My mom and I have always been very similar. We look alike, we think alike, we act alike. We are the slightly-less-rational and very passionately emotional ones in the family. Since I can remember, I’ve always been told I look like my mom and remind people of my mom. As I’ve grown up, I’ve seen things for myself that remind me of my mom. Some of these traits are positive, some of them are negative.
As many of you know, I recently discovered something else I have in common with my mom—hip dysplasia. This definitely falls in the “negative” trait category. However, over the last two weeks, I’ve come to value more than ever my relationship with my mother.
For better or for worse, my mother is always there for me. I never realized how selfish I was growing up. How much I just wanted her to help me or to be there for me or to encourage me. Of course, she was happy to do so. But I finally realized how much I value that over these last few weeks.
Over the last two weeks, I’ve gotten to know my mother. I heard her testimony of becoming a believer for the first time. I heard of her experiences with her hip surgeries. All of these things I never even thought to ask her before.
Tonight as she was helping me get ready for bed, as she has every night since my surgery, I asked her if she ever regretted having surgery—if she ever thought she should have just gotten a wheelchair and been done with it. She told me no. She told me she loved to walk, even though it was hard. She told me how after her first surgeries, she had been told she couldn’t play any sports. She played soccer and racquetball anyways. Then my dad came along, and after she had blown out her hips a few times, he was finally able to convince her to stop. To stop playing the sports that she loved. Then, she had my sister Shannon. She had to have her hip replaced again after that. Then she had myself and my brother, and went to nursing school, and worked in a hospital for two years. She had to get her hips replaced again after that. Two years ago, her and I were at the mall and she fell. She was in so much pain, I remember. But she told me tonight that she was partially so upset because she had fallen on her left hip, her hip with the one of a kind prosthetic, and she knew she couldn’t have that one replaced, and that if it was blown, she would lose whatever mobility she had.
When she finished her story, she told me not to worry—that her fate wouldn’t be my fate. But I said in a low voice, I don’t care about myself anymore. Slightly alarmed, she asked me, What do you mean? And I told her, I just asked because I wanted to know about you. I wanted to learn more about your past, not predict my future.
God has used this surgery to remind me what a wonderful woman my mother is. I’ve gone through a fraction—1/13, to be exact—of what she’s gone through. And what she went through, she went through for others. She got new hips so that she could bear children. She got new hips so that she could work as a nurse to help other people, people she didn’t even know. She did it to support her family, send her kids to college, help put food on the table. She is a hero, even though she doesn’t necessarily believe it.
I’ve had a lot of time to think as I’ve been laying here the last two weeks. A lot of time. And one of the things I’ve been thinking about is my future. Like any nearly graduated college student, I’ve been getting the “What are you doing after graudation?” question a lot. As I think about my future, I’ve realized how difficult it will be to leave my family. And I do believe God is calling me, at least for a time, to the mission field. Jesus said, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” I’ve realized these last two weeks that it’s hard for me to trust God with my mother. I care so much about her, and I know her so well. It’s hard for me to trust that anyone else can look after her as I can. But God has been showing me just how much He has been looking after her all along. And He has given me an example of the kind of woman He wants me to be—but I can only be that woman if I trust the LORD in all areas of my life as my mother has trusted Him in all areas of hers. She has selflessly given of herself for years, trusting God to provide for her and her body, her physical strength. And if she can trust God to provide for her, then I can, too. Because the best way to honor my mother’s life is to live mine the way she has lived hers—poured out in love in service for others.
