Years ago, back in high school days, I was talking one afternoon with a friend from church about something related to our families, and he made a comment that caught me off-guard.
“You guys are just different,” he said.
“Who is?” I asked.
“You are – the Potts. You’re just … different.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. You just are.”
He never could explain exactly what he meant, but after a while, I decided to take it as a compliment. And if we are, in fact, different – and if that’s a good thing – I suspect it’s mostly because of the woman we’re remembering today.
My mother liked to think of herself as a gambler. Not in the financial sense, but in terms of gauging the odds, playing the odds, and taking a long chance, now and then.
The story goes that, long ago, when the world was young, she came back from an out-of-state nursing school rotation to find a new young man leading the church training class for her age group. She thought he was cute. She’d been handed a strip of colored paper as she came through the door, and the young man was dividing the class into small groups, based on the color of the paper in their hand. My mother made it a point to see what color the young man had in his own hand, and then switched papers with someone to be sure she had the same color.
Whether he appreciated that effort, or was just taken by her big green eyes, I don’t know. But soon they were dating. Or, at least, trying to date. For their first night out, he took her to a violin recital – which, for the rest of us, hearing the story later, seems a sure sign she was already pretty smitten. My mother never went voluntarily to a violin recital in her life.
On the second date, he took her to a football game. The team bus broke down. He stayed to fix it, sending her home alone with his jacket draped over her shoulders. It was a preview of coming attractions. Over the next few decades, she was destined to watch that man fix a lot of buses.
One night, months later, he dropped her off from a more successful date, walked out to a nearby garden, and spent most of the night there in prayer, asking God if she was, in fact, The One, and if so, to bless that idea in her heart, and their union for all the years to come. Like all the purest prayers, his was thoroughly, graciously answered.
He asked her, and she said, “Yes!” almost before he finished the question. She was a gambler – and she knew what to do when that rare, sure thing comes along.
“Isn’t it strange that princes and kings
And clowns that caper in sawdust rings
And common people like you and me
Are builders for eternity?
“Each is given a bag of tools, a shapeless mask, and a book of rules
And each must make,
‘Ere life has flown
A stumbling block – or a stepping stone.”
- R.L. Sharpe
My mother wasn’t a big one for reciting poetry, but she loved that one. She worked hard, with my sister and me, to shape our masks, help us find out what tools we had to work with, and to keep us immersed in the Book. She made short work of any stumbling blocks that got in the way.
From my mother, my sister got good looks, a lively wit, and considerable brains. I inherited … small handwriting, a certain incompatibility with mechanical objects, and a deep independent streak. But we both learned some solid life lessons that have always served us in good stead.
“The good Lord made man to work,” my mother like to say, and she drove the point home by example as well as decree. Once, each, my sister and I made the mistake of saying, out loud, that we were “bored.” It is amazing how many chores there are to do in a small house, when you have time on your hands. We learned to be careful what we asked for.
I’m sorry to say that, once, in a period of early adolescent stress, I actually told my mother to “shut up.” She didn’t say a word to me for three weeks. I learned that words have consequences – which is a particularly valuable thing for a writer to know.
During another stressful moment in mother-son relations, she broke off an increasingly heated debate by directing me to vacuum the floor. I tried, but the vacuum wasn’t cooperating, and I was attempting to take it apart and find the problem when she suddenly loomed above me.
“I told you to vacuum the floor,” she growled. My mother rarely growled, but she was growling that day.
“I’m trying, but I can’t get it to work,” I snapped back. Her eyes grew big and dark.
“Then get down on the floor and suck up the dirt with your mouth!” she said. Then my eyes got big. And then, we both began to laugh. There is nothing, my mother taught us, so bad that you can’t find something to laugh about. And you should always begin by laughing at yourself.
She was fond of giraffes, for reasons she could never entirely articulate. They suited her in many ways. For one thing, she always admired people who were willing to stick their neck out. She also liked to chew things slowly and thoroughly … and I don’t mean just food. She taught us to think about the things we think about.
And like giraffes, she always found a way to be graceful, no matter what the circumstances. My sister and I never had to worry about bringing anyone home to our house … never had to wonder if she’d say something embarrassing or awkward. She could talk with anybody, about almost anything … put them at ease, get them to laugh, leave them feeling better about themselves.
That, too, was a good thing for a future journalist to see, and hear, and learn.
“Where I go, you know,” Jesus said to His disciples. “And the way you know.” The way they knew … because they’d watched and listened to Him. The example is everything. I remember hearing that once, about parents: that, in the end, the only thing they can really pass on to their children is a good example of how to live their lives.
We had a good example. We grew up knowing that our parents loved each other. And liked each other. We have many memories of the kisses they stole in the kitchen, and their giggling at each other across the supper table, and of the happy murmurings of their conversation, drifting back from their bedroom, late at night. Those, too, are wonderful things for a growing child to see, and to hear.
We grew up knowing we were loved, too. That someone cared if we skinned our knees, or got home on time, or looked presentable, or got the birthday present we really, really wanted. My mother took care of all those things. She loved surprises, and knew just when to spring them. She thought it was a good thing to treat yourself, now and then, “just because you want to.” She listened.
There are advantages to growing up with a mom who’s a nurse. You learn, early on, that there’s a good chance that whatever the injury, you’ll probably live to tell about it. And you really should tell about it. What’s the point of living through it if you can’t regale the rest of us with tales of your adventures? My mother liked hearing, and telling, stories.
The summer I decided to travel to China, she filled several letters and conversations with dire warnings about all the bad things that could happen to a fellow on the slow boat, the high road, the far side of the world. She was sure she’d never see me again. But once I’d been, and come home … she was the one who wanted to hear all about the trip. Every detail, every moment, every impression. She really was a wonderful listener.
She carried her own lifetime of impressions, and some of them weighed heavily on her. She saw her share of the dark side of life, and my sister asked her once, how a woman with all her worries survived those years before cell phones – when my dad was out of touch for hours, driving vans full of teenagers on black, icy roads, or checking ball teams on the rough side of town.
For that matter, how had she managed those lonely night shifts as a young nurse, working down in the psych ward … or those terrible days as a still-new bride, watching my dad hover between life and death in a hospital bed … or even those long, hot afternoons as a little girl, watching over her younger siblings alone, picking her way through some isolated cotton field?
How’d she come through all that?
“I had the Lord,” Mother said.
Pastor Jackson used to enjoy telling the story of the father who was standing on the busy street corner with his little boy, waiting for a break in traffic. When it came, he grabbed his son by the hand, said, “Hang on!” – then lifted him and scurried with him across the street to the other side. When he put him down, the little boy looked up with a big, adoring smile. “I hanged on, Daddy!” he said. “I hanged on!”
My mother “hanged on” to her Lord.
I have always been intrigued by the story in Luke 10 about Mary and Martha, because there was so much of my mother in both of those women. Like Martha, she would have been endlessly cooking and cleaning and trying so hard to have everything just right and just so for her Savior; she would want Him to be comfortable and cared for. But like Mary, she would also have been the one most eager to sit at His feet, and hear His stories, and ask her questions, and chew on His wisdom.
Jesus, talking to those two sisters, could so easily have been speaking to and about my mother.
“Ione, Ione, you are worried and troubled about many things” – and so she was. “But one thing is needed, and Ione has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Only one thing is needed.
My father was the one who led me to the Lord, but it was my mother who explained to me the Christian life in a nutshell. (She liked putting things into nutshells.) One day, when I was still a little boy, I came home from school aching and teary from something mean somebody had said or done. She hugged me for a little while, and then told me to listen.
“Your father and I love you very much,” she said. “And I hope someday you grow up to have many friends and even meet a girl who will love you very much, and share her life with you. But no matter how much you’re loved … no matter how close you ever are to another person … sooner or later, it all comes down to just you and God. And that has to be okay.
“If it’s not okay, then no matter how good the rest of your life may be, in the end – nothing’s going to be okay.
“But if you and God are okay, then no matter how bad the rest of your life may be – no matter how awful things may seem – in the end, everything’s going to be okay.”
Which is why, as hard as it is to think of a world today without our mom in it, we’re okay.
It’s good to think of another world, this morning, where she is worshiping, and marveling, and maybe asking all of her questions – or maybe no longer needing to. A place where all the fears are gone, and all the pain, and the Lord she hanged onto for so long has her now, in His everlasting arms.
That is what our great and good God has in store, for those who know the one thing – the only thing – that’s important. And for gamblers who bet it all on that one sure thing.
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