Plus 50 Christian Living - Mentoring Moments for Christian Women

Thank God Anyway

Vicki Huffman

I am writing this on November 4 a few hours after the election results came in. To say I am disappointed in the presidential election results is a huge understatement. In nearly 40 years of voting, I have never been this disappointed. Let me say it clearly: for me it wasn’t a racial thing. I can name several black politicians I would gladly see in the White House: J. C. Watts, Michael Steele, or Alan Keyes. Or Condaleeza Rice. But Barack Obama holds none of the same values they or I have. And I’m not alone in that opinion. Obama lost 2/3 of the evangelical Christian vote in most states per the exit polls.

So here is my dilemma: I am on deadline to write a column on thankfulness and I’m not feeling very thankful. If you happen to be in the same shape, maybe you’d like to listen in on several things that I’m reminding myself of tonight.

I remind myself first that most people in the world don’t live in a democracy and have no say in how they are governed. But as Americans accustomed to freedom and prosperity, we forget that and fail to thank God for what we have. We fail to remember we did nothing to obtain it but were born into it. So I am thankful to have a part in the electoral process even when my candidate doesn’t win. I worship God and not the government and that helps put things in perspective.

The second thing I remember is that the New Testament saints lived under totally pagan governments. The apostles didn’t have a vote about what insane Roman emperor they lived under. Most of them were killed by government authorities. And things didn’t get better in the next administration or the next or the next. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, wrote in the third century: “If I could ascend some high mountain and look out over this wide land, you know very well what I would see. Robbers on the high roads, pirates on the sea…selfishness and cruelty, misery and despair under all roofs. It is a bad world, an incredibly bad world but in the midst of it I have found a quiet and holy people who have learned a great secret. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are the masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people are the Christians and I am one of them.”

Cyprian’s words are still timely 18 centuries later. In the midst of our “incredibly bad world” many search for peace. The peace they want requires the world to change. But the world rarely changes for the better. I am thankful that there is a peace that transcends outward circumstances and I can have that peace when I appropriate it. In the upper room on the night He was betrayed, Jesus spoke of the persecution His disciples would endure. But He ended with an encouraging promise: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33 NIV).

The third thing I remind myself of is that Paul told us to “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). Bible commentator Matthew Henry knew how to do that. On the night he was robbed, he prayed: “I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse they did not take my life: third, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed and not I who robbed.”

Maybe the simplest way to say it can be boiled down to three words. When things don’t go my way, and when they don’t go yours either: thank God anyway.

Missing My Mother

Vicki Huffman
It happened today as I passed a full-length mirror while Christmas shopping in the mall. Rather than my usual brief glance to check my hair and makeup, I was brought up short. It suddenly seemed I was looking at my mother—her face (I had my glasses on), her hair color, her body shape, her kind of shoulder bag. For one brief moment I thought about calling her to tell her about it. Then my mind cleared, and I remembered that heaven is farther away than the best fiber optics can reach.

Getting used to being motherless is taking longer than I thought possible. Even though it's been five years since my mother died, many things still trigger thoughts of her: seeing her birthday or anniversary date on the calendar, wearing her wedding ring, dusting the brass candlesticks she bought overseas, sniffing the aroma of meat loaf in the office cafeteria (it's not as good as hers), or glimpsing an intensely pink sky at sundown, a near-duplicate of the day she was buried.

Common sense tells me these reminders will lessen in frequency and intensity as the years pass. Or will they? My friend Frances recently told me, "My mother died thirty years ago and sometimes I still miss her so much."

Why does the loss of a mother seem different than other losses? Maybe it's the unique mother-daughter relationship that causes motherless daughters like me to hold onto our grief for years while concealing it like a box of old love letters high on a shelf. The immense expectations connected with a mother's role leave us struggling with the void she's left behind. The one we thought would always be there for us—nurturing, loving, caring—now no longer is. Suddenly we find ourselves measuring the future in terms of mother-absence: Mother won't see her grandchildren born. Mother won't attend her oldest grandson's graduation. Mother won't be escorted down the aisle first in her granddaughter's wedding. But even those painful thoughts are clung to because they represent a connection, a remembrance.

Jeanette, a friend who lost her mother three years ago, calls her difficult moments grief points: times when she suddenly feels the loss of what was or what could have been. With the realization that her mother, an excellent seamstress, would no longer be able to make her wedding dress someday, Jeanette was left with a poignant sense of future loss.

My grief points usually involve past losses, regrets over the times my mother and I failed to communicate. If I could pick up the phone today and reach her, would we get beyond small talk to deeper issues? Because she lived seven hundred miles away (and often seemed intimidated by the phone), we postponed those conversations for our semiannual visits. Then there never seemed to be enough time or privacy—until she was dying. During that seven-week period, our conversations went well beyond the books we were reading or current events. We talked about life and death, past and present hurts. The mother-daughter bond grew stronger, better late than not at all. I thank God for those times, at the same time wondering what might have happened if He'd chosen to grant miraculous healing. Would my mother and I have continued on that deeper level or slipped back into the life-as-usual mode?

Why didn't we communicate better earlier? I was simply "too busy." While I was caring for a growing family, the years rushed by in a flurry of activity. My mother said she understood because she'd been there. She even boasted to her friends about how complicated my life was. But after finding a packet of my old letters in her bureau drawer while emptying her house, I regret not writing her more. I too often played that foolish game of "I'll write her when she writes me." A game where no one won. My mother frequently described herself (pretty accurately) as "the world's worst letter writer," evidenced by a note she wrote me in college that included a sentence about having the cast taken off her leg. I called home immediately and found out she'd broken her ankle two months earlier but neglected to mention it!

Although physical distance kept us apart most of our adult lives, I wish I'd been better at bridging the emotional distance that sometimes separated us. Now I realize I shouldn't have expected it to be a fifty-fifty proposition; that one person usually needs to give more in order to keep communication open. And, ironically, I've come to understand my mother better now that she's gone. It recently occurred to me I never saw her cry. She undoubtedly had many reasons to cry: a traumatic childhood with an abusive father, the loss of her first husband in the war, a turbulent marriage to an alcoholic, and multiple health problems and surgeries.

After she died, I found a poem in her Bible that spoke of accepting what comes into our life without complaint ("whatever is, is best") because it came through the hands of a loving God. Apparently she believed that. Even though she didn't come to a personal relationship with Christ until several years before she died, she never harbored anger against God for the way her life turned out. Thinking of her perseverance and strength gives me a fresh appreciation for her attributes.

On this continuing grief journey, I'm learning not to look at the past through rose-colored glasses, to succumb to the temptation to make a martyr of my mother (she would have hated that!), or to idealize her with a perfection no human being merits. Neither do I blame her for any childhood deficiencies—even the ones for which she apologized. She gave me what she was capable of giving at the time. And I've forgiven her for the times when that wasn't enough, as I hope my children will one day forgive me.

When I was about five years old, I used to climb onto my mother's lap and say, "I love you. I have the best mommy in the whole wide world." It seemed to embarrass her because she never knew exactly how to respond. The reason became clear when she explained to me on her deathbed that, for some unknown reason, the words "I love you" had always been hard for her to say.

Sometimes when I think of her now, I don't see her as I last did—in her sixties, frail and bedridden as she lost her second battle with cancer. Instead, when life knocks me around and I find myself suddenly, inexplicably wanting my mother, I picture her as the beautiful twenty-eight-year-old woman she once was and myself as a child again. I climb onto her lap and say, "I love you. I have the best mommy in the whole wide world."

But this time, my mother puts her arms around me and says, "I love you, honey. I have the best daughter in the whole wide world." And it is enough.

Maybe when I join her in heaven, we'll have a chance to try it again.

(Copyrighted--This article appeared in Today's Christian Woman in 1995)