True Beauty | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: True Beauty | Previous Challenge Entry
By Teresa Odden
08/24/16
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My grandparents, Ramadan and Zenep, immigrated from Albania to America in 1918 after their arranged marriage. My grandmother was 21-years younger, which is common among arranged marriages. She was raised to take care of the household. It’s what she knew, what she did, what she loved.

My grandfather died when she was 62. I vaguely remember his funeral other than to say my father was drunk and caused a ruckus. A few years later her brother, Dajë, died. The funeral was different and it wouldn’t be for several years before I understood it wasn’t a Christian ceremony, but a Muslim service.

My father was an alcoholic who was verbally and physically abusive to my mother. I never heard my father tell her he loved her. My mother’s world was between the four walls of her home. I wondered why she would do everything my father told her to. I grew frustrated because she enabled his behavior. I saw her as weak, insecure, and helpless. I didn’t want to be like her.

Like my grandma, she lived to serve her family. She was raised to be a servant and a servant she was.

At the age of 59, my mother lost her battle to breast cancer. It wouldn’t be until my mother laid helpless on that hospital bed, having become paralyzed from the waist down due to the cancer ravaging her bones, that I began to see the beauty of her life.

A week before her passing, God blessed me with what would become our last mother-daughter conversation. God spoke into my spirit the need to thank her for all she had done. It was then I realized I had never given her credit for knowing Christ.

I asked her how we began attending church and she said she needed hope. Having no driver’s license, together with my sister, we rode the big, yellow bus to church on Sunday. I sat there wondering if I would’ve done the same. I had to be honest, probably not.

I began to see how her desire to get us into church was where God began to draw me to Himself when I didn’t know who God was. God put a fire in my soul to know Him.

There are no words to describe how beautiful my mother’s humility was that kept me from following the religious beliefs of my grandparents. It was because of my mother’s willingness to find hope in a hopeless situation that I know Christ as my savior.

For all eternity she is living the life she didn’t have on earth. She is in a place where there’s no fear of abuse or unappreciated. God is pouring His peace and joy over her and she is surrounded by the greatest love of all – the God who delivered her soul.

She lived her life how a wife should, which is found in I Peter 3:1-5. She accepted her fate and “clothed herself with a gentle and quiet spirit”.

She was beautiful on the outside, but the delight she found in serving others is where her true beauty shined. Her devotion to do for others gave her life meaning and not just because she was raised to do so, but what she loved doing.

God gave me an extraordinary gift during my mother’s last days. It was almost too late, but God lovingly opened my eyes to see her strengths and how she was the one who held our family together. Where I saw weakness, God showed me what captivated her attention was not the pain, but the love of genuinely caring for others.

God delivered me from a false religion and because of her humility, I have the life she only dreamed of. I am married to a Christian and my home is one of peace and security. Through her, God also showed me a healthy way to view servanthood. Jesus said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve,” (Matthew 20:28, ESV).

When I was too young to understand the difference of a Muslim funeral, I later recognized God’s hand was not only on my mother’s life, but mine. Through her humility, together we found Jesus. She was an example unlike any other how to live, to love, and to wake up every day with joy and delight. I will not only see her again, but I will see grandma Zenep too. Both served others, willingly and lovingly throughout their lifetime.

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