The vast majority of this blog has been dedicated to remembering those who have died and to wrestling with the unknowable reasons behind suffering. Nearly every post, I write about the amazing impact that my dad had on my life; however, I would be hard pressed to remember a time I told him that while he was living.
Isn’t that the irony of death? We all want to know that we matter - that we are loved and seen and have made an impact – but no one thinks to tell us till we are 6 feet under.
Then of course, they gather in hoards.
Heck, I saw people at my dad’s funeral that hadn’t talked to him since high school. He made ripples in the world that were so much broader than he ever believed. And frankly, I wonder how much richer his life would have felt if he had been told a little more often about the impact he was making on individuals. I wonder how much richer all of our lives would be if we took the time to tell others what they meant to us while they were still here, while there was still time.
With that in mind, I want to veer off the well-traveled, R&R road of grief today.
I want to talk about the living.
More specifically, I want to talk about the person who taught me what it looks like to live.
You called it reader – I want to talk about my mom (heyo mother’s day!)
Let me set the scene:
I am in middle school, the early teenage years when every girl goes through a near constant state of PMS and angst. Decked out in an oversized red hoody, flare jeans and with a lip-smackers chapstick and Walkman CD player bulging in my pocket, I got into the car for day-trip to Split Rock Lighthouse with the fam. If you haven’t had the pleasure of going to Split Rock during the summer season – let me tell you – it’s unique. You see, similar to Old Fort Williams in Canada, they do period reenactments from the 1800s. Oh yeah. My mom LOVES that stuff.
While on the drive, undoubtly spurred on by my sassy tween attitude, I complained that my mom was eccentric for making us go to a lighthouse and talk with actors pretending to churn butter. Of course she vehemently denied this accusation and told me it wasn’t eccentric, it was educational.
Not ten minutes later, in the course of conversation mom says, “I’ve always wanted to be a Christmas elf”.
Don’t ask me why it came up, or why she aspires to be such an odd mythical being (I would certainly choose a wood elf over a Christmas elf – hello, Legolas), but it did and she did. In that moment, she was branded with a giant “E” for eccentric, all defenses destroyed by a single comment.
Ever since that sunny car ride in the early 2000s, mom has tried to prove to me that if she is eccentric, so am I; like mother like daughter.
For years afterward, I vehemently denied any association with the “E word”. But at nearly every turn, I find that I make my own Christmas elf admissions – my secret love for Korean Dramas, extreme Star Wars fandom, annual attendance to Renaissance Festivals, dream of owning a cape - the list goes on.
At this point, I can practically feel my mom fist pumping at my admission of eccentricity because it’s true, I am.
But don’t you think all the best people are?
When I said that my mom taught me how to live, I meant she taught me how to live full.
She laughs so loud and hard that I can track her down from several blocks away. She delights in good theater performances, and art and indulgent chocolate cake. She can imagine whole worlds and make my niece and nephew feel like they have entered them with her. She cries over the hurting heart of a friend. She hops up and down like a little kid when she hears good news. She reads books out loud and does a different voice for every character. She was a clown in the pediatric ward of a hospital. She inspires people with her worship leading. She watches Dick Van Dyke reruns almost every night. She prays like God is tangibly across the table from her. She is so incredibly, undeniably WISE, like no one else I know.
My mom lives full out. Even in loss, especially in loss, she lives. She chooses every day to be authentic; to cry when she is lonely, to laugh when she tastes moments of joy again, to rest in the arms of Jesus when she can’t sleep, to wrestle with God over the loss and hurt, to come back to the cross over and over and over again.
The dictionary has two primary definitions for eccentric:
“A person that is unconventional and slightly strange”
“not placed centrally, not centered on the same point as another”
My mom is eccentric.
She is unconventional in the very best of ways. She is strange in a way that makes you want to be strange too – that makes you want to forget what everybody else thinks and just go love others and enjoy your life.
She is not centered on the same point as others. She doesn’t form her life around what the world cares about or values, rather she has made God her axis. Everything she does, it is focused on Him.
I used to fight the idea that I was eccentric like my mom. But now I crave being compared to her. I even kind of get the Christmas elf wish – after all, their job is to bring the gifts of Christmas to the people of the world and isn’t that really the gospel?
So here is what I propose: that all the best people have an “E” branded on them: eccentric, evangelistic and hey, maybe even elf.
Thank you mom - for showing me how to use my imagination, for teaching me to pray, for mentoring me in grace, for geeking out with me over Disney, for singing opera in the kitchen, for crying with me when it felt like there was nothing but hurt, and for showing me what it is to be a woman after God’s own heart - a woman who is authentic, eccentric. I love you fiercely and I am so incredibly proud to be your daughter and friend.
“She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. She speaks with wisdom and faithful instruction is on her tongue. ”