The Gift of a Mother

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"One Word"

"Made in the Image of God"

"A Godly Legacy"

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Dannah Gresh: Just yesterday, I was having a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day. I knew exactly who I wanted to call. My mom. Through tears, I told her all about it. She advised me. Spoke truth from God’s Word over me. And then she said what she always does, “Let’s pray.” Suddenly, the world felt like a much better place.

We’re celebrating the moms today on Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh, and I’m so glad you’re joining me. 

Now maybe what I just said about my mom brought happy tears to your eyes . . . or maybe they made you sad. Perhaps you used to enjoy conversations like that but now your mother is with the Lord, and you’re missing her so fiercely this weekend.

I’m sorry. I’m praying hope that passes all understanding for your heart.

Of course, you may have grown up without a mom, or with a mom who didn’t act like a mother should. Maybe you have a difficult relationship with your mom. If that’s you, I pray for reconciliation, restoration, and healing. 

Regardless, could you stick around and think about the important roles of moms and spiritual moms with me? I think we have some hope and encouragement for all those hard circumstances. 

I sat down with Robert and Nancy Wolgemuth to reflect on our moms.

First up: Robert, talking about how he wishes Nancy could’ve known his mom.

Robert Wolgemuth: In fact, you know Sweetheart, one of the things that I’ve said so many times to you: “Oh, I wish . . .” And you’ve said, “In heaven we’ll meet . . .” But I so wish you could have met my mother! You and I started dating in 2015. She stepped into heaven in 2010, so you never got a chance to meet her.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And yet, I feel like I’ve come to know something of her heart, just by seeing how it’s reflected in you and your tenderness, your gentle spirit. There are qualities in your life that you attribute to each of your parents, but it seems like that tenderness—that gentleness—really came from your mother’s heart.

Robert: That’s an honor that you would say that.

Dannah: I’m sitting here thinking that, Robert, you make me feel that way. I think you make many people feel that way. When they walk into a room you are attentive, and you make us feel like we’re worth that attention.

I’m saying that because, what our mothers have done is exemplify character qualities of God for us to pass on and exemplify to others.

Robert: That’s right!

Nancy: I’m sure that those mothers—your mother, Dannah; Robert, your mother Grace, my mother, who is also named Nancy—I’m sure when we were all kids . . . I’m one of seven children. Robert you’re one of six. So there was a lot going on in our households. 

I’m sure those moms, when they stopped to ask questions or say, “How was your day?” or to pay attention to us, they weren’t thinking, We’re building greatness here, or We’re planting seeds for eternity. Probably they weren’t thinking those kind of lofty things.

Dannah: They were thinking, I need to do the laundry!

Nancy: “I just need to get through this day!” And yet, now we look back ,we thank God for the details of the ways our moms loved us and cared for us—not perfectly—but the lasting things have been, sometimes, those little things that have made a big difference in our lives.

I say that as a word of encouragement to a mom listening today who is wondering if what you’re doing really matters or if it makes a difference. Scripture talks in Proverbs 31 about the day coming when, “Her children rise up and call her blessed” (v. 28).

Your children may not be doing that when they’re eight or eighteen or even twenty-eight! But as you’re sowing those seeds of love and compassion and tenderness and selflessness, those are things that will reap a harvest and will bear fruit in your children’s lives in time to come.

Dannah: That’s true, Nancy. You used the word “persevering” to describe your mother, to honor her. Tell us a little bit about why that word came to your mind.

Nancy: Well, lots of words came to mind! But I think of my mother as persevering. You know, she was widowed unexpectedly at the age of forty. My dad dropped dead of a heart attack, September 1, 1979. My dad was fifty-three; he was thirteen years older than my mother.

She was widowed with no notice. He was gone just instantly! She had at that time seven children ages eight to twenty-one—so very much still informative life stages, making decisions. This was just no warning. This was a huge blow!

But I’ve watched my mother persevere through that season, now more than forty years as a widow—and now as a grandmother and a great-grandmother. She’s in her eighties now, still alive, still praying for us. Robert and I talk to her every Sunday—and often more frequently than that. But at least we’re her “Sunday caller,” and we pray for her, but she also prays for us. 

I watched her through suffering, through loss. Not many years after my dad’s homegoing in 1979, in 1986 our number six sibling, David, who was a twenty-two year-old college student at the time (my youngest brother), was killed in an automobile wreck. Some people call it an “accident,” but there are no accidents with God. 

But I watched. You know, for a parent to lose a child . . . there’s nothing like that! Here she was as a young-ish widow, losing this very vibrant, loving, compassionate son, David. I watched her persevere through hard times, through hard places.

I watched her embrace the calling of having young children, I watched her sacrifice her career in music . . . though I don’t think she ever would have considered it a sacrifice. It’s a part of my heritage—a mother who loved gospel music, loved to sing, loved to make music to the Lord, and blessed our family with that music. So that was a joy of mine growing up!

Dannah: Beautiful, Nancy. 

My mom just made everything fun, approachable. and. You know what? That ushered me into trusting her when she led me into deeper things, like reading my Bible when I was eight years old or praying. I remember my mom as such a lover of the Word and a prayer warrior.

And, Nancy, here’s the thing: she was the first believer in our family, so she did not have the gift of that legacy of faith being passed to her. In a lot of ways she didn’t know how to be a Christian mom. And yet, she learned how to be that by being in the Word and by asking the Lord every day, “Lord, teach me to be a godly mother!”

Nancy: What a beautiful thing to see, how God used her to start a whole new family line! And now you’re passing that on to your daughters and your granddaughters; little as they are, you have a role in their lives already.

I know that some listening to us, when they think of their mom or their grandmom, they don’t think of a legacy of godliness, of gentleness, of kindness, of goodness. Maybe feel like they are inadequate, don’t have the tools. Maybe even thinking about mothering is painful, because of the legacy they have inherited. 

But what a sweet thing to see how God can rewrite our family line and give us grace and wisdom through His Word, to be transformed by the power of that Word!

Dannah: Yes, I love what Nancy had to say. We have so much to be thankful about when it comes to our moms. But if you’ve ever been disappointed in your mom, well, you’re not alone! Which brings me to a hard question: does the way your mom has treated you impact how you treat her? 

Erin Davis has faced this question as her own mom received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. What do you do when the mom you’ve known your whole life begins acting completely different than who she used to be? I sat down with Erin and our mutual mentor, Tippy Duncan, on The Deep Well podcast. And we processed how we can still honor people, specifically moms, even when it’s hard. 

Dannah: Erin, does your mom know who you are?

Erin Davis: No, she doesn’t. Well, I don’t know. She doesn’t know my name. She hasn’t known my name for a long time. She does on occasion, every once in a while, pop out of wherever she is in her mind, and she’ll look me in the eye and she’ll either say, “I love you,” or “You’re so pretty!” Then she kind of goes back into that state.

That’s been a real source of grief for me as a mother, to think about a day when I wouldn’t know my own children! It’s so heartbreaking! I was so angry at her when she first got sick! I was like, “Get it together, woman!” Because she couldn’t remember anything!

Dannah: Was this before you had a diagnosis?

Erin: It was before we had a diagnosis, but we had a hunch that something was going on. But also, a lot of us responded that way. I think you responded that way with your own mother. 

Tippy Duncan: I did.

Erin: Then you feel guilty! Because it’s like here this person is that’s sick, and I’m angry at them. In the grief and the fear and the anger and the frustration with each other and all of those things, we looked at you and said, “Tell us what to do.” And you gave us some really good advice about how to treat her, do you remember?

Tippy: I told you not to correct her, because that’s hurtful and confusing. She’s just saying what she thinks is true. I told you to dignify her.

Erin: The day we took her to the facility, we were all there, and we were just waiting around. They had done the intake forms. And I said to the nurse, “We’ve never done this before. Tell us how to do it well.”

And she said, “Well, it doesn’t go well when the family didn’t tell the person they were dropping them off, and then they just drop them off and leave!”

And my eyeballs did what your eyeballs just did, “Really? That happens?!”

Tippy: That really happens?!

Erin: She said it happens all the time. That’s a dignity decision. This is where theology—if we want to use that big term—has legs and walks around in your life. I can read in Genesis 1 that God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them. It’s repeated there.

That means that people have dignity because we bear God’s image. And people march for that all the time, specifically when it comes to the unborn . . . and we should! We should never stop marching for that.

But I had to face whether or not I believe that’s true when my mom can’t read her Bible anymore, when she can’t pray anymore, when she can’t talk to me about Jesus anymore, when she can’t do anything for herself anymore. But she has dignity because she’s still as made in the image of God as she ever has been.

Tippy, you’ve helped me live that out, and it’s helped the anger dissipate. It hasn’t helped the grief, because it’s so sad to see someone made in the image of God fail! But you’ve helped me dignify her at every step.

For the person listening, can you speak to that dignity piece when it comes to somebody who can’t take care of themselves anymore. What does dignity look like?

Tippy: It looks like acceptance. This is where they are, and we’re going to love them where they are, and they don’t have to be any different. It's a matter of dealing with your own grief about the sadness of what you’re seeing. And then it’s accepting it.

Erin: There is a cycle of grief with dementia that is very different than other kinds of grief. In my heart, I go to my mom’s funeral every week! 

Tippy: Oh, do you?

Erin: There’s not flowers, it’s not like that. It’s not like I have to feel the grief every time, but that woman’s not my mom! I knew my mom loved me every second of my life! That wasn’t true with my dad. With broken people you have the thought, “Do they really love me?” 

Not my mom. My mom has loved me my whole life and wanted me my whole life, enjoyed me, wanted to be in my presence. And that woman—who is my mom—but that’s not true. She doesn’t know if I’m there or not. She doesn’t miss me if I’m not there. It’s like watching the brightest light extinguish slowly.

We live in this little town, three thousand people. The town is grieving! Everywhere I go, people find me. This just happened to my oldest son yesterday at a track meet. A woman came up to him and she said, “How’s your Gigi?” 

And Eli said, “She just had a seizure.”

And the woman burst into tears and pulled Eli into her arms and said, “She was my kindergarten teacher! I’m a teacher because your Gigi was a teacher!” And that happens to us over and over and over. So people are going to talk about how much they miss her. 

What do you think you’ll feel when she’s in glory?

Tippy: I’ll feel happy for her and sad. Your mom has always been such a happy person; we’ve laughed so much and had so much fun over the years! She’s just joyful! 

Dannah: Your mom was amazing! She did deserve the love and attention they lavished on her. What about the daughter listening to this who has a mom or a dad who doesn’t deserve it? 

Erin: They’re still made in the image of God, and they still are worthy of dignity and respect. An interesting/hard/good part of this journey for me has been watching the other people in my mom’s unit, and the way their families treat them.

I don’t know their stories, but I just know that all of them flourish under attention and being treated with dignity and being loved on. When we got the diagnosis, I was in the office with the neurologist and I said, “Okay, who does well? We know what the title is now. Tell me which patients do really well.” 

And he said, “The patients that have this.” And he was talking about those of us who were also in the room, and our commitment to walk it with her. My mom . . . I’ve told you the best of her, and it’s all true. The disease has brought out some really horrible parts.

My mom has never been violent towards me even a little bit before she got sick. She has been violent towards me during this. I’ve been hit; I’ve been kicked. My mom never called me a name, and since she got sick she’s called me “Stupid!”

It doesn’t matter if you’re forty years old or four years old. If your parent calls you a name, it lands like a nuclear bomb!

Tippy: Yeah, it really does.

Erin: So, I don’t mean she deserves it because she’s been wonderful; I mean, she deserves it because she’s made in the image of God. She has value. But no matter how your parent has treated you, this is a hard truth to live out. They were made in the image of God, and they have value to God. And because they have value to God, they are worthy of us treating them with some level of dignity.

Dannah: Good words from my friend Erin Davis. We can still honor our moms, no matter the status of our relationship with them, all because of Jesus—remembering how God made them and the grace He has given to all of us. 

Even in the hard moments, perhaps especially in the difficult times, it’s helpful to take time to remember the gift your mom has been to you. A while back, some women in the Revive Our Hearts studio audience shared some memories of their moms. As they tell their stories, maybe it will bring to mind some of the ways your mom has blessed your life. Here’s Holly Elliff. 

Holly Elliff: My name is Holly Elliff. As I was thinking last night about Nancy teaching on verse 13 of Proverbs 31, she talked several times about being a woman who worked with her hands. I thought about helping my mother care for her mom who lived with us part of the year. She had muscular dystrophy.

I can remember my mom taking care of her mother, which at the time I thought was just kind of a normal thing to do. It never occurred to me how much of her time that took, how difficult that was, and how many hours she must have spent using her hands not just to care for her children, but also for her mother.

So it was very precious last night as the Lord just flooded my mind with those little, small things. Now with my older children they remember details of some things we did really only once or twice. But they talk about them as if we did them over and over and over.

I just wanted to encourage us today to realize that even those tiny things that seem insignificant are very precious to our kids.

Beverly Lewis: My name is Beverly Lewis. In September I moved to Fayetteville to take care of my elderly parents. What a pleasure and how neat that is. I know exactly what you’re saying, Holly. You don’t realize what parents do until you’re doing it yourself.

A sweet little thing my mama said just last week. She said, “You’re over here taking care of me. I’m the parent; you’re the child. I’m supposed to be taking care of you.” I’m just like, “No mom. This is what I want to do. It’s my turn.”

But she can’t even remember some of the things she used to do. I’m the baby of five. She can’t remember that she cooked. I said, “I baked a casserole, and I’m going to bring it over.” And she said, “What’s a casserole?”

I’m talking about a woman who cooked for not only five children, but spouses. There are 12 grandkids. There are 8 great-grandkids. She did all of that for all those years and doesn’t even remember doing it.

I’m thinking of the nights that she stayed up and the mornings that she got up early. I don’t think I ever saw my mother in pajamas. She was always up and dressed and had breakfast. We did not go to school without oatmeal.

I don’t remember dad being there. He was working two jobs. He was a bread man, so he was gone in the morning by three. I know she got up and cooked breakfast for him.

She used to tell me when I had morning sickness—I had all day sickness, not just morning sickness—she’d say, “I can remember holding a rag over my face so I wouldn’t throw up when I was pregnant, but I’d cook for your daddy anyway.”

I’m thinking, “You talk about sacrifice.” I’m thinking, “Why would you want to cook when you’re about to throw up?” But she would. It didn’t even cross her mind not to is the thing. So I’m very grateful that she did that, and I’m able to take care of her now.

Nancy: That’s great.

Wanda Boss: My name is Wanda Boss. My mother just passed away in January. But this Scripture, the 16th verse of Proverbs 31: “She considers a field and buys it. With her profits she plants a vineyard.”

My father passed away when I was six, and my mother bought a piece of property at a little town near where we lived. She raised a garden. On this piece of property there was an apple tree; there was a grapevine; there was a peach tree, and there were nuts, a pecan tree. She took all of these, and we’d make jelly. We’d make juices. We made all kinds of things.

She raised a garden around our house. It was a very small lot, but she raised a garden. The garden almost took up the whole yard, but she sold it in this café that we had. She bought a café as well. We ran the café. It was in my family; there were eight. I was the youngest girl. I was the seventh girl, and I had a brother that was 13 months older, and my father died.

So she ran this café, and she raised the garden and sold vegetable plate lunches. We always had plenty to eat, and we always had love in the family. We always had more than even our neighbors had. We didn’t realize it at the time; we complained and grumbled, but she did such a wonderful job.

And she did like her mother had done. She pieced quilts and took all the scraps and made some of the most beautiful quilts. We still, every one of us, have probably 15-20 quilts in our closets that my mother made. And the neighbors—all of those have quilts.

She canned for everybody in the family. I mean it’s like everybody’s pantry was full by the end of summer. It was just amazing how her time multiplied. I mean, even when she was in the hospital before she died, she told us, “I can still do more than any of y’all put together.” And that was the truth.

It still just amazes me how she did this. Not only did she do all of this, God was absolutely number one in her life. She was just like the other lady. She got up every morning, but she stayed there throughout the day. She kept her Bible opened wherever she was. When she’d have the time to sit down, she would sit down with her Bible.

It was years later when I really recognized how important this was. I still have that picture of my mother sitting reading her Bible. A lot of times she would sit behind the counter in the café, and there would be three other ladies that would come up. These ladies, two of them, did not go to church at that time.

But she would sit there and talk to them. Those ladies have all been very involved in church lately in their later years. But she would sit there and talk with them throughout the day when she was not busy in the café.

The heritage that I have and the legacy that my mother left is just beyond my comprehension. If I could just do a small part of what my mother did would be my dream right now.

Dannah: What a legacy. We’ve been hearing stories from a few women about their moms and how special they were. How has your mom been a gift to you? If she’s still living, how can you let her know that today? 

I’m sure looking forward to celebrating my mom. And oh, one of my life’s great joys is watching two of my girls be celebrated for being great moms. Why just a few weeks ago I was driving my four-year-old twin grandbabies, Addie and Zoe, to see my daughter Autumn and her two-year-old Stella. Addie piped up, “Autumn is a very good mommy!” And so she is! Today, I will remind her again. You should do the same for the moms in your life because, you know, we all have horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad days, and our moms are often the ones who get us through. Let’s take time to say thanks this weekend.

Maybe you can even find a special way to serve your mom today and this weekend.

We’re talking a lot about serving on Revive Our Hearts this month. Our mission is to serve women around the world, and the only way we can do that is with the help of friends like you. 

May is our fiscal year-end, and we’re asking the Lord to provide $838,000. When you partner with this ministry, we get the joy of serving together by calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. Would you like to make a gift to help us reach our year-end goal by May 31? 

With your donation of any amount, we’d like to say "thanks" by sending you a copy of Living Out the One Anothers of Scripture: A 30-Day Devotional. It’s a great resource to help you put on God’s love and show it toward others. Just go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend to give, and click on today’s episode. You can request your devotional there. 

I hope you’ll join me next week as we hear stories from women who were incredibly broken but who found freedom in Christ. I hope you’ll be back for that. 

Thanks for listening, and I hope you have a happy Mother’s Day. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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