Oh Mama!

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In honor of Mothers Day, and because so many of you blog-readers love stories about my mom, here’s a bit of info about her. As you read between the lines, you’ll see how she came to be the colorful person she was.

 

Mom was born at home in 1912, arriving just before Christmas. Because she was due in 1913, she told everyone she wasn’t as old as they thought.

She was born too soon and was unhealthy, so the doctor told her parents not to name her. That way when she died, they wouldn’t be too attached. And so she remained “Baby James” through December and into 1913. By St. Patrick’s Day her father, a full-blooded Irishman, nicknamed her “Pat” after the holiday. He called her that for the rest of his years.

Eventually they officially named her Evelyn Pauline after an older brother, Everett Paul, who died at the age of 8 in a school yard accident.

Growing up during the Great Depression, she learned to squeeze a penny till Lincoln squirmed and made sure we could pinch him, too. She married a shy, 42 year old Swede when she was 29. Unable to wait until he popped the question, she did it herself.

When asked what she wanted as a housewarming gift, she said, “Toys for children who might visit us.” Before she had any of her own kids, though, she made friends with all the neighborhood children, and while in labor with her first baby passed out chocolate chip cookies before heading for the hospital.

After having two little girls born 20 months apart, Mom was expecting a third when she began hemorrhaging and was rushed to the hospital. After being given the wrong blood type from an inaccurately labeled bottle, she nearly died. But God had other plans for Evelyn Pauline Pat James Johnson.

Although doctors cautioned Mom not to become pregnant again, our brother Tom came along on Dad’s 50th birthday, a definite bonus to all of us. To this day I think Mom tricked Dad, since she’d wanted nothing more than a houseful of children. Eventually she got her wish with 17 grandchildren, all local and all in love with their grandma.

Mom viewed children as marvels to be cherished, protected and admired. She never encountered a child she didn’t approve of and although she rubbed off on them, her greatest joy came when they rubbed off on her.

She also loved music and practiced piano daily. In her teens she taught lessons, in her thirties played the four-keyboard organ for Moody Church, and in her prime accompanied enough weddings and funerals to put us through college, although she gave the money back to the bride instead.

Mom memorized entire books of the Bible, taught high school Sunday school for decades and conducted in-home Bible studies throughout her married life. But she also loved a good practical joke and made good use of her whoopee cushion, plastic vomit and artificial dog poop. No wonder kids loved her.

Dad used to say Mom was a risk-taker. Tomorrow I’ll tell you a story that proves it.

“A cheerful heart is good medicine.” (Proverbs 17:22)

Ya don’t say….

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After being with Dad, Mom and Nate as their lives wound down, I’ve learned people on pain meds are not themselves. Trying to have a conversation with a heavily drugged person gives meaning to the word “hallucinogen.”

All of us wonder what we’ll say in our final days. Dad remained dignified, and Nate, who always had much to say, was accurate and gracious to the end.

But Mom? Absolutely goofy. Her colorful statements were so entertaining, we kept a log. She’d been a one-woman-show during her non-medicated life, and her words while drugged (for pain) stayed in line with her character.

Get ready to laugh.

  • Chewing on the hem of her hospital gown she said, “This tastes good, and I like the color. It’s also very nourishing.”
  • To a grandson: “Let’s play funeral. I’ll be the corpse. You be the soloist.”
  • To a sweet visitor: “I can’t wait to get rid of you.”
  • “The most important thing is my conversation with God. He talks out of the Bible, and I talk back.”
  • To me: “Let’s both get in the same bed and start a riot about same sex marriage.”
  • It’d be nice to see my apartment again, but I guess I’d rather go to heaven. I’ll wave down at you.”
  • Looking at our wrinkles: “Do I have strings all up and down my face? Because both Mary and Margaret do.”
  • To a nurse removing her dinner: “Save that food tray. When I’m in heaven, if the Lord decides not to return to Earth, I’ll have something to feed him.”
  • “Maybe I’ll go to bed now.” We said, “You’re already in bed.” Then she said, “Boy, that was easy.”
  • Son Tom asked: “How do you feel?” She said, “With my hands. How do you feel?”
  • After restlessly working both legs out from under the sheets, she began laughing hysterically. We said, “What’s so funny?” She sputtered, “My beautiful legs!”
  • To me: “I wish you a Happy New Year and that you’ll get prettier.”
  • “If I can do anything for you, let me know. I can only do things in my miserable way, but I am the way, the truth and the life.”
  • “It’s nice when parents are just starting out and know that ‘Jesus loves their little children.’ That helps when they don’t know anything.”
  • “Maybe I should change my mind about going to heaven tonight. There’s lots of happy people here, too.”
  • “I served 10 salmon. Put the rest over there. It’s brain food. It’s ok, but not great.”
  • “When I die, just drown the [pet] bird and throw him in the toilet.”
  • Pushing an invisible item around the end of the bed with her foot: “I’m trying to get that muffin over into the corner.”
  • A friend called and said, “Who’s there with you?” She said, “Just Mary and Margaret, if you call them visitors. It’s more like a zoo.”
  • “Today I’m better. I have happiness running out of my lips.”
  • To a visitor: “I’m going to throw up any minute…on you.”
  • Fingering her hospital gown: “I’m going to send this to Joyce. She likes blue and can wallpaper a room with it.”
  • “If I ever wrote a book, it would be about the magnificent mercy of God.”

These are just a few from 26 pages of Mom’s colorful statements. She spoke often of her approaching death but never with uncertainty or fear. One of her last statements while “under the influence” was, “Some stumble, some fall, but if we love Jesus Christ, we all eventually get home.”

She got home 19 days later… but forgot to take her salmon.

“We would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8)

Straight Talk

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In 1972, my brother-in-law taught me how to hang wallpaper. Before he started on our red and blue hounds-tooth paper, he made a plumb line using a metal tool shaped like a teardrop, inside of which was a coiled string sitting in powdered chalk. Bervin pulled out the string and dangled it from ceiling to floor, a small lead weight tied to its end. One quick snap of the chalky string made a perfectly straight start-line for our wallpaper.

Today in my Michigan cottage, Drew began laying floor tiles with a similar process. After measuring and studying the floor, he stretched and snapped his plumb line in three critically important lines.

First he found the exact center of the room by criss-crossing red chalk lines wall-to-wall in both directions, making four 90 degree angles. Then he snapped a perfect 45 degree angle across the other lines so his first row of tile would line up precisely straight.

Scripture references plumb lines in several places, and Jesus, if he was a carpenter, surely had one. Biblical plumb lines were usually synonymous with God’s Word, his standard of righteousness. (The word “righteous” actually means “upright”, very close to “straight up and down,” which is what “being plumb” means.)

In Old Testament days, God measured his people against the plumb line of his Word. He hasn’t changed since then, nor has the Bible. Come to think of it, human nature is the same, too. Righteousness is as unattainable for us now as it was for them. None of us can measure up.

In building our lives as we please, our plumb lines become wobbly and wouldn’t even be good for wallpapering a room or tiling a floor. And wobbly standards make for unstable lives. In the ‘60’s young people used to say, “If it feels good, do it.” That reasoning draws a wiggly plumb line, and taken to its farthest extreme, becomes Osama Bin Laden. This man’s plumb line was a self-created standard of right and wrong having nothing to do with our God’s unchangeable measurements of righteousness.

But God has kept the books on Bin Laden, just as he keeps the books on the rest of us. Although we see ourselves as better than this evil man, Scripture puts us all in the same category. “All… are under sin. As it is written, ‘None is righteous, no not one’.” (Romans 3:9-10)

Being righteous can’t be found in our opinion of what’s good or bad. The only chance we have is to accept the righteousness of the one person who did measure up to God’s plumb line: Jesus. He offered to share his righteousness with us by dying for our sins, an offer that stood for Bin Laden, too, though he rejected it in favor of his own shaky plumb line.

Thankfully, Jesus Christ will one day return to earth as our ruling monarch. When that happens, one snap of his plumb line and everything we’ve made crooked in this world will quickly be made straight.

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line.” (Isaiah 28:16a,17)