Inspired by the moving and probing explorations of women and women of faith for International Women's Day, I wanted to reflect on the importance of women of faith. As I wracked my brain trying to find an ordered sequence of thought, my mind wandered to Christian women who are important and significant in my life, trawling through Church history in the hope I would stumble across a story that spoke strongly to me. Then it suddenly occurred to me: my subject matter has been with me every step of the journey, and is someone who I strongly attribute my choice for faith to. My mother.
This must seem a clichéd choice, a ‘Christian’ daughter talking about her ‘Christian’ mother. However, ours is a passionate, tense and often fraught relationship, anathema to the picket fence cliché. Think Sylvia and Aurelia Plath, sort of.
Though brought up going to Church and Sunday school, I was never much impacted by what I experienced, and subsequently jettisoned myself from any form of spirituality in my last year of primary school. It was a liberating experience to say “No, I’m not going to church today,” and having my mother grant me my wish. This was the first clue that she was different to other Christian mothers I knew.
She refrained from impeding my intellectual, political, social and sometimes spiritual explorations, though we sometimes disagreed on the paths I was choosing to wander down. She also saw me swallowed by the jaws of depression, watching helplessly from the sidelines as I rejected every gentle attempt to help on her part.
When she – very infrequently – mentioned faith, I would chew her out and shut down the conversation. However, if I am honest, this was not the only time I would chew her out and shut a conversation down. My thorn is my temper (and lack of ability to exercise control over it), and all through this period (and in the present) she put up with my awful anger and violence with patience and fairness. God knows, if I had been treated so badly by anyone I would not want to be around them, but she persisted with a love that blunted the sharp edges of my rage.
My mother let me be me. Even when I told her I was running away to New Zealand to pursue a love affair she did not stand in my way. She expressed her reservations, but bought me the ticket there for my 21st birthday. I had little realisation at the time of how much she put her trust entirely at God's feet in doing this. Six months later, still in New Zealand, still living with the boy I had chased, I considered myself a follower of Christ.
It is difficult to articulate the importance of my mother in my making of that decision. Instead, a verse that reflects her heart, her actions (thank you for reminding me of this, Erin):
Love...
Never gives up
Cares more for others than for itself.
Doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end(1 Corinthians 13:4-7 TM)
She showed me the deep heart of Gods love. Without her I would not be who I am or where I am today.
