An Accidental Leader

My mother, a natural leader, attended Girl’s State, held the position of Secretary of her high school, marched with the band as lead majorette, and served as Treasurer of the National Honor Society. Even though her family stretched to make ends meet, her parents provided her one year of business classes at an all-girl college. Good with numbers and ready with a smile, she would have been an asset to any business, but my mother chose to be a mother. This wasn’t a sacrifice for her; it was her dream to be a mother.
At the too-young age of 36, my mother developed rheumatoid arthritis. Doctors as far away as Atlanta and at prestigious hospitals like Duke Medical Center told her she had the worst case they had ever seen, and that she would be in a wheel chair in just a few years. It is a testament to my mother’s courage and strong will that she still walked at her death at 75.
Rheumatoid arthritis robbed my mother of her health but also her confidence. She still worked tirelessly as a mother and wife, our house was spotless and she always had hot meals on the table, and she also continued to do her church and civic activities. But her personality changed and her belief in herself diminished with each year she lived with this debilitating disease.
During the passing years, my father was asked to do more for my mother, helping her dress, getting out of the bathtub, and lifting the frying pan, as well as fashioning some ingenious gadgets to help her continue to live as independently as possible. On the 95th birth day of my mother’s father, in 1998, my father literally dropped dead from a heart attack. The question in everyone’s mind was how my mother would ever live without him, not only because of her grief and future loneliness, but of course for his assistance in the home. My sister and I both lived hours away with our own work and families.
Just as my mother fought to live with her affliction, she also fought to live in her home. Little by little she discovered ways to take care of herself as one by one other parts of her body fell victim to arthritis. Grief, however, made the arthritis worse, and I am certain that my mother cried herself to sleep many, many nights after my father died.
My mother did not give up on going to church on Sunday. Buttoning her blouse and putting on shoes, not to mention trying to comb her hair when she couldn’t raise her hands over her shoulders, proved a test every Sunday morning. Often times, she went without a zipper totally pulled up or with a hair pick in her hand and would get her sister to help finish her grooming right before church began.
The assistant pastor of the church met Mama at the door one Sunday and asked her if she would join a Grief Share group. I am not certain what my mother thought about this. I never knew her to join support groups, having had a bad experience with a group for arthritis sufferers, but I also knew that she trusted this man, this pastor, and she probably also knew she needed some help. The loneliness and sorrow was affecting her pain level. And hadn’t she prayed for God to help her? Maybe this was His answer.
Totally on faith, slightly unsure and not absolutely willing, my mother showed up at the first meeting. Afterwards, when we talked on the phone, she shared that many in the group were certainly suffering even more than she as some had attempted suicide or had to be on daily medication. She also shared that she really didn’t think she needed to be in this group and wasn’t sure if it would help her or not.
But God had other plans. By the second meeting, my mother had become the accidental leader of the group. With her special gift of encouragement and her willingness to listen, many in the group had naturally turned to her for strength and guidance. Many looked at my mother’s life, a life of severe and constant pain and potential lack of mobility and possible dependency, as a model; they saw that if she could make it, so could they. For the next year, my mother quite reluctantly but quite effectively led this group.
At my mother’s funeral, one of these Grief Share members tearfully told me about what my mother had meant to her during a time when she couldn’t see a way to live even another day. Now a beautiful, smiling young woman in a healthy marriage, she said that she knew that my mother’s gift of the spirit was her way of encouraging others even in the midst of her own grief and pain.
God calls us to assume leadership roles when we least expect it or feel ready. In the change and uncertainty of my mother’s life without my father, she was the person God chose to lead others living in grief and despair to hope and a better life.
I thank God that He gave my mother this opportunity. In caring for others, she re-discovered her own gift of leadership and regained the confidence to live alone and independently for eight years after my father’s death, still walking physically and spiritually with God, the Father. She put her trust in Him and was obedient to His call, and He, in turn, gave her what she needed, a purpose and a place of service to Him and others.