Do you struggle to sing through your suffering? It’s not always easy. It takes discipline and practice, but you can learn to trust God in your hardships, and, yes, even sing through them!
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada, and my mother used to have this saying…
Lindy Eareckson has been long gone to heaven for decades now, but I can still hear her saying to me with a twinkle in her eye, she’d say, “I’m just sorry that when you get to be my age, I’m not going to be around to say, ‘I told you so.’” But you know what? Now that I have reached the age that she was when she said that, I understand. I get it. And so, to the younger girls I connect with? I say to them, “I’m just sorry that when you get to be my age, I won’t be around to say, ‘I told you so!’” Oh, when I think of all the things my mother passed on to me. My goodness, she was a strong woman: resolved, disciplined, but oh, so compassionate and caring. And I’m glad she passed on at least some of those character qualities to me.
I mean, take that thing about being disciplined. My mother was my first tennis coach, and I remember the first time I slouched onto the clay court, holding my tennis racket, dressed in cut-offs and a crop-top blouse. Lindy told me in no uncertain terms that the next time I arrived on the court I should be dressed in proper tennis garb: white blouse, white tennis skirt, white tennis shoes. Proper court etiquette, she called it, and I thought at the time, “This is really dumb.” But I see now it was just one small way she instilled discipline into my life.
My mother was never afraid of hard work, and it always meant a lot when she’d ask for my help. I would look with envy on her strong, tanned arms, large hands. She put those hands to good work, exercising her gift of hospitality. She’d throw open our home to our community, knowing that many hearts could be softened to the Gospel through her hospitality. And how is it that I know so many hymns? Well, it was my mother. She was always singing, whether doing housework, unloading groceries, driving in the car. She’d be at the kitchen sink and if the sunset was particularly stunning through the window, she’d drop everything and beckon me outside to watch the sun go down. “Beyond the sunset, O glorious morning, when with our Savior, heaven is begun.” Ah, it’s how I came to know so many Lutheran and Methodist hymns. I’d scramble to keep up with all her verses when the family would sing together.
And during my long years of being in the hospital, she never spoke words of defeat or despair. Never. Not once. She always borrowed words of hope from the stanzas of those old hymns. Looking up at her from my hospital bed, I know it was hard for her, seeing me lying there helpless, but Mother grabbed onto courage just like she grabbed the guardrail of my bed. And she held on to the future as though it were a thin string of a kite, always trusting that somehow, someway, God would get our family through. Often, I’d hear her singing, “I do not know why oft around me, my hopes all shattered seem to be; God’s perfect plan I cannot see, but someday I’ll understand.” Wow.
Well, with Mothers’ Day around the corner, it is no wonder I’ve been thinking of her. She invested so much into my life, into my paralyzed life. And maybe it was her no-nonsense way of tackling each hardship that came her way and singing her way through her suffering. Maybe that’s the legacy that she’s left me, and I couldn’t be more grateful. Oh, friend, thank you for bearing with me today with all my mother memories. And oh, hey, see a couple of photos I’ve posted of Lindy Eareckson at Joniradio.org. And have a great Mother’s Day coming up!
© Joni and Friends