It's odd.  

I miss my Mom.

For the past several years Mom lived with my sister five-hundred miles away.  A year or so ago, I stopped trying to talk to her on the phone.  Even when I would visit she didn't know who I was, and was unable to respond to even simple questions, like, "How are you?"  I'd call and ask how Mom was doing, but it had been years since I had really talked to Mom.  Even though, before Mom died I was elsewhere, my mind was engaged in other tasks, going other directions, and my Mom's death--a week ago today--was a was blessed release from her no longer functioning body, yet, in spite of all that, I miss her.

Though my Mom's body was so emaciated and ravaged by time and disease that I had no desire to see what was left of it, until a little after noon last Monday she was here.  Though I was too far away to do so myself, someone could touch her.  I was concerned that her physical needs be met, and I'm glad that they were.  I was always interested in hearing about any report of something Mom said, or some flicker of recognition that came to Mom's eyes.  Mom, Mom's body, the body that used to contain Mom--there is somewhat of a mystery here; it's hard to know exactly how to identify just what my family buried last week--now lies less than a mile away from where I sit.  Yet the gulf that separates me from my Mom can no longer be crossed in a day's drive.  She was taken.  She is not here.  The finality of. "She is dead." is the new reality.  Though I welcomed the news that death had delivered Mom from the near total disability that gripped her, the news brought a volleyball sized lump to my stomach that has been reduced to tennis ball size, but is still there.

I miss her.

I was proud of my family.  We didn't make any effort to put lipstick on the pig of death.  The body we put in the ground is the body that engulfed each of us for the first nine months of our lives.  The hand that lays across Mom's breast is the hand that touched my face to see if I had a fever, that combed my hair, that spanked me, and prepared thousands of meals.  To see that hand stilled is a horrible thing.  Yet we join with the Apostle Paul in looking death in his hideous eye and saying,

"O death, where is your victory? Odeath, where is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

(1 Corinthians 15:55-57, NASB95)  

I miss my Mom, but I take Paul's words to the Thessalonians to heart.  I don't "grieve as do the rest who have no hope."  But, I miss my mom. 

It's STTA.

 

 

On our website, covingtonbblechurch.com, put your cursor over the "Devotional and Study Aids" tab and select "Thirty Days of Praying the Names and Attributes of God."  Follow the link.

   

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There is lots of information about the one Who died so that we could have life at our webpage, covingtonbiblechurch.com.  Click on "Life's most important question."