"I can do no big things, only small things in loving ways"

My mom's heated bird bath outside her living room window.

Today is one month since my mom left this earth. Although I rejoice daily that she is completely healed and marvel in awe as I never have before at what she is experiencing I still wake up on Saturdays thinking "I can't wait to talk to mom" or many times during the week reach for the phone to call and tell her some cute thing Hudson has said or ask her a question...like "how do you make your roast beef gravy?" as I did today.

I am still processing all that transpired during the last week I spent with her. It was the most difficult, exhausting, emotional, thing I have ever done but in the midst of that week and the week that followed one of the most spiritually rich and humbling events that I have ever experienced. I am writing this more for myself than anyone else as I have tried to grasp the magnitude of it all so I am just going to write my thoughts and if it begins to ramble forgive me.

Let me go back to when I was little. My mom was a city girl, graduating from the U of M with a nursing degree and married my dad, a small town Navy boy with no HS diploma but a huge work ethic. When I was four he moved us to a run down farm on 80 acres. He was a farrier and spent his days with horses, making their shoes and trimming their hooves. As long as I can remember mom worked full time, all year round. I hated coming home to an empty house and swore I would always stay home with my kids whatever it took. She spent most of her nursing career as a mental health nurse in a State Hospital. She took this state job because of the pay and benefits as they were raising a family of six. My dads work was not steady and farming as we know is usually a struggle so she was the steady bread winner. Although she worked full time she always made us home cooked dinners..every night. Eventually my dad got the farm cleaned up and in working order and began to work it and taught us all a strong work ethic as we bailed hay, picked rocks out of the fields, weeded our large garden, pumped water for our horses and cows by hand TWICE a day, along with all of the other lovely chores that come with living on a farm. Our summers of camping trips in Northern MN were replaced with at least half a day of hard work before fun could be had. Since I have become an adult I have come to cherish my childhood much more than I did as a child. I LOVED horses and would spend hours riding by myself through our woods and pastures. I was not raised in a religious home. In fact, neither of my parents were raised in church and decided to go to church when they began their family. They were Lutheran and church was what we did on Sundays..thats it. But, in those quiet hours of horseback riding I believe the Lord began to speak to my heart and I longed to know Him more. I would take my bible out to a favorite place in the woods and sit on a big rock and read. I was inspired by Joni Erickson, Anne Frank and Jim Elliott. I longed to sit in deep studies and worship with something other than hymms and recited prayers. The Lord was SO faithful to me and began to bring people in my life who discipled me and spent hours with my friends and I feeding us "meat" and challenging us spiritually. As I neared graduation from high school and then went on to college my spiritual ego became quite large and now I am ashamed to admit it I just knew I was better than my parents in that department. I would spend hours educating them on how they needed to change and pursue God. Although my mom was a hard worker I saw her as weak because she was a worrier. I wondered why she wasn't more outspoken. As life does, we had some curve balls thrown at us as a family and I slowly began to see my parents lean on their church and their faith. My mom became extremely active in her country church and in her years of retirement began a Parish Nurse program there. I believe it was there that she found her true calling and found such joy in serving. I am so grateful she spent her final years using her love for nursing in a way that brought peace and comfort to so many. Mom and I had many good conversations last year when I lived up there about sharing our faith. As I mentioned before we were doing the Esther study together and she would often tell me how she wished she could share her faith more...like I did.... One night we watched Faith Like Potatoes (GREAT movie) and afterwards it led to a deep conversation about how the main character in the movie was so confident in sharing his faith and my mom couldn't understand that. She felt like she just couldn't be comfortable doing what he did. BUT.....there was not a morning that I did not get up last year (or many years before that when she would visit me or I would visit her) that I did not find her reading her bible in the morning and journaling before she went to bed at night.

Fast forward to 1 month ago.....I did not watch a weak woman struggle and wither down to skin and bones for 7 days before she took her final earthly breath. I watched and was HONORED to serve one of the strongest most confident woman I know I will ever meet. In those last days we began to read through her journals and discovered how much pain she lived with, especially in her last two months. We had no idea how sick she was as she wasn't about to let on to us how she couldn't eat and how much pain racked her body 24/7. We also read how daily she would write down things she was grateful for....her husband, watching the birds outside, working in her garden, her grandkids coming over. Even on those days when dr.'s gave her discouraging reports or when she had been sick without us knowing she was grateful for something.

By the steady stream of visitors in her final days and the day of her visitation we began to get a sense of how many people she touched. For over three hours there was a mass of people telling us how much she had meant to them, or how she had prayed for them or a sick family member on one of her visits. Friends from nursing school came (who she did a yearly reunion with), people she worked with 30 years ago, young and old. One was a young mom in her church. She has a daughter who was born with down syndrome a few years ago. She cried and cried telling my dad how my mom was the only one would hold her baby when she was born and would just ooh and ahh over her. The following day people were filling the church before we even arrived. The sanctuary was packed and not everyone was even fitting in the over flo fellowship hall. Again, for hours we heard family members, friends, strangers share something unknown about my mom to us. And then the cards.....I am STILL sending thank you notes to the hundreds of cards that came in....most with some kind of note again, sharing such HUMBLING words to me about this woman MY MOM who I now know was who Jesus tells us all to be. Almost every card or every person mentioned her faith, what an example she was to them, how much she taught them. She was His hands and feet, never holding back food to the hungry, water to the thirsty. I said earlier I was not raised in a religious home and growing up I would say I wasn't raised in a Christian home. Oh, how untrue.........

....yes, we are so different. She was a worrier, I am not. I am outspoken, she was not. I wear my heart on my sleeve, she wore hers so humbly, never thinking she was doing enough, or good enough, or faithful enough. In some of funeral notes she had written down a quote by Mother Theresa "I can do no big things, only small things in loving ways".......And I have not a doubt that when she stood before Him, HEALED & RESTORED I know He said "WELL DONE GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT"......that I could live so well!!!!!

So mom, you have taught me more about who Jesus desires us to be than I ever thought possible. You LIVED it. I have gone on many a mission trip.....you, not one....but your life was one big mission trip. You just served as you lived, you lived as you served.....which comes first??? I now know the strength you were made of. I miss you, I would love to hear your voice, your laugh.....see you in the kitchen when we arrive next Saturday with the smell of your chocolate sauce on the stove and popcorn popping. But instead I will smile as i picture you before His throne, walking among His streets, His gardens......and I will strive to live as you lived although I will never live as well.........