What My Mother's Life Taught Me

Be still, my soul: when dearest friends depart,

And all is darkened in the vale of tears,

Then shalt thou better know His love, His heart,

Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears.

Be still, my soul: thy Jesus can repay

From His own fullness all He takes away.

(Be Still My Soul verse 3 by Kathrina von Schlegel)

I am a very blessed woman to have been born to Arlena Mahaffy, my dear Mother who went Home to her Savior on April 30, 2015 after ninety-seven years on this earth.  When she departed I lost, not only my Mother, but a woman who had become one of my best friends.  The last few weeks as I have contemplated how much she has meant to me, I realized that the best way for me to honor her is to learn from her and follow as I can in her footsteps, as her footsteps definitely followed the Lord's.  Like no one else I have known on this earth, her life was about serving her Lord.

Chiefly she served Him by being selfless; giving of herself for others.  As a new wife many years ago, she gave up the life she had known, her family and friends to go with her husband to the depths of Africa where she served the people she came to love.  What was needed she cheerfully gave:  phonics charts for her husband to use as he put a language into writing, medical care which she learned as natives showed up with a variety of serious ailments, meals to any who dropped by and in endless other ways.  She gave up much to teach her seven children and several others.   When needed, she set up teaching curriculum for other missionaries.  Back in the states, she taught school to subsidize her husband's income never stopping fulfilling the responsibilities of a pastor's wife and a mother at the same time.  When a neighbor needed food, she was the one to bring a meal.  When visitors came to church they were always invited home for dinner.

She also served Him by keeping busy.  Mother believed with all her heart that for six days she was to work and then rest the seventh.  In all of my life I can never remember a time when she didn't fill her days with activities directed towards what she thought the Lord wanted her to do. Sometimes that meant spending extra time at school providing materials for a parent.   In her later years, despite often being very tired, it often meant  getting material together so that she could give her best when tutoring.  Sometimes that meant calling (or in her eighties and nineties e-mailing) lonely friends, friends she had been praying for or friends she had promised advice to.  It often meant staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning to complete the day's activities that she felt she needed to get done.  What she did, she believed in doing well.

Mother was uncomplaining despite often having what most of us would consider ample reason to complain.  On the mission field she did not complain about her encounters with deadly snakes and scorpions, bandits shooting over the house, backwards conditions for delivering her babies or having more on her plate than she could do.   As she aged her vision deteriorated along with her heart and her mobility.  Though legally blind late in her life I never once heard her complain about that or her other health ailments.  

She was quite the prayer warrior.  There was no need for Mother to keep a list of those she had promised to pray for.  She had the list in her head and in her heart and would not go to bed before she had completed praying for those in need every day.  Frequently when I happened to get up at 1 or 2 in the morning I would see her light on and find her still in her chair praying for those whom she had promised to pray before allowing herself to sleep. 

Those are just a few of the godly characteristics I saw in Mother.  She was a loving, gracious, merciful and determined woman who delighted to do for others as she did for the Lord.  Many have risen up and called her blessed.  Many are the lives she has touched around the world and is still touching.   As I ponder how to be more like her I have asked myself how she became who she was and I think it is primarily because she saturated herself in the Word.  Even when her eyesight was failing her she painstakingly read the Bible with her magnifiers.  She had rare time for TV or radio, but she always had time to listen to her Talking Bible.  Most nights she went to bed with it being read to her.  During the day as she worked she often had a sermon being played explaining parts of the Bible.  When she woke up in the night she would make herself work on Bible memory bemoaning the fact that in her nineties she couldn't retain as much as she did in her younger years.

I miss my dear Mother and have determined to work harder in my life to emulate some of her wonderful godly qualities.  Oh, that God would use me as He used her on this earth!  What a wonderful thing that would be!

How To Prepare For Death

One of the dearest ladies I know, my precious Mother, at 97 years young became suddenly ill a few weeks ago and was told that medically there was nothing more that could be done for her.  This is a vital lady who was tutoring the week before.  My Mother's life has been an example to me of what a woman of God should be like:  she is gracious, loving, industrious and so many more things.  She lives today, but does not know what tomorrow will bring.  She would love to continue longer on this earth doing the things she enjoys, but is accepting of whatever God chooses for her. 

             

      With my Mother's poor prognosis and my living with cancer we have had many good conversations in the past few weeks, as well as done a great deal of reading on the subject of dying and death.  I asked Mother to tell me what she would say about how to prepare for death and this wise woman shared her thoughts with me.  She asked me to share with her friends and mine what we discussed.   

      She makes a point first of saying that dying is not like birth, a one-time event, but requires life-long preparation.  A Christian's life should be spent living as though they could be called to die at any time.  Well before a person dies they need to ask, "Am I prepared to die?"  You need to think on the mistakes made through life, she says, the sins committed against God and the life not lived for Him and you need to repent.  Constantly evaluate your life in view of Scripture and ask if you are living Christ-like or living for yourself.  Then you need to repent to God Almighty and take great hope in the fact that it is not your faith, your life, your determination that will attain Heaven for you, but it is only the blood of Jesus Christ shed for the sins of His people.  Several friends have told Mother recently that they didn't doubt she was headed to Heaven because she was such a saint.  She is quick to respond that when one is dead in sins, one can't be saintly enough to be alive in Christ!  You can rest in that great hope only if you are His child, knowing that God loves to save His people and then nothing can shake you out of the palm of His hand. 

  

            You must be willing, she says, to accept death because God calls us to die as much as He calls us to live.  Even in dying we do it for Him.  Remember that though the process of death may be difficult the end result is an eternity singing God's praises in a place where there are no more tears, no more sorrow and no more pain (Revelation 21: 4).  She says that she knows Christ will escort her soul to be with Him when He is ready and that she has nothing to fear.

              When death comes close, don't be frightened she says.  Remember the Shepherd who walks through the "valley of the shadow of death" with His people (Psalm 23) but she is quick to point out that you must not forget that this assurance only applies if He is your shepherd.  Take great comfort that He will not take you one moment before your work for Him on earth is done.  Pray.  Take your fears, your pain, your weakness and your sins to the One who loves you with a love that "neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from."  (Romans 8: 38)  Read His word and find comfort.  Read what those who have gone on before have had to say (she highly recommends a book we have been reading, O Love That Will Not Let me Go;  Facing Death with Courageous Confidence in God edited by Nancy Guthrie).  Call on brothers and sisters in Christ to walk the path with you and to fervently pray for you. 

            A friend of my Mother's, a 102 year old pastor, sent her an e-mail the other day that I hope he doesn't mind my sharing.  The subject line was "God speaking," and the body of the e-mail said, "'I will never leave you, nor forsake you' Hebrews 13:5"  What an apt message when a Christian faces death.  It can be said no better! Thank you for your gracious, loving prayers for Mother and Myself! They are, as Andrew Murray says, the empty hands of faith which reach up to our loving heavenly Father to receive His blessings to bring down to earth--your prayers have obtained many, many blessings for us! May God richly bless you all!

     Below is a quote by Richard Baxter from Directions for a Peaceful Death.  Mother was enriched by his message and encourages you to read more of it in the book noted above or on-line at http://www.puritansermons.com/baxter/baxter17.htm.

 Remember whose messenger sickness is, and who it is that calls you to die. It is he, that is the Lord of all the world, and gave us the lives which he takes from us; and it is he, that must dispose of angels and men, of princes and kingdoms, of heaven and earth; and therefore there is no reason that such worms as we should desire to be excepted. You cannot deny him to be the disposer of all things, without denying him to be God: it is he that loves us, and never meant us any harm in any thing that he has done to us; that gave the life of his Son to redeem us; and therefore thinks not life too good for us. Our sickness and death are sent by the same love that sent us a Saviour, and sent us the powerful preachers of his word, and sent us his Spirit, and secretly and sweetly changed our hearts, and knit them to himself in love; which gave us a life of precious mercies for our souls and bodies, and has promised to give us life eternal; and shall we think, that he now intends us any harm? Cannot he turn this also to our good, as he has done many an affliction which we have complained about?

Look by faith to your dying, buried, risen, ascended, glorified Lord. Nothing will more powerfully overcome both the poison and the fears of death, than the believing thoughts of him that has triumphed over it. Is it terrible as it separates the soul from the body? So it did by our Lord, who yet overcame it. Is it terrible as it lays the body in the grave? So it did by our Saviour; though he saw not corruption, but quickly rose by the power of his Godhead. He died to teach us believingly and boldly to submit to death. He was buried, to teach us not overmuch to fear a grave. He rose a again to conquer death for us, and to assure those who rise to newness of life, that they shall be raised at last by his power unto glory; and being made partakers of the first resurrection, the second death shall have no power over them. He lives as our head, that we might live by him; and that he might assure all those that are here risen with him, and seek first the things that are above, that though in themselves they are dead, "yet their life is hid with Christ in God; and when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory," Col. 3:1,2,4,5. What a comfortable word is that, John 14:19, "Because I live, you shall live also." Death could not hold the Lord of life; nor can it hold us against his will, who has the "keys of death and hell," Rev. 1:18. He loves every one of his sanctified ones much better than you love an eye, or a hand, or any other member of your body, which you are not willing to lose if you are able to save it. When he ascended, he left us that message full of comfort for his followers, John 20:17, "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; to my God, and your God." Which, with these two following, I would have written before me on my sick bed. "If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there also shall my servant be," John 12:26. And, "Verily, I say unto you, to-day shall you be with me in paradise," Luke 23:43. Oh what a joyful thought should it be to a believer, to think when he is dying, that he is going to his Saviour, and that our Lord is risen and gone before us, to prepare a place for us, and take us in season to himself, John 14:2-4. "As you believe in God, believe thus in Christ; and then your hearts will be less troubled," ver. 1. It is not a stranger that we talk of to you; but your Head and Saviour, that loves you better than you love yourselves, whose office it is there to appear continually for you before God, and at last to receive your departing souls; and into his hand it is, that you must then commend them, as Stephen did, Acts 7:59.

Christmas and New Year Blessings

I have so much to be grateful for this past year.  God has graciously allowed me to recover from my major surgery a year ago and to hold the cancer back this year.  He has blessed me with a new grand-daughter and brought her through surgery to repair the hole in her heart.  He has given my 97 year old Mother health to bless us with her company another year.  I have been surrounded by my family and we have had precious times together.  Even more than that He has given me peace and joy in Him.  As I left the Christmas Eve church service last night I was thinking of how much God has blessed me.

I love going to church and feel I am quite selfish about it as I get far more out of it then I give back to God.  Since I was diagnosed with cancer and started doing some more in-depth examination of my soul  I find the high point of the church service for me is the benediction.  I'm not sure there is any better definition of a benediction than the "pronouncement of God's blessing at the end of a service."  To me it is extremely encouraging, but also challenging.  When I get ready to leave the service and hear the words from Hebrews 13:20-21, Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord, equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen I am reminded of how great God is, how much He loves me, that my task on earth is to do His will and that He gives me everything that I need to do it.

When I am discouraged on a Lord's Day and hear the blessing taken from Numbers 6:24-26, The Lord bless you and keep you: the Lord make His face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you: the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen I leave feeling overwhelmed that God blesses me and gives me peace.  When things seem hopeless I am reminded of where true hope comes from by the benediction from Romans 15:13, May the God of hope Fill you with all joy and peace in believing, So that you may abound in hope By the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Despite constant failures, I am especially challenged to leave church and spend the week living with the knowledge that I have been given so much by God in the way of His blessing and to live all week as a reflection of Him.  The benediction from Colossians 3:15-17 reminds me of that.  Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.  The benediction that comes from Ephesians 3:16-21 reminds me of what an awesome God I serve.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.

Christmas is upon us, the old year is almost gone and a new year about to begin.  I wish for all my dear friends that you might remember with me the birth of Jesus Christ who came in the flesh to save His people from their sins and give them new life.  I wish for you that the sins and neglect of this past year may be wiped out of your sight as well as God's as far as the east is from the west and that you might be renewed in your spirit to live every moment of your life this coming year as one transformed by Christ's work.  May you be blessed and challenged by the benedictions as you leave God's house each Sunday this year!

A Tribute to Two Dear Ladies

At the end of October, I lost my Mother-in-Law after nine months of fighting health issues stemming from a stroke.  One week later the mother of my sister-in-law also passed away.   Sadly this meant some of the family lost two grandmothers and great grandmothers in one week.  Both women had a great love for the Lord and I have no doubt that they are restored whole in Heaven today singing God's praises.

My Mother-in-Law, Joan, was a very sweet, gentle and loving woman.  Her love for the Lord was best seen in her actions. She loved to do for others  and I can't recall her not having a smile on her face.  She seemed to always be "doing" whether it was cleaning, crafting or baking (which she excelled at).   When coming to Texas to visit, she always took it upon herself to do a super cleaning of sinks and the stove.  I think if I had let her she would have taken on the whole house.  Mom B was a far better woman than myself when it came to a non-complaining spirit and no job was above her.  Her family does indeed rise up and call her blessed.

I didn't know Mattie quite as well, but knew her enough to know that she also loved the Lord.  Every time I saw her she was smiling.  She loved to interact with people and kept herself busy doing that.  She struck me as a joyful woman every time I was with her.  Mattie was described at her funeral as an encourager, faithful, content and rich in the things that matter.  I may not get the quote exactly, but her daughter said she would frequently say, "You must give people roses while they are still alive."

It is hard to understand why God chose now to take these two dear women Home, but I know from His Word that the timing was perfect.  I will miss both of them as will the other family members who have been left behind.  On the way home from the funeral last week I was contemplating how ironic it is that I have outlived the human expectation of survival from my cancer, and these two dear ladies were called Home.  I was thinking how my dear mother-in-law loved to make porcelain dolls.  All the granddaughters as well as many other little girls were the recipients of her hard work.  She painstakingly made these dolls.  Though I was never privileged to watch her make them, I know they took a long time and involved many steps including putting all the pieces together, painting and baking.  Often she also made clothes for them.   When something wasn't perfect, she didn't settle for less, but fixed it.  I think she would have liked those dolls to be an illustration of her life.  God did not take her Home until she was finished with what He had planned for her and it was perfect.  For all those years he was busy painting and putting together her life.  When her day came to go to Glory, He was finished working on her and declared her ready.  His work on her and Mattie while on this earth was done as was their work for Him.

Obviously He is not done working on those of us left behind.  These two deaths make me contemplate once again what I am supposed to be doing to grow into a beautiful part of the Bride of Christ and what I am supposed to be completing on this earth.  Joan and Mattie gave in simple ways on this earth, but in ways that reflected their Savior.  Sometimes I am so busy looking for the complex things to do that I miss the simple.  My daily prayer is that I would see and act on the needs around me, speak always with grace and live a self-sacrificing life.  Oh, that God would say "well done" when He has completed His work on me and calls me Home.

"For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain."  Philippians 1:21