I had lunch with the sisters last week. I’ve yet to tell you much about them… these three Southern women connected by birth and each of them hovering toward eighty years of age. I first met them on a Saturday before that Monday (August 23, 2010—a date now chronicled as a beginning diagnosis for my cancer). I was sitting with my family in the local Wendy’s; my mind wasn’t on the food. Instead, my mind wandered to other things… possibilities, my “down the road” and what that might look like for me.
Amelia cradled closely beneath the crook of my arm as she ate her chicken. I just stared and pondered while conversation milled about the table. One of the sisters noticed our bonding, and within a few minutes, made her way to our table.
“Excuse me, I’m sorry to interrupt, but have we met before?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t think so, but it seems to me that I might need to know you, and those other two sitting with you.”
Thus began the seeding of a friendship between the sisters and me. We haven’t had much occasion to get together since that Saturday. Life happened and change set in. Still and yet, they are good to remember me… call me, bake for me, send notes to me, and occasionally hang with me for lunch at Wendy’s. Last week, provided one such occasion, and the fellowship was rich.
I said something to each one of them during our gathering—an unrehearsed, unplanned kind of something. Words that spring forth from a deep well of emotion. Something I’ve been thinking about for a few weeks now, and something, I think, worthy of sharing with you in this moment.
“Ladies, don’t be surprised if your best days of mothering lie up in front of you; your finest hour of parenting might yet be up ahead, not in those moments that lie behind you.”
They looked at me, eager for an explanation. At eighty years of age, they probably hadn’t given much thought about their parenting in recent days. Grandkids and great-grandkids are mostly fodder for table talk. But parenting? After all these years? How can that be and what could that mean to these sisters whose children probably date me by a few years.
And then I told them.
About her.
And her finest hour.
My mom.
Never in my understanding regarding the life cycle did I imagine her having to care for me as she is doing. She is thirty years my senior. I should be the one caring for her. Instead, she has opened up her heart and her arms again to gently gather me to her breast and to remind me that I am her child, and that no matter the decades between us, I will always be the little girl who arrived into her arms on an Easter morning back in 1966.
Certainly, I could chronicle many of her “shining moments” over the past four decades as a parent. She is the steady anchor in our family tree. Sacrificial in nature, she’s never required the “stage,” which is a really good thing in our family since most of us are continually vying for the spotlight. I asked her once how she and my father wound up together, how they made it work between them. Her response?“Your dad needed an audience, and I was ready to listen.”
Straight and to the point; never mincing words. Wise beyond her years. When mom speaks, I listen because I know her words are chosen carefully and root from a place of understanding that few others possess. I cherish her influence; I adore her heart; and for all of the ways that she has groomed me, shaped me, taught me, and loved me over the years, I can honestly say that this season in my life has allowed her the one thing that she has often been denied.
The stage. Her shining moment.
It has arrived, friends, and this time we’re all sitting back and watching her speak her lines, take her mark, and watch her as she navigates the spotlight with all the grace and dignity of a queen in her court. She would tell you it’s nothing, that she’s only doing what any mother would do, but I would tell you otherwise. I would tell you that she’s grand and regal and meant for a moment such as this; that this is her season; that I have never needed her more, and that I am willing to be the recipient of her rich love and guidance.
No strings attached; no agenda from my end. Just a little girl caught in a terrible spell of trouble needing the crook of her mother’s arm as she cradles my fragile frame and soothes me with words of truth, comfort, and peace. I think, perhaps, she may not realize this in all the fray and activity of my current chaos. I’m afraid she might downplay her role, and so I wanted to tell you about my mom and extend my thanks to her for her willingness to stand on stage and to live her finest hour so that all may witness its worth.
This is it. And this is enough for me. I hope it is enough for her; she deserves far more than a few meager words of thanks from my heart. Still and yet, even if my words fail to express the emotion I currently feel, they need saying, because words and feelings are a gift we give to one another while there is yet time to release them. We need to “send flowers” while the living are yet amongst us, and we have the occasion to bless them with our sincerity rather than leaving this earthly life without having said much of anything.
I don’t know who’ll make it home to heaven first, me or her. But I know that for as long as God allows us this shared pilgrim road, I’ll keep to her shadows. I’ll bend in closer for a listen every times she speaks, and I’ll make sure to press in for lots of hugs and conversations and tears and love. Why? Because my mom shines like a star these days. She illuminates my world with the light of all heaven, and this is …
her finest hour.
I don’t know how this strikes you today. I want to encourage you as a parent, maybe as a mentor or as a friend to someone in need. Perhaps you think that your finest hour is behind you. That you’ve done all you can do and that there is little hope of you having a further impact on a relationship that’s grown dim or cold or barren of connection. You fear it’s too late for further influence… that your season of persuasion and shaping has exceeded prearranged time limits. That what you think, feel, and want to say won’t have much of an impact on the one who has seemingly lost interest. I’ll tell you the same thing that I told the sisters last week…
“Don’t be surprised if your best days of parenting, mentoring, loving lie in front of you; your finest hour might yet be up ahead, not in those moments that lie behind you.”
God may yet need you to sow some good seed into the hearts of the generation that rests just beneath the crook of your arm. It’s never too late to speak your faith, friends. Never too late to take a chance on loving others and allowing them to be the lavish recipients of God’s great grace via your heart. Never too late to pray a few more prayers, say a few more thoughts, cook a few more meals, hug a few more necks.
There is someone out there who needs the wealth of your years, tenderness, and wisdom. A someone who needs your finest hour. May God grant you, each one, the wisdom to identify that someone, the strength to minister to that someone, and light enough to your stage so that you, like my mother, may be allowed to live a finest hour in keeping with King’s time table.
Oh the beauty of such trust… to be given time by the Father in order to live and to leave a lasting impact upon this generation. Keep to it, friends, keep to the kingdom road, and I will do the same. Shalom and blessed Sabbath rest to you,
I want a pure soul… a cleanness before God I’ve never known. I want perspective and wisdom that can only come from the Father and that, sometimes, can only be birthed through suffering. I want to get to the end of treatment and not harbor any regrets for the time I now manage. I want to live my “now” rightly and honor the pulse of Christ’s heart as laid out in Matthew 28:18-20. None of us gets a pass on this one, friends. Regardless of what we’re “holding” today, no matter if it hurts us immensely and provokes our faith in the deepest kind of way, we must receive our calling from God as the most precious gift from his heart. We must treasure it, own it, believe it, live it.
