I am finally sorting through my mother’s things in earnest. Yesterday, I woke up with a keen sense of wanting to get things done, and the feeling didn’t pass by this morning. After a very slow start to the morning (try rushing a toddler, while still respecting her limitations and independence), I almost bulldozed husband and child out the door, before settling down to fill up boxes.

I’ve only stopped because of this poem scribbled on a slip of paper. My mother, I am learning through this packing process, kept a lot of journals and prayer diaries. She didn’t blog and didn’t do the whole Dear Diary… but God was her diary, her sounding board, her fount of wisdom. Really.

For those of you who think I write well, for those of you who keep urging me to write a book, I just want you to know that this ability to put thoughts on paper came from somewhere. In this last week, I’ve only just really come to understand how much I’ve always been my mother’s daughter.

Anyhoo.

I found this poem that she had scribbled on a scrap of paper about 25 years old (can tell from the letterhead), and even though she didn’t compose this one, it could just as easily have come from her heart.

A Real Christian

A real Christian is an odd number anyway.

He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen,

talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see,

expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another,

empties himself in order to be full,

admits he is wrong so that he can be declared right,

goes down in order to get up

is strongest when he is weakest,

richest when he is poorest and

happiest when he feels worst.

He dies so he can live,

forsakes in order to have,

gives away so he can keep,

sees the invisible, hears the inaudible and knows that which passes knowledge.

~ A.W. Tozer