brown-headed musings

Mom.

Wanda Brown

September 16, 1944 - June 27, 2011

I stumbled into my study a few hours after hearing the news that my mother had died. Sitting on my desk were two very large, very worn bibles. Hays and Molly had proudly brought them down to my desk while rummaging through all of mom’s old stuff that morning. One was an old King James Bible which had been my father’s bible. He died in 1992, and there was still a faded note from his funeral stuck into the bible’s pages. Scattered through its pages, like random snapshots at her various relationships were cards and letters and even old prayer requests people had scribbled down on slips of paper and mom had stuck into dad’s old bible. The other bible was mom’s. It had notes scribbled on the pages. Reminders on Psalm 23 that God is a shepherd we don’t always want. It was an NIV. There weren’t as many scraps of paper in that one, but the kids may have picked it clean before they brought it down to my study this morning. 

I stopped at the door to my study and thought what a perfect memorial to both my parents, and particularly to my mother. Don’t get me wrong, I can remember a whole slew of amazing little stories from our life together.  I remember her being fairly confident that she could beat Michael Saltsman in a footrace across the parking lot at Kiwanis field when I was in 7th grade. She liked to tell the story as though she were ahead when she fell and broke her arm, but I’m not so sure. I’ll never forget the time she woke me up at 11:45pm to go and buy the new Pearl Jam album (it was VS.) which was being released at midnight at the local music shop. She took a bunch of junior high kids out stealing stop signs until it dawned on her that such a thing could be a criminal offense.  There were countless days at the pool with Suburban-loads of kids, trips to Six Flags with the same Suburban-loads of kids, and lots and lots of sporting events. She made sure that my childhood was not simply good, but exceptional. Everything was an event, everything was filled with an opportunity to laugh or to sing loudly in the car, and all of life was an adventure with Mom. She was my introduction to C.S. Lewis and I’m fairly sure she’d never read him. I mean that the savor for the very marrow and substance of life that Lewis put to words for me, were simply the verbal expression of the first 18 years of my life with Mom. 

There were two-a-days in high school. My friends and I would come to our house after practice to find the freezer stocked with Gatorades, the kitchen table filled with every snack imaginable and the thermostat set to a nice 67. There were the surprise Christmas gifts which seemed to always come right at the last minute. There were the car-full of groceries which would show up at our house in Fort Worth at the most key financial moments during our first year of marriage. I remember countless times as a child dropping groceries off or money in envelopes off at the doors of family friends. We’d ring the doorbell and run away. Our kids loved going to see her even to the day before her death. She always had gifts for them. Visits to Wichita Falls to see GiGi were a little out of hand. Between visits she would just accumulate gift upon gift upon gift for the each of  our kids. She knew how to give gifts that would delight and help others and did so often at great sacrifice to herself. 

I often told her that she wasn’t funny. I did that because her humor was the sort that a son simply can’t ever admit is actually funny.  But, now that she’s fallen asleep I can admit it, she was funny. She had her cycle of jokes, but it was a cycle longer and more robust than most. She had a monologue that she had taken from her mother that was frankly hilarious. I not only knew my mother to be a happy person, but a person who seemed delighted to see others happy and even laughing. It was at the heart of almost all that she did, and her humor was a gift. It was a constant demonstration that even in the absolute darkest of times, there was something to delight in, some bit of irony to notice, something we could laugh at. My father’s last two years were a hard lesson in this that has deeply shaped my life. Those were some of the darkest years (even though they stand largely as a dark blur from this distance), but throughout those memories is profound laughter and even joy. Even in her last weeks, as it became apparent that these were going to be her last weeks, she could make us smile. 

And there were countless nights and days caring for my ailing father the last couple years of his life. I remember coming to the top of the hill at First Baptist Church, dad in his wheel chair, mom pushing and then she’d stop at the top and ask the legless man if he was sure he really loved her.  Those last years I watched a woman love a man. Not when it was easy, but when it was impossibly hard. When he would be almost out of his mind because of the pain. She cleaned him, fed him, comforted him, made him laugh (which was a difficult task, dad didn’t laugh much), sang, prayed, tended his wounds. I often hear people add the phrase “and I never heard them complain,” and I often think they’re lying. But I never heard her complain. I often heard her laugh. I saw her cry on many occasions. I know it was hard, but I don’t she ever complained about her lot. She almost drover herself mad, but she served and loved and comforted day and night through all of it. 

But those bibles…. 

I remember calling mom one evening while I was a junior in college at Wheaton in Chicago. I called because I was excited. I was taking my first systematic theology course and I was absolutely thrilled by what I was reading about and learning. I was nothing but irritated by my mother’s response over the phone: “That sounds wonderful Son, but make sure you’re staying close to your Bible. Always check everything against the Bible.” I remember the first time I was reading John Piper’s Desiring God. I had never read anything like it. I was absolutely floored. I called mom to tell her about it. Her response at the time: “That sounds wonderful Son, but make sure you’re staying close to your Bible. Always check everything against the Bible.” It was a constant refrain from her. The bible could be trusted. Everything else was suspect.  But God had given us His word. Trust that. Doubt everything else. 

I learned to pray growing up next to my grandmother who lived in a perpetual state of prayer (though I’m sure she dozed off during some of those “prayer” times). But I learned a profound and unapologetic biblicism from my mother.  I watched my dad literally devour the bible during his last years. He listened to it, read it, memorized it, and when he couldn’t see anymore I’d find him asleep on the text in his hospital bed. He loved the bible more than any person I’ve ever known. I never heard him teach it. But his love for God’s word was tangible. From my mother I received a profound and practical biblicism. She didn’t devour it like my dad, but it was clearly the foundation of everything for her. That was the thing she pointed me to. Trust that God has spoken here first. The question would always come: But how does that square with the bible?

And the heart of the gospel was taught absolutely everywhere. I learned about grace and salvation and the stunning truths of Jesus’ death in our place and resurrection for us over and over and over again. My mom loved Jesus profoundly, and it was always clear that such love was rooted only in her faith that Christ had loved her and died for her and clothed her in His righteousness. She loved singing old truths loudly. She lived in our home for a year before needing full-time care and her room was next to my study. I can’t count the number of times I had to put headphones in because she would be weeping and belting out old hymns all by herself in her room.  And a few weeks ago my mom asked me to remind her again of what Jesus had done for her and how she could be saved. It is a precious thing for a son to be able to remind his mother of the precious truths she raised him on. So almost every time I saw her up until the last, we talked about Jesus. We talked about the cross. We talked about how much God loved us and how He sent Jesus to die for us, and how He rescued us from our own sins. 

On Saturday evening, Mom could barely keep her eyes open and she couldn’t talk. Jen and I read Ephesians to her. We told her that being with Jesus was way better than anything here. We told her that when she was ready, she should go to Him. I told her to tell dad hello and to give Pops a hug. But most of all we told her to go to the One she had taught me to love. This morning, by God’s grace, she went to Him. Last night I preached on the wonderful command we are given throughout the Scriptures to remember. We are to celebrate grace everywhere God gives it. We’re commanded to eat, drink, sing and remember God’s goodness. 

It seems a rather horrific habit for every generation to despise their parents’ generation. We laugh at their simplicity. We criticize their worst failings (never realizing that ours are often far worse). We find all the worst examples of their own prejudices (ironically displaying our own) and hold them up as the excuse we need to move on and discover something new. This all seems ridiculous.  It is the worst sort of hubris. I look at my mother and see a woman who will not stand before God on her own merits, sure. But I also see clear marks of deep, profound, beautiful grace. I pray that in God’s mercy I wouldn’t fall from this grace. I had a mother who richly loved Jesus. I had a mother who really believed that the bible was true and could be trusted and should be the ground and rule of all faith. I had a mother who didn’t simply know the truthfulness of the bible and the facts of the gospel, but delighted in them and sang them.  I had a mother who knew, perhaps better than anyone I have ever known, how to give her life away for the joy of others. Here is a woman who knew her Savior and God. Here is a woman who loved well. Here is a beautiful life I can never be nearly thankful enough for.