Tribute: How A Mom Can Change A Childhood
My mom slipped quietly into the presence of the Father just a couple weeks ago.
She died of Alzheimer’s disease, which means that the past few years have been confusing and discouraging and just… hard. But it’s funny how quickly the soul recalibrates and rearranges memories that were never the truest truth about who a person was. All of a sudden I find myself grieving the woman God used to show me the way of the Redeemer. The woman I watched change before my resentful, know-it-all teenage eyes.
I’ll have to take you back a ways to tell this story— back to the summer of 1973. Our family had just arrived back to the U.S. after living in Germany for several years. Which means that I moved from the close-knit culture of Frankfurt International School to an enormous American High School campus.
And I floundered— badly. An insecure, culturally ignorant, emotionally immature introvert in the midst of teenage angst. Can you imagine the conflict?
I took it out on mom, naturally.
All of a sudden she was everything I didn’t want to be: loud to my quiet; pushy to my hesitant; out-to-know-the-whole-world to my afraid-of-my-own-shadow shyness. And, to be honest, she was angry— and had been for a long time. Her own childhood had been harshly handled— by her father who was infamous for his temper. She didn’t know how else to be.
Until overnight, it seemed, she changed.
And I didn’t quite know how to handle this new mom.
On our return from Germany, mom got it in her head that we should go to church. I don’t know why, we’d rarely gone to church before. And now I can’t ask her. I didn’t ask her then either, I just followed along as she drug us from church to church, searching for who-knows-what.
One fall day she hustled us out the door to try a church that would, unbeknownst to us, change our lives. Los Gatos Christian Church met in a refurbished warehouse on the edge of town. Everything about the place was unconventional— and so welcoming and relatable we couldn’t wait to go back.
From the very first day that church embraced us— quite literally loving us to Jesus.
But the biggest change— the one that unequivocally convinced me that this gospel we were hearing was real— was the change I saw in mom. Every week, it seemed, something I resented about my mom transformed into something beautiful to admire about her.
She became kinder, gentler, more patient. Soft. Instead of crabbing at me, pointing out my inadequacies, she got nice. I could hardly believe it! She’d always been a mom who did nice things, but now all of a sudden she became a nice person.
And her being nice didn’t change when I challenged her— and believe me, I challenged her big time! Looking back now, I don’t think I wanted her to change— because that meant I had to change too. My old responses sounded lame, even to me, in the light of mom’s new niceness.
When I heard a Sunday sermon about the fruit of the Spirit emerging out of a transformed-by-God soul, I knew that’s what was happening. And I was in awe.
If God could change my mom… He had to be real!
My mom flourished under the influence of all the biblical truth she was embracing. Her naturally out-going personality, combined with her artistic bent in creating a home, now empowered by the Spirit at work in her, propelled her to the forefront of hospitality. Our home hummed with the joy of fellowship, of community, of people-love!
My friends all wanted to be there— whether I was home or not! She fed them ice-cream cake and home-made cookies, she asked about their lives and listened with interest.
Who was this woman in my mom’s body??
Before long, I was one of those many who opened up our hearts to Mary Sue Waterman. Instead of resenting her, I’d sit for hours on the side of her bed late at night telling her everything. She coaxed me out of my self-protective shell, caring about me.
Sure, there was still conflict.
Growth is a messy process. And a whole family growing at different rates and in different ways sometimes set sparks afire. But when (at her urging) I went to a week-long conference about the way of Jesus and I heard about forgiveness and humility and how I was supposed to respond to the God-given authority of my parents… well, let’s just say it was my turn to begin to change.
Within just a few years of mom’s transformation, we were the best of friends.
And because of her, I knew the truth of 2 Corinthians 5:17:
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
I had the rare privilege of watching those new things come right into the reality of my own home, right into my own mom.
I offer my story— my mom’s story— as hope for those of you who come late into the transformation that the Spirit brings. Mom would have been in her early forties with two teenagers, a middle-schooler, and a husband who lagged behind for a while back then. Yet every one of us came running into the faith that we watched change mom.
And that, my dear friends, is nothing short of amazing!
From a heart grieving with joy,
Diane
PS: I would count it an honor to pray for you if you’re in that place of much-needed change. I believe in the Spirit’s power to change a life— to change a family. Please leave your name in the comments so that I can bring you before the One who changes everything.