God In Me (Mother's Day Post)

My mom, my brother, and me

I bought this cutesy saying, painted on a rectangular wooden box, which says, “Sooner or later, we all quote our mothers.” Nothing could be truer for me.

I’ve worked for my mom for 20 years. She is an ordained Bible minister, and I am the sole office worker. If it needs doing, I am the person you call. From graphic design to accounting, to filing and IT work, I’m it. I set up her social media. I balance her checkbook. I repair the printer (often with Dad’s help).

But perhaps the greatest thing of all is that for twenty years, I have listened to her teach.

Longer than that, because I remember her teaching when I was a girl and dragging me and my older brother along. I didn’t appreciate it then. I was the typical squirm-in-the-seat, draw-on-the-envelope, kid. A frustration to my mom, who probably thought I wasn’t listening.

Coming at this topic from the opposite angle. I see troubled families on television, and my heart breaks, and that, more and more as I get older. Because whereas I have such a strong foundation in God and the Bible, they don’t. Troubled parents will raise troubled youths, none of them with a solution to anything they face, and the devil likes it that way.

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (Jn 14:6)

There is only one way out of stress and addiction and heartache and anger. Only one way toward true joy and wisdom, to finding truth and having life. Eternal life, but also a happy life, both a physical and spiritual concept. Only one way to achieve success, to fulfill your purpose, and to raise strong, healthy children.

Jesus is the only Way, and I know that reads trite. It’s easy to say and hard to understand.

It’s sometimes learned through experience. Being honest, I learned Jesus was the Way when I couldn’t find my way. But, and this is my point, at that moment, everything my mom had taught came full circle.

It wasn’t that she ever sat me down, and we had lessons about salvation and faith. It was that I heard her speak it over and over and over again. Before I began working for her, but especially after, and that foundation made a difference in me when I needed it.

I have an adult daughter, and see my failings with her, stark, some days. I wish I could have done better here or here or there or with that. At the same time, I pray the seeds of God that I’ve planted, despite those failings, are buried deep and growing. That they are watered with the words of her grandmother as well.

I pray where I have fallen, she will be able to keep walking, and that my example, though it feels like it took me 40 years to make it, will spark faith in her.

Because that matters to me now. I look at that saying and see it in me. What a privilege that I can quote mom. I have 20 years’ worth of her words in me. What a blessing if my daughter, one day, similarly quotes me.

Yet not me at all, but God in me.

To visit my mother's ministry, go to www.beckycombeeministries.com or look for Becky Combee Ministries, Inc. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

 

For another Mother's Day post, read "Things I Learned From My Mother."

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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.feelgoodromance.com
www.suzannedwilliams.com