On March 26 1924, sixteen year-old Addie Mae Tomberlin Paulk gave birth to a nine-pound baby girl. Baby Myrtle was born hungry and Addie Mae was at a loss as to how to feed her, mother would tell us that then laugh and say, “I am still hungry”. December 25, 2013 she went to heaven, what words would I use to describe her? She was a tower.
I typed the word “Tower” into my Google search and more than twenty-one pages of pictures came up! There were towers of every description, the Mile High Tower, the Eiffel Tower and an old landmark, the Leaning Tower of Pisa along with towers carved by nature’s deft hand, such as the Devil’s Tower, towers from all over the world! The description says, “Towers are tall structures almost always taller than they are wide (almost always?).” There are radio and TV signal towers, cell phone towers. There are smaller tower type structures called “Lighthouses”, getting closer now.
The one type of tower not mentioned was a tower that in most of our lives are towers of light, strength and an unchangeable love. It is the tower of hope, encouragement and help that is our Mother. My mother was the source of all the above-mentioned elements in the lives of my siblings and me and most of all she was all those things to my dad. There were times when I saw my dad, back bent from working all day physically building our church, come in so tired he could hardly put one foot in front of the other. After a few moments of mother hovering over him and admiring how hard he had worked then placing a big plate of food in front of him suddenly he was a new man. She was fiercely loyal to the ones she loved never wanting to believe anything bad about them. But she was resilient and was always able to pop up back like the clown we had as children that you could knock all the way to the floor and it would spring back up smiling! Moving from church to church, visiting the sick, cleaning church toilets and helping cook dinners to raise money, she did it all.
God used a woman to bring us His own Son in the flesh. In Judges we read about Deborah, a woman who actually judged Israel and without whom Barak refused to go into battle! Women are the “kingpin” (the most important person in a group or place) in a lot of our social endeavors, and for all the good we do, without guidance from the Holy Spirit we are nothing.
If you are able to have a conversation with your own mother today tell her you love and appreciate her, I tell mine every night and I know she hears me in heaven!
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