I've decided to publish this online for a couple reasons. One, to honor my mom, and two, to show how important a job parents have in raising their children to follow God. Set the example for them to see.
Mom, I can’t believe you’re gone. It happened so fast, and came much too soon. I expected to have you in my life for another 20 years, and so did my dad. Your absence from the world is a tremendous hole in my heart. I’m devastated and broken.
My amazing mom was a beautiful, elegant, and modest woman that lived Matthew 5:16: She let her bright light shine before others, so they’d see her good works and glorify our Father in heaven. She was truly a light unto the world and gave the glory to God in all things. She had a heart for children, and gave so much for her students and all the kids at the orphanage. She lived James 1:27, and cared for the fatherless as she and my dad led the ministry to the orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico for about 25 years. As one of her friends said, she was the Mother Teresa of Orange County. Another friend said she was, “a beautiful woman of God who mirrored the hands and voice of Jesus so naturally.” In all her ways she acknowledged God.
If you knew my mom, you are blessed. But you already know that.
The Holy Spirit was active in my mom like I’ve never seen before. Some of the most challenging commands from God were accepted wholeheartedly by her as she worshipped God with her every action: “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.” In all things she sought to do as God would have her do. It was no longer she that lived, but Christ that lived in her.
A. W. Tozer said, “To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love.” My mom knew God long before I knew her, and she relentlessly and passionately pursued Him until her passing. She had an incredibly vast and impressive intellectual knowledge of God--almost everything she read (and she read constantly)--was either the Bible or about the Bible. But her heart-knowledge of God, her spiritual relationship with God, was far beyond what I have the capacity to describe, and she always hungered for more.
In the hospital, our friend Dr. Jim Keany asked my mom how she felt. She replied, “Well, I guess I’m excited...to meet Jesus. On the other hand I want to live to see my grandkids.”
Just a couple days before she passed, when she barely had the strength to talk, I told her that I wanted her to know that I remembered everything she had taught me about being compassionate and loving towards others. I added that I wanted to be like her. I was a little startled by her immediate, firm, and loving rebuke. She said, “No, be like Jesus.”
During my mom’s final days in the hospital and at home, her thoughts were only concerning other people, and her prayers were that God’s will would be done. She wanted to make sure her husband, my dad, was cared for, and she was at peace knowing her prayers had been answered about me finding a Godly wife. She had probably prayed for that since the day I was born.
I love you Mom. I miss you. See you soon.
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