My Mother's Hands.........

I saw an episode of the old TV show "Twilight Zone" when I was growing up and it didn't really register then, but lately I am haunted by it. No, it isn't because of scary monsters or aliens. The story was narrated by a pretty young girl who was in love with a wonderful guy and planning her wedding or something very uplifting. Just as the story is about to climax with a happy ending, the woman narrating the story of her life looks down and sees an old woman's wrinkled and gnarled hands. She realizes in horror that those are her hands and she was that young girl, but now she is old and in a facility of some sort, and that joy is just a dream of the past.

WOW! Age alert! I have been looking at my self and seeing my mother since I became a mother myself. As I grew older, I sorta reflected her body style although she was smaller of frame than I am. Now I look at my hands and I see my mother's hands from the days when I cared for her at the end of her life. I see an old woman's gnarled, age spotted, and wrinkled hands. Despite the jewelry worn to brighten them up, my hands are now her hands--the hands of an old woman.

So, I think of that "Twilight Zone" episode and the shock that the narrator feels in realizing that she is at the end of her life and not in Chapter 1 planning her future. Why is this concept of aging so startlingly sad? Why did the author of this story see horror in a woman's discovery that she was old and not still that pretty young girl? Why do I get so misty looking down at my own hands, a reflection of my mom's hands, and not feel proud and wise and stronger because of living a life that has been full and rich and is still going on forward. I still have a future.

If you haven't stopped reading by now or gotten too depressed, let me tell you the other thought that comes to mind when I see my mother's hands in my own. I remember her love, her kind touch, her patience, her gift of teaching, her crazy obsession with saving stuff since she grew up in the depression. I remember that she loved Jesus and taught me to do so also. She made sharing and putting others first fun. We talked and talked and talked and grew together despite our difference in age. We prayed. She touched my children's lives and left indelible marks of distinction. She made me a better wife. Mostly she reflected Christ. Her faith was her core.

Even when she was crotchety and made mistakes, she came back to Scriptural truth, repented, and loved all the more.

I miss her. And so I want to make looking at my old hands and seeing my mother's hands a kind of reminder for the rest of the life God blesses me with on earth. I want to be like my mother, but more so, I want to be like My Father in Heaven--just as she taught me......I see her smile!xo

"And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

You shall teach them diligently to your children,

talk of them when you sit at your house,

when you walk by the way,

when you lie down and when you rise up." Deut. 6: 6, 7