My Mum died when I was 17. My core memory of childhood was church and church people as part of our life. They weren’t separate. 

We grew up going to church fêtes, youth group, kids’ church, Christian camps. Our home was always open to people and events. Our whole youth group would come over; we had a community carols by candlelight service each year on the grounds of our home; Mum started sporting teams for sports that we were interested in. 

When I was in Year 7, she invited the whole year around for a get-to-know-you. She was all about hospitality and opening her home to church and community.

My older sister reminded me that when my mother was confronted with her life-threatening cancer diagnosis, before us five kids would be up in the morning she would go into her little sewing room and have devotional and prayer time. I know, in the quietness of that time, she was praying for us children, knowing that she wouldn’t be around much longer. I treasure that so much. 

When she passed away, I wandered from the faith for 20 years. I came back to church in my late thirties.

One of the emotional things about returning to the faith that I grew up with was that it reminded me of my mother and our upbringing. All those years later, by God’s grace, for the first time the faith became mine and not just my mother’s. 

I’m now in ministry, which is really crazy, to think that I can come alongside women and help them in life and point them to Jesus, just as my mother did to me. I think about how her prayers would have been shaped in that little room by her vulnerability and how she had to trust God with her children. 

Right to the end of her life, my Mum was caring for people and sharing her faith. In those later years, she was listening to others and their problems, even though she was very sick herself. 

Her favourite hymn was “Thine Be The Glory”. I reflect on the last verse of that hymn, sitting with Jesus when he calls us home. That’s what she was looking forward to.

No more we doubt thee, glorious Prince of Life;

life is naught without thee: aid us in our strife;

make us more than conquerors through thy deathless love;

bring us safe through Jordan to thy home above.

I’m now 62, so her memory is very special but just keeps getting further and further away. 

I always wanted to be a mother, to replicate what my mother had done for us, the happy times that I remember being in family with my Mum. God has instead blessed me with a beautiful family, a church family, a husband who is a believer, and a stepdaughter. There’s a surprising connection between that beautiful community I grew up with and in, and realising the richness of what I have been blessed with now, and knowing that I am secure ultimately in God’s eternal family.