The Day Between

I Remember Mama

Everyone has a story.  What we do, how we see the world, how we react to our circumstances have a great deal to do with our story. 

I’ve been thinking about my mom lately.  The things she used to do and say, her life – her story. She would have been ninety-two this year.  She didn’t have an easy life, maybe no one does.  She lived in perilous times, maybe we all do.  I remember an old radio on a shelf that my mom could tune to get French stations.  She would sing loud, with windows open so the neighbors could hear as she sang those French love songs.  The neighbors called her Frenchie, go figure.

My mom was born in Le Havre, France.  She had a troubled childhood.  Her father committed a crime before she was born, so her early years were spent with her grandparents under a cloud of shame.  Later when her sister was born, she lived with her mother and step-dad.  She was resentful and gave them trouble galore.  She was strong-willed, mean, rebellious and defiant.  Her mom wanted her to be apprenticed to a hat maker.  She wanted to sing in night clubs, so she ran away, was brought back, and generally made those close to her miserable.

Then came the war.  She joined the French underground and sang in those nightclubs for German soldiers that called her ‘the girl with the heart of ice’.  She hid arms in her apartment and passed on information the soldiers had shared with the nightclub’s prostitutes.  Her best friend fell in love with an SS officer and betrayed my mom.  She was arrested and sent to Flossenburg, a Nazi concentration camp.  She was twenty-one.

She came to this country in 1947 after World War II.  She was a war bride, having married an American soldier.  She learned English by reading comic books.  Her first marriage didn’t last.  He was an abusive drunk, and she left him.  Sometime in the mid-fifties she met my dad, and they married.  My dad was a quiet man living with his mom.  My mom had rented an apartment in the building my dad’s mom owned.  Grandma decided it was time for her son to get married, and my mom seemed like a good bride-to-be.

My mom was one difficult person.  She was stubborn, selfish, and strong-willed to the point of being unreasonable.  She was plagued by anxiety and fear.  Yet she could also be loving, generous and wickedly funny.  The same qualities that made her difficult to live with also caused her to bravely serve her country during war and helped her survive a Nazi concentration camp.

Everyone has a story.  My mom told me stories of her childhood, her time at the concentration camp, the early years of her and my dad’s marriage, not everything, certainly, but some.  Someday, I’d like to put together a family tree.  There are so many stories, precious lives, good and bad, life lessons to learn.  Folks are generally a mix of good and bad.  Most of us mean well.  We make wise and unwise decisions, and those decisions take us on life paths that we cannot anticipate – and often would not have chosen.

When my first grandchild was born a few years ago, this verse struck me in a new way:

As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes.  When the wind has passed over it, it is no more, and its place acknowledges it no longer. ~ Psalm 103:15-16

   

We are transient, fleeting, the days of our lives pass quickly.  We are really not ready for how quickly the time goes by.

But the lovingkindness of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children’s children, to those who keep His covenant and remember His precepts to do them. ~ Psalm 103:17-18

It would be nice to be remembered fondly, to have a story that instructs and encourages.  Mercy, the Lord’s mercy lasts forever for His people.  Oh, how we need that mercy!  God knows, for most of us, our stories aren’t necessarily going to get any accolades, fame, or adoration from the masses.  Most likely, one day no one will remember we were here.  No one but God, he knows our story - intimately.

O Lord, You have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar.  You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways.  Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, You know it all.  You have enclosed me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it. ~ Psalm 139:1-6

It is both comforting and disquieting to be known like that.  Nothing is hidden, nothing needs to be explained or excused; there are no alibis or secrets in that kind of knowing.  It’s humbling to be laid bare before an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God.  Such mercy and love is mind-boggling.

Things have happened in my own life that have not been pleasant.  Sometimes because of my own foolishness, other times through no fault of my own.  Nothing compared to my mom’s experience, however.  I can only live my story, not someone else’s.  As Aslan told Shasta in A Horse and His Boy, “I am telling you your story, not hers.  I tell no one any story but his own.”  Someday, all the mysteries, disappointments, and whys will be answered when I have the privilege to hear Jesus tell me my story.

And in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.  How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!  How vast the sum of them!  If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.  When I awake, I am still with You. ~ Psalm 139:16b-18

In this life, it is easy to feel alone and misunderstood.  I am thankful that that is not the reality.  Belonging to the Lord, being loved, being held in His mighty hand – that is the reality for the child of God – the soul that has put his trust in Jesus.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. ~ Psalm 139:23-24

Redeem our stories and make them for Your glory, Lord!  Let that be our prayer.