“Who Do You Think You Are, ‘Billy Graham’?”

“Who do you think you are, Billy Graham!!??”

Those are my most definitively-recollected, specific words that my mother said to me in that particular encounter over forty years ago.

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College days seem so far away, and the exact dates of my mother’s various (lengthy) involuntary State-Hospitalizations years ago, with the inevitably difficult encounters that surrounded each event, seem to blur together in my mind these days. As I try to write this piece, I sit here staring here and there while delving into my memory, to keep it straight.

• 1976 was the very first hospitalization (not counting 1946); I was in 7th grade.
• 1981 was the second time; I was a senior in high school.
• 1983 was the third time; I “think” the summer events I recall were after my 2nd year in college, and not in 1982, though, part of me thinks it may have been two summers in a row…
• 1985 was the fourth time; it was spring semester of my fourth year in college, months before my first marriage that June.
• 1989 was the fifth time.
• 1995 was the sixth time.
• 2001 was the very last time.

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OK, now that I got that straight. If I had to guess, the backdrop situation this story sits upon, it might have been summer of 1983. (Unless both summers held hospital episodes for her…1982 as well…) I suppose it doesn’t matter. It may not have been directly connected with my trying to intervene in her life and situation; it may have simply been something that happened during one of my periodic visits.

You see, I had become somewhat of a religious zealot my first year in college.

Meaning, I had a deep conversion experience to Christ. Late summer 1981, through a series of events and conversations, there was a very specific moment I recall (I was working, on the playground at Aletheia Day Care/Newark Church of Christ) that I remember to this day being an intense, internal encounter with the Holy Spirit. There were some things going on in my life that summer–things I am not proud of and rightfully produced the good shame that brings us to repentance–and I recall a co-worker casually handing me a catalogue with Christian gift products and showing me a quotation she was browsing.

When I read this poetic, Christian message, I can only describe something that felt like a heavy, sickening, convicting, weighty presence that came over me. Though the message was not particularly one of strong words or scripture, there was truth so simply and poetically expressed that it cut me to my soul.

God used this in a way that compelled me into an immediate sense of conviction, and all I could think to myself was, “It is true. It is really true.”

In that moment, I don’t recall making any particular outward response, but inside me it was like Someone flipped a switch. I remember having an almost frantic, nauseating sense of some immediacy in need, to understand what had just happened to me.

I was working afternoons there that August and would have finished at 6pm. It is as though I can still see that playground, parking lot, impressions of kids, people and the heat and summer lighting in my mind’s eye. I suddenly couldn’t seem to think about anything else but what I had just read, and more importantly, what it meant for me, personally.

Whenever I share my testimony, this event is central, though there were several preceding events and conversations that had paved the way for my internal conviction that day. These handfuls of things had taken place between February of that year, but mostly culminated in some other things earlier that August.

No one had directly shared the gospel with me to that point–at least, not in any direct way that required a response, nor any theological way that would have enlightened my deeper understanding that I needed to respond. Having been raised Methodist, I did know just enough about Jesus and His death on the cross, and was familiar with Sunday School Bible teachings enough to understand three basic things:

1. God is Holy
2. We are sinners needing salvation
3. Jesus died in our place

That afternoon on that church playground, I wasn’t sure what was happening in me but again, I can only describe it as a sense of immediacy. A sense that I must find God. And with that, I did the only thing that seemed to make sense to me at that time. I got into either my mother’s electric blue 1976 Buick Century at quitting time or the 1973 Dodge Polara (OK, I did Google to figure out for “almost” sure what that tank was…) and I drove up to the Alleluia Gift Shop that was on Kirkwood Highway.

I went into the gift shop that very night, looked over their selection of gold crosses, and I purchased a very tiny one that had decor on each of the four ends. I didn’t know at the time that was a “Catholic” cross and not “Protestant” style jewelry, but it appealed to me for my purpose.

You see, the only initial response I could imagine making to the experience I had just an hour or so earlier, was to buy this symbol and make a commitment in my mind/heart that I would wear it every single day to remind me that I needed God…and…I needed to find Him!

(OK…God is never lost…but we are!)

Really in those days, I don’t think it would have taken too much to persuade me to God. I think of the various youthful sins of those days and though definitely wrong, I don’t think I was characterized by any deep recalcitrance. Actually, I was in a variety of very deep relational and personal need. And it wasn’t too difficult for me to understand that I needed God. In fact, very specifically at that time, embedded in it all, was my recollection that when my father had died in 1979, I stopped attending church. Though it was waning in 9th grade, I had a long history of just him and I attending church together growing up.

And then, of course, there was ‘Billy Graham.’

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If I’ve held your attention to this point, I thank you for bearing with my sin of circomloction. I mean circumlocution. Several months ago someone said I was circumloculatory circumlocutory because they asked me a question that I tried to answer, and when they didn’t pay close attention and made a statement showing that (!) I tried to re-explain the answer in detail. (Because in passing along genealogical knowledge/relationships, older folks often talk in circumlocution, mentioning the context, nitty-gritty details of relationships of ancestors that cause every youth’s eyes to glaze over, being inundated with soculation circumlocution. (I can say I’ve learned a few words from my kids over the years…not that I can spell them nor use them correctly.) I remember hearing, “JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION!” I said, “I’M TRYING TO!!” Then, “NO, YOU ARE CIRCUMLOCUTORY!!!”

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Where was I? I think…I think I was saying that I had become a religious zealot my first year in college. And I alluded to knowing who Billy Graham was as a child. Alongside my Methodist input, and the input of a few neighborhood Catholics (one dear woman that I know had a deep faith, which produced a sincere love and care for me and my situation, that I will always remember, especially as was expressed in one very particular conversation)…there were the occasional times my parents would tune in to a Billy Graham Crusade.

I don’t know which of them turned it on, nor why, but I kind of recall it was my mother thinking it was something important to watch. Likely to “keep up with the Jones” I would speculate. In those days, TV watching was a pretty shared convention. I wouldn’t doubt that porch conversations with neighbors led to my mother’s thinking it was to be watched. Who knows. I can’t say that I ever had any sense that my mother demonstrated any true interest in following God in my childhood, and I have a number of recollections of her seeming to make a spectacle of herself from time to time regarding various things of a “religious” nature. Part of me wants to tell some of these things, but I fear cirmcomlocation. circumlocution. I do think it is worth noting that my mother often used the expression in conversations with other adults that, “I’m as honest as Jesus Christ.” Even as a child, this struck me as an unusual statement and arrogant. Though I’m not sure I could name it as such.

I do want to be gracious to my mother–she was a very damaged, ill person and I’ve come to understand her retroactively in additional lights, sadly, as I age and she has already passed on. That said, the things she was capable of, or ways she thought, for whatever the cause was, were very real things–very striking things, in fact.

These days we hear a lot about narcissism. I think it takes a lot of nerve/ignorance/impiety to even once state that one is on par in character with Jesus Christ, let alone to have this phrase echo in my mind as something I heard her say on numerous occasions. She would use this in catchy, agreeable tone and conversation when she wanted to persuade someone of something or perhaps pre-empt anyone’s doubt of her truthfulness, integrity or perhaps, possibility of error?

OK. I’m just going to say it! My sin is not trying to evade or be vague…my sin is trying to be too detailed and descriptive! My sin is actually…non-circumlocution!

cir·cum·lo·cu·tion
/ˌsərkəmˌləˈkyo͞oSH(ə)n/

noun
the use of many words where fewer would do, especially in a deliberate attempt to be vague or evasive.”his admission came after years of circumlocution”

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Oh where was I.

I remember being in grade school and hearing Billy Graham on TV asking people to close their eyes and pray the sinner’s prayer with him. Oh the faith of children–it all still leads me after over forty years of intentionally following Christ to wonder at a few mysteries that theology can never perfectly answer completely for me–some questions of this-n-that.

In my mind’s eye and recollection, I have a pretty good sense that there was one time (and maybe there was only ever one time Billy Graham was brought up on our TV) that I was listening and at that part didn’t quite know what to do. This actually suddenly makes me a little emotional, as I try to recall that time and my young self. I didn’t know what to do, and I was responding to Billy Graham on the TV.

Maybe I looked at my parents to see what they were doing. And nothing specific comes to mind. I have simply those kind of “frozen images” we sometimes may conjure up of our parents sitting in their TV chairs–generic images of their expressions, attire or general look…frozen in time….doesn’t this somewhat describe the peculiarity of young memories? For me at least, sometimes the images of others are more static, but I can fairly clearly recall my own internal thoughts and actions. Meaning, I am the one in motion in the memory, so-to-speak.

After my listening to whatever Billy Graham’s undoubtedly strong, animated, Bible-filled message had been that night, when he likely asked viewers whether they wanted to “receive Christ as their Lord and Savior and escape hell,” and asked them to close their eyes and pray with him and not look around…I remember attempting to do that. But I would not have prayed aloud, and I might have turned in a way that my mother, especially, would not have seen me in such a vulnerable activity. I mean, I already felt like a “bad child” in a number of ways. Who knows, maybe she put the TV on for ME that night. Almost nothing would surprise me.

What I recall even more, however, was my obsessive feeling about it all. I was afraid I didn’t do it right or say it right, if it wasn’t aloud, or some other way. I kind of recall going into my room later and continuing to repeat it all in my mind or where I could say it aloud, maybe multiple times, and in multiple similar words as I recalled Billy Graham praying. Maybe I emphasized the words, or said them slowly, or “fastly.” Maybe I got on my knees and said it. Then, maybe I sat on the bed and said it. I really don’t recall…but the welling up of tears and child-like thoughts involving fear, perfectionism and perhaps even hints of some type of mild OCD at that age…coupled with my deep, deep understanding of a heavenly Father who knew and loves me so deeply from all time–as He loves all children (and adults must become as children to truly know this)–leaves tears of gratitude and joy slowly leaking from my eyes, freely flowing…as I type these memories out.

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So, where was I?

Somewhere between some grade school response to Billy Graham’s TV audience directive, and that early college day in my mother’s kitchen, as I stated, I had become a religious zealot.

OK. What is a religious zealot? you ask. Define that.

Fair enough.

After the Holy Spirit moved me that August afternoon in 1981, shortly before I started at the UD, I did wear that tiny cross daily. While in my mind, perhaps I was wanting to “get religious” (because I didn’t quite grasp “relationship” with God) but didn’t really know how to go about it, nor what it might entail (nor what I was willing to give of myself to “follow” God), I continued in the same trek I was on, more or less.

In fact, probably no less than a week or two after this spiritual encounter, I was at the UD Band Camp (wearing my little cross) and getting inducted into that crazy fall that involved that “party band.” The world had opened up to me…I was in college meeting new people and had the “privilege” of drinking punch at the band camp’s freshman night that I didn’t initially know was spiked. Not that I wouldn’t have partaken along with my friends, but I was so sick all I recall were my friends carrying me back (and the older Tuba player that had been at CHS needing to do most of the carrying). They laid me on the floor of whatever retreat cabin that was and turned my head so I wouldn’t choke from vomiting. I remember waking up alone the next morning and hearing the marching band playing in the distance. Somehow I made it out onto the field and twirled a flag, with a huge headache…

That fall was filled with various parties and new friends on campus, and of course my little tiny cross attended it all, too, worn around my neck reminding me that I had decided I wanted to “find God.” I remember having a chronic, empty, nagging feeling that first semester. Something was missing, something was off, and I knew that I needed God. I do believe I made some attempts to read my bible that fall and I recall wanting to walk through a cemetery. I was visiting a friend and noticed there was an old cemetery near her house, and I said I felt like taking a walk alone and contemplating there.

She said, “Are you OK?” I replied along the lines of “Yes, I just want to find God.”

This is a somewhat funny recollection–if I smile at it rather than other analysis. Why would I think I’d find God in a cemetery?

Actually, it made sense to me. I was clearly not over my father’s death just two years earlier at the end of my sophomore year in high school. I really wasn’t far off in my “search.” I understood that God controlled life, death, heaven and hell. I understood that my father had DIED. I understood (and feared) that I too, would somehow, someday…DIE. In fact, I was a bit obsessed about that possibility…that I would die young in some terrible way.

And, here I am, writing this at sixty years old…recognizing my young trauma, need and…yes…tendency to obsess over things. And that God loves me, despite that. Maybe even, He appreciates that in me, as only God could.

So, I remember walking around that cemetery just reading names and dates, maybe looking at the sky…or the grass…or trees…or…thinking…about…hmm…I don’t even know. I probably had some rudimentary prayer expressions, but I can’t recall. Who knows, maybe I did something I could have seen on TV…like…um…say aloud, “Where are you, God?”

I know! Maybe…maybe I parodied the title of a book we girls all read in 5th grade and my 18-year-old voice said aloud in that old cemetery somewhere on Welsh Tract Road in Newark, “Are you there, God? It’s me, Eileen.”

I suppose nothing I’ve written so far would indicate I’d become a religious zealot.

I made it through that fall, with a plan to move on campus winter session. I could not wait to be out from my mother’s home and all the difficulties. I needed to find God, and also, I needed to find myself.

A dear friend of those days (whose Christian faith also played a significant part in all of this slow conversion) had encouraged me that when I moved on campus that I should try to “join” Campus Crusade For Christ. I do believe she and I had types of God conversations that fall–she was attending an out-of-state Bible College and we would spend a lot of time together on her breaks. And, I also was still working at the Christian School and Daycare and having positive relationships and experiences there.

I think it was actually one of my first Friday night dining hall experiences after moving on UD campus that I was eating alone and noticed a group of students at a nearby table bowing their heads to pray before their meal. Being alone, I kept hearing parts of their conversation. They seemed to know each other well, and, they seemed happy and friendly. At one point I nervously approached the table and went up to a student (it was Kevin Natrin, for any college friends reading) and said something along these lines:

“I noticed you prayed before you ate and heard you mentioning going to a meeting together. A friend told me to go to Campus Crusade for Christ and had shown me a poster on campus. Do you know anything about this?”

Well. What do you think happened then?

They introduced themselves, and said they were part of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, and their weekly Friday night gathering was about to start and I was welcome to join them.

Jesus sought me while a stranger…wandering from the fold of God… (this hymn is quite meaningful to me…I just picked one of the first YouTube’s that popped up…while the child singer and the format might seem a little oddish…in a strange way it is just perfect to insert into this piece….it’s a little girl, with two parents that are following God…it is a little family, quite different from my young life…but…I am that little 60 year-old-girl…)

And God forever changed my life that night on the UD campus.

I was nervous and didn’t know what to expect–and quite honestly was afraid of what I might be getting myself into. I remember going into a large meeting room in the student center that was full of wholesome looking, outgoing, friendly students and there was the sound of some musicians tuning guitars…as the room filled up they began to play and I sat on the floor with them and was surely given a songbook.

I’d venture to bet they sang one of my favorites of those weekly gatherings that very night…it was often sang as a warm-up I think…since it was a sixties song with a feel-good Christian vibe but not specifically a church song….“Love is but a song we sing…and fear’s the way we die…you can make the mountains ring, or make the angels cry…though the bird is on the wing, and you may not know why….come on people, now…smile on your brother every body get together try to love one another right now….Some will come and some will go…and we shall surely pass…when the One who left us here…returns for us at last…”

Before I knew it, I was involved in bible studies and meetups with other Christian girl students for “discipleship” and “fellowship” and there were retreats and then by that spring I got connected at a church in Kemblesville….there were books to read and little tracts, campus street theatre groups, and mostly, being taught that God’s greatest desire for us was to evangelize. Evangelize the campus…for Christ!

(Please understand…I think this is right, good and wonderful…but…I do have some retrospective mixed feelings about some aspects of that in my own particular young life….I really didn’t understand, nor do many college students who don’t come from a deeply traumatic situation and especially if their family was actively Christian…how that might have played out for someone like me. However, God is over all and causes all things to work together for the good for them that love the Lord…and love Him I certainly did.)

Honestly, my college life revolved around Inter-Varsity from that point on, far more than academics. I would notice people on campus and try to nervously converse about The Four Spiritual Laws and if lucky, they might smile and take a tract. I befriended girls in my various dorms, especially international students, and would meet for a meal or play racquetball, hoping to “succeed” at “friendship evangelism.”

And then, there was that time I ended up debating with a male student after a Religions of Man class the fall of 1982–I was barely out of my “Christian diapers” and we got into dialogues about Zarathustra, Jesus…World Religions and demons…oh…yeah…it’s complicated….I was such a good “missionary” I married him. He’s the father of my sons. But that, is definitely a cirumlocatory tangent I won’t go into here.

I will insert that somewhere during that time he wrote of me that “I was in love with God…wanted converts…and he could ‘dismiss’ me if I didn’t so clearly live it and believe it…” (3rd part paraphrase)

I certainly was as in love with God as any young college girl like me could be. But, I wanted human love, too.

All the while this was going on, I was also dealing with my mother’s mental condition in a variety of ways.

And now, I think I’ve finally set the stage enough for readers to imagine (and me to try to recall) my conversation with my mother in her kitchen one day. Surely there were enough of my Christian college friends who had learned of my situation and suggested my mother “needed Jesus”, and surely because I believed 100% in my newfound “born again” experience and the power of Jesus to heal mental illness and deliver from demons and radically change people (as well as my obligation to “share the gospel” with my mom), I was intentional and zealous in whatever happened that day!

Now when I say zealous or zealot…I simply mean that I was very passionate. I was young, I was simplistic, and I was certainly in some situation (whatever it was!) that was clearly over my head. I was naive. Plus, I already had a terrible relationship with my mom in terms of connection and normal communication.

Who knows what I said to her, exactly. I get these flashes in my mind–just glimpses that may be actual happenings that day–but I’m unsure if I’m simply trying too hard to remember the exact details…

I kind of think I told her that if she became a Christian, that God would heal her of her mental problems. I probably said that He would change her life and make her “normal” and “happy.” It’s getting late as I’m engaged now in finishing this story…and I’m giggling at that thought. (“Jesus will make you NORMAL!”)

I recall a cousin telling me more than once of a time he heard his father (my mother’s brother) say something to my mother he found memorable, as his father didn’t typically talk this way to anyone. He said he heard his dad say to my mom, “Margaret! You need to REPENT!”

Now, as the years have gone by and I get a better glimpse into my mother’s own early life and sibling relationships, there’s a lot more going on worthy of analysis and question. But generally, I can totally imagine this uncle saying that to my mom. I have some interesting recordings my mother secretly made of various phone calls in the 1970’s, and one of them involves a conversation with a Baptist Pastor over wanting to be removed from a mailing list, of which she seemed to be suspicious that former neighbors “signed her up for.” On one hand, it is quite sad that my father and I had to deal with this type of illness and home environment she created. On the other hand, one can’t help but find parts of it funny–and nervously laugh! Here is a link–the most interesting part spiritually comes toward the very end–but if you don’t listen from the beginning, it will not make much sense.

Lately, I’ve been watching some old Carol Burnett shows, and I can more clearly connect that I perceived my mother to have some qualities of “Eunice Higgins.” And the bickering that went on with “Mama” feels to me to this day similar to the feeling I got when my mother was with her WV-born siblings! There is one recording (an interrogation) my mother made with me in front of a tape recorder where I seem to be speaking to her in a puzzling “twang.” I’ve pondered anything from being a smart-aleck child, to the possibility that I had her WV accent at that age of ten due to the immense amount of “confined time” I was forced to spend with her, to some other unknown reason. A friend listened to this once and said that I sounded like the little girl (Scout Finch) in To Kill a Mockingbird!

In past months, as I listen to “Eunice Higgins” all these years later, I do believe I was annoyed with my mother and was imitating Eunice to her for some reason in my replies, perhaps out of boredom, or because I wanted to mock her. I don’t know, but it was not normal. I find it amazing at times the ways I found to deal with this as a child (I was precocious). And as an adult, processing my childhood through forms of art, writing and other creative ways has been immensely helpful.

A few years back, I attempted to put cartoon illustrations with that particular recording to make it funny and cause intentional cognitive dissonance. That is essentially what “dark humor” is–and that is the style of humor I most gravitate to. When one can re-frame something into forms of absurdity or other images, it makes it funny. When dark humor is exceptionally good, the audience is put into a bind. They are torn between wanting to laugh at something that is really quite terrible, but feeling it would be wrong for them to do so!

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My mother had a vindictive streak in her, among other very difficult qualities. Again, I’ve written other pieces in recent times (and have more I intend to tackle at some point) where I express that I feel I better understand now some of my mother’s issues (while not excusing her vindictive behaviors) such as HOW I FELL IN LOVE WITH MY MOTHER, MY MOTHER WAS ALSO FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE , TELEGRAM TO MY DEAD MOTHER! , MY MOTHER’S CODED DIARY MESSAGE MADE THE TRANSLATOR BREAK OUT IN A SMILE WHEN SHE FIGURED IT OUT! , and MY MOTHER REFERENCED ‘CONFUCIUS’ IN HER HIGH SCHOOL POETRY ASSIGNMENT.

But back to that day in my mother’s kitchen. Nineteen-or-twenty-year-old Eileen was “witnessing” to Margaret. I have a feeling she was in one of her highly manic modes and I was meshing two conversations together: one was my intention to intervene (at that time I believed it was my responsibility to force her into treatment if I thought she needed it, because I didn’t know what else to do) medically; and the other (witnessing aspect to the conversation) may have been unplanned, and simply an outgrowth response to her anger, hostility, resistance and general unwillingness to listen to anything I had to say or suggest about her need to get help. Whatever getting help “meant” to me at that time.

I do believe at some point, after telling her that she needed to turn to Christ and surrender her life and her will (I’m certain I emphasized her will because I viewed her as excessively controlling, manipulative, mean-spirited and self-willed) and that I believed if she did that, it would be the key to everything….that I then attempted the logical, incremental approach of the Four Spiritual Laws. (I linked the actual college-campus tract earlier, and below is my faulty recollection of what these even were, but I knew them better at that time!)

1. I explained to her that God created everything and mankind, and that He was pure and holy.
2. I explained to her that Adam and Eve sinned against God and therefore all people were sinners and objects of God’s wrath.
3. I explained to her that God sent Jesus to die for us–be a propitiation for our sin–and that to have a right standing with God, we must accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
4. I explained to her that now that she knew all this, she was obligated to respond (or go to hell).

OK…if there can be any intellectual humor to be found in my summary of what I “might” have said to her in the famous “Four Point Gospel” presentation method I had been indoctrinated with (I say this with some tongue-in-cheek affection, acknowledging it was a great starting point for someone who needed a guide, but could be problematic is some situations). In my tumultuous teenage years with her after my dad died, I’m’ fairly certain that in anger, overwhelm and frustration I had likely told her to “go to hell” more than once. Not that I had any real idea what that even meant, and I should note here that my United Brethren raised, mild-mannered father had used various profanities at here over the years, too. He once told me that he “never swore” before he met her. The topic of how we learn to use (or not use) profanity in the context of what children hear at a young age is a huge one, in-and-of-itself.

So, I suppose this encounter with her that summer while I was trying my best to do the loving, Christian thing still had a lot of undertones of my anger toward her and the difficulties. I am certain that though I may have tried my best to be my most compassionate self and do the right thing–the loving and “godly” thing–that my mother and I had such a long history of yelling and screaming matches at times that the reader should have no doubt in their minds, how this conversation went on an interpersonal level!

I kind of recall she kept interrupting me and I couldn’t get through all my (Four Spiritual Law) points. Maybe I kept starting over!

I do remember there was an incredible amount of anger and hostility coming at me. Honestly, all joking aside, I am certain there were demonic elements at work in this scenario. I say this because I can remember my mother starting to literally mock and imitate me (and my statements about God). Maybe laughing at me, too. She could be very loud and dramatic–and mean-spirited and imitative/condescending. I have the sense that she was picking out things to say or that I said about Jesus and God and mimicking me with the tone of a “preacher.”

It should be noted, that when people are challenged with various difficult truths, we can all react defensively and feel that we are being “preached at.” One of the reasons this unfinished blog piece came to mind this week are various contemplations in several difficult communication situations that make me think about tone, words and the struggle to know whether/how we might communicate hard things to others, and especially, how we ourselves receive hard things. It’s a messy topic I may tackle at some point involving speaking truth in love, postures, and what it means to be a scoffer, and what it means to have a teachable spirit, and more.

There is no way for me to know my actual words or my tone at that time (at least how I might have started out), but what I do know is that beyond our inevitable communication flaws as humans despite our best efforts, resistance to the truth of the gospel is a real thing. And some people resist, mock, scoff, belittle and attack more than others when presented with–regardless of whether gently or not–with even the name of Jesus Christ. Because of our own sin condition, we can have a visceral hostility toward the truth of God, to some degree, when we are not ready to receive. I speak from personal experience at various times in my life.

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As I started in this piece, the clear words of mockery that were left ringing in my ears as I left her house that day were, “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, BILLY GRAHAM??!!”

When people react in this way, what they really are saying is, “How dare you…who do you think you are trying to tell ME any part about God.”

At the end of this piece, I am going to include a section from a short story I wrote in 2005, four years after my mother’s death, because it is the best way to summarize the ups-and-downs of the Jesus factor with my mother between that college day and days before her death–about twenty years in span. Basically I don’t think I ever again attempted to “witness” directly to my mother. The times were filled with difficulties, and amounts of my own anger and judgement toward her with the ongoing forms of hard-to-resolve traumas, as well as my taking her to church, including her in our family in various ways especially at holidays, and otherwise trying to manage my own life and responsibilities.

But before I end this piece, I need to tell a 2nd story from those college days involving “religion” and my mother. The two illustrations in this piece were part of a grouping I did last summer, and there are some more significant life stories I’ve yet to write about to add to my collection with my little illustrated (ageless, timeless….) “little Eileen Slifer with Angry Margaret.”

This 2nd event I really want to pin to the summer of 1982 for several reasons, but another part of me wants to say 1983. In my mind’s eye, I “think” this happened in a parking lot behind Conover Apartments which were on Elkton Road. I lived there that summer, as a live-in aid for a young, disabled woman. But another part of me associates this time period as being around the time a friend got married and I was in her wedding that summer, which I think was summer 1983.

Enough circumloction, circumlocution. I was in a parking lot. I think it was on Elkton Road. My mother was there, either a planned dropping something off to me or it was a happenchance meeting with her. It may have shortly followed the event in her kitchen where she mocked me. My mother was generally unwell, and I, having had another Holy Spirit encounter that summer following my first year in college in which I experienced the gift of speaking/praying in (biblical) tongues, I had also become convinced my mother was demon-possessed. The idea of that seemed to easily account for my understanding of her behavior as I had known in my lifetime to that point!

It’s late, I’ve been writing at this for awhile so my thought flow allows for my appreciation of the various ways one might view this event/memory. I think there’s some truth in each way. Basically, when I saw my mother, I became impassioned (and convinced that maybe I needed to drive “demons” out of her by praying “at her” in tongues “authoritatively”), having been exposed to various thoughts and practices by that point and really not having a good understanding of how these VERY REAL spiritual things operate.

I just had this belief.

And who knows, really, for certain…whether my mother’s response was indication that perhaps I wasn’t so very far off in my belief/sensing that I needed to pray in this particular Holy Spirit way for God to work. (OK…I’ve cartooned it…so there is an aspect to this parking lot scenario that one might find just slightly funny….maybe…)

I do recall some type of verbal exchange with her and then I decided to look her in the eye and loudly pray in tongues. In the natural sense of things (and considering my mother was already paranoid and manic), my mother’s response could have had a totally naturally explanation. If you had never heard a Pentecostal-style “praying in tongues” and your child started doing this “at you” perhaps a relatively sane person might have the response she did! But I tell you, at the time, I totally perceived that there was in fact, something “spiritual” happening.

I can recall the absolute fear in her eyes. It was strange, because she didn’t even ask what I was doing. She just started running from me. Like literally…running. I get this impression/recollections in my mind’s eye of my then 58-ish year old, out-of-shape, woman trying to run from me and looking over her shoulder with again–a look of terror in her eyes. And of course her response confirmed to me that I should continue, that there was something “demonic” that I was encountering.

As she ran, meanwhile, my 19-ish old self was steadily following her, continuing to loudly speak and maybe raise my hands….I kind of now recall, I’m pretty sure I was also speaking in English to cast away Satan “in the name of Jesus” while inserting tongue-speaking utterances.

It’s just a memory. Hard to know what to make of it. At sixty years old, I do believe more than then that there are demonic “familiar” spirits and curses that affect families. I continue to pray in very specific ways as Jesus leads me from time to time, to renounce the works of “Satan” in my life and in the lives of others I love and care about.

While my actions with my mother in that parking lot around 1982 may have been somewhat offbase, misguided or ill-timed…I am not so sure that in my zealousness of “knowing just enough to be dangerous” that I wasn’t entirely off target.

Oh…and I just “made up” a sense of buildings for the cartoon! (In case any Newarker is trying to figure out where it literally was.) I have a fairly good memory for many things, but this one is not so precise.

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Postlude
From my short story called The Mirror, written in 2005, that intertwined my account of my mother’s death in various stages with the account of the death of my first marriage. It was a creative expression, written in a certain intentional format. Twice I’ve read the whole thing aloud to two different psychologists–one was my therapist in 2005 who was riveted and said at the end that the piece was worthy of submitting to a psychological journal. I also read it to my therapist in Alabama around 2017 or so when I was first getting to know her and help her to know me. I remember glancing at her several times during my reading and she seemed very riveted as well, and I thought, perhaps, I saw her eyes were forming at a few parts (the parts around my interactions with her at the very end). The story takes almost a full hour to read aloud. I have attempted to tape record it awhile back, for anyone who might have interest in listening to the audio, please message me. At some point I may have a better version I can publicly link, it is still a bit in progress.

Here is the excerpt that references my experience with my dying mother as it connects to the event in her kitchen in 1982/1983 when she mockingly asked me if I thought I was “Billy Graham:”

” The realtor asked about the mirror and a few last things that were left, I told her I would take care of those things. And I did, after I went one night to visit her in the state hospital. Among her mounds of gaudy costume jewelry (purchased to further guarantee her “guaranteed” sweepstakes winnings) I had found two rings which I believed might be her wedding rings, but I was not positive. She was so out of touch, slouched in a wheelchair, not able to feed herself. She used to be such a powerful woman but now she was reduced to this. She was talking about people from long ago interspersed with possible recent events. One couldn’t make sense of it. But I showed her the rings and asked if they were her wedding rings. She said they were. I said, “Are you sure?” She said that “Yes, I would know them a mile away.” She wanted to keep them, but I said it wasn’t a good idea to have them in that place. She had them in her hand and she took my hand and tried to put them on my finger, telling me to put them on and keep them. Looking back on this moment, I remember thinking that it was as close to a normal mother-daughter interaction as I had ever experienced with her. I told her that she needed Jesus in her heart to be saved and asked if she wanted Him in her heart. Simple, something she might comprehend. She said, “Yes, and you too.” Somehow I felt she had accepted, because she listened to the word Jesus without mocking me. “

~The Mirror