Coming back after two weeks’ vacation can make you feel like you are swimming against the tide. Add to that some life challenges and you begin to feel the real weight of life and the circumstances surrounding it. 

But, I was really encouraged this past Sunday in that I was part of celebrating my mother’s 90 birthday with about 150 other family and close friends. She said, “I don’t want anything big and I don’t want the attention to be on me. I want it to be on Jesus because if it wasn’t for Him, I wouldn’t be here.” Spoken as a true women of God. This is a lady who was born in 1922 and gave her heart to Jesus at 16 and never turned back. 

My sister gave someone who writes poems information surrounding her 90 years and the lady put together a 17 page reading, “This is Your Life”. It was powerful! It was filled with challenges from a sick mother while her brothers went off to fight WWII, leaving her to do much of the farm work, living through the depression, to losing a 62 year old daughter a little over a year ago to cancer. But it was filled with good times as well. 

But here is the key, at 90 years old, she is finishing her race and she is on the victory side. While my sister was reading her story, there were tears flowing down my mother’s cheeks, remembering the good, the bad, the painful, and the humorous times of her life.  And she loves Jesus now more than ever. She simple glowed last year when she announced to me that they had just had their 31st great grandchild. She finished the announcement by stating, “And Daddy and I pray for all the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, everyday by name! We have the time to do it and it is one thing that we can do.” 

As we see people around us who give up on their relationship with Jesus because it is too hard, He didn’t come through for me in the way I desired, or some other self centered reason, remember this women of God. Did she have an easy life, No. Was she perfect, not by any means.  But that didn’t push her away from Jesus, it drew her close to Him. And close to Him she will be for all eternity. May the Lord grant you and me the ability to run that kind of race to the very end. 

Declaring Our Victory Emanuel,