Dear Mom, Leave This Behind...

There is a lot one can learn from a handshake. You can feel physical strength, but also, if you feel with your heart, you can sense the inner strength that resides inside the person on the other end of the handshake. You can tell how much their hands have worked. You will also know the confidence one exudes by their handshake.

There is even more to be learned from an embracing hug. And even more to be discovered through watching one live their life.

I have had a handshake from feeble looking hands who had worked their whole life to feed and provide for generations. A handshake that one would have thought to be dainty and gentle. Instead, it was firm. Very firm. Shook you. Startled you to reality, firm. You walked away knowing this hand had walked through the fire, was confident. You were suddenly aware of your own quick judgement about how that hand might feel. You had underestimated that handshake.

This handshake came from a lady I had known all my life. She was always known to me as Mamaw Beeler. She was a lady who knew who she was and Who she walked with.

She had an embrace that would make you feel like the most loved person, even when everyone else rejected you. She lived a life that quietly, in everyday, taken for granted ways, let you know she was living for her King. And, yes, she had a handshake that was firm enough to make my tough husband wince in pain from time to time. It was firm. It said a lot.

Today, I got to read part of a note her great great granddaughter, Gracie, wrote in a Get Well Soon card from Gracie & her brother as Mamaw Beeler became ill. It said, "Faith is hope, hope is love, love is life. God trust you in life." And later, Gracie wrote a note and left it on her table the day her great great grandmother passed. It said, "She will be in Heaven, a very good place."

What this sweet child had picked up from her great great grandmothers's life was that she was one of God's children. That God trusted her grandmother to be His handshake and His embrace in this life.

She is God's and God is hers. "She will be in Heaven, a very good place."

There is much you can say with your life. You can say who is important to you. You can say if you were happy or if you were bitter. And I wonder often what I'm saying.

I hope when my time comes, that the generation or generations coming up behind me will not hesitate in knowing that, "She will be in Heaven, a very good place."

I want to sit down more often so I can look in the eyes of my children and not only tell them about a God and mother who love them, but show them. Help them feel it. I want to quietly be the embrace that says to someone, "When no one else loves you, I do and so does God." I want to be the handshake that tells people not to underestimate what God can do with my weak body. I want to live the life that says, "I am His and He is mine."

Dear Mom, when you struggle to do everything you think you have to accomplish to be a good mom, remember there is much to be said without saying a word.

Let the dishes go once. Let emails wait.

Let your children see you read God's Word. Let them hear you pray. Let them hear you pray for them. Let them see you worship God, whether in quiet tears streaming down your face or in a joyful dance to your Father.

Dear Mom, if you leave nothing at all for your children but this, you have done well -- That they may know, "She will be in Heaven, a very good place."

**Dedicated to the memory of Mamaw Beeler. May we all live a life like yours. May we all let God's love flow through us.