends did. I learned to cry alone in my room when
husband and wife cannot find a resolution to their differences. Mentors model failure too, if they are truly
human. I learned to read something of
God's word every day. And I noticed that
sometimes it changes part of you. Many
times we ignore. At her funeral, her
grandson pointed out that grandma always had a Bible and the National Enquirer
by her chair. I learned that we run to
lots of empty things for comfort and distraction when life gets hard and
marriages crumble.
When I grew to
be an adult with my own mentorees watching my fall and climb, I found out that
she had not talked about the hurts and
failures of her past that had left the biggest scars. So I understood that we don't know even
those who have raised us, unless we ask and they are willing to answer. And in her time of ultimate betrayal and
hurt, I witnessed these past hurts and fears threaten to consume her. And I understood a little better where
strongholds come from. But I saw a heart
of grief and anger still ready to forgive and receive if he wished it so. But he did not.
Many days when her memory and her health
were fading, she would ask why she was still here on this Earth. She was still
mentoring when her mind was too weak to understand her world anymore. I wish I had sorted these thoughts then so my
answer had not been so practical and weak.
And so my mortal mentor called Mom, left all this engraved on my mind
and in my heart, when she breathed her last.
And I am richer for it, even with the strongholds I fight against, some
created then, while watching and learning from her. And I wonder what you and I will leave here
and who will be sorting their thoughts to answer our why question.
There are no lesson plans or appointed meeting places for
this call to mentor except by Him who planned it all and whose example is
perfect. And we all leave evidence of
the two sided gospel that says all are
sinners but God has made a way. I wonder
which side of the gospel our mentoring legacy will demonstrate most?
Deut 4:9 “Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children's children—
Gal 6:4 But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor.
