Demo

For months I've been silent. Last week my mother died after years of struggle. May she rest in peace and rise in glory.

A few days ago I was in a fancy downtown office building for a meeting. During a break I sat in an empty conference room, staring out the window, asking the Lord to bring me some peace. I was staring vacantly at a the shell of a building directly across from where I was sitting. The building looked like a bomb site, either being torn down or completely renovated. Something caught me eye that I had not noticed at first. Above a dumpster, spray-painted, was the word DEMO. I realize the word meant that this was the designated receptacle for discarded materials. But it meant something different to me. My childhood nickname, the name my mother called me even until her dying day, was Demo. Pronounced deemo, it is the name my family has called me all my life, derived from Donna Demo because they said I was a demon.

Was the Holy Spirit playing a little trick on me, when out of nowhere in a most unexpected setting, just days after her death, there appeared the name my mother called me? I had been thinking about her, that I wasn't what she wanted me to be. I was her ugly duckling, the one born with a deformed head (a story told so often, I could recite it with her). I was the one who never had the right hair--always the hair--until, when she died I had no hair at all. But when she was dying, I laid my head on her shoulder, and she rubbed her gnarled fingers across the stubble on my scalp and said, "Your head actually turned out fine. You have a nice-shaped head after all. My baby girl. My Demo."

Now she is gone.

Just like before she died, when I said my strength was failing, I relied on the Lord's strength. I asked Him to give me compassion and caring and He filled me--not through my efforts but from His deep well. Now I am depleted. She has died--I watched her dying, yet it still seems so unreal.

And what do I need now? I feel frozen, exhausted. Again I will go to Him--to the Lord, my Lord who provides. I need rest to refresh my energy. Lord, please fill me with joy, with a new appreciation for life. I need comfort. Please show the way to a new purpose. I have tried to do your work, fulfilled my obligation to my mother--admitting that I often did it with a begrudging attitude. Please forgive me for that.

It's my mama, Lord. It seems incomprehensible that she is gone, after all these years of courting death, she finally surrendered. Lord, fill me with a new spirit. I know you have been equipping me for this, but I can't find the "on" switch. Fill my heart with what I know in my head. I need your spirit to fill my emptiness. I know it's there, that there is joy, a new purpose in me that hasn't reached my heart yet.

More prayer. More time with you. More trust. And total surrender to your will.