Mother’s Day at a Distance

By |Published On: May 10, 2020|Categories: Inspiration, Joni's Posts|

“Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”

1 Corinthians 13:12

This languishing season of COVID-19 has provided all of us time to sort through old photo albums, and while doing so, I came across one bittersweet photo. It was a 2000 snapshot of me and my mother in our winter sweaters, sitting on the boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland.

I stared at the photo for a long time, recalling the strangeness of that difficult season. In some ways, this time of forced separation due to COVID-19 is not unlike that time. Back then, try as I may, I could not bridge the distance between my aging mother and me. Even when we embraced, it felt as though there were a mile between us.

For the back story, in 1998, after my mother fell and broke her shoulder, she declined quickly. A series of resulting strokes took away her cheer and optimism, and my happy, upbeat mother fell into serious mental confusion. She would sit belligerently on the couch, telling me that no, I was not her daughter. “You’re not the real Joni,” she would say, “you are only in it for the money and the fame.”

Her words crushed me more than I can express. “Mother, please, it’s me, Joni. I’m not ‘in anything for money,'” I would softly say to her. But her hollow, dark eyes only scowled back at me. Convinced I could bring her up out of her mental funk, I tried singing one of the songs she’d croon to her own mother, my Grandma Landwehr: “M is for the many things she gave me, O is for that she’s only growing old…” When I dramatically finished the song with, “Mother, a word that means the world to me,” I looked over, hoping to see some change. But there was none.

The week I spent with Mom in her Ocean City condo was so disorienting. I was with her, as much as I was able to be, and yet Mom’s mind was so far removed, so distant. Much of the week was like that, but toward the end of my visit, God gave us both a moment that I treasure to this day. I was working on my book The God I Love, and suddenly, I had the idea to read the first few pages aloud to Mom – it included heartwarming stories about our family going beach camping, when my sisters and I were little.

As I read about the big army tent in which we all slept, the Coleman stove on which she’d fry softshell crabs, and the nights singing hymns around the campfire, I kept looking over at Mom sitting slumped on the couch. Could she recall any of this?

At last, I asked her, “Is this the way it was? Have I got it right? You and Daddy and us kids?”

It was then the universe shifted. Mom turned, as if recognizing me for the first time and said to me, smiling in wide-eyed wonder, “You are the real Joni!”

The strained distance I had been feeling from my mother all week was lifted like a veil, and we were, for a brief few moments, happy and delighting in one another. After a short while, she sank back into mental confusion. Less than a year later, she went home to Glory where she could see everything with perfect clarity. Still, I will always treasure those few precious moments that day when Jesus opened her eyes to truth and reality.

I’m thinking of that strangely delightful incident today, on Mother’s Day. Lindy Landwehr Eareckson has been gone nearly 19 years, and I am glad that there is no fog of confusion still clouding her mind. In fact, her experience now is far clearer and far more complete than anything she experienced even in her best days of youthful energy.

Today because of COVID-19, you are no doubt feeling the distance that separates you from loved ones, whether that be physical or emotional.

Encourage your heart with this same Scripture that encouraged me after that time with my mother.

For 1 Corinthians 13:12 says, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”

One soon and coming day, there will be no more strange social-distancing. And the difference between the confusion and clarity my mother experienced is just a small window into the difference we will experience when we see Jesus face to face. We will know truth and reality, and we will see things clearly. And even better, there will be no distance between us and our wonderful Lord who created us.

So dear friend, if this Mother’s Day seems a little more bitter than sweet to you, think on the sweetness of Christ. One day we will see everything – including each other – with the perfect clarity of wide-eyed wonder at the Savior’s love. And that’s the truth.

–Joni Eareckson Tada

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