I found it in a drawer last week.
To be honest, we found a lot of things last week. Fabric left over from the valances and quilts Mom made for my babies. Puppets and books from Mom’s days as a music teacher. Old dollhouse furniture that Mom helped us make from tissue boxes and frozen orange juice cans. The beaded blouse Mom wore to my wedding. And many, many more things.
My sisters and I were helping Dad go through some of Moms things, and it was a week full of memories. Some items we stored in the basement to go through later. Some things came home with us. Some were given to Good Will, and some, like the dollhouse furniture, was just too old and musty to keep at all.
As I was going through one of Mom’s drawers, I found several copies of an essay Mom had written several years ago. She was recalling a time when she was in a hospital bed. As I read her essay, my first thought was: Hey! My mom could write!
Most of us realize that our moms are more than moms, especially once we become adults. Our moms have their own pursuits and interests; their own talents and abilities. Rationally, we as adults know this, and yet…our moms are our moms. So while it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Mom could write, especially since she wrote me scads of letters and was a teacher, I was still surprised when I stumbled upon this essay. And of course, being a blogger, I thought: Mom could have written a blog!
While all these thoughts going through my head were nice, those thoughts were not the most important part of my find.
As Mom was lying in that hospital bed on a Sunday morning, most likely recovering from one of her surgeries she had when she was about my age now, she thought about church. She wrote about how important her church family was to her. She wrote about her faith in Jesus, and how her Savior died for her.
I can’t relay all of her thoughts as I sit here at my laptop; that essay is still sitting in that drawer 350 miles away.
Grief is a powerful thing; after Mom’s death, all that grief shook my faith. Was Mom in Heaven? Would I see her again? Or once a life is over, is that it? No Heaven, no Jesus, just death. I never lost my faith — but I couldn’t help having these thoughts.
But that short essay, written in Mom’s flowing handwriting and beautiful language, helped to strengthen my own faith. While the purpose of that essay was surely to strengthen the faith of its readers, Mom didn’t know that it would strengthen the faith of her own daughter who was struggling over such a great loss.
She would be glad that I stumbled upon her writing that day.
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