The Legacy of My Mom and Grandma

A large part of my faith came through my mom and my grandma. Both of these women overcame great obstacles and developed a deep love for Christ. Some of my earliest memories surrounded my mom teaching me different Bible stories and my grandma praying for hours on end. When I think of their faith, I think of Timothy’s mother and grandma. Now, I’m not saying that I have the same faith as Timothy did, but I am saying that the life my mother and grandma chose to live was a large factor in the development of my relationship with God.

For years, I thought my mom got the short end of the stick. Her dreams of being an international journalist were quickly shunted when she came to Canada and had to work the first job she could get to provide for her family. She then continued to stay within that same career path to provide for my brother and I. Her marriage to my dad was tumultuous, but she stayed because of the covenant she made before God. She was then diagnosed with osteomyelitis in 2016 and had to take a leave of absence from work as she was undergoing intravenous therapy.

In almost every aspect of her life, something was stripped away. To someone from the outside, my mom’s life doesn’t look like much, but if you knew my mom, you would know that she lives an extremely rich and intimate life in Christ. Her love for God deepened even more after her illness and she was continuously made alive in Christ day by day. As she learned more and more about God and His character, she shared those truths with my brother and I. The focus of our lives wasn’t to have a success story that the world painted, but to live for Christ and to pass that to the generations to come. Even though my brother and I have had our own failings in our relationship with Christ, we were instilled with a deep knowledge of the sovereignty and love of God. The faith of our mother was compounded by the faith of our grandma. Her love and faith in Christ were an example to us from as early as elementary school when she would send us off to school with a prayer and a reading from a Bible passage.

There’s so much more that I could say about my mom and grandma. They are ordinary women who have extraordinary faith in God despite their circumstances. It wasn’t because there was something particularly special about them, but it was because they continued to lean on Christ despite what the world thought of them. One of my favourite Bible verses is Joshua 24: 15, which says:

“But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

It’s counter-cultural to submit ourselves before a righteous God, and even more counter-cultural to serve a God who doesn’t grant our wishes at our command. A life of faith is marked by suffering and humility, but it is also marked by a deeper joy, hope, and love that surpasses what the world has to offer. These are truths that I’m reminded of when I think my mom and grandma, and these are truths that I hope to pass onto the next generation.