It's unusual for a woman other than Mitzi to be on my mind, but that's been exactly the case this week. I've been thinking about
Margaret.
My mom! She's 87 years old now. Her birthday falls on Thanksgiving this year.
Some of you are undoubtedly thinking, "87. But Phil, you're so young - she must have been in her sixties when she had you!"
To that, I can only say: my mom is a remarkable woman.
She's visited CHEF several times, and loves this ministry. You've always made her very much at home here, and I appreciate that.
In pondering what I learned from my mother, her influences seem to have fallen into two different camps.
First, there were the obvious kinds of lessons, ones she deliberately taught. She pointed me, above all, to God's Word and to His Son, Jesus Christ. She knelt with me when I was 6 years old as I asked Jesus into my heart. Before I was ten, she gave me my first King James Scofield reference Bible! I can still rattle off all 66 books of the Bible in 30 seconds or less.
She gave me a love for literature and poetry. Twain and Poe were regulars in our house. I had a crush on Becky Thatcher until I was 12.
Mom taught me to love good food, and how to make a great sandwich. She taught me to speak in complete sentences and look people in the eye. She gave me a love for humor. She taught me to honor leaders, but not to be afraid of them.
There was a second kind of lesson, too: an influence that was largely unintended.
I'll explain. Mom was born to a large farming family in Washington State; at the impressionable age of seven, she watched her mother simply walk away.
That left her father to run the farm, raise the kids, tend the garden and hunt for meat, and so on. Apparently, it couldn't all be done.
He gave my mom to a neighbor to raise. He paid some support for a few months, but that ended quickly, and he disappeared. While she was still in grade school, both of mom's parents had - in essence - washed their hands of her.
The neighbors that took her in were Herman and Annie. They were proud, German atheists, rough as corncobs, but they treated mom like a daughter. Mom has quoted Annie all her life. Herman built violins; one year he made one especially for her, and she still treasures that instrument like a Stradivarius.
Bundled up in tattered hand-me-downs, dragging a family scandal behind her, I don't suppose people expected much of Margaret.
What people expected didn't much matter, because Mom just kept smiling and rising to the top. Her 4.0 point average made her the star of her two-room school house. Teachers kept moving her ahead and at age-16, she graduated from high school at the top of her class.
A local businessman snatched her right up, gave her a good job, along with room and board.
The only fellow in the community smarter than him was my dad, who married her a year later. (I'll write about that great man another day.)
I pass along this story because this "lesson from Margaret" has impacted my life deeply. Though mom was abandoned by her own parents, she never displayed any sign of bitterness or any kind of emotional scarring. Instead, she's always spoken of her father with a hushed reverence as if he were distant royalty.
The whole subject makes Mom cry - but not for the reasons you might think. She says, "I don't know why God's been so good to me. I don't understand why He's always surrounded me with such wonderful, generous people."
You'd hardly know bad things have befallen her. She's delivered a still-born child. She's endured cancer. She has a daughter who won't speak to her. She nursed my father through a terminal illness and finally buried him. It hasn't all been good.
Yet - throughout these hard things - this Saint has been completely confident in God's ability to work "all things together for good," just as Romans 8:28 says.
I'm glad she taught me to love literature, but any inspiring 3rd grade teacher could have done that. She deposited, though, something priceless into me; her life has consistently reflected a deep trust that God is both powerful and personal. And as a bonus gift, she has convinced me that - regardless of circumstances - His kindness would be reflected in the faces of people around me.
I couldn't help but love a God like that. I couldn't help but spend my life declaring His glory.
A mother can place impressions on a heart that the roughness of life will never erode.
Mine did.
As we near this Thanksgiving, I thank the Lord for a terrific heritage, and issue this simple reminder: let's remember the impact of our lives upon the young people God has placed around us.
Blessings, Phil
