Speak Oft with the Lord

There are many a memories - priceless, valuable and much cherished memories - of my dear mother, who died a few years ago. She was a darling. No girl could have asked for a better mother. We shared a very beautiful relationship. She told me off when as a mischievous little girl I disobeyed my parents, She counseled me yet gave me the room “to grow up” ( I must admit, looking back I wouldn’t have been as charitable as she was to me), as a young woman I found in my mother my closest friend and confidante. And even now with her gone, every memory of her is vibrantly alive inside my head and I want to keep her thus alive by sharing the legacy she left behind.

My mother whom I fondly called amma was a full time school teacher, a pastor’s wife – full time, and without a moment's hesitation I can avow a full time mother. She was a friend to anyone who just needed a shoulder to cry on, a generous giver to those who needed help (and some of the things that my mother did I only discovered from the various eulogies delivered and crowds of genuinely anguished town-folk at her funeral). In spite of so juggling different roles and responsibilities, she maintained such poise even in the midst of daunting situations and God knows she had to encounter many. Even as a young person in her thirty’s her health was failing and even though that took its toll on her, she never allowed that to get in the way of her cheery disposition.

On seeing her I have often wondered, “Where does she find the strength to do all that she does, even when tied down with a debilitating illness?” And now with her gone I still ponder, “How was she able to live the life she did in spite of those harsh realities that she often encountered?” And in response one image repeatedly comes to my mind; that of my mother in the quiet of the early morning, sitting on “her” chair in the living room, even before any of us woke up, with her glasses perched on her petite nose, poring over her worn-out bible. And I know that time of reading the word of God would be preceded or followed by a time of laying bare her heart to God; the evidence of which was but the quiet movement of her lips or her tear stained face.

Of all the lessons I learned from her, and there are many, the one that I think she would have wanted me to hold onto tenaciously is this “communion with God.” Now I know why she was unfazed while in the midst of agonizing difficulty – in her body, in her spirit and in her mind. She would never attempt to explain her self when misunderstood or maligned; she would never find an excuse to shirk her responsibilities at work and at home; and she did not flinch in the eye of suffering, because she had battled with every burden that threaten to consume her by “taking it to God” in the still of not just a particularly troubling morning but every morning. She did indeed speak oft with the Lord. The lesson she taught, not only with her lips but also through her life, will ever, ever remain with me. May God give me the strength to be at least half the person that she was.