Mamaw Didn't Expect to Be Understood

Turns out, "unprecedented times" just aren't all that unprecedented

Sometimes we fall into the trap of forgetting history. It’s understandable. We live in the here and now, and our focus is on what’s ahead, not what’s behind. But while it’s understandable, it’s also regrettable— because not only is there a lot to learn in the past, there’s a rhythm of rise and fall that we would recognize.

You see, unprecedented times are really not that “unprecedented.” In fact, I’d argue that, if anything, they’re common. Epidemics? Wars? Political wranglings? Violence? Church decay? Sexual debauchery? Friends, welcome to the long, hard fall of man. History has been rife with such things since the Garden.

These times are not unprecedented. They’re exactly in line with what every other civilization has witnessed, albeit perhaps on a larger scale.

My Mamaw was born in 1933. Now, it’s possible that she had a bit of a crash course in the presence of sin in the world because she what was then called, “illegitimate.” Nowadays we say, “born to a single mother,” and know that multiple scenarios could have played out resulting in that pregnancy. But her mother wasn’t a 40 year-old who had banked her eggs, shopped a catalog for a sperm donor, and flown solo through IVF. She was a rebellious womanchild of 15 who had a taste for liquor, dancehalls, and married men. My grandmother was raised by her own grandparents under a fiercely scarlet letter in a holler where there was nowhere to hide from the fact that one of the Ten Commandments had been violated on the way to her conception. Her biological father went to prison for murdering his wife when she was three years old. This was a year before her mother married his younger brother, and five years before she and her half-sisters would be called, together, to the teacher’s desk during recess to be told that their father had been stabbed to death over a crooked card game while serving his time.

So sin was a known quantity, and named. She was 8 years old when the US entered WWII, and understood genocide before she was old enough to have her first period. She didn’t expect fair— rich men’s sons were never drafted, and the politicians who pillaged the people and resources of Appalachia were never punished. This was simply the way things were, and she expected nothing else.

You know what else she didn’t expect? For people to understand her way of life. And this, I think, is perhaps one of the greatest lessons the homemakers of today can take from her life.

See, Mamaw lived through the 1960s and 70s. Ancient history to most women tying on their aprons today, but not so long ago in the big picture of what we see playing out socially right now. The FDA greelit the first oral contraceptive in 1960, and by the time Mamaw sent one of her beloved sons to fight in Vietnam, more than 1 in 5 married women was happily taking her daily dose of birth control every morning. Nearly half of all women were in the workforce by then. Church attendance began a steep and rapid decline. Political assassinations, betrayal of public trust, all of it was afoot.. The tide had turned, and turned quickly. The life for which Mamaw had been prepared— the life of a homemaker, a wife, a mother— was suddenly seen with suspicion and even mistrust. After all, if you didn’t join the revolution, you weren’t for the revolution, right?

My Mamaw talked about those strange times with me now and then. I remember her telling me once how she prayed primarily for her future daughters-in-law during those years, knowing that whomever and wherever they were, they were being shaped by the prevailing thoughts of the day. “I started to wonder if I’d ever have grandchildren,” she confided once, and as a woman who had suffered through miscarriage and stillbirth and the death of a newborn, I knew that this must have been heartbreaking for her. Then I asked the question whose answer I have held close to my own bruised heart ever since:

Didn’t you feel alone, watching everyone else run in the opposite direction socially, politically, even spiritually?

Her reply:

“Why would I feel alone? Never will He leave me nor forsake me. If the world hates me, it hated my Savior first.”

She was paraphrasing two pieces of Scripture there, the first being Hebrews 13:5 (in KJV, because that’s what Mamaw used), “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” The second was John 15:18-20,

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.

If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

Mamaw never expected the world to be her friend and as such, she wasn’t disappointed when that truth played out. She didn’t waste her time or energy attempting to engage in arguments she wasn’t called to make. Instead, she focused on her home, her family, her circle… and trusted that God had a both a plan for the country she loved, and the manpower to bring it to fruition. Mamaw didn’t need the media to laud her efforts to care for her community. She didn’t need her political party of choice to hold the majority. She didn’t need the books on the shelves at her local library to reflect her values. She was faithful to what God had placed before her, and knew without a shadow of a doubt what that was, because she spent time in both the Word and prayer, discerning His will for her.

It’s so easy to fall into the error of thinking what we’re witnessing is unique. It’s not. It’s easy to think everyone has to agree with us. They don’t. It’s easy to think we’re alone. We’re not.

The only will with which we must be aligned is God’s. The world will misunderstand us. It will view us outsiders, as underminers of it’s “progress.” Don’t forget to whom you belong. Don’t forget where you belong. This world is not your home. Let them mock and let them shake their heads at your backwards ways. You stand in good company— you stand as a witness to the power of God.

In Christ,

Heather