I think of not just the tear-stained faces in that hospital room but the rainbow that sliced through the gray, rainy skies. My heart is heavy when I remember holding my grandpa's hand just a year ago and the way he pushed through the haze of Alzheimer's and told me that she should not have left before her parents. But I also see the faces of the people who took my hand at the funeral and the love and strength they've imparted to me since then, things she had first given them.
I think of the despair of those early years, the loneliness and the wandering, and I think of the hope and redemption of later years, of the adopted moms that stepped in and the situations I couldn't have spoken to so honestly and the hugs I couldn't have felt so deeply without first living through my own heartbreak.
I remember her life. I imagine the romantic dreamer my dad says she was in school when she wrote in her red, velvet journal. I think about her fierceness and sense of justice and how some people used to be afraid of that part of her. I remember her frustration and watching hours of Chinese dramas, but I also remember her frankness with God and her tender obedience. I remember how we groaned when she took us to visit all kinds of people, from the old to the sick to the lonely. We just didn't understand. But I think we do now.
Kids have a hard time seeing their parents as real people. I think we've been blessed to learn the value of that early on. In all the quirks and flaws and imperfection, there is a beauty in the realness and what God can do with each of those things. And when you witness that, you're changed, too.
So today I honor my mom . . . and everything else that comes with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment