LWQ Spring 2014

Spring 2014 Finally!

From the Editor ...

How can such an intelligent girl like you believe in those myths?” my mother scoffed. Although she had been baptized and confirmed a Lutheran, when I was about eight years old, my mother stopped attending church.

On Sundays, she’d cajole me, “It’s too cold/hot; it’s snowing; it’s raining. Don’t go to church.” I went anyway.

Although I sat alone in church each week, my Sunday School teachers, youth leaders, and congregation members (including the LWML women) encouraged me.

I understood why my mother didn’t want me to walk the half-mile home from church alone in the dark, but that meant I missed the first year of confirmation instruction because of the time the class was scheduled. During the following year, my gracious pastor held special weekly, three-hour, Saturday morning classes for me, allowing me to catch up and still be confirmed on time.

Not only did she declare herself a nonbeliever, my mother was openly hostile to Christianity. I had to explain to our perplexed young daughter why her Nana deliberately clinked the knife and fork together continuously while we prayed the table grace: “It’s her way of saying, ‘I refuse to participate in this.’”

I prayed unceasingly that the Holy Spirit would lead my mother back to faith one day.

When I became an LWML district president, I looked for opportunities to include her. She loved multicultural events, so I knew she would be eager to attend a district-wide musical celebration of our Atlantic District missions, held in New York City. At a dinner following that festival, the national LWML President, one of the event’s guest speakers, kindly asked my mother which church she attended. She blurted out: “Christianity is ______ (a word for garbage).” Yikes, Mom!

Over time, I began to witness small breakthroughs: she loved the Alma Kern books personally inscribed for her; she began reading the Quarterly when I became the editor; and she started bowing her head — and remaining silent — during grace.

Fast forward: My mother needed to go into a nursing home after hospitalization. On her first Sunday at the Lutheran Care Center, where I also happen to serve on its board, a volunteer — perhaps thinking that my mother, too, would be a Lutheran — came into her room and “scooped me up and just took me and wheeled me into the chapel!” reported my mother, with astonishment.

Expecting a confrontation, I held my breath. But my mother added softly, “I liked it, and I think I’ll go back.”

And she did.

In the weeks that followed, she told me that she confessed Jesus Christ as her Savior. The Holy Spirit had overcome her unbelief through the hearing of God’s Word. We talked about the promises of God, and I prayed with her. My husband and I started to attend the Sunday chapel services beside her. I was blessed with the indescribable joy of hearing my mother’s voice sing old-time hymns and speak the words of the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer … for three precious weeks before she left this earthly life to rest in the arms of her Savior.

The best “finally” of all.

Nancy Graf Peters
Editor-in-Chief
editor@lwml.org

LWML — Lutheran Women in Mission

Spring 2014 Finally!

From the Editor ...

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