The month of April is special to me. It is the month one of my dear cousins was born. It is the month that my dad’s life began. It is also the month that my sweet mama went to be with Jesus.
I can’t help but to spend time reflecting on my mama’s life each year on April 3rd. It has been eleven years now that I have lived without her. If someone would have asked me then, I would have said I wouldn’t be able to live without her. And some days, I didn’t know if I could. Some days, it felt I was as close to the edge of caving in and giving up and missing her more than felt possible than I could bear.
But here I sit, eleven years later in a village in Romania on the porch of a home with no electricity, listening to the birds and the roosters and the gusts of wind and watching the tractors drive by and the people tending their cows and the sun is hitting that tree perfectly and its warmth hits my face. And I’m alive.
And I can look back upon her life, what little it seems I really knew of it, and I can give thanks. I give thanks that she lived her life with Christ as center and that each person she spoke to got a taste of Jesus. I give thanks that she was MY mama and that I got to learn from her and be loved by her. And I give thanks that she showed me an example of who I can be, and now I want my life to reflect her heart and bring honor to her life, and her impact shall live on as long as I am here to talk about it.
Some days, I wish she were here still. And if she were, I know she would be my best friend, even still. But then I think-I’m across the world and the closest I could get to her would be a Skype call across dodgy internet connections. Now though, now I have her with me wherever I go. Now she can walk with me and see memories that I may have forgotten to tell her about. But now she sees all my days and she sees all my memories and she walks nearer than most days I may even realize. She’s as close as she’s ever been.
