An Enduring Faith Begins at Home

This is the first installment of A Legacy of Faith series where we explore five women’s stories from different generations whose lives intertwine to create a legacy of faith.

The Chair

For as long as I can remember, she begins every morning in that chair. I’m sure at some point, the chair wasn’t actually that particular chair —this steel blue one covered with bouquets of leaves and flowers and such. But in my memory, that’s the one, the place where my mom paused and sat to prepare her heart and mind as her day begin. This is the space she holds where we knew, as kids, to leave her be until she was done. Well, most of the time, anyway.

There’s always been a basket nestled near her feet, too. Through the years, the basket took on different shapes and sizes and colors, but its purpose the same — holding a variety of books and studies and journals, ready and waiting for her to reach in and pull out whatever was needed.

To be honest, I’m not sure when this rhythm of my mom’s life began. A cup of tea or coffee in one hand, slippers on her feet, her bathrobe warming her body. Her shower would wait. Her breakfast would wait. Each day began with a feast of what mattered most.

I remember how elegant and beautiful my mom looked as she sat in that chair, even before a shower. Sometimes her legs stretched out with her ankles crossed. Sometimes she curled and tucked her feet underneath her. Either pose always included her Bible in one hand and teacup in the other.

the Bible

I need to ask my mom when she started this practice of beginning her day this way. I know she grew up in the Moravian Church, a church just up the hill from their home, where others modeled faith to her. I need to ask her who taught her the importance of starting her day reading the Bible.

I believe this is where my faith began, long before I could read or even understand this idea of believing in something I couldn’t see. Those days Mom spent reading the Bible pointed me toward realizing I could know something through that book. As the years passed, I learned it wasn’t merely something I could know, but Someone.

During those early years, my mom showed me the Bible could be read at home, that she, a woman, could read it for herself and understand it. And through the studies she did, through the times she read, she not only experienced God’s love and grace for herself, but she also lived so the world would see, as she continues to do today.

But it started there, sitting in that chair.

Talking to God

It was there she not only spent time reading about God, but she talked to Him through prayer. Because not only did my mom teach the value of reading the Bible, she modeled that God was approachable through His Son, Jesus. She talked to Him about anything and anyone.

She does that a lot —talks to God. She prays for her husband and her kids, and now not only her kids’ spouses and grandkids, but a great-grandson as well. And her friends. She jots names in her Bible next to verses she senses the Spirit leading her toward on that particular day for that specific person.

My name is in there a lot.

My mom taught me that reading the Bible matters, and so does prayer. One helps her know the Father; the other molds and shapes her and the hearts of those she loves.

How does she know this? Because she ends each morning journaling, keeping a record of requests and answers and signs of the Spirit’s movement through her life. I don’t know what words or dreams or worries her journals carry, but I know they’ve carried her. 

Hope and healing

Those words carried her through her early years of marriage and several moves. They sustained her through her middle years and parenting woes and held her through her granddaughter’s death and the loss her daughter endured. More recently, they contain her thoughts and feelings about her own mom’s death and the battle against cancer that wars in her body. These journals hold over sixty years of processing and prayers, hopes and sorrows, or joy and wonderings.

Some call it soul care, others discipleship. Tim Keller likens this to putting on your own oxygen mask so you can then help someone else. I think that analogy fits my mom well.

My mom loves her people. If she’s met you, connected with you, she enfolds you right in. That’s just who she is. I believe she can do that because she spends her morning tending to her own heart and soul, readying herself to care for others. 

That’s the curious thing about legacies, I think —you don’t always recognize their unfolding until years slip by. I’m beginning to see that now.

I’m beginning to see the slow tilling that needs to happen over time; that’s what faith requires, so your roots of belief and trust dig deep into rich soil, not only steadying yourself but nourishing your soul as the elements rage or still around you.

Faith requires time and persistence. Faith doesn’t develop in a dash to the finish line but, as Eugene Peterson once said, a long obedience in the same direction.

My mom taught me that.