It was about 4 a.m. when the staff at the hotel tracked me down to take the urgent call. I was frozen in time as I heard my brother’s voice repeat, “Lin, they don’t think she is going to make it.” My mom had suffered a stroke in the middle of the night and now her heart was giving out.
What was I going to do? I was chaperoning a school outing over three hours away from the hospital and I had to wait until I could find another chaperone to cover for me. Could I get there in time? Would I be able to say goodbye? The student leadership high school kids I was with comforted me as I wept.
It was a long three hour drive. There were no cell phones, so it was an agonizing wait to find out what was going on. My brother met me at the door of the hospital with the bad news. She didn’t make it. My mom was gone.
My four brothers, my sister, my dad and I sat in the family room for hours, talking, crying and reminiscing. Our church had an interim pastor who had only known mom for a few weeks, but he came to bring words of comfort. It ended up being the best tension breaker of the day because he had no social skills whatsoever and had to open his little church book to read “what to say to grieving families” because it just didn’t come naturally to him to say he was sorry for our loss.
It was so mechanical that my siblings and I just started glancing around at each other and before long we were laughing at this poor man for his gallant yet fruitless effort to enter in to our family’s tragic moment. At one point he probably thought he had gotten through to us because the tears were rolling but it was because I was laughing so hard.
It was then that I decided that I would preach the sermon at my mom’s funeral since I knew her and he didn’t and I also knew that she wanted people to turn to God in their times of trouble and I didn’t have a whole lot of confidence this well meaning man of the cloth would inspire people to consider how my mom had come to a deeper spiritual path. My mom herself would show me how she had done that just a few hours after she died.
Mom had began to suffer from depression and anxiety attacks and as a counselor, I had lots of tools to offer her, but unlike my clients, getting through to a parent or family member can be much more difficult. I decided to try a different approach to getting her to turn over her fears and anxiety and hopelessness to the same place I had gone many years earlier. I bought mom a subscription to Guideposts, a Christian magazine that has many heartwarming and faith-filled stories. I didn’t know if she ever read it but I was about to find out.
My sister Tammy and I were in my mom’s bedroom cleaning things up and we were surprised that her fan was not on. She always slept with the fan on and since she had the stroke in the kitchen in the middle of the night we thought it may have still been on. We started to strip the bed as we talked to mom as though she was there experiencing what we were seeing and feeling.
I reached down to move her pillow and under it I found a copy of the Guidepost I had got for her. It was turned to a page on anxiety and I started to cry. To know that a simple gesture of offering someone some reading material could help them in their time of need made me grateful that I had opportunity to do something of eternal value. I asked out loud if the book had helped her and just then the fan began to blow. No timer, no short in the cord, no electrical issues. Mom was there letting us know that we what we do matters. Our lives matter, and she will be with us each step of the way to help us be what God wants us to be.
Since those days I have spent my years journaling, reading, praying, and listening to others talk about how to have peace with God, how to know His plan for my life, and how to overcome the challenges I face each day with mental, emotional and physical well being.
I decided to write down what I was learning and especially what God Himself was saying to me. I have since turned these conversations into a meditation where I use the 12 steps, the Bible and prayer to get the answers from God I am seeking. These writings have become my new meditation book Speak to Me God I’m Listening- 365 Daily Meditations for Those Who Want to Hear God Answer Life’s Toughest Questions, and I know my mom helped me write it.
In honor and remembrance of my mom, I decided to “birth” my book on her birthday, December 2nd. It is my hope that those who knew and loved her, those who have been impacted by all she brought into the world and those who can appreciate the influence she had on me to get me to where I am today, will honor her by coming to the virtual “Birth-Day party so we can launch this book right in to heaven!
Though my book is available online now, I want December 2nd 2019 to be “Betty’s Best Seller Birthday Bash Book Launch To Heaven,” If we can sell the most books in a category in any hour or day or month it can be a “best seller” and it would mean a great deal to leave that kind of legacy in mom’s memory.
So, let’s all meet online and make this thing happen! Get your Christmas, birthday and next years gifts now. Give a friend a gift of love in this meditation book or buy a bunch of them to give out at recovery meetings, homeless shelters, Christian schools or anywhere else where people need a down to earth way to connect to God. Let’s join my mom and change the world together.
BE SURE TO LIKE THE PAGE SO YOU CAN FIND YOUR WAY BACK TO IT.
I will be giving away over $1000 in free prizes including books, coaching and seminar packages.
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