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| By Palmer, Alfred T., photographer. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons |
We all
dream about making a change in someone’s life.
We think that perhaps if we did this or if we did that, we could alter
their whole outlook on life. In our
parenting years, we believe that if we set enough rules we can save our
children the heartbreak that we ourselves went through, or protect them from
the world or from some of our personal fears.
But
actually, being on this side of parenting, I realise that actually there’s very
little I can do to save my children or indeed anyone else’s children from doing
exactly what they want to do. I can
guide, teach and beg, but the end decision is that of the said person.
The only
true answer to our problems is to love.
Judging doesn’t work. It only
alienates and separates. The single sure
way to win someone’s heart is to love them and to live by example so they want
to follow. No quick fix, it takes time
and patience and above all…LOVE!!
When my
mother, also called Wendy, was a young girl, she was brought up by a single
uncle, her father's brother (her father had divorced her mother and remarried). This uncle later married a Godly lady, but
they themselves never had biological children, instead struggling to bring up
two beautiful little girls, my Mum and her sister Christian, two years her
junior.
It wasn’t
easy to make decisions for someone else’s children, but this was their lot and
they did it bravely. Yolande, as her
Aunt was called, never preached to Wendy.
She tried to live her life by example.
It couldn’t have been easy as the girls grew and developed their own
personalities. My mother was a fiery redhead who had learned to fight for her little sister against all the odds. Although brought up with a distant knowledge
of God, she had no relationship with Him as such.
But, she
loved to dance. It was just after the
war and there hadn't been much happiness around, but the release that dancing
brought made life a bit brighter. Of
course, Yolande, as a devout and strict Christian in those days, did not
believe in dancing. But wisely she never
criticised my Mum when she left for the dances in the small local halls. The
lads all dressed up and the girls made great effort to be as beautiful as they
could be with the limited resources they had.
My mum told me often about how the girls dyed their legs with the colour
in tea and drew a straight line up the back of their legs to give the
appearance of wearing tights. In those
days, a much stricter dress code was observed and everyone tried their best to keep
up the tradition.
On many
nights, when my Mum came home from work, my Aunt Yolande would be getting my
Mum’s clothes ready for her to leave as quickly as possible. She would iron her dress to make sure she was
the ‘belle of the ball’ and polish her shoes.
My mother, being young, often took it for granted, but one night as she
hurriedly painted her legs for the dance, she looked at the older lady and
inquired, “Why are you ironing my dress to help me go to a dance, when you
yourself do not believe in going to them?”
Yolande quickly responded, “I want you to look your best and to enjoy
every moment you have there, as it’s the only heaven you’re going to have.” Those words pierced my mother’s young heart
and all night as she danced around the hall, she kept hearing the words, “this
is the only heaven you will have”. It wasn’t said out of spite, or to make her
feel bad: it was said out of a heart of love.
Her aunt kept preparing her clothes and ironing her dresses, but her
words penetrated my mother’s heart.
What if
this was the only heaven she would enjoy?
What if there was nothing else after death? Suddenly she began to search and ask
questions of this lady who was showing such kindness. Yolande never spoke much regarding her
beliefs, but when asked could give a sure and steadfast account of what God had
done for her and how He was willing to do it for all who came to Him in
sincerity.
It led of
course to my Mother finding God and living her life for Him, bringing us all up
to know Him as our own personal Saviour.
How could ironing a dress have had this possible consequence? How could someone show that God was real just
by the way they lived their life? It was
only through the manifestation of love.
If preaching were to save the world, everyone would be saved by
now. But love is the key.
Many of us
struggle with the fear that maybe some of our loved ones will miss the call of
God. They seem to have turned their
backs on Him and are living according to their own plan for their lives. But,
take courage, where there’s life – there’s hope!
If you feel
despair, if you think your love for someone isn’t having an effect, then just
keep on going. It may take longer than
we hoped, maybe longer than we can understand, but my simple hope is that if we
keep on loving, God will do the work and ‘restore’ the years that the locust
has eaten.
Keep
‘ironing the dress’, keep ‘polishing the shoes’. Do all things possible to live
the gospel. Leave the rest up to an ‘all
knowing and powerful God’.
Wendy Tomin
Co-Pastor,
Kairos Christian Centre
