She identified herself as a friend of the deceased. After leading a graveside service for a very small gathering, the woman approached me at the end of the brief service. Since only a handful of people were in attendance on a brisk May morning, I thought their relationship must have been significant. Her name was Roberta and she offered me some background on the woman who had died.
As a child, she had suffered cruel abuse. She emerged from childhood with anxiety and depression—no wonder. With damaged self-esteem, she chose abusive husbands two different times—no wonder. She lost custody of her children, at times, because of her inability to adequately care for them as a single mom—no wonder. She did the best she could with her three children but, as adults, they had little to do with her and no compassion for her past trauma. Roberta wasn’t even sure she had talked with them about the horror of her past. She may have believed that she had caused or deserved her suffering. As her health declined in older age, a couple of children took her in for brief stints but they tired of trying to accommodate her needs. They sent her packing with little lead time like a foster child who learns to quickly pack their few precious possessions into a paper bag. She never had a sure footing.
Roberta met her at a senior community center shortly after she moved in with her daughter. This gave the daughter some free time during the weekdays. Roberta learned that the woman had very recently been homeless, living out of her car after her son tired of her. While she was in the hospital for stroke symptoms, he packed up her few things, gave away her cat and insisted that she needed to find a new place. She had come to expect such rejection. The daughter reluctantly took her in and looked for ways to hand her off. This is where Roberta began to play an important role.
Roberta worked with the daughter to find a suitable facility where her mother could live. When they found a place that would accept her with her meager income, she was handed off unceremoniously from the daughter with little contact from her afterwards. The woman kept her head low and only left her room for meals. Initially, anxiety and depression had a grip on her in this new communal setting. Roberta helped the staff to understand the woman’s insecurities so they surrounded her with words of assurance: You are, finally, home! You do not have to move. We will care for you and these people are your friends!
Roberta noticed how she began to emerge from her small quarters to interact with others. Her anxiety slowly diminished as she realized she would never have to leave. She received good medical care and ate meals at regular times. She began to talk to the woman in the room next to her. The circle of trust gradually widened. She attended the Bible study offered weekly in the dining room and the faith she had clung to over the years gave her new confidence. She shared with Roberta the many times God had rescued her from seemingly hopeless situations. When Roberta brought her snacks that accommodated her dietary needs, the woman quietly distributed them to her new friends. Dietetic cookies handed from one shaking hand to another became a communion feast where Jesus offered spiritual nourishment. She never would have seen herself as having anything to offer others. She began to realize, in this last chapter of her life, that she was valued. That is a wonder!
Her children did not come to her bedside as she was dying. Her new friends from the facility—staff and residents alike—kept a vigil. A wave of grief washed through her final earthly home when she breathed her last. After her death, there were few personal items that held any interest for her children. Roberta told me that there were only two things that seemed to have survived the multiple moves and continual hardships the woman had endured: a coffee mug and a Bible. The Bible was marked up with underlined passages and the woman’s reflections in the margins. Maybe her reflections would be meaningful to her children? Roberta would send these two items to the daughter, hoping it might bring some healing.
I wonder if this overlooked, undervalued wife and mother related to the Biblical woman who bled for twelve years and was driven, out of desperation, to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe? That act of faith finally brought her healing. I saw her as a modern-day Tabitha, giving of herself freely without ever seeing herself as a generous friend. Roberta wept as she confessed how deeply she and the other members of the Bible Study grieved her death. The presence of the Spirit was palpable in this discarded woman and they had been blessed by her. How impossible that would have been for her to believe. Most of all, Roberta was thankful to have met her because she had gained a sister. The Spirit had knit them together as family.
A couple of the other graveside service attendees were part of the Bible Study group. They decided to go for coffee before returning to the facility. As I said goodbye to them I, too, felt blessed to have gotten to know this woman through Roberta’s story. Certainly, she was among “the least of these” that Jesus exalted near the end of His life. Through His Spirit that she was transformed from a nobody into a friend and a sister!
Wonderful!
Preaching Life 