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Love You Can't Resist “Bye! I love you!” That’s what my mother told me everyday as I headed out the door during my senior year in high school. She made a point to say it every morning, standing at the light-green screen door in her fuzzy, royal blue housecoat. I remember jumping in my car, fumbling with the keys trying to hurry and crank the car because she would stand there, smiling, until I drove off. I realized she had work to do. I knew it wasn’t easy for her, considering what she was going through. She had a sick twenty year-old son, two rambunctious boys ages eleven and seven, a two year-old toddler, a husband who was absent most of the time, and, of course, me, a seventeen year-old with wheels. I always felt I was a normal kid with normal parents and a normal home, but the summer I turned fifteen all of that was turned upside down. You see, my older brother was always skinny—his whole life—but right after his high school graduation he was so sickly that a doctor decided to do exploratory surgery on his abdomen. For the Kent family, that was the beginning of sorrows. After stays in three different hospitals, various intervening doctors, and Christmas, my brother came home. The folks had a hospital bed set up in the den, and that’s where my brother stayed. One night a couple who were friends of my folks came over and prayed and talked for several hours. All I knew was that my mother started talking about Jesus all the time after that. She also informed me that she was able to speak in tongues, whatever that meant. The folks had to take my brother back to the hospital once more to have a permanent device put in for IV fluid infusion. I found out later in life that my father left my mother after that trip. He was a surgeon, and, with the odd hours he had always kept, it was difficult to tell when he was home or not. He’d come by most nights, but would be gone when I woke up the next day for school. Oh, I forgot to mention that my mother had a baby the summer this all started, a blonde-haired baby girl. So now she took care of the baby and my brother as full-time nurse and mother. Plus, she was raising my other two brothers and myself, with my father supporting us financially. Her plate was quite full. Still, she was always reading her New American Standard Bible, reading stuff to me and telling me Jesus loved me, always in her sweet way. She told me Jesus loved me and wanted to help. It was hard to understand—How could she give so much of herself to me? How did she have the power to stand and wave to me every morning when I drove off to school? I couldn’t resist her love for long. Two years later, as a senior in high school, I gave in. (It was exactly two years after the couple came over and prayed for my folks, and my mother started speaking in tongues and talking about Jesus all the time.) I had been living a secret party life those high school years, one that started when my folks were away in hospitals with my brother. I drank every night I could get away, riding around with my buds on country roads getting wasted. But Jesus had different plans for me. I finally gave in to my mother’s love and the voice of God. On a cloudy Sunday afternoon, I drove out to a little horse pasture and walked to the middle of the field, far from people and noise—just me and Jesus. I got down on my knees and told Him I was sorry for all the crummy stuff I’d ever done, and asked for forgiveness. I thought He heard me, so I asked for a miracle—I wanted to see the sun. It had been a dark and cloudy day, but, as I pulled out of the gate to the pasture, I looked up and saw the sun peeking out of those fast-moving clouds for only a second. That was my answer from Jesus. I knew He heard my prayer. A few weeks later, after reading a book about people speaking in tongues, I knelt down beside my bed before heading to school. My mother came in a few minutes later and informed me that I was going to be late for school. I told her about the pasture prayer and that I had received the Holy Spirit and spoken in tongues for several minutes. She gave me the best hug in the whole world, a hug that only a mother can give. The road for me from that day forward was long and winding and full of potholes, but it all started with my mother. I give her full credit for being the one who won me to the Lord. She introduced me to Jesus and spent her energy encouraging, teaching, and loving me even though her own load was nearly impossible, while I was heading for disaster with my drinking. But there she was—I can still see her standing at the screen door—waving. “Bye! I love you!” I love you too, Mom.
ninetyandnine.com © 2003, Stuart Kent ---------- Stuart D. Kent calls his brother in Columbia, SC, and sister in Jackson, MS, some weekends with unlimited cell phone time. He hopes to one day write about his two other brothers who are not living. His mother and father are still alive and kicking. |
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