What Would Mother Say?

For the past few weeks I have been reading Jan Karon's Mitford series and am currently in book two, A Light in the Window. The series was extremely popular among Christian women in the mid-1990's. Now that I am retired I have more time for reading books that I am not preparing to teach. This book features two main characters, Father Tim who is a sixty-two years old Episcopalian priest and his next door neighbor, Cynthia, with whom he has fallen in love. As Father Tim is searching for an amethyst brooch he had given his deceased mother, he asks the question, "What would his own mother say if she could speak to him now?" For all of us whose mothers have died, we sometimes ask the same question of ourselves.

If I could speak to my mother again directly, I believe my mother would be filled with joy for me. She would say, "Lisa, I am so glad you have the time now that you are retired to enjoy nature. You worked so hard through the years that the time just flew by. Enjoy the creation, especially in the autumn of your life. Like the trees outside your windows today, the leaves will slowly drop in preparation for the winter months. That should not diminish, however, the joy we have for the precious moments of today."

I believe my mother would also say, "Now that you are not so tired with work, getting your doctorate, raising your children, being a wife, and having various ministires, you can also enjoy stretching your mind and appreciating the Incarnation. You can actually think about what you are reading in your daily Bible reading and meditate upon the universal truths within it. You remember that I was a searcher all my life for truth, and now you are joining me in that search."

I have to ask myself also, in fairness, what I would say to my mother if we could miraculously once again sit in my living room or hers and have a long conversation. I would probably say more about sorrow than joy. I would have to give my regrets in this way, "I am sorry that I did not take more time when you were alive to appreciate your wisdom and just sit for hours listening as you talked about your love for my father, your love for us, and your desire to have us be faithful Christians." I am sure I would also say, "I regret that I did not fully understand how hard your life was as a single mother through the years working several jobs in order for us to pay our bills. It has only been in recent years through reading your letters to Kimberly [our daughter] that I began to understand the tough environment you lived in with Daddy [an alcoholic, womanizer, and compulsive gambler].

The Bible assures us in the New Testament that we will have no regrets in heaven, only joy. I look forward to that day.