Friends Needing Friends: Honoring a Mother Whose Life Exemplified Christ

(Mama) Eunice Brown)

It’s the month of May and in America it’s the month in which we set aside a day to honor our
mothers. So, this month I decided to honor my own mother, a woman about whom I’ve spoken on a number of occasions, but never on this site.

It’s difficult to cull through one’s memories and choose just one or two memories to share. I’ve chosen one that reflects my mother’s devotion to and trust in God in spite of deep grief and heartache.

I was in middle school which had just closed for the summer recess a few weeks earlier. On this particular morning my younger sisters and I, along with our brother Philip who had just turned six the previous month, decided to stroll down our country road to a little bridge not far from our house. There Philip decided to amuse himself by picking up twigs and throwing them over the side of the bridge into the water, then darting to the other side to watch them wash through. About five minutes into his childish play, we heard a car approaching, a rare occurrence for this time of day. Phil had just started to retrace his steps when the speeding car struck him, catching his head in the headlight. Several yards from the initial impact the teen driver stopped, the jolt of which dislodged Phil’s head from the headlight and threw his badly traumatized and unconscious body to the side of the road. My sisters ran home to get our mother and I ran to a neighbor’s house to call for an ambulance. Within a few minutes I observed as she hovered over the broken body of her baby boy praying. At the hospital, a veteran reporter from a neighboring city reported that she was the calmest woman under the circumstances he had ever observed.

Later that afternoon she returned from her vigil at the local hospital to check on her children and refresh herself. Mother went into her bedroom and I could hear her praying. My mother’s prayers were a daily occurrence, but because I longed for physical proximity to her, I sat on the hallway steps outside of the master bedroom. Her prayer went something like this,

“Lord, you gave Phil to us and we gave him back to you. We’d like to keep him a little longer, but if you want to take him home, I surrender him to you.”

That was it, very calm, very matter-of-fact and not overly emotional. It was just a simple prayer of relinquishment to a loving Heavenly Father in whom she had complete trust and faith. In less than 24 hours, Phil was dead. I never once heard my mother question God as her faith was as absolute in the face of tragedy as it was when one of her children was receiving an award. Her faith was rewarded and her eight surviving children all served God, several in full time ministry, in part to the unswerving faith they observed in their mother, as well as their father.

My mother outlived my Dad, her sweetheart and companion, by 15 years so she was acquainted with widowhood. She filled her days with prayer and ministry to others. Well into her eighties she taught a Bible class to young couples at her church and they adored her. She regularly visited and ministered Christ’s love to residents of a nursing home, many of whom were younger than she, a fact she found amusing as she would recall her day to one of her children saying, “I went to the Old Folks Home.”

Mother died the way she lived, quietly without earthly fanfare, while sleeping. She gave two deep sighs and was in the presence of Jesus, her Lord and Savior. Thank you “Mama” for demonstrating a

The Eunice Brown Home
for Children

faith that didn’t buckle when tried in the crucibles of life. To honor our mother, we surviving children established a children’s home, The Eunice Brown Home for Children, in Ukraine, in cooperation with a strong Christian community there with whom our oldest brother ministered. Mother didn’t know it, but she’s going to be having children until Christ returns. Her tombstone, which she shares with our Dad, says it all, “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.”

Ladies, if you don’t know Jesus Christ as your Savior, I implore you to take that step of asking Him into your life so that you too can say as the Apostle Paul first stated, “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.”

That is the best Mother’s Day gift you can give yourself and your children. Happy Mother’s Day to each of you.