How do you write a tribute about a woman who left a lasting impression on everyone she came in contact with? It seems almost impossible to put into words the life of someone who was one of the most impactful people in your own life.
But if I were asked to sum up the motto of my mom’s life, especially as she grew deeper in her relationship with Christ, I think it would be this: a deep, abiding rest in the providence of God. Her heart continually returned to the simple truth: “It is the Lord.”
Through every circumstance, every hardship, every joy, and every sorrow, she learned to see the hand of God at work and to rest in His sovereign care. “It is the Lord” was what she lived by.
My mom was an overcomer.
She truly lived a life marked by obstacles. From the time she was a baby, she struggled with all manner of autoimmune issues, asthma, and severe allergies. Physical limitations were something she knew from the very beginning of her life. In fact, from the earliest days of my parents’ dating relationship, my dad was learning how to accommodate her limitations, care for her, and help her navigate a world that was often difficult for her physically.
Growing up, there were so many places my mom simply could not go because of her allergies. Her sensitivities reduced her diet to just a handful of foods, and even her living environment had to be significantly different because of her health challenges. There were countless reasons she could have complained or grumbled about her circumstances and the lot she had been given.
But she didn’t.
She saw it all through the lens of God’s providence. “It is the Lord.”
She didn’t pretend that life was easy, and she certainly struggled at times, But she learned to receive even those things as coming from the hand of a sovereign God. What could have become a source of bitterness became an opportunity to trust Him. What could have been opportunities for self pity the Lord gave her deeper grace as she looked for her contentment in Him.
But her physical difficulties were only one part of her story.
Her childhood was deeply difficult. Her parents divorced when she was a teen and then, when she experienced the devastating loss of her brother when he was only 20 years old. She carried grief and hardship from a very young age, things that could have shaped the course of her entire life. But God, in His mercy, rescued her.
It was my dad who led Mama to the Lord. And when she met Jesus, it sparked a fire within her soul that stayed lit to her dying breath.
As a first-generation Christian, she had a vehemence about serving the Lord. She was passionate about truth. There was never a question in her mind that she would give up everything for Christ and go to the ends of the earth if Jesus called her there.
There were patterns of brokenness, hurt, bitterness and generational sin that had been passed down before her. But when the gospel came to her, those patterns did not simply continue unchanged. By God’s grace, she became a buffer in our family. She took what had been handed down to her and, instead of allowing all of it to be handed down to us, sought to change the course of our family through Christ.
She wasn’t perfect. She carried wounds. She struggled. She had weaknesses and battles of her own. But she kept pressing forward and sought to create a new family legacy.
And that same fervency that marked her relationship with Christ marked everything else she did.
She was an incredible example to all of her children. There was seemingly nothing she would not rearrange in her life for the sake of serving someone else.
When I was a young girl, my mom opened our home to another homeschooling family. The father had lost his job, and they could no longer afford a place to live, so she welcomed them into our home and gave them the entire lower level of our house. To Mama, helping someone in need was worth whatever sacrifice it required. Nothing was too much if it meant making someone else’s burden a little lighter. Again, she saw it as the Lord’s doing by bringing that opportunity into our lives.
It wasn’t until I was older that I realized how extraordinary that was. I simply thought this was what families did, that when someone needed a place to stay, you opened your home and made room for them. I didn’t yet understand that not every family would simply invite another family to move into their home. But that was my mom, and that was one of the gifts God had installed in her, the gift of hospitality
She loved deeply, and she served deeply.
Mom was a morning person and would wake up to see her feverishly pouring over her Bible. Underlining and highlighting. That’s one thing about mom she wrote, underlined and marked every Bible and book she read, writing in the columns and absorbing every word. Also her sermon notes were not summaries. They were literal dictations. In the evenings when we would all go over our sermon notes, it would be like Mom was reading the whole sermon again. She didn’t want to forget a word.
When I met Steven and it became clear that he was the one God had designed for me, I used to tease that I thought she loved him almost more than I did. When we got engaged, she said, “I get a Steven!”
She was my greatest cheerleader as I began my own family. And when the grandbabies came, nothing gave her more joy than to step up, support me, and help me in whatever way she could. And again it was with all her passion and resources, helping with the day to day functioning of a large family with lots of littles, homeschooling, hospital trips, home organization and giving lots and lots of grandbaby snuggles.
When I had health issues, Mamamo became a second mom to my children while I was recovering.
For years, she lived in a little cottage on the same property, and there was nothing that gave her more joy than to have my children run down to see her. She always kept special snacks for them, and she kept a supply of batteries for Matthew and Jed. We laugh but that was mom. It was the little things that were important to her.
Mama was also obsessed with all things birth and babies, just like I am. She was the one who first did all the research on natural childbirth when Jon was born and she allowed my sister and I into his birth which springboard me into my doula work. When I went through my doula training, Mom did it with me simply because of how she loved it. She never intended to practice as a doula herself, but still wanted to train together. Whenever I was at a birth, she was praying, not only for me, but for the mother who was giving birth.
Sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night and text me for an update. Sometimes she would come with Steven in another car and drive me home because I was too tired after a two-day birth. And as soon as I had slept enough to think straight again, she would wait for me to walk down to her cottage so I could give her every last detail of how the birth had gone. She wanted to know everything.
After raising her children, her next priority became assisting all of us in whatever way she could, as a grandmother and then as a great-grandmother. Whether it was helping my sister and then my niece through very difficult pregnancies or caring for me after I had my kidney removed, she was there.
She was like a rock in our family.
It seemed like there wasn’t much Mamamo couldn’t fix. When I was young she wanted our family to go camping when we only had five dollars in the bank, but she made it work. She decided to build a wall in our home while my dad was out of town. And then there was the time we piled up our tiny car with a million pieces of furniture and mattresses on top looking like the Beverly hillbillies to get them home, because you never said to my mom that something couldn’t be done, she’d find a way, because that’s who she was.
She loved surprises, too. Whether it was surprising the cousins in the UK by bringing one of my children along, or surprising Steven and I while we were out of town packing by packing up my entire house with my children while Steven and I were out of town because she knew I had to come home and to it all went sh wanted to take things off my plate she found joy in serving and in making memories.
She served, served, and served some more.
Those who knew her would testify if aomeone needed something, nothing was too much for her to give. She would literally go to the ends of the earth, using all her resources to serve, whether it was people in her own family, people in the church or those in the community.
But as much as Mama loved her family, her deepest passion was always Christ.
One of Mama’s favorite verses was Jeremiah 6:16:
“Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”
She would remind us to look at church history and see how the godly saints of old had followed the Lord uncompromisingly, refusing to veer from the Scriptures. She warned us against the compromise she saw in much of the modern church.
She sought the Lord hard.
She served hard.
She loved hard.
Everything she did, she did with all her heart.
Sometimes I think she should have been called Mighty Mo instead of Mamamo. She may have been a tiny woman, but she had a giant of a soul.
She was truly remarkable.
And even when she received her devastating diagnosis just two short months ago, she had no doubt that the Lord does all things well.
The morning we were supposed to meet with the oncologist, she gave me a handwritten index card to take with me to the appointment. On it she had written:
“Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye whose hope and confidence doth on the Lord depend.”
Psalm 31:24
Even then, her concern was more for me than for herself.
Just a few days before her death, as she was losing her ability to communicate well, she was lying in my dad’s lap. My dad asked Pastor McCurley to give us a synopsis of a recent sermon they had missed.
Mama sat up from my dad’s lap and said, “I want to hear a sermon.”
That was so much like my mother, to muster up whatever strength she had left because she wanted something good for her soul.
That same night, the strong testimony of her mouth was simply:
“Christ is all.”
And even when she lost most of her ability to speak and could only say one or two words, when family members would come in to say goodbye, she would radiate a smile, call each one by name, and say, “I love you.”
Even at the very end, she was still Mama.
To know Christ as intimately as possible was her greatest desire. And her greatest fear was to be found at the last we a hypocrite.
She mourned that she did not see enough of her own sin, and yet sin was one of her greatest burdens. She mourned that she did not love Jesus enough, and yet her greatest desire was to love Him more. She was so saddened by the obstacles that her own placed between her and fully beholding His beauty. That was Mama she desperately wanted more of Christ.
She longed to see Him face to face, and now she does.
She spent her life longing to know Jesus more intimately, and now she has received what she desired most.
She has seen Him.
She took her last breath while listening to the Psalms, and I imagine that the next sound she heard was the singing of the heavenly host. Her eyes closed here, and then she opened them in glory and beheld the One she had spent her whole life longing to see.
Her greatest desire was fulfilled, she saw Christ’s face not dimly, but fully.
I will miss her more than words can say. My heart can barely take it. But even in the midst of this overwhelming grief, I am so very, very happy that she is safe in the arms of Jesus.
She fought the good fight.
She finished her race.
And now she is home.
One day, I will see her again.
Until then, I pray that I will carry faithfully the legacy she left me, that I will seek Christ as she sought Him, serve as she served, love as she loved, and never forget the words that summed up her life:
It is the Lord and Christ is all.
