054: Legacy

April 10, 2010
Proverbs 31:10-31

My Mom went to a funeral today of a woman who was the mother of one of her friends. Linda, my family’s friend, is a single mom of four kids living in inner-city Minneapolis loving on people and transforming her world one project at a time. I’ve always admired Linda – she has a PhD which, as a wanna-be academic, is just cool. But even more cool than her degree is the fact that she’s never married, but she chose to adopt four girls from Haiti and raise on her own. And almost as cool is that is the fact that she buys real estate at rock bottom prices because the property is just a mess – blood stains from murders, misshapen fences from where prostitutes leave their infant children to go have sex with their customers, etc – restores it, and either sells it or rents it out to upstanding citizens, so her neighborhood doesn’t have to be a typical inner-city neighborhood. That’s guts, gumption, and God-oriented vision!

Linda’s mom, from what my Mom was saying, sounded like she was cut from the same cloth as Linda. Her husband – Linda’s dad – had multiple sclerosis for 29 years, and Linda’s mom took care of him every day while raising their family. She couldn’t work, because she wanted to be home with her husband, so she bought and sold real estate on the side to support her family. She was a tough but fair business woman, she had an absolute open-door policy and made Sunday dinner for several families to come over after church each week, she had a van specially designed for her so she could take her husband with her anywhere she wanted to go, and she never once complained about getting the short end of the stick.

Her husband would come with her to the kids’ sporting events, he’d sit with the family every meal, even when he couldn’t eat the food they ate, and she made him an active and normal part of her life and her children’s life, despite his debilitating disease.

As my Mom was telling me all about this woman, I can’t help but be impressed. I hope that I can be half that kind of a woman – I hope I am servant-hearted, savvy, solid, and selfless like Linda’s Mom.

The Proverbs 31 woman, which always seems to be one of those “haunting characters” of Christianity, certainly seems to have been at least a similar type woman to Linda’s Mom. Clearly her nobility and character was something that warranted praise ALL the days of her life… and, in fact, well beyond.

Are you becoming the kind of person you want to be remembered as being after you die?